Born in a Marion, Indiana, apartment house to Winton and Mildred Wilson Dean, James Dean and his family moved to Santa Monica, California six years after Winton had left farming to become a dental technician. Dean was enrolled in Brentwood Public School until his mother died of cancer in 1940.
At age nine, after his mother's death, Dean was sent by his father to live with his Aunt Ortense and Uncle Marcus Winslow on a farm in Fairmount, Indiana where he was brought up with a Quaker influence. In high school Dean played on the school basketball team and participated in forensics and drama. After graduating from Fairmont High School in 1949 Dean moved back to California to live with his father and stepmother.
He enrolled in Santa Monica College, pledged to the Sigma Nu fraternity and majored in pre-law. Dean transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles and changed his major to drama, resulting in a parental fight that left him turned out of his father's home.
Dean began his acting career with a Pepsi-Cola television commercial followed by a stint as a stunt tester in the game show Beat the Clock. He quit college to focus on his budding career but struggled to get jobs in Hollywood and succeeded in paying his bills only by working as a parking lot attendant at CBS studios.
Following the advice of friends Dean moved to New York City to pursue live stage acting, where he was accepted to study under Lee Strasberg in the storied Actors Studio. His career picked up and Dean did several episodes on early-1950s episodic television programs such as Kraft Television Theater, Studio One, Lux Video Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, Danger and General Electric Theater. Positive reviews for his role in André Gide's The Immoralist led to calls from Hollywood and paved the way to film stardom.
Director Elia Kazan was looking for a new actor to play the role of Cal; Dean and another relatively unknown actor, Paul Newman, were the final two chosen. Following a screen test in New York City the part was given to Dean.
On March 8, 1954 Dean left New York City and headed for Los Angeles to begin shooting East of Eden. Dean played the son of a constantly disapproving father played by Raymond Massey, while strangely enough, their onscreen conflict was heightened by an apparently mirrored relationship off-screen.
The relationship between Cal and his father was one similar to that for Dean and his own father, thus Dean had a special infatuation with the role of Cal. He became known on the set for his improvisational contributions to the script; his creativity proved to be very important as some of the most famous scenes were not originally scripted as they appear today. Dean would apparently drive past cinemas during the release of the film and stare in amazement as people lined up to see him in East of Eden. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role (the first posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards history).
James together with Natalie Wood in a screenshot from Rebel Without a Cause.He followed this up in rapid succession with the starring role in Rebel Without a Cause , a film that would prove to be hugely popular amongst teenagers. The film is widely cited as an accurate representation of teenage angst of the early 1950s.
The film co-starred Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. Director Nicholas Ray encouraged Dean’s creative side which he had showed during the filming of East of Eden.
During filming, he purchased one of only 90 Porsche 550 Spyders, and, while still in production, introduced himself to the world of competitive racing, entering a number of small competitions and achieving a high degree of success.
Giant which was posthumously released in 1956, saw Dean play a supporting role to both Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.
The film is highly memorable in that it takes place over thirty years, thus, all the characters must age progressively during the film. Dean dyed his hair grey as opposed to wearing a wig and shaved some of his hair off to give himself a receding hairline. This is particularly special in that although his character ages considerably in the film, Dean himself will never grow old.
Giant would be Dean’s last film. Towards the latter end of the film, an old Dean is at a banquet set to make a speech, which would be his last ever on-screen appearance. That scene has been dubbed “The Last Supper”.
Dean was nominated for an Academy Award after the release of the film.
Dean had become friends with fellow auto enthusiast and multi-millionaire Lance Reventlow, one of the last people to speak to Dean when they met on their way from Los Angeles to a sports car race at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California. A few hours later Dean was driving his Porsche 550 Spyder west on U.S. Highway 466 (later California State Route 46) near Cholame, California when a car driven from the opposite direction by 23-year-old Cal Poly student Donald Turnupseed, attempting to take the fork onto California State Route 41, crossed into Dean's lane without seeing the very low-slung silver-grey Porsche roadster in the twilight. The two cars hit almost head on. According to a story in the Oct 1, 2005 edition of the Los Angeles Times[2], California Highway Patrol officer Ron Nelson and his partner had been finishing a coffee break in Paso Robles when they were called to the scene of the accident, where they saw a heavily-breathing Dean being placed into an ambulance. His mechanic Rolf Wutherich had been thrown from the car but survived with a broken jaw and other injuries. Dean was taken to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 5:59PM at the age of 24. His last known words, uttered right before impact, are said to have been: "That guy's got to stop... He'll see us."
Contrary to reports of excessive speed which persisted decades after his death, Nelson said "the wreckage and the position of Dean's body indicated his speed was more like 55 mph (88 km/h)." Turnupseed received a gashed forehead and bruised nose, was not cited by police for the accident, though research has indicated he was exceeding the speed limit. He died of lung cancer in 1995. While completing Giant, Dean had recently filmed a driving safety announcement targeted at teenaged drivers. "The life you save," he had said in conclusion, "may be mine."
In 1955, Dean purchased one of only 90 Porsche 550 Spyder, nicknaming it "Little Bastard". Since the actor's death, the car has been infamous as being the vehicle that killed not only him, but others in the years following his death.
Over the years, many groups of people believed that the actor's vehicle and all of its parts were cursed. George Barris, who customized the car for Dean, bought the wreck for $2,500, only to have it slip off its trailer and break a mechanic's leg.
Soon afterwards, Barris sold the engine and drive-train to physicians Troy McHenry and William Eschrid respectively. While racing against each other, the former would be killed instantly when his vehicle spun out of control and crashed into a tree, while the latter would be seriously injured when his vehicle rolled over while going into a curve.
Barris later sold two tires, which malfunctioned as well. The tires, which were unharmed in Dean's accident, blew up simultaneously causing the buyer's automobile to go off the road.
Two young would-be thieves were injured while attempting to steal parts from the car. One tried to steal the steering wheel from the Porsche; his arm ripped open on a piece of jagged metal. Later, another man was injured while trying to steal the bloodstained front seat. This would be the final straw for Barris, who decided to store "Little Bastard" away, but was quickly persuaded by the California Highway Patrol to loan the wrecked car in a highway safety exhibit.
The first exhibit from the CHP featuring the car ended unsuccessfully, as the garage storing the Spyder went up in flames, destroying everything except the car itself, which suffered almost no damage whatsoever from the fire. The second display, at a Sacramento High School, ended when the car fell, breaking a student's hip. "Little Bastard" also found itself causing trouble while being transported several times. On its way to Salinas, the truck containing the vehicle lost control, causing the driver to fall out, only to be crushed by the Porsche after it fell off the back. On two separate occasions, once on a freeway and again in Oregon, the car came off other trucks, although no injuries were reported, another vehicle's windshield was shattered in Oregon.
Finally in 1959, one last exhibit would plague the CHP, in which the 550 Spyder would spontaneously break into eleven pieces. This would mark the end of the car, as in 1960, when being returned to George Barris in Los Angeles, California, the car and the truck holding it, as well as its driver, would mysteriously vanish. "Little Bastard" has not been seen since.
James Dean is one of only five people to have been nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for their first feature role and the only one nominated twice posthumously. He is buried in Park Cemetery in Fairmount, Indiana.
Two films from 1955, Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle, are most often cited as having symbolized the growing post-war rebellion of 1950s teenagers along with playing a part in the emergence of Rock and Roll as a lasting cultural phenomenon. Many young people of that and later generations modeled themselves after James Dean. His charismatic screen presence and very brief career combined with the publicity surrounding his death at a young age transformed Dean into a cult figure and pop icon of apparently timeless fascination.
James Dean's sexual life is a matter of some debate. Often considered a gay film icon, there are many published accounts of Dean having had bisexual relationships. In literary critic Ron Martinetti's biography, "The James Dean Story," Martinetti writes, "Only one of Dean's homosexual relationships is dealt with in this book--and that in his early days in Hollywood and New York with a director named Rogers Brackett. Toward the end of his own life, however, when he was stricken with cancer, Rogers granted me the only interviews he ever gave on Dean. He was tired of the "half-truths" that had been published and wanted "to set the record straight."
Further, Boze Hadleigh, a Hollywood biographer who focused on film figures who he asserted were gay or bisexual, published a 1972 interview with Sal Mineo in which the actor said, "Nick (Adams) told me they had a big affair." Further sources support the view that Dean could have had homosexual relationships. John Gilmore, a member of Dean's "Night Watch" motorcyle riders, wrote a book on James Dean claiming they had a homosexual encounter. In his Natalie Wood biography, Gavin Lambert, himself homosexual and part of the Hollywood gay circles of the 50s and 60s, describes Dean as being bisexual. In her memoir of her brief affair with Dean, actress Liz Sheridan states Dean had an affair with Rogers Brackett, a radio director for an advertising agency whom Dean met in the summer of 1951 while working as a parking attendant at CBS. In Val Holley's James Dean: the Biography (1997) gay studies scholars will also find evidence of a homosexual social life. Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon's book Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day (2001) includes an entry on James Dean. "Live Fast, Die Young – The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause," a recent book by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel, states that Rebel director Nicholas Ray knew Dean to be bisexual.
In 1977 a Dean memorial was built in Cholame, California. The stylized sculpture composed of concrete and stainless steel around a tree of heaven growing in front of the Cholame post office was made in Japan and transported to Cholame, accompanied by the project's benefactor, Seita Ohnishi. Ohnishi chose the site after examining the location of the accident, now little more than a few road signs and flashing yellow signals. In September 2005, the intersection of Highways 41 and 46 in Cholame was dedicated as the James Dean Memorial Highway as part of the celebration for the 50th anniversary of his death.
The dates and hours of Dean's birth and death are etched into the sculpture along with one of his favorite lines from Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince - "What is essential is invisible to the eye."
Walz Hardcore Cycles also built a memorial bike for James Dean with the number 130 on it. The number comes from his silver Porsche 550 Spyder, he had the number 130 painted on the hood, and on the back end of the car, he commissioned car customizer George Barris to paint his nickname "Little Bastard".
In September 2005, the intersection of Highways 41 and 46 in Cholame was dedicated as the James Dean Memorial Highway.