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(February 8, 1931 – September 30,
1955)
 James
Byron Dean was an American film actor. Dean's status as a cultural
icon is best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film,
Rebel Without a Cause, in which he starred as troubled high school
rebel Jim Stark. The other two roles that defined his star power
were as the awkward loner Cal Trask in East of Eden, and as the
surly, racist farmer Jett Rink in Giant. His enduring fame and
popularity rests on only three films, his entire starring output. As
with Buddy Holly, Bruce Lee, and Marilyn Monroe his death at a young
age helped guarantee a legendary status. He was the first actor to
receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and
remains the only person to have two such nominations posthumously.
Dean initially had little success in Hollywood. He began his
professional acting career with a Pepsi Cola television commercial.
He quit college to focus on his budding career, and was cast as John
the Beloved Disciple in "Hill Number One", an Easter television
special, and three walk- on roles in movies, Fixed Bayonets, Sailor
Beware, and Has Anybody Seen My Gal. The only movie in which he was
given a line to speak was Sailor Beware, a Paramount comedy starring
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis; Dean played a boxing trainer. While
struggling to get jobs in Hollywood, Dean helped to pay his bills by
also working as a parking lot attendant at CBS Studios, during which
time he met Rogers Brackett, a radio director for an advertising
agency, who offered Dean professional help and guidance in his
chosen career, as well as a place to stay.
In October of 1951, following actor James Whitmore's and his mentor
Rogers Brackett's advice, Dean moved to New York City to better
pursue his career by acting in theater and television. In New York
he worked as a stunt tester for the Beat the Clock game show. He
also appeared in episodes of several CBS television series, The Web,
Studio One, and Lux Video Theater, before gaining admission to the
legendary Actor's Studio to study Method acting under Lee Strasberg.
Proud of this accomplishment, Dean referred to the Studio in a 1952
letter to his family as "The greatest school of the theater. It
houses great people like Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Arthur
Kennedy, Mildred Dunnock. ... Very few get into it ... It is the
best thing that can happen to an actor. I am one of the youngest to
belong." His career picked up and he performed in further episodes
of such early 1950s television shows as Kraft Television Theater,
Robert Montgomery Presents, Danger and General Electric Theater. One
early role, for the CBS series, Omnibus, (Glory in the Flower) saw
Dean portraying the same type of disaffected youth he would later
immortalize in Rebel Without a Cause (this summer, 1953 program was
also notable for featuring the song "Crazy Man, Crazy", one of the
first dramatic TV programs to feature rock and roll music). Positive
reviews for his 1954 theatrical role as "Bachir", a pandering North
African houseboy, in an adaptation of André Gide's book The
Immoralist, led to calls from Hollywood and paved the way to film
success. |
