On September 30, 1955, the actor died in a car accident and became a myth. The fates of the co-stars of the era-defining film would also prove fatal.
To say that three films made James Dean become one of the great Hollywood icons of the 20th century is as true as it is incomplete. He jumped to the big screen in 1954 with East of Eden and the following year Rebel Without a Cause and Giant were released, both posthumous. Because on September 30, 1955, he died in an accident surrounded by theories and conspiracies. And here the myth ends up taking shape in a story that seems scripted to its measure: a tragic death, a beautiful, young, and eternal body, the context of the rock and roll explosion, and the first great generational rebellion in American society in the last century.
From his brief filmography, Rebel Without a Cause is James Dean. Or vice versa. The title remained as an alter ego, a pseudonym to which his ephemeral career was linked, the one he embraced as a boy and which he cut short on a day like today when he was only 24 years old. He was born in Marion, Indiana, on February 8, 1931, and it was there that he made his first appearances in the theater. By the early 1950s, when everything was about to happen, he pivoted between Los Angeles and New York, the great cultural powerhouses of the time.
In the Big Apple, he trained at the Mythical Actors Studio, achieved small roles in three films, and fulfilled his first dream by getting on the Broadway stage. In The Immoralist he began to receive the critical eye. And Elia Kazan saw something of that when in 1954 he was offered the role of Carl Trask in East of Eden. Soon after, Nicholas Ray hired him for the role of Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause, co-starring Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. The objective was to tell the youthful discontent of the time and ended up uniting three destinies marked by tragedy.
Jim Stark (Dean), John "Plato" Crawford (Sal Mineo), and Judy (Natalie Wood) meet in the youth division of a Los Angeles police station. As their adolescent concerns come to light, they will realize the things they have in common and that the world of adults is much more than a couple of years away. They do not want to follow in his footsteps or repeat his mandates. A wet ear to the American dream that lived years of splendor. A move that came out very expensive.
While building his meteoric path in acting, James was also going full throttle on the roads. He had a passion for vehicles as a boy and at the age of 13, they gave him an extra motor for his bicycle with which he could accelerate up to 50 km/h. The next natural step was motorcycles and at 16 he was raising dust on two wheels. Sports cars were a matter of time. In his college years, he switched from the Ford to the Chevrolet while carbureting a dream that was currently unattainable and driving at full speed and rather recklessly perhaps as a way to shorten the times.
That dream had its own name: the Porsche, which in the early 50s led sports car competitions. Also, a setting that was familiar to him: California was the region where beginners made their first races. The success of his films allowed him to obtain his first model of the German brand. The circle had closed and James became a regular at informal racetracks, where he immediately showed his talent. Although he was only able to compete in three races, he was not off the podium in any of them. He had a fourth competition in mind and wanted to redouble his efforts.
Thanks to an advance from the film studio, he managed to get hold of a Porsche 550 Spyder, which he acquired on September 21, 1955. It was too light a car, designed more for racetracks than for roads, and in six days, Dean had two notices in the form of minor accidents that he chose to continue long. On September 30, 1955, he was driving as he used to on the way to the Salinas circuit. It was his last trip: on the way, he collided head-on with another vehicle and James was killed almost instantly. In that same scene, only he knows how and why it happened, the myth was born.
Sal Mineo, the eternal adolescent
The son of Italian immigrants and raised in the New York Bronx, Salvatore Mineo Jr. was discovered as a child by a talent scout who saw him and his sister at the door of his home. At the age of 11 he made his Broadway debut in The Rose Tattoo and was the prince in the musical The King and I, so successful that it served as a bridge to the small screen.
There he knew how to build a physique for the role of a troubled, gang member, tormented young man and with that resume, the move to Rebel Without a Cause was almost natural. Legend has it that Sal auditioned for a minor role, but ended up being the apex of Dean and Wood's triangle with their John "Plato" Crawford. The ambiguous relationship with James Jim was one of the attractions of the film, with implicit homos-. But that was not much talked about in the cinema, and less in family homes. It took a few years for Sal to talk about his bis- in an interview.
Mineo's career continued with success in titles like Marked by Hate and Exodus, which earned him his second Academy Award nomination. He felt like a rock star and wanted to prove it himself by releasing an album with his name. But as the young man grew, the actor lost his luster, and worse, mismanagement left him on the verge of financial bankruptcy.
He took refuge in his first love, the theater, where he was able to carry out more played bets in a less modest environment. That was the night of the 12th of 1976 when he was returning from a rehearsal and was stabbed at heart level. He talked about a crime of passion, a settling of scores and everything seemed to come to an end in a robbery attempt that went wrong. He was 37 years old.
Natalie Wood, the scream that nobody wanted to hear
Natalia Zakharenko was born in San Francisco on July 20, 1938, the daughter of Russian immigrants who anticipated the Cold War and settled in California. She was five years old when director Irving Pichel discovered her in the first row of the curious who attended the filming of Happy Land (1943). Her stage name is due to Bill Goetz, one of the founders of 20th Century Pictures, and at her 8th, she had her first leading role in the hit Miracle on 34th Street.
When she put herself in the shoes of Judy, Natalie had much more experience than the male protagonists of Rebel Without a Cause. As she recounted on many occasions, it was the first script that she read and chose from her without her parents doing it for her, who, by the way, opposed her acting in the film that marked a generation. And naturally, herself.
She then worked on classics like The Searchers, Splendor in the Grass, and Love Without Barriers, among her most outstanding titles. At the age of 43, she was filming Project Brainstorm when she lost her life in never-explained circumstances. It was the night of November 29, 1981, and she was traveling with her husband Robert Wagner, the actor Christopher Walken and the yacht pilot. Her death is one of the great mysteries of Hollywood and her body stopped beating with a crude history of abuse and mistreatment that no one in the industry wanted to hear.
Rebel Without a Cause was released on October 27, 1955, almost a month after the death of its protagonist, and was an immediate success in American theaters that were excited or scandalized depending on the age of the client. The critics also accompanied the Academy, which nominated Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo in the -questionable- category of supporting actor and actress and Ray for best screenplay. But the tragedy seemed to reach this category as well since none was awarded. To continue the game of paradoxes, Dean was nominated for his leading roles in East of Paradise and Giant. However, the great merit of him is to have become a legend. An icon of a generation. On the poster in each room. In the object of s- desire of men and women of all time. In the cause of eternal speculation about what happened, and what would have happened, if he had not crashed his Porsche on a highway near Cholame, on this day 67 years ago.
