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Good morning! Snow in Amsterdam, -16 C in Fairmount, Indiana. Brr! No wonder this clever farmboy, born on this day (8 February 1931) took off for sunny California. A thread on James Dean (1931-1955) in 25 images.
If he had not been killed in a car crash, today he might have celebrated his 90th birthday. Well, unless lung cancer had gotten to him by now, as he was almost never without the ubiquitous cigarette.
Dean in 1949 was still very much a shy and insecure country hick, who did not know much save for his relentless drive to act. Hardly regarded as star material at the time, Dean had a hard time passing Hollywood’s gatekeepers.
It took much and dedicated work and it was not easy, but by early 1955 Dean had reinvented himself multiple times over into a New York hipster hero and an excellent actor, on the stage, on television and in film.
A protean personality, gleefully erecting smoke screens by inventing stories about himself, Dean was a shapeshifter who could look completely different from one moment to the next. It made him a fascinating model for photographers.
Deeply interested in the arts, Dean took up photography himself, learning how to turn himself into stark and powerful, telling images. Photographers flocked around him precisely for this reason.
He has been called a poet in images, and actually wrote some decent poetry himself, sadly apparently mostly lost. He read widely (if a little sketchily): plays, poetry and prose.
A consummate trickster, Dean loved cracking jokes, and to create image jokes. This photo was taken in Fairmount cemetery close to the family tombs, part of a series meant for the journal Life. Hence the mischievous grin!
Another image joke he made with Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he became close friends on the set of Giant. This Crucifixion re-enactment has nothing to do with the film, but gained obvious notoriety after his death.
Dean also loved to draw, sculpt, paint and dance, and music, especially avant-garde: modern classical and jazz. Here he is jamming (on his bongo’s) with his good friend Eartha Kitt, but he also skilfully played the recorder.
Famously he loved speed, roaring through town and country on his motorbike and in his car. He won trophies racing his new Porsche: looking mightily pleased with himself!
Dean disliked much about Hollywood and loved playing the rebel, this to the annoyance of some. After yet another spat with studio boss Jack Warner the latter called him ‘a little bastard’. Characteristically Dean then named his new car Little Bastard.
His mother’s death and father’s distance, among other things, saddled an often lost-feeling Dean with recurrent black moods, retreating into silence of monosyllabic grunts. At such times he could be hell to work or live with.
However, he was also a very humane young man, capable of great acts of genuine kindness, and always surrounded by friends. Apolitical, he cared not for differences in colour, gender or sexuality, and was critical of the bigotry in Fairmount.
Dean had a typical farmboy attitude to animal life, hunting jackrabbits and being transfixed by bullfighting, but at the same time he showed great concern for animals, because they accepted him without question. He loved to play with the kitten Elizabeth Taylor gave him.
The issue of his sexuality is a minor ongoing skirmish in the American Culture Wars. Known for his many girlfriends, Dean actually had lovers of both sexes, but was very secretive and non-committal about his love life, even to those closest to him.
His highest profile romance was with the Italian actress Pier Angeli. Likely they never got further than chaste kisses, as Angeli was a devout Catholic and ‘La Mamma’ guarded her like a dragon. Marriage plans were never serious.
More important probably was his more-than-friendship with scriptwriter William Bast. The boys met in 1950, dated this girl (briefly at the same time), roomed together and in 1954 also became lovers. Bast loved him greatly and wrote two books about their friendship.
Bast never knew whether the secretive Dean requited his feelings in quite the same way, but Bast was without doubt very important to him. When Bast wasn’t around, he loved wearing this jacket of Bast’s. Few other relationships of Dean enjoyed the same depth and longevity.
Feeling depressed however during the filming of Giant, Dean confided in Taylor and told her apparently things he did not even tell Bast. Taylor would never divulge the contents of their talks, but in 2000 she declared Dean had been gay.
Nevertheless, Dean had a great predilection for European women. His last girlfriend was Swiss actress Ursula Andress, with whom he undoubtedly got much further than with Angeli. It is more likely that Dean was bisexual, as Bast thought.
Aware of the transitoriness of Hollywood fame, Dean wanted to direct films and was in the process of setting up an indy film company with his director Nicholas Ray. Bast was writing a script Dean was interested in filming.
His great dream however was to become a writer, like his hero Hemingway. ‘Writing is the god’, he once declared. He regarded himself ‘still to wild and silly’ for writing. Unfortunately he never got round to it.
His sudden death turned him into a myth – and a mystery. The historian nowadays has to wade chest-deep through myth and (black) legend and may never resolve certain issues. To some, the myth may even be more important than the man.
However, as @marinamaral2 shows in this wonderful colorised photograph, Dean was once a many-faceted young man of flesh and blood, with an endearingly roguish smile. He deserves to be remembered for who he was, not for the in comparison shallow myth which he became. Finis
