American · 1931–2015
William Bast (1931-2015) was an American screenwriter and author best known as James Dean's closest friend and college roommate. The two met as Theater Arts students at UCLA in 1950 and later shared an apartment in New York while pursuing acting and writing careers. A year after Dean's fatal car crash in 1955, Bast wrote James Dean: A Biography, the first book-length account of the actor's life. He returned to the subject five decades later with the more candid Surviving James Dean (2006), which discussed aspects of their relationship he had omitted the first time. Bast built a long career writing for television, contributing scripts to Combat!, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Outer Limits, among other series, and won an Edgar Award for the 1975 telefilm The Legend of Lizzie Borden.