The James Dean Story

Dying young is always a smart career move, and never more so than by James Dean after his astonishingly short career of just six months the lot. We can too easily imagine this petulant, self-absorbed problem-kid living on into the Sixties and boring the pants off us with protest and psycho-babble. But his glory days - so brief, so intense - came and went at just the right moment, when audiences were needing a rest from too much conventional virility in their screen heroes. The idea of an angry teenager hiding a sensitive, vulnerable side seemed to intrigue many. There is no doubt that it touched the maternal in female viewers. And after Dean's dramatic death, many young males liked to see themselves as enigmatic figures with tragedy hovering. (Scriptwriter Stewart Stern even picks up a hint of emotional blackmail: "It could happen to me too, Mom.")

Stern also points out that Dean's origins in the small-town Indiana of cornfields and prairie did not exactly chime with that tortured personality that seemed so metropolitan, like the Actor's Studio from which he promptly dropped out. The clunking interviews with locals who remember the boy next door (generally fondly) were plainly rehearsed, and the extensive use of still pictures instead of the expected movie-clips does nothing to raise the production values, whatever Stern may have meant by "dynamic exploration of the still photograph".

One of these stills shows a school report, where his temporary enthusiasm for art is acknowledged, alongside another reference to Safety Driving Training - ironical indeed, as is his brief involvement in a documentary movie about car safety. On that sensitive topic, I was surprised not to hear the widely-credited story of Alec Guinness warning him of a premonition that Dean would shortly die in an accident if he continued to drive that new Porsche. It happened in a week.

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.

"The James Dean Story" is introduced as "A different kind of motion picture," explaining, "The presence of the leading character in this film has been made possible by the use of existing motion picture material, tape recordings of his voice and by means of a new technique - dynamic exploration of the still photograph." The only "tape recordings of his voice" noteworthy is one short recording Mr. Dean make while visiting his family in Indiana; he wanted to record any family recollections of his great-grandfather Cal Dean, intrigued because he played a similarly named "Cal" in "East of Eden". Dean asks if Cal Dean was interested in art, and learns the relative was an auctioneer. James Dean was interested in art and had warm relationship with his family, obviously. That's the only 100% accurate revelation in this documentary. James Dean was interested in art and had warm relationship with his family.

An amazing "screen test"/"outtake" from "East of Eden" appears near the film's end. It's a black and white scene between Dean (as Cal Trask) and co-star Richard Davalos (as Aron Trask). Dean is at his mesmerizing best. If this scene appeared only here, and no "East of Eden" film was completed, this documentary would be an essential, high rated film. But the scene, a perfect "10" in isolation, should be considered an "East of Eden" extra. Dean's "Traffic Safety Film" is also worth seeing.

There are the expected interviews with family and friends. My favorites were the guy (Lew Bracker) going through a box of stuff Dean left with him, and Dean's family. There wasn't enough from Aunt Ortense and the letter from Dean to his little cousin was very nice. More reading of Dean's letters would have been welcome. Dean's unidentified writer friend seemed to have a better thesis for the film; filmmakers might have considered developing it as a main focus.

Robert Altman's direction of Martin Gabel's reading of Stewart Stern's script is dreadful. What were they thinking? Perhaps, filmmakers can be forgiven due to the closeness of Dean's passing. Don't expect "The James Dean Story" at all. This movie is more about Dean's effect on people (both the fans and filmmakers) than the man. It is very clearly an early piece of the James Dean myth-making "legend". Tommy Sands sings "Let Me Be Loved". The narrative refers to Dean as "He" with a god-like air. The shots of Dean's family seeming to "know" the moment he dies are truly wretched.

** The James Dean Story (8/13/57) Robert Altman ~ James Dean, Martin Gabel, Richard Davalos

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.