James Dean

James Byron Dean (Marion, Indiana, February 8, 1931 – Cholame, California, September 30, 1955) was an American actor. After playing minor roles in television shows and plays during the early 1950s, he moved to Los Angeles, California.

He is considered a cultural icon of adolescent disillusionment and social distancing, as expressed in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he played the role of Jim Stark, a troubled teenager from Los Angeles. His other defining star roles were the reclusive Cal Trask in East of Eden (1954) and the farmhand Jett Rink in Giant (1955). His enduring fame and popularity is based on his performances in these three films, where in each of them he played the leading lady of him.

His untimely death in a car accident cemented his legendary status. He was the first actor to receive a posthumous Oscar nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous nominations. the American Film Institute ranked him 18th best male movie star on its AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list.

Early Years

He was born James Byron Dean in Marion, Indiana. His parents were Mildred Wilson and Winton Dean. Six years after his father had given up farming to become a dental technician, James and his family moved to Santa Monica, California, where the family spent several years. It is said that young Dean was a son very attached to his mother; according to Michael DeAngelis, she was "the only person who could understand him." He enrolled at Brentwood Public Elementary School in the Los Angeles neighborhood of the same name until his mother died of cancer when Dean was nine.

Without the option of caring for their son, Winton Dean sent James with his sister, Ortense, and her husband, Marcus Winslow, to a farm in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was raised in a Quaker-influenced environment. Dean followed the advice and friendship of the Methodist pastor, the Reverend James DeWeerd. DeWeerd was credited with having a formative influence on Dean, especially in creating an interest in bullfighting, motor racing, and the theater. According to Billy J. Harbin, "Dean had a very close relationship with his pastor... which began in his senior year of high school and lasted for many years." At that stage of his upbringing, Dean's theatrical performances can be considered small-time. However, he became a popular sportsman, as he played on the basketball and baseball teams and also studied drama.

Years later it was learned that Dean took a secret to his grave that was revealed thanks to Elizabeth Taylor. The actress told a journalist and asked him not to bring it to light until after she was dead. In 1997, Taylor was interviewed by Kevin Sessums for the AIDS activism magazine POZ. In that interview, the actress revealed an unknown fact about Dean:

"I loved Jimmy (James Dean). I'll tell you something, but it's off the record until I die, okay? When Jimmy was 11 years old and her mother died, she began to suffer sexual abuse by the pastor of her church," she then revealed the actress, as she collects. The Daily Beast. "I think that tormented him for the rest of his life. Actually, I know it was. We talked a lot about it. During the shooting Giant We spent nights sailing talking and talking, and that was one of the things that he confessed to me."

He loved the theater, he began to study and practice it from a very young age. Before leaving his town, he had already represented several plays. At the age of 18 he traveled to Los Angeles where he studied at the University of California (UCLA). In December 1949 he began getting small roles on film and television, he also did a famous Pepsi ad (that day he met his manager Isabelle Dreasemer). He soon moved to New York to study acting at the famous Actor's Studio.

Career

Publicity photo of James Dean in 1953.

First acting jobs

Before traveling to New York, in 1951 he got a role in the film Fixed Bayonets, he also had two other small roles in the films Sailor Beware and Has Anyone Seen My Gal?, both in 1952. After applying to numerous acting agencies, he worked in a play, and in 1952 he was offered a role in See the Jaguar, in which he played a teenager who had been locked in a cage for most of his life. He also made several minor television appearances. In 1953 he was given another role on Broadway, The Immoralist, which had a very positive reception by critics; that year he also had another role in the movie Trouble Along the Way.

East of Eden

Dean along with Julie Harris in a promotional picture of the movie East of Eden1954.

Finally, Jimmy, as he would be known, managed to become a film actor, when in 1954 the director Elia Kazan, who had shot A Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando, offered him the lead role of Cal Trask in East of Eden. The director chose Dean because of his similarity to the character, introverted, rough, melancholic and passionate.

Dean and Kazan flew together from New York to Los Angeles on March 8th. Dean moved into a flat on the Warners set with Richard Davalos (who would play Cal's brother Aaron). Filming began on May 27 and ended on August 9.

Dean did not attend the premiere of East of Eden on March 9, 1955. None other than Marilyn Monroe, Eva Marie Saint and Marlene Dietrich worked on that occasion as ushers. Days later Dean saw his film going unnoticed in the lines of the cinema, like one more spectator. For his performance in said film he received his first Oscar nomination.

Rebel Without a Cause and Giant

James Dean and Natalie Wood at Rebel without cause1955.

Not long after, he was hired by Nicholas Ray for the role of Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause, co-starring Natalie Wood. When he came to Hollywood to work on the film, he bought his first Porsche, a white 356 Speedster convertible, which he would call Little Bastard. On March 26 he ran his first and second races where he was first in one and second in another. The film began shooting on March 28, 1955 in black and white, but seeing the success of East of Eden they returned to filming in color, it was finished after two months and post-production a few months. later. On May 1 he ran in his third race where he placed third.

During this time Dean shot Giant (Dean joined the shoot later as he was finishing George Stevens' Rebel Without a Cause), opposite Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. His character, Jett Rink, also had Dean traits, as they were both loners. In his fourth and final race, while he was running fourth, a piston on the Speedster blew and he had to retire. Also in this film he was prohibited from participating in car races during filming. The film was shot near the Mexican border. During breaks in filming Dean would shoot the film backstage with his 16mm Bolex. For this film he earned his second Oscar nomination (this time posthumous) and his co-star Rock Hudson also earned another nomination in the same category. Both were defeated by Yul Brynner for 'The King and I'.

Hobby for car racing

In 1954, Dean became interested in developing a career in motor racing. He bought several vehicles after filming East of Eden wrapped, including a Triumph Tiger T110 and a Porsche 356. Just before he began shooting Rebel Without a Cause, he competed in his first professional event at the Palm Springs Road Races, held in Palm Springs, California on March 26–27, 1955. Dean placed first in the novice class and second in the main event. His career continued at Bakersfield a month later, where he finished first in his class and third overall. Dean had hoped to compete in the Indianapolis 500, but his busy schedule kept him from doing so.

Dean's last race was at Santa Barbara on Memorial Day, May 30, 1955. He failed to finish the race due to a blown piston. His brief career was put on hold when Warner Brothers banned him from all races during the production of Giant. Dean had finished filming his scenes and the movie was in post-production when he decided to run again.

Traffic accident and death

James Dean in his Porsche 356 Speedster. Photograph taken in March 1955.

The James Dean Memorial in Cholame. Dean died about 800 meters east of this tree.

While working at Giant, Dean bought a Porsche Spyder 550, christened “Little Bastard” by Bill Hickman, another racer, a personal friend of Dean's, who was part of his team as an instructor, Being a specialist in shooting dangerous scenes with cars. On September 17 (days before his death) he made an advertisement advising young people to drive safely. As soon as filming for the film finished, Dean went to compete in a car race in Salinas., near San Francisco. The night before he left his cat with Elizabeth Taylor to take care of him, as he feared something would happen to her.

On September 30, 1955, he hitched up the Porsche in his station wagon to take it to Competition Motors for a tune-up. There he met photographer Sanford Roth and his friend actor Bill Hickman. His mechanic Rolf Wütherich spent three hours tuning up the high-performance engine and a seat belt on the driver's seat. Before going to Salinas, Dean stopped at a gas station six blocks from his house to refuel. He then decided to drive the Porsche along the coast to do a few miles (when he originally was going to take the Porsche on the trailer of his station wagon). As Dean was driving down the highway, accompanied by his mechanic, he was approached at junction 41-46 in Cholame, California by a speeding 1950 Ford Tudor driven by a student. Dean tried to avoid it, but he could not. He slammed into the Ford front and side from the left. He was seen by several passersby who rushed to his aid. A nurse found him with a very weak pulse and a fractured neck from the shock, losing his life instantly on September 30, 1955, at the young age of 24. The driver of the Ford, who only broke his nose and bruised his shoulder, died of cancer in 1995, while Dean's mechanic was thrown from the vehicle, shattering his leg and breaking his jaw, but died years later in a crash. traffic accident in Germany (1981).

James Dean was buried in Park Cemetery in Fairmount, Indiana, on October 8, 1955. A memorial in his honor was unveiled in 1977 near the crash site in Cholame.

In 2005, Channel 5 aired a documentary revealing new facts about Dean's accident. For starters, Dean didn't try to dodge the Ford; instead he put his 550 Spyder on the brakes. James Dean was not killed instantly, but was thrown into the windshield of the Ford (the impact of the glass can be seen in the photos of the incident). After that impact, his body bounced inside the Porsche, falling on the passenger seat. According to Hickman, when they arrived (within three minutes), he himself would extract James from the wrecked vehicle and die in his arms. The driver of the Ford assured that he "did not see the car" of Dean, and claimed to see two bodies go flying out of the car: one fell into the ditch (Dean's mechanic) and another "fell on my car and bounced off".

Some investigators, journalists and biographers find certain details that question the version of the accident. There is talk of a planned suicide, planned by James Dean himself. To support this strange conjecture, different theories are put forward. The first opens a question about why Dean did not avoid the vehicle he was going to collide with, which is not explained according to the statement given by the mechanic Weutherich. Secondly, another piece of information that suggests that Dean was looking for fatality in some way, were the different visits he made to some of his best friends and some of his co-stars in his films. It is said that after the accident everyone agreed on the strangeness of the case, since he had appeared before all of them dressed in a dark suit, which was not usual in his clothing. However, it is very unlikely that he decided to commit suicide putting his life at risk of the co-pilot and that of the driver of the other vehicle; nor is the reason for stepping on the brake explained if his intention was to commit suicide, so it is more of a conspiracy theory from the field of YouTube

Private life

Today, Dean is considered iconic for his experimental approach to life, which included his sexuality. When asked about his sexuality, Dean replied: "I'm not gay, but I'm not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back." Journalist Joe Hyams suggested that any gay activity Dean became involved in might be due to an interest in advancing his career. In any case, director Nicholas Ray claimed that Dean was gay, while author John Howlett claimed that he was bisexual. A biography written by George Perry claimed that he was & # 34; experimentation & # 34;. Elizabeth Taylor, who became close friends with Dean on the set of Giant, claimed in 2001 that he was gay.

The most widespread rumor about his sexuality occurred with the publication in 2016 of the book James Dean: Tomorrow Never Comes, written by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince, which included interviews with friends of Dean himself. The book spoke of a purely sexual relationship between Dean and Marlon Brando. Although this rumor existed before and Marlon Brando even denied it, a friend of Dean, Stanley Haggart, even talked about his masochistic sexual practices and that Dean was completely in love with him. "I think Brando was sadistically using Jimmy, following him around with his tongue hanging out," he explains. A possible relationship with Walt Disney was also stated in the book.

As for official relationships, during his stay in Hollywood Dean dated many women, but the love of his life was the actress Pier Angeli, whom he met while filming East of Eden. Despite the fact that Angeli's mother opposed that romance, because of her behavior and way of dressing, in addition to not being Catholic, they were together for a while until Angeli told her that she was going to marry the singer Vic Damone. Dean did not accept that decision and, according to some biographers, hit her. During Angeli's wedding ceremony, she rode her motorcycle in front of the church door and kept the engine revving to make noise. Angeli's marriage did not last long. She committed suicide in 1971 with an overdose of barbiturates.

Legacy and icon

Cinema and television

American teenagers in the mid-1950s, when James Dean's major films were released, identified with him and the roles he played, especially that of Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause. The film shows the dilemma of a typical teenager of the time, who feels that no one, not even his classmates, can understand him. Humphrey Bogart commented after Dean's death about his public image and his legacy: "Dean died at just the right time." He left a legend. If he had lived, he would never have been able to live up to the hype about him."

Joe Hyams says Dean was "one of the rare stars, like Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift, whom men and women find sexy". According to Marjorie Garber, this quality is "the indefinable extra that makes a star." Dean's iconic appeal has been attributed to the public's need for someone to stand up for the marginalized youth of the day, and to the air of androgyny she projected onto the screen.

Dean has been a cornerstone of many television shows, movies, books, and plays. The film September 30, 1955 (1977) depicts the ways in which various characters in a small town in the southern United States react to Dean's death. The play Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean , written by Ed Graczyk, shows a gathering of Dean fans on the 20th anniversary of his death. It was made by director Robert Altman in 1982, but the reception was not positive and it closed after 52 performances. While the play was still on Broadway, Altman filmed a film adaptation that was released by Cinecom Pictures in November 1982.

On April 20, 2010, NBC writer Wayne Federman discovered a lengthy "missing" live from the General Electric Theater called "The Dark, Dark Hours" with Dean at a performance with Ronald Reagan while working on a television retrospective of the latter. The episode, broadcast on December 12, 1954, garnered international attention and was featured in numerous media outlets including: CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and Good Morning America. It was later revealed that some footage from the episode first appeared in the 2005 documentary, "James Dean: Forever Young".

James Dean's estate still earns about $5 million a year, according to Forbes magazine. On November 6, 2019, it was announced that Dean's likeness will be used, via CGI, for a Vietnam War film called Finding Jack, based on the novel by Gareth Crocker. The film will be directed by Anton Ernst and Tati Golykh and another actor will play the role of Dean. Although the directors obtained the rights to use Dean's likeness from Dean's family, industry insiders scoffed at the film's announcement.

Youth culture and music

Numerous commentators have claimed that James Dean had a unique influence on the development of rock and roll music. According to David R. Shumway, a researcher in American culture and cultural theory at Carnegie Mellon University, Dean was the first iconic figure of youth rebellion and "a forerunner of youth identity politics." The character Dean portrayed in his films, especially Rebel Without a Cause, influenced Elvis Presley and many other musicians who followed him, including American rockers Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent.

In their book Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel wrote: "Ironically, though Rebel had no rock music on their soundtrack, the film's sensibility, and especially the defiant attitude and James Dean would effortlessly make a big rock impact. The music media often viewed Dean and rock as an inextricable [...] link. Industry trade magazine Music Connection even went so far as to call Dean "rock's first star."

As rock and roll became a revolutionary force that would affect the culture of countries around the world, Dean acquired a mythical status that cemented his place as an icon of this musical genre. Dean listened to music ranging from African tribal music to the modern classical music of Stravinsky and Bartók, as well as contemporary singers like Frank Sinatra. While Dean's on-screen magnetism and charisma appealed to people of all ages and sexualities, his youthful rebel persona provided a template for future generations of youth to model around him.

In his book The Origins of Cool in Postwar America, Joel Dinerstein describes how Dean and Marlon Brando eroticized the rebel archetype in film, and how Elvis Presley, following their lead, did the same in music. Dinerstein details the dynamics of this eroticization and its effect on adolescent girls with few sexual outlets. Presley said in a 1956 interview with Lloyd Shearer for Parader magazine, "I've done a study of Marlon Brando. And I've made a study of poor Jimmy Dean. I've done a study of myself, and I know why girls, at least young ones, go after us. We are moody, thoughtful, we are a kind of threat. I don't get it exactly, but that's what girls like in men. I don't know anything about Hollywood, but I know you, you can't be sexy if you smile. You can't be rebellious if you smile'.

Dean and Presley have often been portrayed in academic literature and journalism as personifying the frustration felt by young white Americans with their parental values, and portrayed as avatars of the youthful riots endemic to rock style and attitude and roll. Rock historian Greil Marcus characterized them as symbols of teenage tribal identity, providing an image that youth of the 1950s could identify with and emulate. In the book Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground: Nicholas Ray in American Cinema, Paul Anthony Johnson wrote that Dean's performance in Rebel Without a Cause provided an 'acting role model for Presley, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, all of whom took borrowed elements of Dean's performance into his own carefully constructed stars". Frascella and Weisel wrote: "As rock music became the defining expression of youth in the 1960s, Rebel's influence was passed down to a new generation."

Rock musicians as diverse as Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan and David Bowie regarded Dean as a formative influence. Playwright and actor Sam Shepard interviewed Dylan in 1986 and wrote a play based on his conversation with him, in which Dylan personally discusses Dean's early influence on him. A young Bob Dylan, still in his popular music period, consciously evoked Dean visually on the cover of his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), and later on Highway 61 Revisited (1965), cultivating an image that his biographer Bob Spitz called "James Dean with a guitar." Dean has long been invoked in the lyrics of rock songs, famously in songs like "A Young Man Is Gone" from The Beach Boys (1963), "James Dean" from The Eagles (1974), and "James Dean" from Goo Goo Dolls (1989). He is referenced in Style, a song performed by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and included on her fifth studio album, 1989 (2014).

Sexuality

Today, Dean is considered iconic for his experimental insight into life, which includes his ambivalent sexuality. The Gay Times Readers' Awards Awards cited him as the greatest gay male icon of all time. When asked about his sexual orientation, Dean is reported to have said, "No, I'm not gay. But I'm not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back either. Bast, Dean's first biographer, once said that he and Dean "experienced" sexually, but without explaining it, and in a later book he describes the difficult circumstances of his involvement.

Journalist Joe Hyams suggests that any homosexual activity Dean may have been involved in appears to have been strictly "for the trade," as a means to further his career. However, the notion of "trade only" it is contradicted by Bast and other Dean biographers. In addition to Bast's account of his own relationship with Dean, Dean's fellow biker and "Night Watch" member, John Gilmo, claimed that he and Dean "experienced" their relationship with Dean. with gay sex on multiple occasions in New York, describing their sexual encounters as "bad boys play bad boys as we open up the bisexual sides of ourselves". James Bellah, son of James Warner Bellah, who was a friend of Dean's at UCLA, said that "Dean was a user." I don't think he was gay. But if he could get something by performing an act... Once, in an agent's office, Dean told me that he had spent the summer as a 'professional house guest'. on Fire Island".

Rebel director Nicholas Ray says Dean was gay, while author John Howlett believes Dean was "certainly bisexual." George Perry's biography attributes these reported aspects of Dean's sexuality to "experimentation." Martin Landau stated: 'A lot of people say that Jimmy was hell-bent on killing himself. It isn't true. Many homosexuals make it look like gay. It isn't true. When Jimmy and I were together, we would talk about girls. Actors and girls. We were kids in our early 20s. That's what we aspire to. Mark Rydell stated: "I don't think he was essentially gay. I think he had a big appetite and I think he exercised them." Elizabeth Taylor, with whom Dean had become close friends after meeting on the set of Giant, referred to Dean as gay during a speech at the GLAAD Media Awards in 2001.

Filmography

Theater

Broadway

• See the Jaguar (1953)
• The Immoralist (1954) — based on the novel by André Gide.

Off-Broadway

• The Metamorphosis (1952) — based on the novel by Franz Kafka.
• The Scarecrow (1954).
• Women of Trachis (1954) — translated by Ezra Pound.

Television

• Father Peyton's Family Theatre"Hill Number One" (1 April; Easter Sunday, 1951).
• The Web"Sleeping Dogs" (February 20, 1952).
• Studio One"Ten Thousand Horses Singing" (March 3, 1952).
• Lux Video Theater"The Foggy, Foggy Dew" (March 17, 1952).
• Kraft Television Theater"Prologue to Glory" (May 21, 1952).
• Studio One"Abraham Lincoln" (May 26, 1952).
• Hallmark Hall of FameForgotten Children (2 June 1952).
• The Kate Smith Show"Hounds of Heaven" (January 15, 1953).
• Treasury Men In Action"The Case of the Watchful Dog" (January 29, 1953).
• You are There"aliens" (February 8, 1953).
• Danger"No Room" (14 April 1953).
• Treasury Men In Action"The Case of the Sawed-Off Shotgun" (16 April 1953).
• Tales of Tomorrow"The Evil Within" (1 May 1953).
• Campbell Soundstage"Something For An Empty Briefcase" (17 July 1953).
• Studio One Summer Theater"Sentence of Death" (August 17, 1953).
• Danger"Death Is My Neighbor" (25 August 1953).
• The Big Story"Rex Newman, Reporter for the Globe and News" (September 11, 1953).
• Omnibus"Glory In Flower" (4 October 1953).
• Kraft Television Theater"Keep Our Honor Bright" (October 14, 1953).
• Campbell Soundstage"Life Sentence" (October 16, 1953).
• Kraft Television Theater"A Long Time Till Dawn" (November 11, 1953).
• Armstrong Circle Theater"The Bells of Cockaigne" (November 17, 1953).
• Robert Montgomery Presents the Johnson's Wax Program, Harvest (23 November 1953).
• Danger"The Little Women" (March 30, 1954).
• Philco TV Playhouse"Run Like A Thief" (5 September 1954).
• Danger"Padlocks" (9 November 1954).
• General Electric Theater"I'm a Fool" (14 November 1954).
• General Electric Theater"The Dark, Dark Hour" (December 12, 1954).
• U.S. Steel Hour"The Thief" (4 January 1955).
• Lux Video Theatre, "The Life of Emile Zola" (March 10, 1955) — appeared in a promotional interview East of Eden issued after the program.
• Schlitz Playhouse of StarsThe Unlighted Road (6 May 1955).

Awards and distinctions

Oscar