Time Capsule: Death of James Dean

September 30, 1955: The late afternoon sun glistened off the sleek silver Porsche Spyder as it sped west along Highway 466 in California. Behind the wheel was rising Hollywood actor James Dean, who had just finished filming Giant with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor; in the passenger seat was his mechanic, Rolph Wutherich.

September 30, 1955: The late afternoon sun glistened off the sleek silver Porsche Spyder as it sped west along Highway 466 in California. Behind the wheel was rising Hollywood actor James Dean, who had just finished filming Giant with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor; in the passenger seat was his mechanic, Rolph Wutherich.

Both were road-racing enthusiasts, en route to compete at Salinas, then hot-rod central. Dean had originally planned to load the car on to a trailer, but at the last minute decided he needed more practice handling the vehicle. As he approached the fork to Route 41, a 1950 model Ford Tudor, driven by a college student, Donald Turnupseed, suddenly cut across his lane. “That guy’s gotta stop … he’ll see us,” Dean yelled anxiously to Wutherich.

Seconds later, the 24-year-old actor was slumped over the wheel unconscious, breathing unevenly with a broken neck and several broken bones. Wutherich, who had been thrown clear of the car, was lying bleeding on the side of the road with a broken jaw and minor internal injuries; Turnupseed escaped with a gashed forehead and bruised nose. The two cars had crashed almost head-on, leaving Dean’s car a twisted heap of metal, its engine smoking.

Medical staff declared the actor dead shortly after his arrival at hospital, at 5.59pm. That night, on the new medium of TV, news of the star’s death flashed across the globe. Contrary to those first reports Dean had not been speeding at the time of the accident, and although Turnupseed was clearly at fault, he was never charged over the accident.

For Dean, it was an abrupt end to a spectacular but brief career, one based on a trio of major roles in East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, the last of which was only released after his death. His smouldering, bad-boy roles – complete with blue jeans, torn T-shirt and cigarette – came to epitomise adolescent angst and the growing rebellion of ’50s teenagers against the values of their parents. Along with Marlon Brando (whom Dean idolised) and Elvis Presley, Dean helped to represent the new phenomenon of the teenager and a hip new creed: the young know better and should be free to break the rules.

While Presley and Brando devolved into obesity and shabby tabloid controversy, Dean cemented his status as a rebel by never having to grow old. No sooner had the actor been buried in his home town of Fairmount, Indiana, than the urban legends sprang up – that he had survived the car crash but lay hideously scarred in a Californian hospital; that the brakes of his Porsche Spyder had been tampered with.

In later years, a string of seamy revelations by former friends and associates added to Dean’s outsider mystique – that he had been a street hustler when he first arrived in Los Angeles, had had affairs with a number of starlets, as well as homosexual encounters with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter. His “true” sexuality remains unknown.

Behind the pop culture fame – the T-shirts, wall posters, the countless mentions in songs and films – Dean was a fine actor, and he remains the only person to have had two posthumous Oscar nominations. He studied under Lee Strasberg at the famous Actors Studio in New York – former alma mater of Marlon Brando – and his first big break was in a Pepsi Cola ad before scoring minor roles in a number of TV shows and feature films. At the time of his death he was one of Hollywood’s most in-demand actors.

Dean’s estate is estimated to gross more than $US5 million a year, principally from merchandising. Even the most luminous of legends eventually fades, however. The James Dean Gallery museum in Indiana closed last year because of too few visitors, and auctioned off many of its exhibits. Dean’s Giant blue jeans sold for $US30,000.

Greg Callaghan