A rebel for all time: James Dean's impact endures

The sun was setting on Sept. 30, 1955, when 24-year-old James Dean, behind the wheel of his silver Porsche Spyder, sped toward the California twilight and off into eternity.

The actor, who in just one year had become the idol of American youth in "East of Eden," was killed when his car smashed into a 1950 Ford Tudor in San Luis Obispo County's Cholame Valley.

Just two months earlier, on July 29, Dean, an auto-racing devotee, had filmed a highway safety commercial. In the commercial, Dean advised teenagers to "take it easy driving, the life you save may be mine." Hours before the fatal accident, Dean got a speeding ticket outside Bakersfield, where in May he had won a third-place racing trophy at Minter Field.

Dean had been in the public eye an infinitely shorter period than Rudolph Valentino, the world's most famous screen heartthrob; yet, more than four decades later, Dean's reputation as one of the great icons of the movies is unchallenged. Of course, it was partly the fact that he died in the bloom of youth that explains his mystique.

And once again, the faithful will pay homage to Dean. Thousands will flock to the small Indiana farm town of Fairmount that was his home. The town's annual Fairmount Museum Days will be tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, a combination town fair and tribute to Dean that includes a Dean look-alike contest, a road race, a lasso contest, a 1950s sock hop and a parade. A memorial service will be held Sept. 30, the anniversary of his death. Dean would have been 69.

In California, also on Sept. 30, there will be an auto excursion retracing Dean's fatal route.

James Byron Dean was born on Feb. 8., 1931, in Marion, Ind., to Winton Dean, a dental technician, and Margaret Winslow. James Dean moved to California with his parents when he was 5. His mother died of cancer four years later, and Dean was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, Ortense and Marcus Winslow, on their Fairmount farm.

He attended Fairmount High, where he was a top scorer on the basketball team and a standout hurdler and pole vaulter. As a member of the school's drama team, he won the Indiana state dramatic speaking contest in 1949.

Dean's sports trophies are among several of his possessions displayed at the Fairmount Historical Museum. The collection also includes the racing trophy he won in May 1955, high school letter sweaters, his Czechoslovakian motorcycle, his bongo drums and the cowboy boots he wore in "Giant."

And there is more just down the road at the James Dean Gallery, where owner David Loehr claims he has "the world's largest collection of James Dean memorabilia." The collection includes movie posters, clothing from Dean's films, photographs, high school yearbooks, buttons, cups and clocks.

Loehr says that "at least 10,000 visitors" from around the world come to his gallery each year.

Dean's only living relative, his cousin Marcus Winslow Jr., was 12 when Dean died. Now 57, Winslow and his wife, Marylou, live in the 96-year-old farmhouse where Dean and Winslow grew up.

Winslow said he receives hundreds of letters and visitors every year. "We get several cars a day stopping by with people wanting to take pictures or ask a few questions," Winslow said. "We also get a lot of people from foreign countries. It's really unbelievable with all the interest that has been shown for Jimmy. We have a lot of people who visit who say that they were really inspired by Jimmy."

After graduating from high school, Dean returned to California for college on a path that took him to the stage in New York City and back to Hollywood for what would be a brief but stunning career in films, beginning with bit roles in the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis comedy "Sailor Beware" (1951), the Korean war flick "Fixed Bayonets" (1951), the light-hearted comedy "Has Anybody Seen My Gal" (1952) and the John Wayne lark "Trouble Along the Way" (1953).

Dean's meteoric rise to stardom started with "East of Eden" (1955), the film in which Dean played the rejected and moody teenager Cal Trask, who competes with his brother, Aron (played by another newcomer, Richard Davalos), for the love of their God-fearing father.

Young people seeing "East of Eden" were so carried away by the shy, tender, rebellious presence on the screen that Dean was immediately proclaimed a star. More than any other actor, Dean was the symbol of misunderstood youth, and within weeks, young people had transformed him and his screen character into a national cult.

In his second major role, Dean struck a reverberatingly contemporary chord as restless teenager Jim Stark in Nicholas Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955). Intense almost to the point of expressionism in its evocation of a secret world of teenage rivalry, Rebel proved a perfect showcase for its star's capacity to project a mixture of outgoing tenderness and incoming pain and frustration. Yet Dean was 23 and playing a character presumably about 17; he was in a sense on borrowed time so far as his popular identity was concerned.

In his third major role and final film, George Stevens' "Giant" (1956), Dean was called upon to extend his acting range. In the early scenes as the surly ranch hand Jett Rink, Dean is still the youthful loner, but the lengthy time span converts him eventually into a dissipated middle-aged oil tycoon, and his capacity to suggest the frailty of the prematurely aged man is startling. One senses here that Dean had an acting potential at least the equal of Marlon Brando's.

Unfortunately, we shall never know.

Dean's last words in "Giant" were actually spoken by his friend and fellow actor Nick Adams. In the banquet scene, during which a drunken Jett Rink is speaking to a vacant room, Dean's monologue was too inaudible to be used. The scene was supposed to be dubbed in later by Dean. However, by the time the dubbing was done, Dean was dead.

If James Dean's death robbed us of a potentially major actor, it froze him in a posture of romantic yearning that has not since been surpassed.