James Dean Add to My Celebs Age 24 (passed away Sep. 30th, 1955) Birthday Feb. 8th, 1931 Born in Marion, Indiana, USA Height 5' 8"

James Dean's Main TV Roles Show Character(s) Danger Augie J.B. Campbell Playhouse Hank Bradon Joe Adams

Main Movie Roles 1957 - The James Dean Story 1956 - Giant 1955 - East of Eden 1955 - Rebel Without a Cause 1952 - Deadline - U.S.A. 1952 - Sailor Beware 1951 - Fixed Bayonets! 1951 - The Day the Earth Stood Still

NOTE: Complete List of Works can be found at IMDB


BIOGRAPHY:

James Dean was raised on a farm by his aunt and uncle in Fairmount, Indiana. He received rave reviews for his work as the blackmailing Arab boy in the New York production of Gide's "The Immoralist", good enough to earn him a trip to Hollywood. His early film efforts were strictly bit parts: a sailor in the Dean Martin (I) and Jerry Lewis (I) overly frantic musical comedy Sailor Beware (1952); a GI in Samuel Fuller's moody study of a platoon in the Korean War, Fixed Bayonets! (1951) and a youth in the Piper Laurie-Rock Hudson comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal (1952). He had major roles in only three movies. In the Elia Kazan production of John Steinbeck's East of Eden (1955) he played Caleb, the "bad" brother who couldn't force affection from his stiff-necked father. His true starring role, the one which fixed his image forever in American culture, was that of the brooding red-jacketed teenager Jim Stark in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955). George Stevens (I)' filming of Edna Ferber's Giant (1956), in which he played the non-conforming cowhand Jett Rink, was just coming to a close when Dean, driving his Porsche Spyder, collided with another car in Cholame, California. He had received a speeding ticket just two hours before. His very brief career, violent death and highly publicized funeral transformed him into a cult object of apparently timeless fascination.


TRIVIA:

• He was issued a speeding ticket only two hours and fifteen minutes before his fatal accident.
• While filming _The Swan (1956)_ (qv) in Hollywood, 'Alec Guinness' (qv) he met 'James Dean (I)' (qv), just days before the young actor's death. Sir Alec later recalled predicting that Dean would die in a car crash: when Dean showed Guinness his newly-bought Porsche, Guinness advised him to "Get rid of that car, or you'll be dead in a week!" Guinness unfortunately proved right.
• 'Marlon Brando' (qv), in his 1994 autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me", says that Dean, who idolized him, based his acting on him and his lifestyle on what he thought Brando's lifestyle was.
• Like his hero 'Marlon Brando' (qv) (Dean had been separated from his own father as a child and was distant from him. Brando apparently served as a role model for Dean) Dean wanted to write. He told gossip columnist 'Hedda Hopper' (qv) that writing was his supreme ambition.
• While a struggling actor in the 1950s, he once lived at 19 West 68th Street, off Manhattan's Central Park West.
• Immortalized in 1974 by the song "Rock On" sung by 'David Essex (I)' (qv).
• (1995). Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#42).
• He was given a Siamese cat as gift by 'Elizabeth Taylor (I)' (qv).

James Dean Photos

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