Hopper by Tom Folsom

for a barbecue at his home in Benedict Canyon. The hamburgers sizzled while something tapped away inside.
    Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat .
    â€œThat’s the—”
    â€œNo, Dennis, the monkey isn’t here.”
    â€œWell, it’s Jimmy.”
    Stepping inside, they saw on Stern’s top shelf a little wooden Buddha from Thailand, bouncing up and down.
    Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat .
    â€œIt’s Jimmy,” said Hopper. “I’m getting out of here.”
    Hopper flew out the door, leaving Stern to deal with Dean.
    â€œSit down,” said something powerful. “Leave yourself alone, but pick up the pen.”
    So, Stern began to write—rather, Jimmy began to write—but the only word Stern could decipher was “wood.” Natalie Wood perhaps? Whatever it meant, it was definitely spooky, leading him to conclude that if anybody were to have contact with the dead, it would be Dennis.

THE DEATH CURSE
    W ithin weeks of the silver Spyder crash on September 30, 1955, Variety pegged Dennis Hopper as the next James Dean. Of course the next James Dean would never call himself the next James Dean. The trick to winning what Warner matinee idol Tab Hunter acidly called the “James Dean Replacement Sweepstakes” was to completely deny being a contender. Stating on the record that he refused to give any interviews about Dean, Hopper did not permit photographers to snap pictures of a treasured painting given to him by his departed friend.
    Otherwise he’d be as shameless as his slick pal Nick Adams, a fellow Rebel delinquent who’d taken to showing up to parties in a candy-red windbreaker. For Life ’s feature “Delirium Over Dead Star,” the notorious Hollywood opportunist posed with a cigarette by his kitschy shrine of Dean memorabilia, including Dean’s hat and a poem Dean had penned about a lonely boy.
    Hopper let it be known—he wanted no part in such gloss. Coolly playing his cards, he pleaded to Young Movie Lovers magazine, “Please, don’t call me another Jimmy Dean.”
    Practically every young actor was being thrust into the sweepstakes, like a guy Hopper saw pulling up to a popular Hollywood restaurant in a Porsche, just like Dean’s. He even kind of looked like Dean. Weird. And his name was Dean!
    You Picked Dean Stockwell
    to Play Jimmy Dean!
    But Would It Ruin Him
    or Make Him a Star?
    So asked the pages of Movie Life , a cheap fanzine that made this grown-up child star cringe. Dean Stockwell preferred to hang out with his subterranean art crowd and make cosmic collages and strange underground movies like For Crazy Horse , Pas de Trois , and Moonstone , screened out in the wilds of Topanga Canyon.
    But a dark horse roaring in from Tupelo had no reservations about going after James Dean gold. Dropping to his knees before Nicholas Ray, the stranger with the slicked-back black hair commenced to recite Dean’s lines from “Rebel Without a Pebble,” as he adoringly called his favorite film. He’d seen it over and over in the theaters and was desperate to star in the upcoming James Dean Story , not realizing it was going to be a documentary, or knowing what a documentary was anyway.
    â€œI’d sure like to take a crack at it,” said Elvis Presley. “I think I could do it easy.”
    Hunting down Hopper so he could hear all about Jimmy Dean, Elvis confided how worried he was because the script of a B Western he was about to star in instructed him to smack around his lovely costar. He told Dennis, “Man, I never hit a woman before.”
    Realizing the confusion, Hopper sat down the sloe-eyed cowboy for a chat. He broke it to him gently that the movies—like Santa Claus or the Easter bunny—weren’t real. Dennis ought to know, having just filmed Gunfight at the O.K. Corral . Playing the troubled rustler Billy Clanton, he’d clutched his chest and dropped off the balcony for the