A young actor by the name of James Dean was doing an exercise called a Private Moment, which is an activity you do at home when no one else is around, and in it must be the germ of something you need for a scene you're working on.
She recounted many of these stories in her 1980 memoir, Shelley, Also Known as Shirley, which became a bestseller for its dishy tales of romances with Marlon Brando, William Holden, and Sean Connery.
In the late '80s, I attended a screening of two of his films at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Bing Theater.