In appreciation of America’s Rebel...
Film rebel James Dean was born 90 years ago. MARION MCMULLEN looks at how his untimely death ended the life of a movie icon
JAMES DEAN starred in three major films before he tragically died in a car crash at the height of his career at the age of 24. East Of Eden was the only one to be seen in cinemas before his death and Giant and Rebel Without A Cause were released posthumously.
He once said: “If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live on after he’s dead, then maybe he was a great man.”
James Byron Dean was born in Marion, Indiana, on February 8, 1931. His mother died when he was nine and he was raised by an aunt and uncle on a Quaker farm.
He headed to New York as soon as he could to make his acting dreams come true and then set his sights on Hollywood.
One of his early film roles saw him playing a sailor in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis musical comedy Sailor Beware in 1952 and before that he had made a fleeting appearance in a 1950 advert for Pepsi Cola.
Dean’s big break came when director Elia Kazan cast him in East of Eden based on John Steinbeck’s classic novel. Elia wrote to Steinbeck about the casting saying: “He’s a little bit of a bum, but he’s a real good actor and I think he’s the best of a poor field. Most kids who become actors at 19 or 20 are very callow and strictly from NY professional school. Dean has got a real mean streak and a real sweet streak.”
Dean said of himself: “I’m a serious-minded and intense little devil, terribly gauche and so tense I don’t see how people stay in the same room with me. I know I wouldn’t tolerate myself.”
Filming on Rebel Without A Cause and Giant quickly followed.
Dennis Hopper, who appeared with him in both movies, later said: “Jimmy was the most talented and original actor I ever saw work.
“He was also a guerrilla who attacked all restrictions on his sensibility. Once he pulled a switchblade and threatened to murder his director. I imitated his style in art and in life. It got me in a lot of trouble.”
Dean was the biggest rising star of the 1950s and had just signed a $1m deal for nine pictures with Warner Brothers before his untimely death.
The 5ft 8ins tall actor enjoyed speed and lost his two front teeth in a motorcycle accident when he was young.
His East of Eden co-star Julie Harris remembered: “He took me for a ride that I thought would be my last, up in the Hollywood hills and so fast that my heart was in my throat, but instead of saying to him ‘Slow down, Jimmy,’ I didn’t say anything. I was like ‘Wheee.’
“As long as I didn’t say ‘Hey, don’t go so fast,’ I was a comrade and after that we just always got on.”
Dean celebrated his new found film success by buying a silver 1955
Porsche 550 Spyder sports car. It was one of only 90 made of that model that year.
He took possession of it just nine days before his fatal crash and proudly showed off his new vehicle to British actor Alec Guinness who was in Hollywood filming a movie called The Swan. He looked at the Porsche and promptly advised him to get rid of it.
“If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week,” he told him.
The prediction sadly proved true when he was involved in a collision with another car near Cholame in California on September 30, 1955.
He had been on his way to take part in races in Salinas and died near the intersections of Highways 46 and 41. The other driver survived.
Dean’s death shocked colleagues and cinema goers and he received posthumous Oscar nomations for East of Eden and Giant.
He was interred at Park Cemetery, Indiana, and President Ronald Reagan later described him as America’s Rebel.
Dean himself looked up to Marlon Brando and tried to become his friend even buying a Triumph motorcycle because Brando had driven the 650cc GT Thunderbird model in the 1953 film The Wild One.
Brando did not encourage the friendship though and said: “I know it can be hard for a troubled kid like James Dean to have to live up to sudden fame and the ballyhoo Hollywood created around him.
“I saw it happen to Marilyn Monroe and I also knew it from my own experience.
“In trying to copy me, I think Jimmy was only attempting to deal with these insecurities, but I told him it was a mistake.”