Background
William Bast was born in Wisconsin in 1931. While attending college at UCLA he shared an apartment with James Dean. Later,
he and Dean moved to New York City independently of one another and roomed together there as well. In 1956, a year after the
actor's death, Bast published the first biography of Dean. In the 1960s Bast began writing for television, both in Hollywood
and in London. He worked in a variety of genres, including medical dramas (
Ben Casey), science fiction (
The Outer Limits), and crime shows (
Hawaii Five-O). In the 1980s he created, with his partner Paul Huson, the short-lived series
Tucker's Witch and
The Colbys, a spin-off the wildly popular program
Dynasty. Bast and Huson continued their collaboration throughout the 1990s, writing several television movies. In 2006 Bast published
a second biography,
Surviving James Dean, in which he revealed that their relationship had occasionally been sexual in nature. William Bast died in Los Angeles on
May 4, 2015.
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