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Legend of the patron saint of cool
When James Dean was on the screen you couldn’t take your eyes off him writes Sunita Rappai
James Dean by William Hall Sutton Publishing, £6.99 order this book
FIFTY years after his untimely death on a Californian highway, James Dean is still the patron saint of angst-ridden teenagers.
He is also the patron saint of cool. There is something in the Dean swagger, in the way he holds a cigarette, the cadence of his speech patterns that seems to defy age and trends.
For William Hall, the Highgate- based biographer and film critic whose 1992 biography of Dean is being re-issued this month, the answer is simple.
“In the end it comes down to watchability,” he says. “All the great actors had that quality about them.
“When James Dean was on the screen, the other guy could be acting his socks off but you couldn’t take your eyes off him – even if he wasn’t saying anything.”
With his urbane charm and 30 years plus as a seasoned hack in the murky world of showbiz, Hall, 62, is not the obvious choice for a book about a tortured, sensitive method actor – even one as famous as Dean.
His many biographies have tended to focus on stars more famous for their lighter side – Norman Wisdom, Frankie Howerd, Larry Adler or most famously two on the ubiquitous Michael Caine.
And Hall’s own heroes tend to reflect the glory days of Hollywood when legends like John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Sophia Loren and Rita Hayworth – all of whom he has interviewed – ruled the silver screen.
But it says something about Dean’s appeal that his most famous film – the iconic Rebel Without a Cause – made a lasting impact on the young Hall – despite an idyllic childhood in the Hampstead Lane home where he still lives.
“It’s funny,” he says. “I can’t remember that many frustrations when I was growing up. I got on well with my parents and as an only child, I was spoilt rotten.
“But I think he reflected all the longings and hopes in our lives that we keep bottled up. One could admire him because he wasn’t afraid to go out on a limb and challenge authority and the establishment.
“Luckily I was able to write so I could always get it all out but he represented those people who couldn’t communicate.”
Having accepted an offer to write the biography, Hall made a conscious decision to avoid the acres of torrid prose that have already been written about Dean.
“I didn’t want to be influenced by other books,” he says. “I just went through some of the cuttings and then I went to Fairmount, Indiana, where he grew up to get the atmosphere right.
“I interviewed his aunt Ortense who was very charming and let me try on the red jacket he wore in Rebel. It was a bit tight but I still got it on.”
I ask him whether he was surprised by anything he discovered by Dean while researching the book.
“That he knew so much about acting and that he studied it as much as he did (Dean was a member of the legendary Actor’s Studio in New York). And that he was bisexual – I had no idea of his bisexuality.”
The resulting book – a slim volume simply entitled James Dean – cuts through some of the complex myths surrounding Dean to provide an introduction to the man, rather than the legend.
The facts, by now, are well known. Born in 1931, Dean was raised by his aunt and uncle on their Indiana farm after his mother passed away when he was eight.
Always something of a loner, he moved to California and then to New York where he studied acting in earnest and won roles in several television commercials.
Having caught the eye of Hollywood, he won his first big role – as Cal Trask in East of Eden, quickly followed by Rebel Without a Cause, and then, in what would be his final role, a part opposite Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor in Giant.
Dean died in a headon collision on Highway 466 near Bakersfield, California at 5.45pm on Friday September 30, 1955, in his Porsche Spyder, on route to a racing competition in Salinas at the age of 24 – ironically the day before Rebel Without a Cause opened in cinemas across the US.
His portrayal of the introverted loner Jim Stark in that film quickly created a new star.
Hall says: “He had this quality about him that women loved. Brando had invented that new kind of acting but where he was macho, Dean was always ultra sensitive.Hall says: “He had this quality about him that women loved. Brando had invented that new kind of acting but where he was macho, Dean was always ultra sensitive.
“But they both had this quality of bringing a lump to your throat – even if you didn’t quite know why.”
For all his admiration of his subject, Hall, refreshingly, is cleareyed about the mythology that has come to surround Dean. “If I ask myself what James Dean would be today, the answer, I would have to say, is a lonely shambling 74-year-old.
“I think he would have been a very sad figure, probably succumbing to drugs or maybe worse. I can only see that his life would have taken a turn for the worse. The fact that he died when he did is what made him the icon that he has become.”
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