September 30, 1955: Actor James Dean is killed in a car crash. He was only 24 years old.
He had been in 5 films, uncredited in each, between 1951 and 1953, and none of them are worth remembering today. In 1954, he filmed East of Eden, based on the 4th and last part of John Steinbeck's 1952 novel about a family in the Salinas Valley of central California in 1917. It was released on April 10, 1955, and made Dean, as troubled teenager Cal Trask, a star.
He soon filmed Rebel Without a Cause, playing another angsty teenager, Jim Trask, in present-day Los Angeles. His performance would make the Australian humorist Clive James, in his TV documentary Fame in the 20th Century, say, "James Dean was so moody, he made Marlon Brando look like Danny Kaye." It was set to premiere on October 27, 1955, and did.
Before that could happen, Dean filmed Giant, based on the 1952 novel by Edna Ferber, and set in Texas oil country from the 1920s to the 1940s, with Dean playing Jett Rink, a ranch hand who strikes oil and strikes it rich, but never being accepted by those who were already rich.
Filming began on May 21, 1955. While filming was going on, Dean agreed to appear in a public service announcement. Gig Young -- another actor whose death would turn out to be bizarre -- interviewed Dean, who said that he felt he was safer on the racetracks on which he had begun competing than on the roads, because the rules were better enforced. He closed by looking into the camera by saying, "Take it easy, drivin', you know? The life you might save might be mine!" (A takeoff on the more familiar saying, "The life you save might be your own.")
He had gotten permission to take time off from filming to return to the Salinas area, and enter the Salinas Road Race to be held on October 1 and 2. He drove his Porsche 550 Spyder, which he had named Little Bastard (and had the words painted on it), with the mechanic he hired to take care of the car, Rolf Wütherich. They planned on entering that very car in a race.
At around 5:45 PM Pacific Time, they were driving westbound on U.S. Route 466 near Cholame. Donald Turnupseed, a 23-year-old student at California Polytechnic State Institute (a.k.a. Cal Poly), was driving a 1950 Ford Tudor, and made a left turn onto U.S. Route 41.
Various versions of the story have Dean driving at 90 miles per hour, or even as high as 140. An inquest determined it was 55. Nevertheless, there was no way for him to stop in time. He was trapped in the car, and his neck was broken. Among the passersby who saw the wreck was a nurse, who said death was instantaneous. Wütherich was thrown from the Porsche, and was badly hurt, but survived. Turnupseed sustained only minor injuries.
This was not the era of social media, where (as with the details of Kobe Bryant's 2020 helicopter crash) pieces of information, some of them wrong, would reach around the world within minutes. Since it was already mid-evening Eastern Time, it took until the morning of October 2 for most Eastern newspapers and TV stations to mention Dean's death.
Wütherich developed survivor's guilt, depression and a drinking problem. In 1981, in his native Germany, he was in another car crash, this one killing him at age 53. Turnupseed was cleared of any wrongdoing, built a business in Tulare, California, and lived until 1995, dying at age 63.
U.S. Route 466 was rebannered as California Route 46, and realignment means that its intersection with U.S. Route 41, while named James Dean Memorial Junction, is about 100 feet north of the actual crash site, about 180 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, and about 220 miles southeast of San Francisco.
Dean's early death, after just 1 major film role, made him a legend. The photo of him as Jim Stark on the poster for Rebel Without a Cause became iconic. By the time Giant was released on November 24, 1956, his name had become a byword for disaffected youth.
After Giant, his next role was supposed to be that of former Middleweight Champion of the World Rocky Graziano, in the film version of Graziano's memoir Somebody Up There Likes Me. The role went to Paul Newman instead, and launched him to stardom.
Newman has had so many big roles, it's easy to imagine half of them going to a still-living Dean, with Newman still having enough great roles in which to become a film legend. I can imagine Dean, at 27, playing Brick Pollitt, alongside his Giant co-star Elizabeth Taylor, in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof; at 30, playing Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler; at 36, as Lucas Jackson in Cool Hand Luke; at 38, as Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; and even at 51, as Frank Galvin in The Verdict.
Indeed, Newman was also into auto racing, and it's not hard to imagine his last film role, as the voice of Doc Hudson in the 2006 animated film Cars, being the last film role of an 85-year-old James Dean.
Some of Newman's other roles are hard to imagine Dean in. Dean as Henry Gondorff in The Sting? Probably not. Dean as Doug Roberts in The Towering Inferno? I don't think so. Dean as Reggie Dunlop in Slap Shot? No way. (Dean had played basketball at Fairmount High School in Indiana, but not hockey.)
And the idea of James Dean going on to market salad dressing under his name is ludicrous.
