To this day, actor James Dean is considered the archetypal bad boy and the epitome of cool. Though his Hollywood career spanned just one year and three films prior to his untimely death in 1955, Dean has acquired posthumous popularity of legendary proportions. Much like his contemporary Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, or more accurately, the image of James Dean, has metamorphosed into a pop culture icon on an international scale. He has been memorialized in song, verse, prose, and film. His leather jacket, carefully coiffed hair, brooding demeanor, and penchant for fast cars and faster women made Dean seem larger than life, and as we have seen over the last half century, larger than death as well.
The Man
James Byron Dean was born on February 8, 1931 in Marion, Indiana. His father Winton was a dental technician for the federal government, while his mother Mildred stayed at home as a housewife and full-time mother. In 1935, the family moved to Los Angeles when Winton Dean was transferred to a position at a California Veterans Hospital. Five years later, Mildred Dean died of cancer. Nine-year-old James, called Jimmy by family and friends, rode a train back to Indiana with his mother's body. After the funeral, he moved in with his aunt and uncle on their small farm in Fairmount, Indiana while his father remained in California.
As a teenager in the Midwest, James Dean was anything but rebellious. In a high school essay, he refers to himself as a stereotypical All American boy, and this wasn't far from the truth. He was an engaging young man who was popular with his classmates, though he was sometimes teased for his eyeglasses and jughandle ears. Dean excelled at his schoolwork, and expressed interest in the extremely practical fields of geology and agricultural science. He kept himself busy with a wealth of extracurricular activities, playing for his high school's varsity baseball and basketball teams, and competing on a national level as a member of the school's forensic team.
However, James Dean's dreams always lay in art. In this respect, he was greatly encouraged by his drama teacher Adeline Nall, whom Dean later named as his initial inspiration to pursue an acting career. During his adolescence, he tried his hand at everything from violin to tap dancing to sculpture and painting, with a little drama (in the form of starring roles in high school plays) thrown in for variety. Perhaps the only precursor of Dean's future as a representative of America's disillusioned youth was his early love of motorcycles. He loved to tinker with his bike on the weekends, and entered several amateur motorcycle races as a teenager.
In June 1949, a month after he graduated with honors from high school, James Dean boarded a bus headed for California. After one semester at Santa Monica City College, he transferred to UCLA to study drama. California proved to be a rude awakening for the budding actor. In his miniscule hometown of Fairmount, James Dean was hailed as a golden boy, and his roles in high school plays often made it into the headlines of the local newspaper. However, when Dean participated in a 1950 UCLA production of Macbeth, campus critics derided him as "the world's worst Malcolm." His search for professional work went poorly as well, and he found himself unable to earn anything larger or more lucrative than small parts in television commercials.
In 1951, James Dean dropped out of college to devote his time to an acting workshop organized by James Whitmore. Dean began to get work in big Hollywood films, but only as an uncredited extra. In this early phase of his career, he had to count himself lucky if he landed a one line speaking part. Later the same year, Whitmore advised Dean to move to New York and build his career in theater before trying to break into Hollywood. The three years that Dean spent in New York City were fruitful ones indeed. The stage initially eluded him, but he almost immediately found work in television. While the film industry has been centered in Hollywood practically since it earned the right to be called an "industry," television's home has always been in New York. Dean found a relatively regular paycheck with both NBC and CBS, making guest appearances in more than a dozen different TV series. He supplemented his income with additional work in commercials.
James Dean finally found a role on Broadway in the Nash play See the Jaguar in late 1952. He played a teenager who has spent his entire life held captive in an icehouse by his insane mother. The play was a flop, closing after just three days and five performances (and never produced on Broadway or anywhere else again). However, See the Jaguar received just enough press as to get James Dean noticed. That, in combination with his induction into the Actor's Studio, led to bigger and better parts in television and off-Broadway productions. In 1954, Dean was cast as the colorful, thieving Arab Bachir in the Broadway production of The Immoralist, based on the novel by Andre Gide. This play was a much bigger hit than Dean's previous work, running for three months and nearly 100 performances.
At one of the early performances of The Immoralist, film director Elia Kazan was seated in the audience. Kazan was busy developing John Steinbeck's East of Eden for the silver screen, and was having troubles casting the part of Cal Trask. In the film (a loose adaptation of the novel and even looser interpretation of the Cain and Abel myth), Cal is the black sheep of the family, spending most of his young life vying with his seemingly angelic twin brother Aron (played by Richard Davalos) for their father's love. Eventually, Cal wins this love by utterly destroying Aron's life, stealing his fiancée, and airing the family's dirty secrets. In making the Cain-like character the hero of the story, the part required a nearly impossible mixture of ruthlessness and charm in order to convincingly portray Cal Trask's unsavory actions while retaining the audience's sympathy. Kazan believed that newcomer James Dean was perfect for the role. East of Eden hit theaters in March 1955, the only one of James Dean's films that was released during his lifetime. It did well both critically and commercially, and propelled James Dean into public favor, especially amongst teenage girls. In a matter of weeks, James Dean fan clubs surfaced all over the country.
In early 1955, Dean began filming his watershed work, Rebel Without a Cause. Although the film would later serve as inspirational material for rebellious young suburbanites, it was originally intended as a warning to Eisenhower-era parents, with the alliterative tagline, "Teenage terror torn from today's headlines!" The intended audience wasn't all that happy with the film, as Rebel Without a Cause places the blame for America's disillusioned and anti-establishment youth on bad parents, in a show of pseudo-Freudian pop psychology. James Dean plays Jim Stark, an angst-ridden but surprisingly well-mannered young troublemaker who subconsciously seeks to redefine masculinity after his disappointment with his domineering mother and effeminate, apron-wearing father (played by Jim Backus, better known as Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island). Similarly, Jim's girlfriend Judy (Natalie Wood) is looking for a proxy daddy after discovering that her own father does not consider her worthy of his love. The group is rounded out by Stark's friend Plato (Sal Mineo), a lonely young man who has turned to homosexuality to fill the void left by his absentee parents, who dumped him in a nanny's care as a toddler. As the victims of ineffectual parenting, these financially secure but emotionally fragile teens are forced to go about defining themselves as best they know how (through dangerous rebellion and teenage terror, of course).
Shooting for James Dean's third and final film, Giant, commenced in June 1955. Giant, co-starring then superstars Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, was a Western epic depicting nearly three decades of the tumultuous marriage between Texas cattle baron Bick Benedict (Hudson) and his wife Leslie (Taylor). James Dean plays Jett Rink, a farmhand on Benedict's ranch who eventually lands a windfall in the form of a newly discovered oil well. Most of the scanty information made public about James Dean's personality comes from stories told by the actors and crew of Giant. By almost all accounts, Dean was a hard-living guy who could be a lot of fun (in a sort of psychotic way) when away from the set, but he was extremely difficult to work with despite (or perhaps because of) his dedication to his craft. He blew off rehearsals, refused to take direction, constantly taunted Rock Hudson for his not-so-secret trysts with young men in his dressing room, and unpredictably vacillated between being charming and obnoxious. Among the people who actually knew him, James Dean seemed to inspire either fanatical devotion or undying hatred. Director George Stevens swore he would never work with Dean again. On the other hand, friend and co-star Dennis Hopper almost idolized Dean, claiming that the young actor was simply misunderstood and struggled to overcome his inherent shyness, leading him to sometimes overcompensate and appear rude.
On September 17, 1955, James Dean took a break from the Giant shoot to film a public service announcement for the National Highway Safety Committee designed to reduce speeding. Dean, still dressed in his costume for Giant, claims that he feels safer on the racetrack than on the highway. At the end of the 30-second spot, he urges drivers to "Take it easy driving. The life you might save might be mine." Slightly less than two weeks later, on September 30, 1955, James Dean drove his silver Porsche Spyder 550 into a Ford sedan while on his way to an automobile race in Salinas, California. During the high-speed collision, both the other driver (the ironically named Donald Turnupspeed) and Dean's passenger (racing mechanic Rolf Wutherich) suffered minor injuries and survived. James Dean's death was almost instantaneous. He was 24 years old.
Rebel Without a Cause was released less than a month after Dean's death, in October 1955. Giant hit theaters more than a year later, in November 1956. James Dean's performances in East of Eden and Giant earned him two consecutive posthumous Oscar nominations for Best Actor, but he lost both times (in 1956, to Ernest Borgnine, and in 1957, to Yul Brynner).
The Media Icon
If James Dean were alive today, he would probably be immensely flattered and more than a little perturbed at all of the fuss that has been made over him. Of course, if he were still alive, there most likely wouldn't be much of a fuss. As with so many other celebrities who died young, Dean's death acted as the catalyst for his legend. It allowed him to forever remain a brash, sexy twenty-something with tremendous promise. The world never saw James Dean fall short of the public's lofty expectations. We never saw him succumb to addiction, grow a middle-aged paunch, suffer a mid-life crisis, or start chasing women young enough to be his granddaughter. We never saw him take a leading role in a stinker of a movie just for the paycheck; James Dean never had the opportunity to sell out. For an idea of how he might be treated if he had survived, consider Marlon Brando, with whom Dean competed for roles on several occasions. Brando, the sex symbol of the 1950s, has grown into the human Orca of the 21st century. If James Dean were alive, would he now be the butt of the media's jokes? A one-liner in Leno's monologue? Quite possibly.
In fact, because he died so young, the iconization and idolatry of James Dean really has no basis upon the man himself at all. This is true to some extent of all celebrity, but James Dean's spectacularly brief career made it particularly easy to blur the division between fantasy and reality. The cult of James Dean is built upon a fiction: the character of Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause. The characteristic slouch, upturned jacket collar, rebellious sneer, and tortured plea that, "You're tearing me apart!" belong to the character, not the actor. The public never knew the real Dean, unless one wishes to count a few abbreviated interviews with teenybopper mags as a soul-baring process. And so, Jimmy Stark masquerading as James Dean (or perhaps vice versa) has entered the dubious pantheon of Hollywood gods.
Something in the emotional makeup of Jim Stark resonates with teenagers of every generation. Stark is misunderstood by his parents, victimized by peer pressure, emotionally torn by his (rather trite) examination of what constitutes good and evil, and desperately searches for an identity all his own. This commonality shared by the character and ordinary teens was enough, perhaps, to get the film and James Dean noticed, but the reason that the actor has been catapulted into legend lies in a notable difference between Stark and real teenagers. As Stark, James Dean manages to make teen angst look good. The character's largely self-inflicted torment does not translate into appearing as a pimply, insecure mess, unlike most teens. Throughout his emotional turmoil, Jim Stark manages to exude an aura of self-confidence. He's angsty, yes, but never awkward. That significant component of awkwardness is one of the main reasons that adolescence can be truly unpleasant. Without it, teen rebellion seems, well, almost righteous. The irony is that, by many accounts, James Dean himself was really quite awkward, sometimes to the point of abrasiveness.
The lasting popularity of Dean/Stark is evident in the number of tributes to the actor. Since his death, James Dean has been the subject of nearly 45 songs, an equal number of books, a dozen movies and even more television shows, two surprisingly lengthy collections of poetry, one play, and innumerable magazine and internet articles. He has entries in both the Encyclopedia Britannica and the American Heritage Dictionary. James Dean's image (usually lifted from stills of Rebel Without a Cause) is available on posters, t-shirts, coffee mugs, key chains, action figures, and a life-size cut-out of the actor as Jim Stark (interestingly, James Dean seems to have literally grown after death - the cardboard cut-out is 6'2", while Dean only stood 5'8"). There is a 5-day annual James Dean Festival in his hometown of Fairmount, Indiana, which includes a look-alike contest, trivia sessions, a car show, a tattoo exhibition (Dean seems to be a popular subject for body ink), and a graveside memorial service. Since 1955, Fairmount has welcomed millions of tourists who are anxious to sneak a peek at the actor's final resting place (though these numbers have tapered off recently, the town still saw more than 6,000 visiting Dean fans last year). James Dean has unwittingly become a one-man merchandising and tourism empire.
Tidbits and Trivia
Rebel Without a Cause was initially developed as a vehicle for Marlon Brando. Brando passed on the role for fear of being typecast as a teenage hoodlum, having just finished the film The Wild One. For the duration of James Dean's career, he would have to endure criticism that he was just another Brando wannabe.
Though James Dean is often associated with rock and roll, he lived and died just before the dawn of that particular musical genre. He listened mostly to jazz and classical music (he once named his favorite artists as Billie Holiday and Bela Bartók). Dean also liked African tribal music and Afro-Cuban dance, and possessed passable skills on the bongos.
Very little concrete information is known about James Dean's adult life (most of his friends and colleagues refuse to divulge such details), but it is probable that Dean was privately bisexual. Publicly, he was known as a playboy who carried on a multitude of (sometimes concurrent) affairs with women, but he also secretly dated men, including well-documented relationships with director Rogers Brackett and fellow actor Jack Simmons.
The Porsche Spyder that James Dean was driving when he died had been customized by George Barris with racing stripes and the name "Little Bastard." After James Dean's death, Barris purchased the car and sold most of it off in parts to other racing enthusiasts. Since then, urban legend alleges that the Porsche and parts of the Porsche carry a death curse, causing at least four fatalities, two paralyzing injuries, and one fire at a storage facility. The veracity of these claims remains unproven, and in any case, such figures are not likely to be statistically significant when one considers the occupation of those who bought the parts.
James Dean did show a personal preference for leather jackets. However, contrary to popular belief, the now famous red jacket he wore as Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause was in fact a nylon windbreaker.
He earned only a pittance while he was alive, but James Dean is now one of the wealthiest dead guys around. His family has turned merchandising into an extremely profitable business. Among the deceased, Dean is second only to Elvis in terms of annual income. Marilyn Monroe is a distant third.
Workography
Movies
Theater
Television
Unsurprisingly, there have been far more movies and television programs made about James Dean than by James Dean. His career was so short that conventional filmographies often list any works that include archival footage or uncredited appearances. In the interest of clarity, I have included only his credited, professional film and stage work and recurring television appearances. For a lengthy account of Dean's every on-screen belch and toenail clipping, check out IMDb. For a recounting of his every off-screen belch and toenail clipping, try jamesdean.com.
Sources:
http://www.jamesdean.com
http://www.americanlegends.com/jamesdean
http://www.allsands.com/jamesdeanbiogr_rz_gn.htm
http://www.jamesdeanartifacts.com
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Dean,+James
http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=37665
http://www.snopes.com/autos/cursed/spyder.htm