So much has been written about James Dean, and his influence looms so large over movies and over popular cultural in general, that it’s always jarring to be reminded that at the time of his death, at the preposterously young age of 24, he had starred in only three films — one of which hadn’t even been released when he died in a car crash on September 30, 1955.
James Dean, New York City, 1955.
And yet, as iconic an actor and star as Dean has become, much of the public’s view of the brooding young man from Indiana was, in fact, formed not by his utterly singular onscreen presence in Giant, East of Eden or even Rebel Without a Cause, but by a series of remarkable pictures made in early ’55 by the great photographer Dennis Stock.
James Dean in his apartment on West 68th Street, New York City, 1955.
In his wonderful 2005 book James Dean: Fifty Years Ago, Stock writes of trying to get the rapidly rising actor, whom he barely knew, to agree to let the photographer chronicle Dean’s return to both New York and Indiana from his new home in Los Angeles.
James Dean in his apartment on West 68th Street, New York City, 1955.
“The story, as I explained it [to Jimmy],” Stock wrote, “was to reveal the environments that affected and shaped the unique character of James Byron Dean. We felt a trip to his hometown, Fairmount, Indiana, and to New York, the place of his professional beginnings, would best reveal those influences…. I would solicit an assignment guarantee to cover expenses. The obvious magazine to approach was LIFE…. It took only a week for LIFE to approve the assignment.”
James Dean, New York City, 1955.
The photographs that Stock produced during his time with Dean captured an introspective, intensely self-analyzing (and occasionally self-absorbed) artist — albeit one who could, at times, also be self-deprecating almost to the point of parody.
James Dean attending dance classes given by Katherine Dunham, New York City, 1955.
LIFE, meanwhile, ran a number of the pictures in its March 7, 1955, issue, under the headline, “Moody New Star.” East of Eden was about to open. Rebel had already made Dean a household name. Less than six months later, the phenomenally talented, category-defying actor would be dead — and would pass into legend.
James Dean with the great Geraldine Page in her dressing room, New York City, 1955.
Here, LIFE.com remembers the too-short life and brilliant, violently truncated career of a true Hollywood original, as seen through the lens of a brilliant photographer, and asks: What would it have felt like?
James Dean with a friend at Jerry’s Bar, in front of the Ziegfeld Theater on 54th Street, New York City, 1955.
What would it have felt like to receive one’s weekly issue of LIFE magazine in the mail in, say, a small town in New Mexico, or New Hampshire — or in Boston or Chicago or Miami, for that matter — what would it have felt like to open it up, and encounter in its pages that startling shot of a haunted-looking Dean, cigarette in his mouth, stalking through Times Square in the rain? There’s a kind of desolate romance in that picture — a bracing, bleak solitude that evokes the story of every young, driven, sensitive, creative person who has ever moved to a city to pursue a dream.
James Dean poses in a casket in a funeral parlor in Fairmount, Indiana, in 1955, seven months before he died.
What did it feel like to see that picture, for the very first time, long before the man in the raincoat with the inscrutable, lopsided grin had become something far larger than a mere movie star?
James Dean in the Fairmount, Indiana, cemetery in 1955, where he found the grave of one of his ancestors with the same same name of the character, Cal, he played in East of Eden.
It’s difficult — in fact, it’s close to impossible — to address any photographs of note that have been around for decades and see them, really see them, as if looking at them for the first time. But if we’re able to suspend for even a brief moment all we’ve come to know of James Dean, or all we think we know of James Dean, then these pictures offer more than just a diversion, or a reminder of what was lost when Dean was killed in that car wreck six decades ago. They offer us a chance to experience the jolt that must have raced through countless readers in the late winter of 1955, as they gazed at Stock’s portraits of this strange, beautiful, thrilling young star, all the while knowing, knowing, that he would be with them, starring in movies, for years and years to come.
James Dean, with his cousin Markie (on the right), who lived on a nearby farm in Fairmount, Indiana 1955.
Tommy Z.™
Geek For Life™ 