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filming the movie that would make him a legendary star, "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955). The story dealt with a troubled 17-year-old youth named Jim Stark who felt his parents did not understand him, who formed a bonding with two equally troubled teenagers played by Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.

Many real-life teenagers of the time felt a personal sense of identity with the film and the movie became an instant box-office hit, catapulting James Dean to stardom. He became the standard of the typical juvenile delinquent of the 50s. He was the most unusual-looking, unsual-acting (as judged by the mores of 1955) young man people ever saw up to that time. It was eclipsed one year later by another young man named Elvis Presley. It caused a James Dean fad to break out throughout the country, which in time spread throughout the world. Young teenaged boys and girls around the world began to dress like Dean and to emulate his mannerisms; jackets deliberately opened to display a T-shirt, slicked-back hair, boots, and an arrogant swagger-just as they saw displayed by Dean in 'Rebel'.

His next major film-which proved to be his last-was even bigger, namely "Giant" (1956), in which he played in a rags-to-riches tale about a young man named Jett Rink who struck it rich in the oil business who self-destructed in his later life. That movie too, won an Academy Award nomination-poshumously.

Dean-being a youth-was a young man, who like the characters he portrayed on film, liked living his life 'on the edge'. He particularly liked fast cars. In fact, he loved to go to car races, even having his own racing sports car, a Porsche. (ironically, while completing the movie Giant and promoting his previous film "Rebel Without a Cause", when being interviewed by Actor Gig Young about safe driving, Dean exclaimed "The life you save might be mine!" When showing his Porsche to British Actor Alec Guiness on September 23,1955, Guiness reportedly exclaimed " if you get in that car,you'll be dead in one week.!" Tragically, Guiness' words proved to be uncannily prophetic.

On September 30,1955, Dean and a friend was travelling in that same porsche. He had been given a ticket for speeding nearly three hours earlier; he was driving at 65 mph in a 55-mile zone. But he did not heed the summons. Later that evening, he was speeding on Route 466 (later Route 46), when he smashed head-on with another driver, taking a fork in the road onto Route 41 in the opposite direction and crossed into Dean's lane without seeing him.

"That guy's gotta stop...he'll see us" Dean said to his passenger. Those proved to be his last words. Unfortunately-for Dean and his passenger-the 'guy did'nt stop'. Dean's car smashed almost immediately into the other car. Dean's passenger, Rolf Wutherich, was critically injured as was the driver of the other vehicle, Donald Turnupseed, but Dean was not so fortunate. At 5:59 PM, 24-year-old James Dean died of his wounds. His sudden death caused a shock as well as dismay from his many fans throughout the world.

James Dean died young, but even with his short and untimely movie career, he as indeed made a major impact in motion pictures-a legacy that has continued until today.

Learn more about this author, James Harvey.
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