Today in 1955, James Dean Died At the Age of 24

He had made 7 movies, but only 3 where he was “credited”.

East of Eden (which basically changed my life when I first saw it) was the only one of his 3 major films (East of Eden, Rebel without a Cause and Giant) to be released while he was alive. Strange. No wonder a cult flourishes. Obviously, the man (I should probably say “boy”) was very gifted as an actor – but then there was the dying a young and violent death, and to add to that – movies starring him continued to come out a couple of years after he died. It must have been especially impact-ful (in terms of a burgeoning cult) to see something like Rebel Without a Cause, knowing that he had died so young.

When I was a teenager, I saw all those movies. I saw them on late-night television, usually when I was babysitting, and then I would beg, and plead my parents to rent a VCR (member those days??) so I could see them again.

His performance in East of Eden tormented me. It was typical young-school-girl crush stuff, but there was something else. It got me asking questions about acting, about actors …And even though I was 13, 14 years old – I was the same person then as I am now, so I read the great biography of James Dean, called Mutant King – and read all of the biographies of anyone who had come into contact with him. Natalie Wood, Carroll Baker, Elia Kazan …

James Dean’s twisted-up overly-open nearly-inarticulate brand of acting captured my imagination.

If I had had a blog when I was 14, it would have been all-James-Dean all-the-time.

Now I’m not so sure about him. I used to consider him a “great actor” – but I think there’s a huge difference between a “great actor” (say, a Jeff Bridges, or a Marlon Brando, etc. etc.) and a “movie star”. Not that he was “just” a movie star. Something else was going on with James Dean.

What I mean by all this is: James Dean was young, neurotic, extremely self-conscious, very shy, bisexual, filled with guilt, a loner, an outsider, may possibly have been a virgin when he died, he was reckless, had kind of a death wish … Elia Kazan, who directed him in East of Eden called him, years later, a “sick kid”. This is not to say that there wasn’t magic there, because there OBVIOUSLY was. I can only think of one other person the camera loves as much as James Dean, and that’s Marilyn Monroe. It may not be the magic of honing your craft, of being a Meryl Streep type virtuoso – but it is that very special brand of movie magic.

James Dean is riveting. To this day. No wonder his movies last. You can’t not watch him. He is so compelling. You want to untwist that pretzel body, and help him relax. (Well, that’s a very female response … most women want to help him relax. He seems so self-conscious.)

His face is unendingly interesting. Yes, it’s very handsome too … but we’re talking about what the CAMERA picks up. Plenty of people are handsome, but they wouldn’t be magnetic on screen. It’s magic, hard to describe. I think it might have to do with vulnerability, a willingness to let the camera read your soul. All the great movie stars have that.

I am not sure now of how aware James Dean was of what, exactly, he was doing. A lot of it was sheer instinct, bravado, and fearlessness. There’s a genius there. But I’m not sure anymore that it is a genius for acting. The way Marlon Brando had a genius for acting. The way Bogart had a genius for it. Those guys were ACTORS. In the tradition of Olivier, Spencer Tracy all the greats.

I see James Dean now more in the realm of … a “behaver”. I just made that up.

What he did was, and why he is so INTERESTING (and why other actors, incidentally, were often completely frustrated when working wiht him) … he was able to behave and let us know that something deep and psychological was going on with him – all without saying a word. He mumbles his lines, he’s embarrassed, he scuffs his feet, his hands are jammed in his pockets … We can’t look away. We know that SOMETHING is going on with this poor boy. We can’t wait to find out what it is.

Other actors often felt: Jesus, this guy is in his own world … He’s not really here in the scene with me … he’s off thinking about his own demons.

I am not saying this is good or bad. It is just an observation.

But being aware of one’s own demons, and being able to show the audience the struggle is different from …. say, a Brando in Streetcar.

Brando, with all of his pooh-poohing the craft of acting, was, in fact, a genius craftsman. He was not just twitching around, showing us his inner torment. Each scene is perfectly modulated, he is in total control of what he is doing, he is able to burst out with a catharsis when Tennessee Williams has written one, he shows us the tenderness, the sexiness, the loutishness, the insanity … and Brando would never say that he was consciously doing anything (hence: genius) – but to me, Brando at his best was like a great musician.

The craft, the long years of training, have become so internalized – that you see no work at all. All you see is life, on screen.

To my eye, as a huge James Dean fan, that was not what James Dean was about.

He was more un-evolved, more at the amoeba stage of human development.

Elia Kazan (and others) confirm this. James Dean was lucky enough to find acting, and lucky enough to find the roles – the twitchy rebellious youths – that could just LET him stand up there on screen, and not DO all that much, but show us how hard it was to be James Dean. (The last scene in Giant is a notable exception, when he reappears as a broken old man. He’s 24 years old filming that scene. It’s astonishing. To my mind, his work in that scene gives a glimmer of the truly great actor James Dean could have become.)

But now, since the untimeliness of his death, he remains before us as he was then. Young, boyish, almost pre-sexual, twisted-up, neurotic, sometimes cocky, sometimes shy, always with an inner core of kindness. Think of his kindness towards the Sal Mineo character in Rebel. Or his kindness towards Julie Harris in East of Eden.

And when he let out the torment, the inner anguish that was ALWAYS there underneath, it is so powerful, so raw, that you almost want to look away. It’s horrible what is inside this kid. And when it comes out – it’s embarrassing. You’re embarrassed for him. And yet you weep for him, too. The father in East of Eden, when he refuses the money Cal made for him, and James Dean collapses, slowly sliding down his father’s body – letting the bills slip from his hands – anyone remember that scene?? Jesus. The feelings of betrayal, of abandonment, of grief. That underbelly is ALWAYS there, which is why his acting is so interesting to watch. I can’t think of him screaming “YOU’RE TEARING ME APART” without feeling tears come up in my eyes – It is so RAW. And he theatrically and courageously draws out the last word, so it sounds like, “APPAAAAAAART” – Only a truly brave person would do that. The guy had no fear. He had plenty of neuroses, but when it came to stuff like that, and it was truthful, he had no fear.

But my lasting image of James Dean, how I always think of him, is in some of the scenes with his whore-mother in East of Eden … and how you can barely understand what he is saying, and his lean little body is all twisted up, and he’s looking down, he’s looking up, he can barely sit still … in direct contrast to her frightening stillness behind the desk. It’s not about the WORDS James Dean says – it never is. It’s about the BEHAVIOR.

In his shy scuffing-feet awkwardness – we can tell that he is afraid to speak, afraid to articulate, perhaps because of what he might reveal about himself. And yet – and here’s his fascination – even though he spends most of his time trying not to reveal himself, using body-language as a smoke-screen, an obscurer – all we can see, as an audience, is a man before us, completely revealed.

He tried to hide. But he could not hide it from the camera.

And so he gave us that gift. A complex tormented gift, to be sure, but a great gift.