September 15, 2005. Copyright 2005, Graphic News. All rights reserved

James Dean: Too fast to live, too young to die
By Elisabeth Ribbans

LONDON, September 15, Graphic News:  James Dean, the intensely handsome Hollywood actor and brooding icon to generations of teenagers, remains freeze-framed in time as the ultimate embodiment of the 20th-century adolescent rebel.

His face, a chiselled study in sensitivity, restlessness and defiance, has adorned everything from bedroom walls to beer glasses, beach towels to postage stamps. But the Indiana farm boy who so captivated the attention of contemporary audiences, and the imaginations of fans yet to come, enjoyed his fame for only six months.

In March 1955, Life magazine ran a photo spread on James Dean, a ÒmoodyÓ young movie actor who had just made his first feature, the Oscar-winning adaptation of John SteinbeckÕs novel East of Eden. The endorsement of this influential publication confirmed to the ambitious Dean that he had at last arrived in the celebrity realm. But by the end of September the same year, the rising star was dead.

Between the release of East of Eden -- for which he received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of troubled teen Cal Trask -- and his untimely death in a car accident, Dean starred in two more films: with Natalie Wood in the movie with which his name would become synonymous, Rebel Without A Cause (1955); and Giant (1956). His last picture, in which he played alongside Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, earned him yet another Academy Award nomination. Dean, of course, never knew of this or the earlier award citation, becoming the only actor to be nominated twice posthumously.

This brief and brilliant starburst of talent had unlikely beginnings. Born on February 8, 1931 in Marion, Indiana, James Byron Dean moved with his family to Santa Monica, California, at the age of five. But when his mother died of cancer just four years later, Dean was sent 2,000 miles back to his home state to live with relatives on a farm near the small town of Fairmount, Indiana. The journey, which the nine-year-old ÒJimmyÓ made alone by train with his motherÕs coffin, was said to have left an indelible mark on the young boy.

After graduating from high school, Dean returned to California, where he briefly studied law and drama. But, frustrated at winning no more than bit parts in Hollywood movies, he moved east to New York to take up a place at the renowned Actors Studio. Appearances in a number of television programmes followed, but it was his acclaimed performance in a 1953 Broadway production of The Immoralist, Andre GideÕs exploration of homosexual awakening, that prompted director Elia Kazan to cast the relative unknown in East of Eden. Overnight Hollywood found its ideal, idealistic anti-hero -- a position confirmed by DeanÕs emotionally charged inhabitation of the character of Jim Stark, the tormented high-school misfit in Rebel Without A Cause, and again by his angst-ridden Texas teenager in Giant.

Next to acting, DeanÕs greatest passion was fast cars. On September 30, 1955, he was heading for a motor race in Salinas, California, when his Porsche collided with another vehicle near the town of Cholame. The young actor -- whose final appearance on screen had been in a road safety film -- was killed instantly. His immortality, however, was assured.
/ENDS