The actors James Dean and Earth Kitt were fabulous friends. He’d seen her on stage in a performance and had been in awe of her movements. “Can you please teach me to move like you?” he asked her. “Sure, she said,” and took him to a ballet studio. They remained close ever since — Dean didn’t trust a lot of people in ‘the business’ but with Kitt, he felt safe enough to open up. They’d hang out, and exchange stories. He would confide his worries in her, and unload his heavy heart. Sometimes he’d even call her up in the middle of the night, if something troubled him particularly much. She never hung up early or told him to go to sleep — she’s always hear him out, realizing it was something he needed. He didn’t like Hollywood,” Kitt later said, “because he found fame, the way he was being treated as a business, as a piece of flesh, a thing. It was not becoming beautiful to him anymore.” Eartha Kitt saw James Dean one last time, shortly before his tragic early death in a car crash. She would later say “he was there… but he wasn’t there. I knew he was gone before they told me he has passed — he just wasn’t there.” She never quite got over losing him.