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[h3]James Byron Dean was born to Winton and Mildred Wilson Dean. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, James and his family moved to Santa Monica, California.[/h3]

The family spent some years there, and by all accounts Dean was very close to his mother. He attended Brentwood Public School until his mother died of cancer in 1940. It’s been said that Dean's moodiness and antisocial behaviour is attributed to her loss.

Unable to care for his nine-year-old son, Dean’s father sent him to live with his sister Ortense and her husband on a farm in Indiana, where he went back to high school and was brought up with a Quaker background.

In high school, Dean's overall performance was mediocre. After graduating from Fairmount High School he moved back to California to live with his father and stepmother. He first enrolled in Santa Monica College (SMCC) to study pre-law but he decided to transfer to UCLA to study drama instead, which resulted in estrangement from his father.

While at UCLA, he beat out 350 actors to land the role of Malcolm in Macbeth and by January 1951, he’d dropped out of college to pursue a career as an actor.

Dean began his professional acting career with a television ad for Pepsi Cola, followed by a stint as a stunt tester on the ‘Beat the Clock’ game show. He struggled to get jobs in Hollywood and paid his bills by working as a parking lot attendant at CBS Studios.

The first film in which Dean had a speaking role was Sailor Beware, also starring [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/9:0/Dean_Martin.htm]Dean Martin[/urlnew] and Jerry Lewis, where he played a boxing trainer. Dean then followed actor James Whitmore's advice and moved to New York to pursue live stage acting. He was accepted to study under Lee Strasberg in the Actors’ Studio.

Dean’s career picked up as he appeared in several TV shows. Positive reviews for his role in André Gide's The Immoralist led to calls from Hollywood and paved the way to his film success. In 1954, he took the play to Broadway.

On 8th March, 1954, Dean left New York City and headed for Los Angeles to begin shooting East of Eden. Much of Dean's performance in the film is completely unscripted, and he received a posthumous Best Actor in a Leading Role Academy Award nomination for this role, the first posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards’ history.

Dean quickly followed up his role in Eden with a starring role in Rebel Without a Cause, a film which would prove hugely popular among teenagers and come to epitomise Dean’s career. Director Nicholas Ray often encouraged Dean’s creative input. However, it was said that Dean’s verbal battles with his directors increased in each film as he increased in confidence.
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Giant, which was posthumously released in 1956, saw Dean play a supporting role to [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/241:0/Elizabeth_Taylor.htm]Elizabeth Taylor[/urlnew] and [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/837:0/Rock_Hudson.htm]Rock Hudson[/urlnew]. In the film, he plays Jett, a surly, racist Southerner with a high prejudice towards Mexicans. His role was notable in that, in order to portray an older version of his character in one scene, Dean dyed his hair grey and shaved some of it off to give himself a receding hairline. Giant would be Dean’s last film.

When Dean got the part in East of Eden, he bought himself a red race-prepared MG TD and shortly afterwards, a white Ford station wagon. He later upgraded his MG to a Porsche 356 Speedster which he raced. Dean came second in the Palm Springs Road Races of March 1955 after a driver was disqualified; he came in third in May 1955 at Bakersfield and was running fourth at the Santa Monica Road Races later that month, until he retired with engine failure.

During filming of Rebel Without a Cause, Dean traded the Porsche 356 for one of only 90 Porsche 550 Spyders. He was contractually barred from racing during the filming of Giant, but with that out of the way, he was free to compete again.

Dean's 550 was customised by the young George Barris, (who would go on to the design of the Batmobile). Dean's Porsche was numbered 130 at the front, side and back. Apparently when Dean introduced himself to [url=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/844:0/Alec_Guinness.htm]Alec Guinness[/url] outside of a restaurant on 23rd September 1955, he asked him to take a look at the Spyder.
Guinness thought the car appeared "sinister" and told Dean "If you get in that car you will be found dead in it by this time next week.”

On 30th September, Dean and his mechanic Rolf Wütherich set off from Competition Motors, where they had prepared the Porsche Spyder for a sports car race at Salinas, California. Dean originally intended to trailer the Porsche to the meeting point at Salinas, behind his new Ford Country Squire station wagon. At the last minute, Dean instead drove the Spyder, having decided he needed more time to familiarise himself with the car.

He was driving west on U.S. Highway 466 in California when a 1950 Ford Tudor, driven from the opposite direction by 23-year-old student Donald Turnupseed, attempted to take a fork in the road and crossed into Dean's lane without seeing him. The two cars hit almost head on.

Wütherich had been thrown from the car, but survived with a broken jaw and other injuries. Dean was taken to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 5:59PM. His last known words, uttered right before impact, are said to have been "That guy's gotta stop... He'll see us."
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Contrary to reports of Dean's speeding, which persisted decades after his death, a policeman at the scene of the accident said "the wreckage and the position of Dean's body indicated his speed was more like 55 mph (88 km/h)." Turnupseed received a gashed forehead and bruised nose and was not cited by police for the accident.

Dean is often considered to be an icon because of his "experimental" take on life, which included his ambivalent sexuality. There have been several accounts of Dean's sexual relationships with both men and women, although Dean's true sexual preference remains unknown.

He had one of the most spectacularly brief careers of any screen star. In little over a year and in only three films, Dean became a widely admired screen personality and a personification of the restless American youth of the mid-50's.

[i]Sarah Barnard[/i]
James Dean biography



- Most of Dean’s so-called affairs with various starlets were made up by the Warner Brothers PR. He did have love affairs with Pier Angeli and Liz Sheridan.

- Dean was issued a speeding ticket only two hours and fifteen minutes before his fatal accident.

- Dean is the only actor in history to receive more than one Oscar nomination posthumously.

- Contrary to popular belief, Dean's middle name was not taken from Lord Byron, but from a relative, "Byron" Dean.

- Dean’s final screen test for East of Eden was shot with Paul Newman, who also was in the final running for one of the roles.

- At the time of his death, Dean was signed to appear in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) at M.G.M. and The Left Handed Gun (1958) at Warner Bros. Both parts subsequently were taken by Paul Newman and helped make him a star.

- Just before his death, Dean’s agent, Jane Deacy, negotiated a 9-picture deal over 6 years with Warner Bros. worth $900,000.

- Dean was given a Siamese cat as gift by Elizabeth Taylor.
James Dean biography



Giant (1956)

Crossroads (1955) (TV)

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (1955) (TV)

Lux Video Theatre (1952-1955) (TV)

East of Eden (1955)

The United States Steel Hour (1955) (TV)

General Electric Theater (1954) (TV)

Danger (1953-1954) (TV)

The Philco Television Playhouse (1954) (TV)

Robert Montgomery Presents (1953) (TV)

Harvest (1953) (TV)

Armstrong Circle Theatre (1953) (TV)

Kraft Television Theatre (1952-1953) (TV)

Campbell Playhouse (1953) (TV)

Omnibus (1953) (TV)

The Big Story (1953) (TV)

Studio One (1952-1953) (TV)

Tales of Tomorrow (1953) (TV)

Treasury Men in Action (1953)

Trouble Along the Way (1953) (uncredited)

You Are There (1953) (TV)

The Kate Smith Hour (1953) (TV)

Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952) (uncredited)

Hallmark Hall of Fame (1952) (TV)

The Web (1952) (TV)

Sailor Beware (1952) (uncredited)

CBS Television Workshop (1952) (TV)

The Stu Erwin Show (1951) (TV)

Fixed Bayonets! (1951) (uncredited)

The Bigelow Theatre (1951) (TV)

Family Theatre (1951)
James Dean biography