James Dean Rebel Life

This authoritative biography of film icon James Dean offers a clear-eyed look at the actor who crossed America's cinematic landscape with the brilliance and brevity of a meteor.

James Dean died in 1955. The star of three movies, he was aged just 24. Six decades later, the charismatic screen idol has lost none of his power to captivate. Revered by fresh generations of fans born years after his untimely death, the glamor of his limited but incandescent legacy of cinematic classics - East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant - will never fade. Drawn from extensive research and original interviews, James Dean: Rebel Life strips back the hype to reveal the man behind the myth. Filled with the testimonies of the actors, directors and ex-lovers who knew Dean best, and lavishly illustrated with candid photos (from boyhood up to Dean's untimely death) and sumptuous film stills, the book provides a uniquely personal insight into the life and times of Hollywood's tragic leading man - essential reading for fans of every generation.

LIFE Magazine memorializes James Dean.

In the decades following his death, many of those who knew James Dean best––actors, directors, friends, lovers (both men and women), photographers, and Hollywood columnists––shared stories of their first-person experiences with him in interviews and in the articles and autobiographies they wrote. Their recollections of Dean became lost in fragile back issues of movie magazines and newspapers and in out-of-print books that are extremely hard to find. Until now. The Real James Dean is the first book of its kind: a rich collection spanning six decades of writing in which many of the people whose lives were touched by Dean recall their indelible experiences with him in their own words. Here are the memorable personal accounts of Dean from his high school and college drama teachers; the girl he almost married; costars like Rock Hudson, Natalie Wood, Jim Backus, and Raymond Massey; directors Elia Kazan, Nicholas Ray, and George Stevens; entertainer Eartha Kitt; gossip queen Hedda Hopper; the passenger who accompanied Dean on his final, fatal road trip; and a host of his other friends and colleagues.

Drawing from new and documented sources, a revisionist portrait of the actor's homosexuality and personal identity conflict argues that Dean's angst-ridden public compliance with rigid sexual mores helped fuel the electricity of his performances.

James DeanJames Dean is known as the first rebel. He was a '50s-styled, leather-clad biker rebuking authority. With his black turtleneck and a penchant for bongo drums and poetry, he could also easily be a kind of forerunner to the beatniks. And with his unkempt, wild hair and far-reaching philosophies, he is often cited as a kind of early hippie as well. But whatever category you put him in, James Dean was the embodiment of cool. He had a cool look, cool clothes, cool attitude, and a cool backstory that most know nothing about. James Dean began life in Indiana as the descendant of a long line of farmers. After the tragic passing of his mother at a young age and the virtual abandonment of his father, he was left to be raised by his sister and her husband on a farm in Fairmount, Indiana. Inside you will read about...- Losing His Family - A Troubled Childhood - Dean's First Big Breaks - Friends and Lovers - Dean's Acting and Car Racing Career - The Final Ride And much more! So just how did this Indiana farm boy become a Hollywood legend and kickstart a counterculture rebellion that would last throughout the '50s, '60s, and beyond? Who was James Dean? Come along as we find out more about the man, the legend, and the eternal rebel without a cause: James Dean.

After the death of James Dean in 1955, the figure of the teen rebel permeated the globe, and its presence is still felt in the twenty-first century. Rebel iconography—which does not have to resemble James Dean himself, but merely incorporates his disaffected attitude—has become an advertising mainstay used to sell an array of merchandise and messages. Despite being overused in advertisements, it still has the power to surprise when used by authors and filmmakers in innovative and provocative ways. The rebel figure has mass appeal precisely because of its ambiguities; it can mean anything to anyone. The global appropriation of rebel iconography has invested it with fresh meanings. Author Claudia Springer succeeds here in analyzing both ends of the spectrum—the rebel icon as a tool in upholding capitalism's cycle of consumption, and as a challenge to that cycle and its accompanying beliefs. In this groundbreaking study of rebel iconography in international popular culture, Springer studies a variety of texts from the United States and abroad that use this imagery in contrasting and thought-provoking ways. Using a cultural studies approach, she analyzes films, fiction, poems, Web sites, and advertisements to determine the extent to which the icon's adaptations have been effective as a response to the actual social problems affecting contemporary adolescents around the world.