Biography of James Dean

The rebel icon

February 8, 1931
September 30, 1955
It was late afternoon, already tending in the evening of September 30, 1955: in highway 466 in the direction of Salinas, California, a Porsche Spider was unable to avoid colliding with another vehicle, possibly a distraction of the driver, had invaded the lane. The impact was devastating: for the driver of the car there was nothing to do, was died instantly and his car reduced to pieces. A few hours later, between the General dismay, began to spread the news that James Dean was dead. He was 24 years old. Today, more than fifty years after the death of the actor and the birth of a legend, that of James Dean is an icon that youth culture has introjected, almost unconsciously, and whose legend continues to be perpetuated for several generations, but diminish its subtle charm and its relevance today.
It is not easy to find another character who, to his peers, has influenced so much, and so long, behaviors, the dress code, Metropolitan Youth mythologies; to the point of being able to say that in every young person there lies something that belongs to James Dean, the prototype of every teenager. In the same years in which he began to define the legend, rock 'n' roll was moving its first steps and the figure of the "rebel" embodied by the actor was, from the outset, hired as its new musical trend: youth culture was born in the States, which was soon conquered and revolutionized the world. As well as his early death, the life of James Dean's written long for decades, often accented with almost epic ending to generate a total lack of distinction between private and public life but, above all, between life and art.
This form of indistinctness, although it may represent a limit, because often we run the risk of putting in those who are the undoubted artistic merit of the actor against a certain taste for the man's biography, on the other hand anecdotal is perhaps inevitable at the same time to understand a singular and enigmatic character like James Dean, who starred in the way he lived , and lived as she appeared on the big screen. James Byron Dean was born on 8 February 1931 in Marion, Indiana, in what was then one of America's most depressed and rural States. His early childhood was marked by the untimely death of his mother and the difficult relationship with his father. He was lovingly raised by his uncles and, since his youth, strongly attracted to theatre and other creative activities, began to develop a personality troubled, eccentric, ambitious, and she'd be loads of adolescent conflict unresolved.
A few years later, were especially these characteristics peculiar to convince the Director Elia Kazan that the 23-year-old James Dean--who had studied acting, attended the "Actors Studio" and had already had several theatrical experiences, but also for radio and television-owned the personality more suited to interpret the difficult character of Cal Trask in East of Eden ("East of Eden" , 1955), based on the novel by Steinbeck. For the role, he was preferred to both Marlon Brando, both Montgomery Clift: the other two older "Hollywood rebels", both role models for the young James Dean, did not have the same emotional charge according to Kazan, the same resentment against the father figure, the same youthful impetuosity, the same deep unhappiness. So it was that the young actor, for the first time, opened the big doors of stardom and success, by he long yearned. But, if James Dean needed to Hollywood to fulfill her innate and uncontrollable ambition, even Hollywood needed actors like him.
In those same years, the famous "dream factory" was opening up a new way of cinema: more free and independent, more realistic styling, poignant and less self-celebratory, attentive to social phenomena and especially the nascent world of youth, that the cinema itself helped define and food industries. James Dean remained in Hollywood just eighteen months and had time to recite only three films but, even in this narrow span of time, revolutionized not only the lives of millions of teenagers, but also the style of recitation of several movies by actor.
Truffaut wrote of him, after his death: "Dean runs counter to 50 years of cinema. He says something else than pronouncing, his gaze does not follow the conversation, causes a mismatch between the expression and expressed. Every gesture is unpredictable. Dean can, talking, turn your back to the camera and end this way the scene, can push sharply the head back or jump forward, can laugh where another actor would cry and vice versa, because he killed the psychological drama the day it appeared on the scene. " Lonely, restless, a little gloomy, since its debut in East of Eden, that enfant terrible of Hollywood he was considered a hero by American youth, being able to represent the estrangement, to denounce the misunderstanding, to dispel the loneliness. The film depicts the story of the stormy relationship between a father and the younger of his two sons, which feeds on resentment against the parent because, unlike his brother, he never felt loved and appreciated.
James Dean, for their similar personal experiences, characterized so so intense the character of Cal Trask, unhappy and unappreciated, that his was not only a great cinematic interpretation; It was something far more powerful and poignant that went beyond the fiction film, the story: suddenly, he was hired as a spokesman for an entire younger generation that, for the first time, he tried to assert herself. During those same months, another revolutionary phenomenon, rock 'n' roll, got her sensational appearance. If "East of Eden" highlighted a new revelation of cinema, and began already to define the features of a generational symbol, but it was mainly the second interpretation, rebel, the most memorable and that delivered to posterity the legend of James Dean in the form that has been passed down since then: is the resulting image from "rebel" to be the most closely linked to the myth of the actor because in this movie, the man Dean and the character he played, Jim Stark, thanks to a clever Director, seem to really come to identify themselves completely; in this way, the film turns almost into a biographical document of the actor, a fragment of his short life and, at the same time, also a premonition of the unfortunate death that, even before the movie came out in theaters, he would find it. "His anguish was authenticates both on screen and in life," Andy Warhol said of him a few years later.
For left unity coincidences, the other two young actors who were-Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo-would find both a tragic early death in gloomy and mysterious circumstances. Rebel ("Rebel Without A Cause", 1955), directed by a talented Nicholas Ray, depicts the dramatic and moving story of three teenagers struggling with the difficult transition to adulthood and the arduous search for its own identity. The adult world, parent, is seen with detachment and profound alienation, as unable to find answers to youth problems and, above all, to find them quickly. It follows a total lack of communication between the two horizons: that adult, dashed as weak, absent and hypocritical; young people, painted as sentimental and idealist. The deep existential insecurity, loneliness, lack of landmarks, brings young protagonists to seek their own way even if it means risking losing it.
In the end, the love story between Jim and Judy will maybe for the young couple a vehicle of renewal and landing in a later life, but at the same time aware and brave; the expense will be, however, the smallest and defenseless of the three protagonists: Plato, the innocent victim of a sick society and distracted. In "rebel", soon became a real cult movie, make their full appearance even those issues that temperamentally accompany, since a very early age, the short and turbulent life of James Dean: competitiveness, continues challenged themselves, the rush to live, the challenge to the death. As is known, in fact, the actor was in their lives a "rebel" certainly not less than in movie screens, leading a full life, hectic and often unregulated. Originally from Indiana, home of the Indianapolis 500, Jimmy-as he was called by his friends-he had a huge passion for motorcycles and racing cars, with whom he spent a lot of time, often participating in official competitions. The day he died, Salinas was headed for a race that would take part the next day. The irony of fate willed that, just over a month before the accident, Jimmy had participated as a testimonial to a television commercial on safe driving. On that occasion, his words were: "you drive it slow"--and then, turning towards the camera, with an enigmatic smile Conservatoire: "because the life that you'd snatch if might be mine."
Although later appears to have been established that the accident in which he suffered was not tied to a speeding, the sad ending was the final outcome of a life lived always on a knife edge. One of the mottos was invented by him: "dream as if you could live forever, live as if you'll die today". So lived, so he died. The 30 September of ' 55, young America-and not only-found himself in tears over the loss of a hero; saw tragic scenes of delirium comparable only to those who, thirty years earlier, had accompanied the disappearance of Rudolph Valentino. Just a week before the tragic collision driving his "Little Bastard"-so the new Porsche 550-had nicknamed, the actor had completed in Hollywood, alongside Liz Taylor, principal photography of the blockbuster The Gigante ("Giant", 1956), directed by George Stevens; his third and final cinematic interpretation, although not as a protagonist. The film was released in theaters a year after his death and was received with great fanfare. A few months later, Hollywood offered the first of many future tributes to his young and unlucky hero: The James Dean Story (1957), a lively documentary co-directed by a young Robert Altman, and whose soundtrack was an exceptional jazz musician Chet Baker interpreter (which is also nice and bloody, he began to be dubbed the "James Dean of jazz").
In the movie, however, the documentary intent actually ran out to reveal their limits, making the recently deceased actor already intense aura of legend. Legend that, since then, doesn't seem to know about sunset. From the mid-50 today, James Dean was the subject of a veritable cult: for decades, thousands and thousands of fans worshipped and imitated, have commemorated the death have visited the grave, have been collecting relics and objects, some have even participated in competitions in his memory. His image was heavily used and reworked-in a more or less direct-connections with the film, television and fashion. One can also say that nobody has contributed as he is to define what is still today the look more prevalent on young people from all over the world: jeans and t-shirts, garments now considered inseparable from the same celebrity status of young people. But maybe it is in the world of rock, and its own mythologies, that the influence of the actor was more pervasive and authentic. Already the day after his disappearance, the nascent rock & roll took over not only the aesthetic aspects, while essential for defining weds rocker, but even the anarchist spirit of rebellion: Elvis, to consolidate its image, adopted the movements look and strategically "animal variety" to James Dean, who was a fanatic admirer; Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, instead, they came to a much greater spiritual identification and, while the first the escaped twice, the second found himself, like the actor, an unfortunate and premature death on the asphalt. The mythical Hollywood rebel legacy, however, was not limited to the first rock & roll but, thereafter, became permanently part of rock music culture tout court: from early rock & roller to Bishops of the underground, by surfers to punk, and up to the present day, the figure of James Dean accompanies, with its strong connotations , the entire history of rock; embodying that soul rebel and bloody, but also fragile and girlish, featuring the recurring image from "hard on the soft-hearted" and defying even the battle of generations, because as much as fathers symbol so strong that it be taken by children. If the young Bob Dylan saw James Dean an Idol and lamented the death, some years after the Beach Boys dedicated a song, a tribute on behalf of the people of surfing. Across the ocean, however, John Lennon went so far as to declare that "No James Dean would never existed the Beatles".
The same Lennon, on the cover of his "Rock 'n' roll", was the "James Dean" portrait dressed and role played and looked so merge, the tribute to the glorious rock 'n' roll formed from his record, a clear reference to the actor, making it so explicitly the deep spiritual bond interwoven with the culture of rock music. The first 70 years, then watched the blossoming of the cult of Jim Morrison, undoubtedly owe James Dean. At the end of the 70 's, it was the turn of Sex Pistols bassist, Sid Vicious, one of the most eloquent symbols of a new "rebel", to be seen by some as yet another incarnation, much more perverse and transgressive, cursed Angel of Hollywood. Over the years the Smiths singer Morrissey--80, was to give voice to the most intimate and melancholy of the actor, to whose memory he dedicated a book ("James Dean Is Not Dead", 1983). In the years 90, finally, someone came to liken the troubled and alienated Kurt Cobain, the leader of Nirvana, in a modern-day James Dean who, among other things, portrayed in ' 54 in a famous sequence of photographs, had introduced with decades of advance even a sort of deportment "grunge" before its time. Maybe it wasn't the death of James Dean to introduce for the first time the mythologizing of premature death, but it was surely his to offer a new, modern, wording to that romantic ideal; He who in a celebrated romantic poet lived intensely, Byron, bore his name. Was James Dean indeed the interpreter par excellence of the saying "live fast, die young"; also, it was done right and exalted from rock: from Jimi Hendrix to Jim Morrison, from Nick Drake to Tim Buckley, from Sid Vicious to Ian Curtis, until Kurt Cobain, in the imagination of rock, early biological death seems to be the ultimate passport to immortality and artistic consecration.
But who was actually James Dean? The young talented actor whose promising career was interrupted by an untimely death, or one of the products of the collective American? He was definitely, and more than others, each other together.
Only in America, young land of history with an extraordinary Mythopoeic power, could flourish the modern legend of James Dean that, like an eternal Peter Pan, is one of the places of honor in the Olympus of the "gods": what, among others, hosts the stars of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe and that represents one of the keepers of the American dream, powered by their own mythologies. But, on the other hand, the icon of James Dean also appears to represent a special case. Remaining and renewing itself in a unique way, and in some ways unique, the unlucky actor appears, compared to the other, an image far deeper: more real and authentic but, together, more universal and indefinite. The magnitude of James Dean, and the secret of his amazing and lasting success, consisted in being able, because of his undoubted talent, to infuse the films something unique, as was her restless personality and, at the same time, to become a universal interpreter not only of young Americans in the postwar period, but also deep spirit of young people of every age.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.