the James Deanist

James Dean photographed by Richard C. Miller, Texas, 1955

James Dean

I woke up this morning, you know… and the sun was shining, and it was nice, and all that type of stuff. And the first thing, I saw you, and, uh, I said, “Boy, this is gonna be one terrific day, so you better live it up, because tomorrow you’ll be nothing.” You see? And I almost was.

“He didn’t show you very much. He’d challenge you to find him. Then when you’d found him, he’d still make you guess. It was an endless game with him. The thing people missed about Jimmy was his mischievousness. He was the most constantly mischievous person I think I’ve ever met. Full of tricks, full of magic, full of outrageousness.” - Stewart Stern on James Dean

Giant (1956)

Jimmy was a chameleon, protean by nature and by profession, with the power to assume different characters, become different creatures, in order to avoid capture. Only if caught and held would the Greek god Proteus confide the truth. Few ever caught and none ever held Jimmy.- Bill Bast

James Dean photographed by Roy Schatt in New York City, 1954.

James Dean at the Sweetheart Ball held at Fairmount High School in his hometown of Fairmount, Indiana, February 12th, 1955. Dean was in Fairmount with photographer Dennis Stock shooting a photo essay for LIFE magazine while he stayed with the aunt and uncle who raised him on their family farm following his mother’s passing when he was a child. Jimmy signed autographs for the students at the dance and also played the bongos on stage with the Bob Winslow Orchestra. This was his final trip home and the last Valentine’s Day he celebrated before his untimely passing in a car accident seven months later at the age of 24.

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet. In the short span of his lifetime, an actor must learn all there is to know, experience all there is to experience, or approach that state as closely as possible. He must be superhuman in his efforts to store away in the core of his subconscious everything that he might be called upon to use in the expression of his art.

“Without James Dean, the Beatles would have never existed.” John Lennon