A half-century after his death, the memory and legacy of movie icon James Dean, who in a short but brilliant career incarnated the rebellious angst of a generation, burns brighter than ever.
Dean was just 24 when his Porsche 550 smashed into another car on a lonely California highway on September 30 1955, and his legend is built on a career of only three films.
But the actor and his off-screen persona left an indelible mark on both cinema and popular culture.
The reluctant star left behind searing performances in East of Eden (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956).
Dean was a complex mass of contradictions who went out of his way to catch friends and colleagues off guard with his frequently eccentric behaviour, say those who knew him.
”He liked being unusual so that people would talk about him,” observed actress Jane Withers, who played neighbour Vashti Snythe in Giant, Dean’s final film, released in 1956 after he was killed.
In one colourful exploit, Dean sent all-powerful Hollywood studio chief Jack Warner a box of rabbit ears culled in a hunt on which he went with his dialect and rope-trick coach, Bob Hinkle, in the Texas town of Marfa, where Giant was filmed.
Though Warner was fond of Dean and Hinkle, he had been expecting a pair of cowboy boots, not bunny ears, from the Texan hinterland, and put out the word he was going to ”kill those two bastards”, Hinkle recalled.
While on location, Withers held a crew party every evening in her bungalow that was affectionately dubbed ”Withers USO” by the cast, after the US military entertainment organisation.
One night, as she locked up, she found Dean asleep in the guest room, his hat pulled down over his eyes. He told her he had not wanted to see fellow cast and crew members so he had sneaked in through the window.
Withers knew the elusive Dean ”was one of a kind. He was truly a loner,” she said.
But she did not like the idea of him sneaking around her house.
She reached for her tool kit and nailed the windows shut.
”You come in through the front door or not at all,” Withers told him.
”I didn’t kow-tow to Jimmy,” she said.
Method-acting devotee Dean would totally immerse himself in his characters to the exclusion of those around him, and could be notoriously abrasive with colleagues.
His devotion caused some friction with Giant director George Stevens, observed Noreen Nash, who played starlet Lona Lane in the film’s hotel party scene.
”Jimmy wanted to feel things. He wasn’t so interested in the words,” Nash said. ”There was a clash in styles.”
Fellow Giant actor Earl Holliman, who played Bob Dace, the husband of Judy Benedict, did not get to know Dean until the last week of shooting and found him ”very straightforward, honest and truthful — no BS [bullshit]”, he said.
He said Dean told him: ”It doesn’t matter if the crew doesn’t like me, what matters is what’s up on the screen.”
Dean was also capable of great moments of sensitivity. He and his 1952-53 roommate Bill Bast were on their way to the California desert resort town of Palm Springs when a bird hit the car’s windshield.
According to Bast, Dean slammed on the brakes and came to an abrupt stop.
”He scooped up the bird and held it in his hands. It died and he cried.”
The men did not resume their trip until Dean buried the creature by the side of the road.
Bast, who went on to become a television writer, remembers working on a script in his Hollywood apartment early one Sunday morning when Dean showed up curbside in his MG sports car.
He leaned on his horn to let Bast know he had arrived. Bast, whose book Surviving James Dean is due out in early 2006, leaned out the window and asked him to wait until he was finished.
Instead, Dean vanished down the road. Bast was baffled at first.
”It was Mother’s Day and he wanted to be with somebody,” he said. ”I was uncomfortable because I let him down. That’s why he was there: to be distracted. Everybody else was with his mother. He wouldn’t tell you. You had to figure it out.”
Dean also personified cool. His high-school buddy Bob Pulley recalled how he and Dean were having beers at a bar in his hometown of Fairmount when a local man approached the actor for an autograph.
Dean obliged, but the man ”tore it up” right in front of them.
”I think he was jealous,” said Pulley. But the actor didn’t break a sweat.
”Bet he wishes he had that autograph now,” said the 74-year-old Pulley, laughing. — Sapa-AFP