James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931-September 30, 1955) was an American actor.
He is remembered as a cultural icon of teenage disillusionment and social estrangement, as expressed in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as troubled teenager Jim Stark.
The other two roles that defined his stardom were loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955) and surly ranch hand Jett Rink in Giant (1956).
After his death in a car crash, Dean became 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 him the 18th best male film star of Golden Age Hollywood in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list.
James Byron Dean was born on February 8, 1931, at the Seven Gables flat on the corner of 4th Street and McClure Street in Marion, Indiana, the only child of Mildred Marie (Wilson) and Winton Dean. He also claimed that his mother was partly Native American, and that his father belonged to a line of original settlers that could be traced back to the Mayflower.
Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, Dean moved with his family to Santa Monica, California. He was enrolled at Brentwood Public School in the Brentwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California, but transferred soon afterward to the McKinley Elementary School.
The family spent several years there, and by all accounts, Dean was very close to his mother. According to Michael DeAngelis, she was the only person capable of understanding him.
In 1938, she was suddenly struck with acute stomach pain and quickly began to lose weight. She died of uterine cancer when Dean was nine years old. Unable to care for his son, Dean's father sent him to live with his aunt and uncle, Ortense and Marcus Winslow, on their farm in Fairmount, Indiana, here he was raised in their Quaker household. Dean's father served in World War II and later remarried.
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Dean's first television appearance was in a Pepsi Cola commercial. He quit college to act full-time and was cast in his first speaking part, as John the Beloved Disciple in Hill Number One, an Easter television special dramatizing the Resurrection of Jesus.
Dean worked at the widely filmed Iverson Movie Ranch in the Chatsworth area of Los Angeles during production of the program, for which a replica of the tomb of Jesus was built on location at the ranch. Dean subsequently obtained three walk-on roles in movies: as a soldier in Fixed Bayonets! (1951), a boxing cornerman in Sailor Beware (1952), and a youth in Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952).
While struggling to gain roles in Hollywood, Dean also worked as a car park 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. Brackett opened doors for Dean and helped him land his first starring role on Broadway in See the Jaguar.
In
July 1951, Dean appeared on Alias Jane Doe, which was produced by
Brackett. In October 1951, following the encouragement of actor James
Whitmore and the advice of his mentor Rogers Brackett, Dean moved to New
York City. There, he worked as a stunt tester for the game show Beat
the Clock, but was subsequently fired for allegedly performing the tasks
too quickly.
He also appeared in episodes of several CBS television series The Web, Studio One, and Lux Video Theatre, before gaining admission to the Actors Studio to study method acting under Lee Strasberg.
In 1952, he had a non-speaking bit part as a pressman in the film Deadline-U.S.A., starring Humphrey Bogart.
Dean's career picked up, and he performed in further episodes of such early 1950s television shows as Kraft Television Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, The United States Steel Hour, 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 portray in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
This summer 1953 program featured 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 homosexual North African houseboy, in an adaptation of André Gide's book The Immoralist (1902), led to calls from Hollywood. During the production of The Immoralist, Dean had an affair with actress Geraldine Page.
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. This book deals 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.
Dean quickly followed up his role in Eden with a starring role as Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), a film that would prove to be hugely popular among teenagers. The film has been cited as an accurate representation of teenage angst.
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Following East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, Dean wanted to avoid being typecast as a rebellious teenager like Cal Trask or Jim Stark, and hence took on the role of Jett Rink, a Texan ranch hand who strikes oil and becomes wealthy, in Giant, a posthumously released 1956 film. The film portrays a number of decades in the lives of Bick Benedict, a Texas rancher, played by Rock Hudson; his wife, Leslie, played by Elizabeth Taylor; and Rink. To portray an older version of his character in the film's later scenes, Dean dyed his hair grey and shaved some of it off to give himself a receding hairline.
Giant would prove to 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. Due to his desire to make the scene more realistic by actually being inebriated for the take, Dean mumbled so much that director George Stevens decided the scene had to be overdubbed by Nick Adams, who had a small role in the film, because Dean had died before the film was edited.
Dean received his second posthumous Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his role in Giant at the 29th Academy Awards in 1957 for films released in 1956.
The death of James Dean occurred on September 30, 1955, near Cholame, California. Dean had previously competed in several auto racing events, and was travelling to a sports car racing competition when he crashed his car at the junction of California State Route 46 (former 466) and California State Route 41. He was 24 years old.
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Being a man is even harder.
I want to be both before I'm done.
James Dean
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