The James Dean Story

If you know anything about James Dean, then this movie will probably not add much to your knowledge. What we see of Dean is mainly through still photographs. Most of these are just portraits that add little to the film, but there is an occasional one that surprises, like a nice one of Dean enjoying himself in a ballet class. The scene of real interest, which is saved for the end, is from a black-and-white audition Dean did for "East of Eden."

The tone of the narration would be appropriate for the biopic of a saint--you are made to think that Dean's early death was some sort of national calamity.

There are several interviews with some of Dean's relatives, friends, and even some restaurant owners and taxi drivers. The depth of the questioning is often inane, such as when the interviewer asks the restaurant owners, "How was his appetite?" We watch as a previous friend rummages through a box of Dean's miscellaneous stuff like phone numbers and a note from his laundry. It seems that everything that Dean touched was sacred. We don't even get any insights from Dean's girlfriend, the one with whom, "for the first time he found the timid belief that life was possible."

The most frustrating thing about this film is the narration's constant speculations about Dean's motivations and thoughts. For example, consider this, "He took his envy to the beach. He looked at the ocean and he was jealous of its power. He envied the gulls for having found each other. He envied them their freedom and their solitary flights. Suddenly he knew that as an actor he could be the ocean and flood everything with his power. As an actor he could be a gull." A good part of the movie is filled with such florid prose that has no basis in fact. Amid all of the speculations there is none about the common one of Dean's being homosexual, or bisexual. He supposedly avoided the draft by registering as a homosexual.

The main question I have always had about Dean is the extent to which he manufactured his own myth of being the sensitive, misunderstood, moody, independent intellectual. This film got me no closer to answering that.

I watched the movie because Robert Altman directed it, but I'd assumed it was going to be a straight forward documentary of Dean's life. Then about half way through it something didn't feel right. The people being interviewed spoke like they were on automatic pilot and the childhood photographs chosen for the movie had the quality of a spoof. I watched it a second time and realized it was Altman's documentary of the American Celebrity Cult, not James Dean. Our devotion to movie actors was reaching a new zenith in the 1950's and the life and death of Dean was a timely example of it. It's a movie about us in the same way Nashville is, or A Wedding, or Short Cuts.

This 1957 documentary was thrown together to capitalize on the Dean legend and hopefully cash in on it. Out of luck - even Dean's ardent fans avoided this turkey. Using still photography and a morose narrator, Martin Gabel, this contains little useful information not already known about Dean. Interviews with family and neighbors back home shed little light - they are so terminally dull and brimming with flat affect, one is astonished that Dean's fluidity of expression and sensitivity grew out of this environment. Of some value is an outtake from EAST OF EDEN (presented here in dimly lit black and white) between Dean and Davalos. It's a gruelling 82 minutes.

Released two years after Dean's death at the untimely age of twenty-four, THE JAMES DEAN STORY is a valuable document as it includes interviews with many of the family and close friends who knew him - his grandmother, his aunt and uncle, his acquaintances in New York and Hollywood, and other workers who befriended him. Sometimes their testimonies seem somewhat stilted on screen, as if co-directors Robert Altman and George W. George had rehearsed their dialogue beforehand and were prompting them into making reactions. On the other hand their love for Dean seems palpable, despite his reputation for being difficult.

Narrated by theater actor and sometime director Martin Gabel, the film paints a portrait of a troubled personality whose father and mother died young and who was brought up in rural Indiana by his aunt and uncle. Although extremely helpful with the chores, young Dean always appeared lonely, as if in search for something he could never access. Apparently he used to spend a lot of time under a favorite tree, that not only served as a place of sanctuary but gave him the time and space to reflect.

He cut his theatrical teeth at school, and then decided to make the big move from Indiana to New York. After a short time in the wilderness, he landed a role in the short-lived production SEE THE JAGUAR (1952), but shot to stardom two years later in THE IMMORALIST, adapted by Ruth and Augustus Goetz from the novel by André Gide. His raw energy, stimulated by loneliness, produced an electrifying performance that outshone those of his costars Geraldine Page and Louis Jourdain.

Yet this was not enough for him - after a dispute with the producer, Dean walked out on THE IMMORALIST to seek his fortune in Hollywood. After spending many nights sequestered in local hostelries, hobnobbing with stars and hangers-on, he landed a leading role in EAST OF EDEN (1955), directed by Elia Kazan. The rest, as they say, is history.

Gabel's narration sounds a little portentous at times, but nonetheless we are given a portrait of a complex personality at once alienated from yet keenly desirous of praise from the world. His career really took off with the help of father-figure directors such as Kazan and Nicholas Ray, who understood his potential and made every effort to develop it. Dean was a mercurial actor - even more so than his illustrious contemporary Marlon Brando - who never gave the same performance twice, either on stage or screen. If a director could develop that raw energy, then they could be assured of a memorable performance from him.

True to the spirit of the late Fifties, we are not told about the actor's alleged bisexuality. Our attention focuses rather on the way in which the actor did not perform on screen at all, but simply drew upon his perpetual feelings of alienation and loneliness to produce a series of electrifying screen characterizations. Truly he was an icon of the times, whose early demise only served to enhance his legendary status.

That first part tracking Dean's growing-up years in small town Indiana is almost poetically rendered. Dean appears an average kid participating in normal school activities, with little hint of the near-tortured soul of later life. The docu itself amounts to a succession of photographs centering on Dean, and are woven together by a very listenable narrator (Gabel), along with a few scattered interviews of family and friends. Generally those contents follow Dean's life in rough chronological order from Indiana to New York to Hollywood and finally to a lonely California road. All in all, the main point appears an effort at penetrating the nature of Dean's tortured soul, its where's and why's. How successfuly the effort does is up to the viewer to decide.

Several points about the account are worth noting. First, there's very little about the actor's career in movie's or TV. So don't expect to see out-takes from either. The narrative's concern is much more with Dean the person than with Dean the celebrity. So don't expect to see much of star-studded Hollywood. Secondly, there's little on the young man's romantic life, except for an anguished clip from an emotional Arlene Sax. Just what the extent of their involvement is left unrevealed, while there's no clippage from actress Pier Angeli with whom he's usually identified. Lastly, there's next to nothing on how Dean supported himself during those struggling apprentice years, a seemingly important element in his life story that also remains largely untouched.

Perhaps these neglected points have something to do with the year the docu was produced, namely 1957. At that point, Hollywood was still trying to cleanse its public image from the taint of nefarious doings claimed by the McCarthy, HUAC hearings of the early 50's. At the same time, about the only thing worse than being gay was being a communist. Thus rumors of Dean's being at least bi-sexual if not simply gay would have sullied his growing iconic image during that highly conservative period. Now, I'm not claiming this as factual reason for the general omissions, but it is a possibility given the nature of the era.

However you take that, there's plenty in the footage to interest Dean fans both old (like me) and new. Then too, a thanks to whoever rescued the docu from what's an apprently self-imposed exile, and also to Amazon for making the footage public. So, if you can, catch up with a cultural icon that somehow managed to escape that lonely California road.