Today is the 50th anniversary of the day teenage film icon Jimmy Dean died in his Porsche in the California desert. He died with his boots on, having just wrapped filming on “Giant” a few days before and having finished “Rebel Without a Cause” only two months before that. He went to the set of “Giant” straight from the set of “Rebel” without a break. And he had finished “East of Eden” only a few months before that, the first of the only three major movies he would ever make. He would be nominated for Oscars for the first and last of the three, the first and second posthumous Oscar nominations in history. Warner Brothers Studios received more mail addressed to Dean after his death than was received for any living star in Hollywood in the year after he died.
Supporting actress Natalie Wood, only 16 at the time, would go on to eclipse Dean in her later films including the legendary “West Side Story.” Supporting actor Dennis Hopper would later film the smash hit “Easy Rider” along side Peter Fonda. Nick Adams would make a TV western series named, ironically, “The Rebel,” and director Nicholas Ray would forge a career with highs and lows that would raise the bar on chaos to a level never challenged since. Beginning with Nicholas Ray’s motto, “Make Drama out of Trauma,” authors Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel craft an exhaustingly researched story of the events leading up to the filming of “Rebel,” the two months of tumultuous shooting and the lives of its cast and crew afterwards.
Director Ray was enamored with the adolescent mind set that was forming the modern concept of “teenager” after WWII. The modern teenager became a reality as post-war America was beginning to break up the traditional family. Adults lives were taken up with prosperous business and glamorous professional goals. The sons and daughters of affluent Americans were set on their own path. Ten years after the filming of “Rebel” In 1955, teenagers would have an entire culture of their own. They would have their own cars, clothes, music, books, magazines and a language their parents could barely understand. Ten years later they would have their own drugs, their own crime and their own prisons.
Although influenced by 1950’s landmark film “Los Olvidados” by director Luis Bunuel, the basis for the story of “Rebel” is more directly traced to a Dr. Robert Lindner’s “Rebel Without a Cause: The Story of a Criminal Psychopath.” Warner Brother’s purchased the film rights to the best-seller, although it had been languishing in the studio for years. groundbreaking “method” director Nicholas Ray was provided this script and several others by top Warner brass but rejected them all. He did not want make a film about angry and violent psychopaths and starving, poverty stricken outcasts, he wanted to make a film about the anger and violence that was only slightly below the surface of every successful American professional’s family. He wanted to show the unrest and trauma seething in the young of normal family life in post WWII America.
Against a time crunch that would dog him throughout the film, Ray slapped together a 17 page treatment of a possible script he called “Blind Run” about a imaginary car race with two autos flying head-on towards each other in a dark tunnel. This was transformed into the “chickie run” in the final version of “Rebel.” He then turned to Irving Shulman, the successful author of the first great modern treatment of juvenile delinquency, “The Amboy Dukes” (1947). But Shulman was also incapable of seeing the troubled teen as anything but an aberration. Although an important stepping stone, Shulman’s work was also rejected. In the nick of time Stewart Stern arrived out of nowhere to convert the script into what Ray wanted and also to add the critical 24 hour timeframe (“Rebel” takes place in one day, ending at dawn). Although Ray took this script to Warner’s to get shooting started, he, James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo and the rest oft he cast would improvise lines and action daily as the film unfolded.
Not content with child actors, Ray moved far ahead of his time and recruited actual gang members from Hollywood High. The leader of the pack joined both his cast and crew, as an actor and as a consultant on teenage gang clothes, speech and cars. Car customizing legend George Barris, who would go on to build the Batmobile, tailored the gang’s cars. He also painted the number “130” and the words “Little Bastard” on the car that would become James Dean’s last ride, his Porsche Spyder.
Of all the stars in the film, only Dennis Hopper survives to this day and is working on no less than four films to be released in 2005/2006. Natalie Wood, nominated for three Oscars, died in 1981 in an alcoholic haze amidst her love triangle with Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken. Nick Adams drank and drugged himself to death in 1968 after the failure of his poor man’s Rebel, Johnny Yuma, died after its first season. Director Nicholas Ray never recovered from Dean’s death and never made another film anywhere close to “Rebel.” He died in 1979.
The film not only explores the seamy side of the lives of the participants in exquisite and unflinching details, it is a real-life doctorate degree in film-making terms and techniques. By using “Rebel” as a back-drop, this book describes every aspect of film making from the story, through the adaptation and screenplay to scripts, rehearsals costumes and shooting to post-production and the sound track. It is as expertly written and informative as it is absorbing.
The book is out now and available via Amazon and Amazon UK .
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