Forever Cool, Forever the ‘Rebel’

I first discovered James Dean on one of those nightly “Late Show” movie programs that dominated after-hours television in Southern California in the mid-’60s.

The film was “Rebel Without a Cause.” I was in high school in Santa Barbara, and director Nicholas Ray’s classic 1955 portrait of teen angst was beamed into our living room via a 21-inch black and white Magnavox.

It was the height of Beatlemania, the beginnings of the hippie movement, widening national civil unrest and a soon-to-be escalating war in Vietnam. (At 16, I barely knew where to find Vietnam on the map, although I’d get to know the terrain firsthand a few years later.)

But even in that burgeoning era of long hair, incense and love beads, there was something about that iconic ‘50s movie star with the out-of-style pompadour that struck a chord.

“Rebel Without A Cause,” released only four days after Dean was killed in his silver Porsche Spyder on the way to a race in Salinas, had been a high-profile antidote to the Ozzie and Harriet-style blandness usually found in films depicting teenagers during the Eisenhower era.

The low-budget film, which featured Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo and Jim Backus, spoke volumes about youthful alienation and what it is to become a man as Jim Stark (Dean) battles his parents, authority and a gang of young toughs who don’t much care for the new kid in school. (Has anyone not conjured up James Dean when visiting the Griffith Park Observatory where key “Rebel” scenes were shot?)

The film also offers a budding romance (Dean gives Wood her first screen kiss) and a case of hero worship as the vulnerable and parentally deserted Plato (Mineo) turns new buddy Jim into a father figure.

But Dean alone is what made the film live far beyond its initial release date. As Saturday Review critic Arthur Knight observed, “Dean projects the wildness, the torment, the crude tenderness of a rootless generation.”

In other words, Dean spoke to the young generation; I just thought he was cool.

I couldn’t seem to get enough of old Jimmy and watched “Rebel Without a Cause” and “East of Eden,” his first starring picture, whenever they showed up on TV.

I continued my Dean fixation after I was married and attending Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo on the GI Bill in 1973. By then I had my first color TV--a small portable that my wife, Anita, had brought to the marriage.

Seeing “Rebel Without a Cause” in color for the first time, I was surprised to discover that the “gray” jacket Dean dons at a pivotal moment in the film was actually red. (Red, I’ve since learned, played an important thematic role in the film, symbolizing rage and passion.)

While in college, I met another journalism student who was an even bigger fan than I: After high school graduation, he and a buddy actually drove all the way from the San Joaquin Valley to Dean’s hometown in Fairmount, Ind. There, they not only visited Dean’s grave site but also met Dean’s aged aunt, Ortense Winslow, who invited the two young pilgrims inside her farmhouse to see Dean’s bedroom.

I’ve seen “Rebel Without a Cause” innumerable times since those days and even made a pilgrimage of my own: On Sept. 30, 1985--the 30th anniversary of Dean’s death--I visited the scene of his fatal accident near Cholame on Highway 46 (old California 466) in San Luis Obispo County.

Cholame had only a small post office, a car-repair garage (where Dean’s car had been towed), and a cafe called Aggie’s. Outside Aggie’s, surrounding an old tree, stood a 5-foot-tall chromium and stainless-steel monument in Dean’s honor. A fan from Japan had paid to have it erected sometime in the 1970s.

About 5:30 that afternoon, more than a dozen other pilgrims who had shown up at the cafe, including two fans from Germany and one guy dressed like Dean in “Rebel,” walked about a mile up to the intersection of highways 46 and 41 where Dean had died. At least it was the approximate location. The intersection had been slightly altered since Donald Turnupseed, a 23-year-old Cal Poly student, made a left-hand turn onto Highway 41 and crashed his Ford sedan into Dean’s car as it streaked down Highway 46.

Turnupseed claimed he never saw the silver Porsche carrying Dean and mechanic Rolf Wutherich. According to Wutherich, who survived the accident, Dean’s last words were “That guy’s gotta stop; he’ll see us.”

On that 30th anniversary day in 1985, several fans laid flowers and personal notes on the ground at the crash site; and, as 5:45--the time of the impact that propelled Dean into mythic status--approached, everyone grew quiet in the fading light, each attempting to feel the Dean vibe in their own way.

The garage and post office in Cholame are gone; all that remains is the cafe, now called the Jack Ranch Cafe. As it did when it was Aggie’s, it still has pictures of Dean on the wall and sells souvenir James Dean mugs, T-shirts and posters. And yes, fans still show up every Sept. 30.

It’s now been some time since I’ve seen “Rebel Without a Cause” on television, but I’m still a fan and wasn’t about to miss a chance to see it for the first time on the big screen. As part of the Warner Bros. Classics series at AMC 30 at the Block in Orange, it ends its weeklong run today.

My wife didn’t want to go. “I’ve already seen it,” she said. I took Hayley, our 14-year-old daughter, filling her in on the Dean mystique as we drove to the theater. So, what did she think?

“Kind of depressing, but I liked that movie,” she said as we walked out after the film. Although she felt Dean and Wood looked too old to be playing teenagers, she didn’t think the film looked too dated.

What about Dean?

“Good acting,” she said. “So, he made only three films?. . . .”

I doubt Hayley is a James Dean convert like her old man. But as for me, seeing “Rebel Without a Cause” on the big screen for the first time only magnified what I liked about it during all those years of watching it on the small screen.

Dean, by the way, would have been 68 last Monday had he not met his fate on that central California highway.

Instead, he remains frozen in time, the forever agonized, confused and vulnerable young rebel.

And, I must say, forever cool.