The Rebel

Actor Martin Sheen said of James Dean, “There were only two people in the fifties:  Elvis Presley, who changed music, and James Dean, who changed our lives.”  It’s an amazing assessment, considering that Dean died midway through the decade.  In fact, he was in Hollywood less than two years and made only three movies, two of which – Rebel Without a Cause and Giant – had yet to be released when he died.  The car crash that killed him rated only four short paragraphs on an inside page of The New York Times.  But the West Coast newspapers knew better.  Their front-page banner headlines above a picture of his crumpled Porsche was more attention that Dean had ever gotten when he was alive.  But it was merely a hint of the legend that would follow, unfettered by the bounds of living human subject.  “You Haven’t Heard the Half About James Dean, by Natalie Wood” and “Here is the Real Story of My Life – by James Dean As I Might Have Told It to Joe Archer” were two of the early postmortems in the movie magazines.  The 24-year-old achieved immortality a few days after he completed filming Giant, a sweeping epic that, rising state that he was, matched him with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.  Dean had taken an interest in race-car driving, but Warner Brothers had forbidden him to race during the filming.  On a Friday, the day after a party celebrating completion of the movie, Dean and one of the film’s stunt men headed for a weekend racing event.  Dean was driving his new gray Porsche that he had bought for $7,000 a few days before.  The car was capable of doing 150 miles per hour, and Dean named it “The Little Bastard.  About 3:30 that afternoon Dean got a speeding ticket outside of Bakersfield, California.  A little over two hours later, as he was driving west on a rural two-lane highway.  Dean saw an east bound car slowing at an intersection, apparently to turn left across the highway.  “That guy’s got to stop,” Dean told his companion.  “He’ll see us.”  But Dean’s gray Porsche blended into the late afternoon twilight.  The impact tore open the hood and trunk on the little sports car and crushed the driver’s side of the car.  Dean died almost immediately; his passenger was thrown from the convertible and seriously injured.  The driver of the other car, a 23-year-old college student, received minor injuries.  In one of those classic ironies, Dean had filmed a commercial for safe driving while on the set of Giant.  “People say that racing is dangerous, but I’ll take my chances on the track any day than on the highway.”  Dean, slouched in a chair and toying with a small lariat, had mumbled in his style.  “Take it easy drivin’, uh, the life you might save might be mine, you know?”