Neal Cassady

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Personal life

In October 1945, after being released from prison, Cassady married 16-year-old Lu Anne Henderson. In 1946, the couple traveled to New York City to visit their friend, Hal Chase, another protégé of Brierly's. While visiting Chase at Columbia University, Cassady met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Although Cassady did not attend Columbia, he soon became friends with them and their acquaintances, some of whom later became members of the Beat Generation. While in New York, Cassady persuaded Kerouac to teach him to write fiction. Cassady's second wife, Carolyn, has stated "Neal, having been raised in the slums of Denver amongst the world's lost men, determined to make more of himself, to become somebody, to be worthy and respected. His genius mind absorbed every book he could find, whether literature, philosophy, or science. Jack had a formal education, which Neal envied, but intellectually he was more than a match for Jack, and they enjoyed long discussions on every subject."

Carolyn Robinson met Cassady in 1947 while she was studying for her master's in theater arts at the University of Denver. Five weeks after Lu Anne's departure, Cassady got an annulment from Lu Anne and married Carolyn on April 1, 1948. Carolyn's book Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg (1990) details her marriage to Cassady and recalls him as "the archetype of the American Man". Cassady's sexual relationship with Ginsberg lasted off and on for the next 20 years.

During this period, Cassady worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad and kept in touch with his "Beat" acquaintances, even as they became increasingly different philosophically. While working there he lived in San Francisco at 29 Russell Street.

The couple eventually had three children and settled down in a ranch house in Monte Sereno, California, 50 miles south of San Francisco, where Kerouac and Ginsberg sometimes visited. This home, built in 1954 with money from a settlement from Southern Pacific Railroad for a train-related accident, was demolished in August 1997.

In 1950, Cassady bigamously married Diane Hansen, a young model who was pregnant with his child, Curtis.

Cassady traveled cross-country with both Kerouac and Ginsberg on multiple occasions, including the trips documented in Kerouac's On the Road.

Travels and death

During 1964, Cassady served as the main driver of the bus named Furthur on the iconic first half of the journey from San Francisco to New York, which was immortalized by Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). Cassady appears at length in Magic Trip (2011), a documentary film about the Merry Pranksters and their cross-country trip.

In January 1967, Cassady traveled to Mexico with fellow prankster George "Barely Visible" Walker and Cassady's longtime girlfriend Anne Murphy. In a beachside house just south of Puerto Vallarta, they were joined by Barbara Wilson and Walter Cox.

For the next year, Cassady's life became less stable, and the pace of his travels more frenetic. He left Mexico in May, traveling to San Francisco, Denver, New York City, and other cities. Cassady then returned to Mexico in September and October (stopping in San Antonio on the way to visit his oldest daughter, who had just given birth to his first grandchild), visited Ken Kesey's farm in Oregon in December, and spent the New Year with Carolyn at a friend's house near San Francisco. Finally, in late January 1968, Cassady returned to Mexico.

On February 3, 1968, Cassady attended a wedding party in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. After the party, he went walking along a railroad track to reach the next town, but passed out in the cold and rainy night wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans. In the morning, he was found in a coma by the tracks, reportedly by Anton Black, later a professor at El Paso Community College, who carried Cassady over his shoulders to the local post office building. Cassady was transported to the closest hospital, where he died a few hours later on February 4, aged 41.

The exact cause of Cassady's death remains uncertain. Those who attended the wedding party confirm that he took an unknown quantity of secobarbital, a powerful barbiturate. The physician who performed the autopsy wrote "general congestion in all systems." When interviewed later, the physician stated that he was unable to give an accurate report because Cassady was a foreigner and there were drugs involved. "Exposure" is commonly cited as his cause of death, but his widow believes he may have died of kidney failure.

In film

Anthem to Beauty (1997).

Love Always, Carolyn — A film about Kerouac, Cassady and Me (2011), a documentary that features Cassady in archival segments, as well as interviews with Cassady's ex-wife Carolyn and his children.

Magic Trip (2011), a documentary film using the footage shot by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters during their cross-country bus trip in the Furthur bus; the hyperkinetic Cassady is frequently seen driving the bus, jabbering, and sitting next to a sign that boasts, "Neal gets things done."

The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir (2015).

The film Who'll Stop the Rain (1978) is a psychological drama released by United Artists. The film is based on Robert Stone's novel Dog Soldiers (1974), and stars Nick Nolte as Ray Hicks. Stone based the character of Hicks on Beat writer Neal Cassady. Stone became acquainted with Cassady through novelist Ken Kesey, a classmate of Stone in graduate school at Stanford University. Hicks' death scene on the railroad tracks at the film's conclusion was directly based on Cassady's death along a railroad track outside of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in 1968.

Heart Beat (1980), which portrays Neal Cassady's friendship with Jack Kerouac, stars Nick Nolte as Cassady and John Heard as Kerouac. The film was based on the memoir of the same name by Carolyn Cassady (played by Sissy Spacek). Talk show host Steve Allen, who was a big supporter of On The Road, appears briefly as himself. Released immediately after Warner Bros. acquired Orion Pictures, the film was given a limited release due to studio politics and a perceived lack of public interest. The film quickly fell from view.

What Happened to Kerouac (1986).

The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997), with Thomas Jane as Cassady, is based on the "Joan Anderson letter" written by Cassady to Jack Kerouac in December 1950. Until 2014, much of this letter was thought to have been lost, though an excerpt had been published in a 1964 edition of John Bryan's magazine Notes from Underground.

A short film Luz Del Mundo (2007) deals with Cassady's friendship and adventures with Jack Kerouac. Cassady is played by Austin Nichols, and Kerouac is played by Will Estes.

In the film Across the Universe (2007), the character Dr. Robert, played by Bono, is said to have been inspired by Neal Cassady.

Neal Cassady (2007), a biographical film focused mostly on the Merry Prankster years and stars Tate Donovan as Neal, Amy Ryan as Carolyn Cassady, Chris Bauer as Kesey, and Glenn Fitzgerald as Kerouac; Noah Buschel wrote and directed the film, which deals primarily with how Neal became trapped by his fictional alter-ego, Dean Moriarty. The Cassady family criticized this film as highly inaccurate.

Howl (2010), Jon Prescott, chronicles Allen Ginsberg's creation of the poem "Howl" and the obscenity trial surrounding its publication; Jon Prescott portrays Cassady.

In On the Road (2012), the dramatic adaptation of the book, Neal Cassady/Dean Moriarty is portrayed by Garrett Hedlund.

In Big Sur (2013), Josh Lucas portrays Cassady.

In The Empty Man (2020), James Badge Dale's character, James LaSombra, jokingly references Neal Cassady to Robert Aramayo's character: "Aren't you a little young for the Neal Cassady routine?"

In literature

David Amram's OFFBEAT: Collaborating with Kerouac (2002)

Charles Bukowski's Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969) as Kerouac's boy Neal C

Allen Ginsberg:

"The Green Automobile" (1953) as my old companion

"Howl" (1956) as N.C., secret hero of these poems

"Many Loves" (1956)

"On Neal's Ashes" (1968)

"The Fall of America" (1968)

"Elegies for Neal Cassady" (1968)

John Clellon Holmes:

Go (1952) as Hart Kennedy

The Horn (1958) as the driver

Jack Kerouac:

On the Road (1957) as Dean Moriarty. Cassady was the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Kerouac's On the Road and the character Cody Pomeray in many of Kerouac's other novels. In the surviving first draft of On the Road, which Kerouac typed on a 120-foot roll of paper specially constructed for that purpose, the story's protagonist's name remains Neal Cassady. However, in Kerouac's final edition of On The Road, Cassady's character is known as Dean Moriarty. In On the Road, the narrator, Sal Paradise (representing Jack Kerouac) states "He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him...Somewhere along the line, I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line, the pearl would be handed to me."

The Subterraneans (1958) as Leroy

The Dharma Bums (1958) as Cody

Book of Dreams (1960) as Cody Pomeray

Visions of Cody (1960; published 1973) as Cody Pomeray

Big Sur (1962) as Cody Pomeray

Desolation Angels (novel) (1965) as Cody Pomeray

Ken Kesey:

"Over the Border" (1973), as Houlihan

Kesey also wrote a fictional account of Cassady's death in the short story "The Day After Superman Died" (1979, referring to Cassady as Houlihan), wherein Cassady is portrayed as mumbling about the number of railroad ties he had counted on the line (64,928) as his last words before dying. It was published as a part of Kesey's collection Demon Box (1986).

Phil Lesh's Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (2005)

Nick Mamatas' Move Under Ground (2004)

Chuck Rosenthal's Jack Kerouac's Avatar Angel: His Last Novel (2001) as Cody Pomeray

Robert Stone:

"Porque No Tiene, Porque Le Falta" (1969), as Willie Wings

Dog Soldiers (1974), as Ray Hicks

Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties (2007)

In Hunter S. Thompson's book Hell's Angels (1966), Cassady is described as "the worldly inspiration for the protagonist of two recent novels", drunkenly yelling at police during the famed Hells Angels parties at Ken Kesey's residence in La Honda, California. Although Cassady's name was removed from the book at the insistence of Thompson's publisher, the description is clearly a reference to the character based on Cassady in Jack Kerouac's works On the Road and Visions of Cody (1951–1952).

Tom Wolfe chronicled Cassady's drunken yelling at police during Hells Angels parties in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).

Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady

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