Dean was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Dean the 18th best male movie star on their AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list.
Early life
James Dean was born on February 8, 1931, at the Seven Gables apartment house in Marion, Indiana, to Winton Dean and Mildred Wilson. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, James and his family moved to Santa Monica, California. The family spent several years there, and by all accounts young Dean was very close to his mother. According to Michael DeAngelis, she was "the only person capable of understanding him". He was enrolled at Brentwood Public School in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles until his mother died of cancer when Dean was nine years old.Unable to care for his son, Winton Dean sent James to live with Winton's sister Ortense and her husband Marcus Winslow on a farm in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was raised in a Quaker background. Dean sought the counsel and friendship of Methodist pastor Rev. James DeWeerd. DeWeerd seemed to have had a formative influence upon Dean, especially upon his future interests in bullfighting, car racing, and the theater. According to Billy J. Harbin, "Dean had an intimate relationship with his pastor... which began in his senior year of high school and endured for many years." Their sexual relationship was earlier suggested in the 1994 book, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: the life, times, and legend of James Dean by Paul Alexander. In 2011, it was reported that he once told Elizabeth Taylor, his co-star in Giant, that he was sexually abused by a minister two years after his mother's death.
In high school, Dean's overall performance was mediocre. However, he was a popular school athlete, having successfully played on the baseball and basketball teams and studied drama and competed in forensics through the Indiana High School Forensic Association. After graduating from Fairmount High School on May 16, 1949, Dean moved back to California with his beagle, Max, to live with his father and stepmother. He enrolled in Santa Monica College (SMC) and majored in pre-law. Dean transferred to UCLA and changed his major to drama, which resulted in estrangement from his father. He pledged the Sigma Nu fraternity but was never initiated. While at UCLA, he was picked from a pool of 350 actors to land the role of Malcolm in Macbeth. At that time, he also began acting with James Whitmore's acting workshop. In January 1951, he dropped out of UCLA to pursue a full-time career as an actor.
Acting career
Dean's first television appearance was in a Pepsi Cola television commercial. He quit college to act full time and was cast as John the Beloved Disciple in Hill Number One, an Easter television special, and three walk-on roles in movies, Fixed Bayonets!, Sailor Beware, and Has Anybody Seen My Gal? His only speaking part was in Sailor Beware, a Paramount comedy starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis; Dean played a boxing trainer. While struggling to get jobs in Hollywood, Dean also worked as a parking lot attendant at CBS Studios, during which time he met Rogers Brackett, a radio director for an advertising agency, who offered him professional help and guidance in his chosen career, as well as a place to stay.
In October 1951, following actor James Whitmore's and his mentor Rogers Brackett's advice, Dean moved to New York City. There he worked as a stunt tester for the game show Beat the Clock. He also appeared in episodes of several CBS television series, The Web, Studio One, and Lux Video Theatre, before gaining admission to the legendary Actors Studio to study Method acting under Lee Strasberg. Proud of this accomplishment, Dean referred to the Studio in a 1952 letter to his family as "The greatest school of the theater. It houses great people like Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Arthur Kennedy, Mildred Dunnock. ... Very few get into it ... It is the best thing that can happen to an actor. I am one of the youngest to belong."
Dean's career picked up and he performed in further episodes of such early 1950s television shows as Kraft Television Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, Danger, and General Electric Theater. One early role, for the CBS series Omnibus in the episode "Glory in the Flower", saw Dean portraying the type of disaffected youth he would later immortalize in Rebel Without a Cause. (This summer 1953 program was also notable for featuring the song "Crazy Man, Crazy", one of the first dramatic TV programs to feature rock and roll.) Positive reviews for Dean's 1954 theatrical role as "Bachir", a pandering North African houseboy, in an adaptation of André Gide's book The Immoralist, led to calls from Hollywood.
East of Eden
Main article: East of Eden (film)
In 1953, director Elia Kazan was looking for a substantive actor to play the emotionally complex role of 'Cal Trask', for screenwriter Paul Osborn's adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1952 novel East of Eden. The lengthy novel had dealt with the story of the Trask and Hamilton families over the course of three generations, focusing especially on the lives of the latter two generations in Salinas Valley, California, from the mid-19th century through the 1910s.
In contrast, the film chose to deal predominantly with the character of Cal Trask. Initially seeming more aloof and emotionally troubled than his twin brother Aron, Cal is quickly seen to be more worldly, aware, business savvy, and even sagacious than their pious and constantly disapproving father (played by Raymond Massey) seeking to invent vegetable refrigeration, and estranged mother, whom Cal discovers is a brothel-keeping 'madame' (Jo Van Fleet). Elia Kazan said of Cal before casting, "I wanted a Brando for the role". Osborn suggested Dean, who then met with Steinbeck; the future Nobel laureate did not like the bold youth personally, but thought him perfect for the part. Kazan set about putting the wheels in motion to cast the relatively unknown young actor in the role; on April 8, 1954, Dean left New York City and headed for Los Angeles to begin shooting.
Dean's performance in the film foreshadowed his role as Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause. Both characters are angst-ridden protagonists and misunderstood outcasts, desperately craving approval from a father figure.
Much of Dean's performance in the film is unscripted, including his dance in the bean field and his fetal-like posturing while riding on top of a train-car (after searching out his mother in a nearby town). The most famous improvisation during the film was when Cal's father rejects his gift of $5,000 (offered in reparation for his father's business loss). Instead of running away from his father as the script called for, Dean instinctively turned to Massey and, crying, embraced him. This cut and Massey's shocked reaction were kept in the film by Kazan.
For the 1955 Academy Awards, Dean received a posthumous nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in East of Eden, the first official posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards history. (Jeanne Eagels was unofficially nominated for Best Actress in 1929, when the rules for selection of the winner were different.)
Rebel Without a Cause
Main article: Rebel Without a Cause
Dean quickly followed up his role in Eden with a starring role in Rebel Without a Cause, a film that would prove to be hugely popular among teenagers. The film is often cited as an accurate representation of teenage angst. It co-starred teen actors Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and Dennis Hopper and was directed by Nicholas Ray.Giant
Giant, which was posthumously released in 1956, saw Dean play a supporting role to Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. This was due to his desire to avoid being typecast as Jim Stark and Cal Trask. In the film, he plays Jett, an oil-rich Texan. His role was notable in that, in order to portray an older version of his character in one scene, Dean dyed his hair gray and shaved some of it off to give himself a receding hairline.Giant would be Dean's last film. At the end of the film, Dean was supposed to make a drunken speech at a banquet; this is nicknamed the 'Last Supper' because it was the last scene before his sudden death. Dean mumbled so much that the scene had to later be re-recorded by his co-stars because Dean had died before the film was edited.
For the 1956 Academy Awards, Dean received his second posthumous Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his role in Giant.
Racing career and 'Little Bastard'
When Dean got the part in East of Eden, he bought himself a red race-prepared MG TD and, shortly afterwards, a white Ford Country Squire Woodie station wagon. Dean upgraded his MG to a 1954 Porsche 356 Speedster, which he raced. Dean came in second in the Palm Springs Road Races in March 1955 after a driver was disqualified; he came in third in May 1955 at Bakersfield and was running fourth at the Santa Monica Road Races later that month until he retired with an engine failure.During filming of Rebel Without a Cause, Dean traded in the 356 Speedster for one of only 90 Porsche 550 Spyders. He was contractually barred from racing during the filming of Giant, but with that out of the way, he was free to compete again. The Porsche was in fact a stopgap for Dean, as delivery of a superior Lotus Mk. X was delayed and he needed a car to compete at the races in Salinas, California.
Dean's 550 was customized by George Barris, who would go on to design the Batmobile. Dean's Porsche was numbered 130 at the front, side and back. The car had a tartan on the seating and two red stripes at the rear of its wheelwell. The car was given the nickname 'Little Bastard' by Bill Hickman, his language coach on Giant. Dean asked custom car painter and pin striper Dean Jeffries to paint Little Bastard on the car.When Dean introduced himself to actor Alec Guinness outside a restaurant, he asked him to take a look at the Spyder. Guinness thought the car appeared 'sinister' and told Dean: 'If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.' This encounter took place on September 23, 1955, seven days before Dean's death.
Personal relationships
Screenwriter William Bast was one of Dean's closest friends, a fact acknowledged by Dean's family.Dean's first biographer (1956), Bast was his roommate at UCLA and later in New York, and knew Dean throughout the last five years of his life. Fifty years after Dean's death, he stated that their friendship had included some sexual intimacy.Early in Dean's career, after Dean signed his contract with Warner Brothers, the studio's public relations department began generating stories about Dean's liaisons with a variety of young actresses who were mostly drawn from the clientele of Dean's Hollywood agent, Dick Clayton. Studio press releases also grouped "Dean together with two other actors, Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, identifying each of the men as an 'eligible bachelor' who has not yet found the time to commit to a single woman: 'They say their film rehearsals are in conflict with their marriage rehearsals.'"
Shortly before filming began on East of Eden, Dean befriended horse trainer Monty Roberts. Roberts introduced Dean to the area and the two became close friends. Dean had planned to meet with Roberts shortly after the race on September 30 to discuss plans for the construction of a ranch, which would be owned by Dean but managed by Roberts. Roberts and his wife were the first people to learn of Dean's death through a telephone call placed by Dean's mechanic, Rolf Wütherich, immediately following the incident, in which Wütherich mumbled through a broken jaw that Dean had died. Roberts and his family did not attend Dean's funeral because, although the two considered themselves 'brothers', their friendship was unknown to Dean's family.
Dean's best-remembered relationship was with young Italian actress Pier Angeli, whom he met while Angeli was shooting The Silver Chalice on an adjoining Warner lot, and with whom he exchanged items of jewelry as love tokens. Angeli's mother was reported to have disapproved of the relationship because Dean was not Roman Catholic. In his autobiography, East of Eden director Elia Kazan, while dismissing the notion that Dean could possibly have had any success with women, paradoxically alluded to Dean and Angeli's "romance", claiming that he had heard them loudly making love in Dean's dressing room. For a very short time the story of a Dean-Angeli love affair was even promoted by Dean himself, who fed it to various gossip columnists and to his co-star, Julie Harris, who in interviews has reported that Dean told her about being madly in love with Angeli. However, in early October 1954, Angeli unexpectedly announced her engagement to Italian-American singer Vic Damone, to Dean's expressed irritation. Angeli married Damone the following month, and gossip columnists reported that Dean, or someone dressed like him, watched the wedding from across the road on a motorcycle. However, when Bast questioned him about the reports, Dean denied that he would have done anything so "dumb", and Bast, like Paul Alexander, believes the relationship was a mere publicity stunt. Pier Angeli only talked once about the relationship in her later life in an interview, giving vivid descriptions of romantic meetings at the beach. Dean biographer John Howlett said these read like wishful fantasies, as Bast claims them to be.
Actress Liz Sheridan claims that she and Dean had a short affair in New York. In her memoir, she also states that Dean was having a sexual involvement with director Rogers Brackett, and describes her negative response to this situation. However, again Bast is skeptical whether this was a true love affair and says Dean and Sheridan did not spend much time together.
Dean avoided the draft by registering as a homosexual, then classified by the US government as a mental disorder. When questioned about his orientation, he is reported to have said, "No, I am not a homosexual. But, I'm also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back."
Death
On September 30, 1955, Dean and his mechanic Rolf Wütherich set off from Competition Motors, where they had prepared his Porsche 550 Spyder that morning for a sports car race at Salinas, California. Dean originally intended to trailer the Porsche to the meeting point at Salinas, behind his new Ford Country Squire station wagon, crewed by Hickman and photographer Sanford Roth, who was planning a photo story of Dean at the races. At the last minute, Dean drove the Spyder, having decided he needed more time to familiarize himself with the car. At 3:30 p.m., Dean was ticketed in Mettler Station, Kern County, for driving 65 mph (105 km/h) in a 55 mph (89 km/h) zone. The driver of the Ford was ticketed for driving 20 mph (32 km/h) over the limit, as the speed limit for all vehicles towing a trailer was 45 mph (72 km/h). Later, having left the Ford far behind, they stopped at Blackwells Corner in Lost Hills for fuel and met up with fellow racer Lance Reventlow.After leaving Lost Hills, Dean was driving west on U.S. Route 466 (later State Route 46) east of Cholame, San Luis Obispo County, when a black-and-white 1950 Ford Custom Tudor coupe, driven from the opposite direction by 23-year-old Cal Poly student Donald Turnupseed, moved to take the fork onto State Route 41 and crossed into Dean's lane. The two cars hit almost head-on. According to a story in the October 1, 2005, edition of the Los Angeles Times, California Highway Patrol officer Ron Nelson and his partner had been finishing a coffee break in Paso Robles, when they were called to the scene of the accident, where they saw an unconscious, heavily breathing Dean being placed into an ambulance. Paramedics were attending to Wütherich who had been thrown from the car and was lying on the shoulder of the road next to the mangled Porsche Spyder barely conscious, but survived with a broken jaw and other injuries. Dean was taken to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 5:59 p.m. by the attending emergency room physician. His last known words, uttered right before impact when Wütherich told Dean to slow down when they saw the Ford coupe in front of them about to drive into their lane, were said to have been: "That guy's gotta stop... He'll see us."
Junction of highways 46 and 41 as it looked circa 2007
Contrary to reports of Dean's speeding, which persisted decades after his death, Nelson said "the wreckage and the position of Dean's body indicated his speed was more like 55 mph (88 km/h)." Turnupseed received a gashed forehead and bruised nose and was not cited by police for the accident. He was interviewed by the Tulare Advance-Register newspaper immediately following the crash, saying that he had not seen Dean's car approaching, but after that, refused to ever again speak publicly about the accident. He went on to own and operate an electrical contracting business and died of lung cancer in 1995. Wütherich died in a road accident in Germany in 1981 after surviving several suicide attempts.
While completing Giant, and to promote Rebel Without a Cause, Dean filmed a short interview with actor Gig Young for an episode of Warner Bros. Presents in which Dean, instead of saying the popular phrase "The life you save may be your own" instead ad-libbed "The life you might save might be mine." [sic]Dean's sudden death prompted the studio to re-film the section, and the piece was never aired—though in the past several sources have referred to the footage, mistakenly identifying it as a public service announcement. (The segment can, however, be viewed on both the 2001 VHS and 2005 DVD editions of Rebel Without a Cause).
Speculated sexual orientation
Today, Dean is often considered an icon because of his "experimental" take on life, which included his ambivalent sexuality. There have been several accounts of Dean's sexual relationships with both men and women.William Bast, one of Dean's closest friends, was Dean's first biographer (1956). He recently published a revealing update of his first book, in which, after years of successfully dodging the question as to whether he and Dean were sexually involved, he finally stated that they were. In this second book, Bast describes the difficult circumstances of their involvement and also deals frankly with some of Dean's other reported homosexual relationships, notably the actor's friendship with Rogers Brackett, the influential producer of radio dramas who encouraged Dean in his career and provided him with useful professional contacts.
Journalist Joe Hyams suggests that any homosexual activity Dean might have been involved in appears to have been strictly "for trade", as a means of advancing his career. Val Holley notes that, according to Hollywood biographer Lawrence J. Quirk, gay Hollywood columnist Mike Connolly "would put the make on the most prominent young actors, including Robert Francis, Guy Madison, Anthony Perkins, Nick Adams and James Dean." However, the "trade only" notion is debated by Bast and other Dean biographers. Aside from Bast's account of his own relationship with Dean, Dean's fellow biker and "Night Watch" member John Gilmore claims he and Dean "experimented" with homosexual acts on one occasion in New York, and it is difficult to see how Dean, then already in his twenties, would have viewed this as a "trade" means of advancing his career.
Screenwriter Gavin Lambert, himself homosexual and part of the Hollywood gay circles of the 1950s and 1960s, described Dean as being homosexual. Rebel director Nicholas Ray is on record as saying that Dean was homosexual. Additionally, William Bast and biographer Paul Alexander conclude that Dean was homosexual, while John Howlett concludes that Dean was "certainly bisexual". George Perry's biography reduces these aspects of Dean's sexuality to "experimentation". Still, Hyams and Paul Alexander also claim that Dean's relationship with pastor De Weerd had a sexual aspect, too Bast also shows that Dean had knowledge of gay bars and customs.Consequently, Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon's book Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day (2001) includes an entry on James Dean.
Stage
Broadway
- See the Jaguar, (1952)
- The Immoralist (1954) – based on the book by André Gide
Off-Broadway
- The Metamorphosis (1952) – based on the novella by Franz Kafka
- The Scarecrow (1954)
- Women of Trachis (1954) – translation by Ezra Pound
- La Légende de Jimmy (1990) – Musical by Michel Berger and Luc Plamondon
Television
- Father Peyton's Family Theater, "Hill Number One" (Easter Sunday, April 1, 1951)
- The Web, "Sleeping Dogs" (February 20, 1952)
- Studio One, "Ten Thousand Horses Singing" (March 3, 1952)
- Lux Video Theatre, "The Foggy, Foggy Dew" (March 17, 1952)
- Kraft Television Theatre, "Prologue to Glory" (May 21, 1952)
- Studio One, "Abraham Lincoln" (May 26, 1952)
- Hallmark Hall of Fame, "Forgotten Children" (June 2, 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, "The Capture of Jesse James" (February 8, 1953)
- Danger, "No Room" (April 14, 1953)
- Treasury Men In Action, "The Case of the Sawed-Off Shotgun" (April 16, 1953)
- Tales of Tomorrow, "The Evil Within" (May 1, 1953)
- Campbell Soundstage, "Something For An Empty Briefcase" (July 17, 1953)
- Studio One Summer Theater, "Sentence of Death" (August 17, 1953)
- Danger, "Death Is My Neighbor" (August 25, 1953)
- The Big Story, "Rex Newman, Reporter for the Globe and News" (September 11, 1953)
- Omnibus, "Glory In Flower" (October 4, 1953)
- Kraft Television Theatre, "Keep Our Honor Bright" (October 14, 1953)
- Campbell Soundstage, "Life Sentence" (October 16, 1953)
- Kraft Television Theatre, "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 (November 23, 1953)
- Danger, "The Little Women" (March 30, 1954)
- Philco TV Playhouse, "Run Like A Thief" (September 5, 1954)
- Danger, "Padlocks" (November 9, 1954)
- General Electric Theater, "I'm A Fool" (November 14, 1954)
- General Electric Theater, "The Dark, Dark Hour" (December 12, 1954)
- The United States Steel Hour, "The Thief" (January 4, 1955)
- Lux Video Theatre, "The Life of Emile Zola" (March 10, 1955) – appeared in a promotional interview for East of Eden shown after the program aired
- Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, "The Unlighted Road" (May 6, 1955)
Filmography
| Year | Film | Role | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | Fixed Bayonets! | Doggie | (uncredited) | ||
| 1952 | Sailor Beware | Boxing opponent's second | (uncredited) | ||
| Has Anybody Seen My Gal? | Youth at soda fountain | (uncredited) | |||
| 1953 | Trouble Along the Way | Extra | (uncredited) | ||
| 1955 | East of Eden | Cal Trask | Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actor Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor Jussi Award for Best Foreign Actor | ||
| Rebel Without a Cause | Jim Stark | Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor | |||
| 1956 | Giant | Jett Rink | Golden Globe Special Achievement Award for Best Dramatic Actor Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actor |
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