By Lucie M. Winborne, ReMIND Magazine
“Too fast to live, too young to die.” So California rock band the Eagles characterized a small-town Indiana boy — short, thin and nearsighted, with fake front teeth —who remains a cultural icon of teen disillusionment and rebellion six decades after his untimely death: James Byron Dean.
The son of farmer-turned-dental-technician Winton and housewife Mildred, young James was raised primarily by his aunt and uncle after his mother’s death from cancer when James was 9. Upon graduating from high school, he moved to California and studied law at Santa Monica City College before transferring to UCLA, where he studied theater and appeared in Macbeth. His first TV appearance came in a Pepsi commercial in 1950, and his first speaking part in a film was in the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis comedy Sailor Beware, but Dean made ends meet as a CBS Studios parking lot attendant before being accepted as a student of legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg. After some TV roles and a stint on Broadway as an Arab houseboy in The Immoralist, Dean landed a spot in East of Eden under the directorship of Elia Kazan, followed by his signature role of agonized teen Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause and his portrayal of oil baron Jett Rink in Giant.
Offscreen, Dean was a passionate racecar driver who hoped to compete in the Indianapolis 500. The actor admitted to Gig Young in an interview promoting Rebel Without a Cause that he had taken “a lot of unnecessary chances on the highway,” but was now “extra cautious,” adding in an eerily prescient bit of advice for young drivers: “Take it easy driving. The life you might save might be mine.” Not long afterward, he was killed in a car crash on his way to a race in Salinas, Calif., and the interview never aired. Dean was just 24.
When a striking young talent is curtailed far too soon, it’s impossible not to wonder what might have been. Though Dean received two posthumous Oscar nominations for East of Eden and Giant, Kazan opined the actor was not sufficiently trained and relied too much on his instincts to build a successful long-term career, unlike his idol, Marlon Brando. He certainly didn’t fit the mold of “old Hollywood.” Yet over the years Dean has inspired artists from Elvis to Brad Pitt, and will no doubt continue to inspire generations to come, simply by being forever young, forever cool.
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