Jimmy Dean

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Jimmy Dean

Happy Birthday! And another repeat performance. Yet another loss. How we might have enj0yed him through the years. Not to be.

“The acting of James Dean is more animal than human. For this reason, it is unpredictable: what will happen next?” Francois Truffaut, Cahier du Cinema

“Jimmy may have had crabs, but he also had durable charisma.” Kenneth Anger, Hollywood Babylon II

Born on this day: cinema’s bongo drum-playing quintessential doomed 1950s bad boy, James Byron Dean (8 February 1931 – 30 September 1955) – one of the most lusciously photogenic actors of all time. Pictured: portrait of Dean by Roy Schatt, 1954.

Posted by Lobotomy Room.

Someone once said that Dean was not at all the same person off camera. You would not know what you had until the camera made love to him. And indeed it did. It made him larger than life. Someone else once said upon meeting him you knew he was doomed. He was just plain too much and too small for this world. It was impossible to sustain.

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And Then There Was Jimmy Dean

From a posting by Follies of God.

As Lois Smith and Julie Harris have said, James Dean was a sweet and sensitive actor, beautifully handled by Elia Kazan and his friends. It was all happening far too quickly.

With thanks to Magnum Photos

USA. New York City. 1955. Jimmy DEAN with a withdrawn timid look, “East of Eden” had just opened in New York at the Astor Theater after a celebrity studded preview. Jimmy neither attended the previews or the opening, “I can’t handle that scene” so he boarded a plane to Los Angeles.
USA. Fairmount, Indiana. 1955. In 1955 James DEAN visited the town where he had spent his youth, it was just after he had made “East of Eden” but the film was not yet released. He stayed on the farm of his uncle Marcus Winslow with his relatives.
USA. New York City. 1955. James DEAN.

And he was my first love, my first crush. A symbol of what was to come in a love for bad boys: the unavailable, those meant to die young in a flurry of dreams and fast cars. You know, the kind you play the sad songs for. The ones who break your heart.