"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today."
I had the above photo, as a poster, in my dorm room. Original, huh? Because, no other young male actor in the late 1960s & early 1970s was looking to James Dean for inspiration.
57 years after to the meteoric career of James Dean, one thing now seems clear to me... this young man was truly gay! Just watch the outtakes below from Rebel Without A Cause. His affairs with men, mostly older father figures, are documented now, a hlaf century later. He had been groomed to be the vulnerable young male innocent, tormented, longing for freedom, & the true love of the right girl. The studio made sure that he acted it out in real life by setting him with starlets to be seen with in public. 56 years ago this September, in his new Porsche 550 Spyder, at the age of 24, on US 101 near Salinas, there was no reality left to mess up the myth.
For most of his short life there's every reason to believe that Dean didn’t undersand what his problem was either. Until he was the 18 year old his name was Jimmy Dean, & he was a short, nerdy, basketball playing hick, with coke-bottle glasees & a big cowlick.
"Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done."
It is because James Dean only made 3 films & lived a very short life, that has made him a symbol for so many different & contrasting things. Had Dean lived to enjoy the stardom that was given to him after his death, he eventually would have ceased to be such an enigma. Dean today is such a romantic & misunderstood figure. James Dean would have been 80 today. His death was tragic, but ironic. I am sort of grateful that he didn’t live long enough to play Betty White's love interest on Hot In Cleveland.
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