September 30th, 1955. James Dean takes to
the road for the last time, heading for Salinas
and an appointment with destiny. At the wheel of his Porsche, the 24-year-old carves out
his place as the ultimate icon. I don't think anyone will ever be
remembered after their death, 50 years like James Dean is. He's a name today, probably more so
than he was when he was alive. In Hollywood what it is,
even today, which is amazing, people will say about a new young actor,
"Maybe he's the next James Dean," and they've been saying that for 50 years. James Dean. I guess you're about the best-looking gal
we've seen around here in a long time. The star who became a legend, who spoke for all the restless young
as no one has before or since. Thank you, Jett. At his death James Dean
is still almost an unknown and has just completed his third film, but the three roles he plays
and his particular personality confer on him the image
of the consummate rebel. His mark on Hollywood is indelible. I don't think many people know
he was only in Hollywood 16 months and did three major films, and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley
had a Hollywood experience. It was much longer than that. They predict that Elvis Presley
will be another James Dean. -Now, have you heard that?
-Well, I've heard something about it, but I would never compare
myself in any way to James Dean, because James Dean was a genius. He made his cause giant 16 miles and race cars and boom,
and he was dead. It's just kind of all very dramatic,
just like his life was. Were it not for his death,
he'd probably just be another old actor today. But he died at the right time,
and he died in a dramatic way. There's kind of a "What if," to it. A tragic death.
It happens very quickly. That seems to be
a central theme for all of them. Monroe, of course, had it.
Presley had it. Obviously, James Dean had it. Being frozen as a 24-year-old, it's just an amazing phenomenon
that nobody's ever repeated or been this popular
long after he's been dead. Live fast, die young,
and leave a beautiful corpse, said James Dean, a challenge he met only too well. That's the story of
Rebel Without a Cause. It really happened. Jimmy always had
a lot of confidence in himself, and he'd always told my mom
and dad that if he could just get a break, he'd make it. He seemed to have this drive
to be a success, fast. Before he was 24 years old,
he had made three movies. He did do it fast,
and he seemed to be in control. Dean's career
took off in March 1954. He turns his back on bit parts for TV and makes his first movie with
the hottest director around, Elia Kazan. Kazan had seen him. He gave him a screen test
in New York for East of Eden, and the only competition he had was
another young actor named Paul Newman, and Dean got the part. Warner Brothers had to
seek out vibrant new personalities, tap new sources of talent,
and create new stars, James Dean as Cal,
the wildest boy you've ever met. It was a thrill to see
Jimmy up on the screen, and of course, we didn't know
how much he would be in it, and turned out he was
in it almost all the time. To me, it never seemed
like he was acting in East of Eden. It just seemed
like that was Jimmy up there. It was a very powerful performance. It was very close to. The character was
very close to what Jimmy was, and Kazan was wise enough
to just pull that out of him and use it, make him use everything he was. At that time in Hollywood, the style of acting was changing. There was Brando
and Montgomery Clift. They brought with them
a revolutionary style to film, and it turned things upside down. James Dean was not just
a Hollywood actor or a Hollywood star. I think he was America's last pioneer
because he did things behind the camera and in front
of the camera that other people never did. James Dean has an instinctive talent for powerful, emotional portrayals
played his own way. When an actor plays a scene
exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions, he would say. He liked to sit and watch someone
and just study what they do different types of people. Then I think later on he
would pull those people into into some of his acting. In "East of Eden" and some scenes
with Raymond Massey, he kind of did little things
that weren't part of the script and Raymond Massey
really got upset. In the script,
it called for a conflict between the two. He built it off-camera by not talking to him
and then on camera doing it intentionally, which would aggravate him. The actor wanted to
quit the show because Jimmy was bringing such turmoil to the set, but if you see that movie today,
you can see that conflict is real. It's not just acting. And I suggest a little slower, Cal, and you don't have
to read the verse numbers. "For this shall every one
that is godly pray unto thee. And surely in the floods of great waters,
they shall not come nigh unto him. Selah." -Seven.
-Not the numbers, Cal. "Thou art my hiding place,
thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about
with songs of deliverance. Selah." -Eight.
-You have no repentance! You're bad!
Through and through, bad. It was very hard to adjust to this,
but I got to know him well enough that I could see
through some changes of mood and realized
that a lot of them were a fact. He was trying things out,
trying a scene, trying to make a scene, seeing how you would react
to something unexpected. Jimmy's constant provocation
leads to a bad boy reputation and a complicated relationship
with Jack Warner, the film's producer, but impressed by his
performance in East of Eden, Warner soon offers him a second movie,
"Rebel Without a Cause." The film came about because
he had a contract with Warner Brothers. Nicholas Ray wanted to be
the next director of a Dean film, and they wrote a script for Dean. They knew that they
had potentially a big star. No, I don't want
you to go to the police. There were other people.
Why should you be the only one involved? But I am involved.
We are all involved. -Mom, a boy, a kid was killed tonight.
-This is all going too fast. You better give me something.
You better give me something fast. Jimmy, you're very young. "Rebel Without a Cause"
evokes a social reality that America is barely waking up to,
a rebellious and delinquent youth. Director Nicholas Ray knows
Jimmy is made for the part. Do you want to kill
your own father? You barely ever hear a fan talk
about "East of Eden," or "Giant." It's always "Rebel." There were very few actors
that I can think of who portrayed adolescent
youth as well as Jimmy did. Before that, teenagers weren't heard. He yelled at his parents
and he got mad and threw things. Before that, kids were teenagers,
and movies were all just squeaky clean and wholesome. He's the first teenager that did this. Yes, that's what's important. He's the first teenager who said,
"Sometimes parents are wrong," and that's essentially what
Dean is saying in Rebel. You say one thing.
The other says another thing. There's a scene about it and "Rebel",
and then, "You're tearing me apart." You know what kind of
drunken brawls those parties turn into. It's no place for kids! A minute ago, you said
you didn't care if he drinks. -He said a "little" drink.
-You're tearing me apart! What? You say one thing, he says another,
and everybody changes back again! He did such a tremendous job
playing the characters he played. Honestly, I think some people get
the characters mixed up with James Dean himself. It is conceivable, at least, that the young at the time
of Dean's death were looking for an attachment,
looking for a human being, looking for a symbol to attach their frustrations,
anxieties, and anger. It coincided with not only that a movie was made
about that particular aspect of the young
"Rebel Without a Cause," but he died, so he became the martyr. When they had the funeral for him, it was on the same day that
they released "Rebel Without a Cause." I think the timing of that event probably increases
popularity a thousandfold. They released "Rebel"
about a week after his death, and it's just kind of sad
to see him up there on the screen and knowing that he wasn't here anymore. All the ingredients are set
for a legend to be born. Captured in the brilliant bloom of youth,
James Dean became a worldwide phenomenon. His image is printed everywhere, and there is a surprising abundance
of photos for such a short career. There are many pictures of Jimmy because he wanted
many pictures, because it's conceivable
he knew he would die young, and he wanted
to leave a legend. I came along and proposed
the ultimate, legendary project, "Let's go back and do your life." One has to keep in mind
that I had no idea he was going to die. The photographs became legendary,
not with my intention as such, but that's the case. Dennis Stock and his camera accompanied
James Dean as far as Fairmount, Indiana, where he grew up. It is February 1955, the last time he visits his family
and his cousin's last memories. No one had any idea that we
were never going to see him again, the fact that Dennis took all his photos,
and they've been in magazines and books and things. Every time I see one of them,
it brings back memories, of when he was here,
and it was a very happy time. It was right after Christmas,
and I got this little Jaguar toy. It was a car that you could take apart and take the wheels off
and take the motor out of. He got down on the floor
with me and played with that. For a joke, Dean asked Stock
to take a photo of him in a coffin. Eight months later, his body would
once again lie in the same funeral parlor. On the farm, he was all right,
but then I photographed him in a coffin. He wasn't so all right. There was an
unbalanced human being there. Unwittingly, Dennis Stock
provides posterity with a different Jimmy Dean, the fragile and touching farm boy
whose life began with a tragedy. Jimmy's mother died
when he was nine years old, and he came here to live with my folks. My mom and dad raised him
from age nine until he left here, after graduating
from Fairmount High School. To me, he was just like an older brother. He's coming from a quiet place, but he's still a very angry
young man because he lost his mother when he didn't want to
and nobody can explain to him why. So, he is rebellious. 52 years later, this small town in Indiana
still celebrates its own Hollywood Rebel. Every September,
tens of thousands of fans and admirers flock to the James Dean Festival. You're studying this subculture
that's called Gravers. Gravers are men and
women of all backgrounds, socioeconomic levels ethnic backgrounds, who are interested
with dead celebrity icons. We get James Dean fans who visit
Fairmount from all over the world. You can tell a James Dean fan
by looking at them, artists, doctors, lawyers,
punk rock kids, bikers. What makes an icon successful, one that can be long-lasting
and have a long following, is they have to have several things. Firstly, they have to have a place,
a place where people can go and walk where they walked
and see what they saw and touch what they touched. I'm looking for the names
of the three actors, the three actors. The festival kicks off
with the Main Street Car Show. Among the 2000 vehicles on the show are the red Ford and the tractor
Jimmy drove in his youth. You can tell from
the festival in Fairmount that there are still a lot of people who like
James Dean and "Rebel Without a Cause," and Jimmy is what made the 49, 50,
51 Mercury car the classic car that it is. If you ever want to see Mercuries,
Fairmount is a place to come. James Dean's passionate
association with cars is not limited to one legendary scene in
"Rebel Without a Cause." With his first paychecks, he signs up
for real races on real racetracks. I met James Dean in the movie
called "Rebel Without a Cause." I was the person
who customized the Mercury, and also I worked with him
on what we call the "Chicken chase." I also coordinated the stunts
and the different variations. From there on, we became kind of
what we call racing or custom car buddies. He liked cars very much. On the set, we'd talk about
different cars and things like that. He was getting into racing
and into that variation, so we kind of followed each other around
while he went into his racing days. He liked speed.
He really did. Then, when it was time
for the kids to go to bed, Jimmy would say to me,
"Well, shall we?" I'd say, "Sure." We'd go outside, and I think in those days
he had a Porsche, an old one. I'd get in my old Buick convertible,
but it was souped up, and we drive to the top
of Mulholland Drive. We'd pull up at a stop,
and he'd say, "Okay, let's go." He always won because he had a faster car
and was a better driver, I'm sure. Then, everybody,
when they heard he was going to race in Palm Springs and Bakersfield
and Santa Barbara, but, "Here comes this young actor.
What could he know about driving?" Phil Hill, who was one
of the world's most renowned racers, said he was terrifying
everybody else before he got on the track, but once he got on the track, he was
the most precise driver he had ever seen. He never endangered himself
or any other drivers. He was a very good racer. With the short amount of time
that he was driving and the experience he was getting, he could and could
have been one of the top racers. He took a lot of chances. Some people called him Daredevil, or possibly a man who didn't care about whether he crashed or got killed or not,
but that's not true. He was just a very good racer and
to win a race, you have to take chances, or you have to know
what you're going to do. His passion is of concern to the studio. Fearing that an accident will compromise
shooting on his third film "Giant," Warner forbids Jimmy
from driving before October 1st. On the very day of the race in Salinas,
Jimmy signs up. Jimmy called me and asked if I would
want to go to the racetrack with him. He was going to a racetrack, and he was going to race
the new Porsche he'd bought. I couldn't go with him to
the race the following day because I had to be
in Mexico to do an interview and Jimmy tried two
or three other friends. He wanted to go with him
and no one was available. I was working in Switzerland
and I got this need to see him. I was working on a movie there,
and so I got on the plane. A mutual friend picked me up
at the airport in Los Angeles, took me to a house where Jimmy was,
and then said to me, "Come with me this weekend to rid,"
and I said, "Sure, I'd love to." Something turned into my brain
and I said, "No, I can't." I had no idea why.
I just simply said, "I can't." The day before he dies,
Jimmy's new Porsche is finally ready. When we went to the car lot
where he was buying the Porsche, obviously he was excited, but I had no idea how excited until he insisted on every detail
of the car being explained to him shown to him. He spent four hours
with me standing there, stamping my feet, waiting while he went
over every detail of that car. And he was so proud of that car. I think he loved it probably more
than he loved any woman. It is largely thanks to James Dean that
Porsche has become a mythical brand name. For the past 20 years, the star of the Fairmount Show
is an exact replica of Jimmy's Spyder. In pride of Place
at the entrance to the show, it captures everyone's attention. We built this car in six weeks
and that was rushing it just a bit. We worked day and night,
but I was trying to make a big show in my hometown of Detroit
and that was in 1987. Over the years, I've learned a lot
about the car and Jimmy, that he was a car guy. He loved cars, loved motorcycles, and loved to race
and that's what we like to do. That's more the connection
than say the movie stuff. Original cars, they made 90 of them,
so there's not very many left. This is a replica. Several companies are making bodies,
and you could purchase one and build it. So, there's probably
a lot of them out there, not too many done up with the 130 and the Little Bastard
and the whole James Dean connection. The term "Little Bastard" was a term
that a lot of different people claim. I've read it repeatedly, but I believe that the one
that originated it was Jack Warner because he could not control James Dean,
and he called him "A little bastard." Right after he bought the car,
he took it to Barris on Riverside Drive, and Barris lettered
"Little Bastard" on the trunk. Then Jimmy purposely
parked this new 554 Spyder right outside in the parking lot so that Jack Warner could
look out of his window and see that. Hollywood is locked into the star system, and Jack Warner cannot allow another studio to benefit
from Dean's popularity. James Dean was one of the first people
to get a nine-picture contract. He signed that contract
the last day of his life, really, with Jack Warner
and George Stevens present. It was a tool that Jack Warner
wanted to use to control James Dean. They figured that the only way
that they could do it, was to offer him
a nine-picture contract for $1 million. At the last minute, Jack Warner
changed the contract to $997,000 just to make sure that James Dean
did not ever get Hollywood's first million-dollar contract. James Dean, however,
does enjoy the unprecedented privilege of choosing three
of the nine films his contract demands. The night before he died,
he came to see me, and he wanted to do a modern contemporary
"Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." I thought that was a very suitable subject
for him because he had such a schizophrenic personality,
so changeable. We talked about it
and started to sort of kick ideas around, and he was going to
sort of finance this script, and I was going to put it together. He had plans for the future
that were incredible. He wanted to be a director. He did not want to remain as an actor. He wanted to be able to parlay
that into becoming a director. When he got his first camera, he began to take a lot of photographs,
and he thought in terms of scenes. Jimmy, how much you set a fee? As evening falls over Sunset Boulevard, James Dean calls in
for the last time at Boogies, a trendy bar where
all Hollywood comes to hang out. My father was a bongo player. He played bongos with James Dean. James Dean after he got off the movie set, would go up to Sunset Boulevard
and watch my father and Bob Romeo play music. Then James Dean would get up on stage and sit in with my father
and Bob Romeo on flute. He liked to draw.
He liked to paint. I've seen paintings
and drawings he's done. He's very artistic. He used to draw all the time
when he was here at home, and he encouraged me to draw. Certain people can identify
with him in a lot of different ways because he was so multifaceted, the Indiana farm boy, the wholesome
high school athlete and student, New York City bohemian, Hollywood movie star, race car driver. He painted.
He played bongos. So I think he's just so multifaceted
that people could identify with him in a lot of different ways. I think he had a curiosity. I don't think it's appropriate
to believe that he necessarily would have been outstanding
in anything more than acting. On the morning of September 30th, 1955, James Dean crosses
Los Angeles for the last time and yet he is still officially
not allowed to drive. We saw him before he left when he was getting off
with Hickman and Sandy Roth. They were off to this gasoline station
and the car was on the trailer of course. From there on,
he took the car off the trailer and wanted to drive it. Of course, Bill and everybody,
we all said, "Don't drive it." You don't want to drive it 300 or 400
miles clear up to Salinas for the race. "I want to get used to it
and I want to get into it." It was just one of those things
that kept falling into place that led up to the tragedy. There is something
inevitable about the tragedy. Neither the studio ban nor the unreasonable distance
he has to drive would change anything. Jimmy slides in behind the wheel. He liked to hear the engine go and
the speed that he could make out of it. Jimmy was going very fast,
much too fast for the road. Jimmy had gotten a ticket on the way down. We traced back the route he had taken from the time you received the citation
until the time of the accident. He would have averaged about
70 miles an hour from the time he received the citation to the time
or the location of the accident. However, we did know
that this time he had stopped, so we knew he was going
much faster than this. Jimmy is not alone that day. Posterity will benefit from the presence
of photographer Sandy Roth, who follows him, camera at the ready. I'm thankful that the photos
were taken that day. We were able to capture
his last moments as much as we could. But in his Porsche, Jimmy is much quicker,
and his speed past him. The last photo of Jimmy alive. Sandy will see him just once more at Blackwells Corner,
a store in the middle of the desert. Every day we get people
asking about James Dean, how he died, and where he died. History states that he bought apples and a Coke. That's what they say he bought. What happens is people want to know
do we have any apples and do we have any Coke. The store that we're in now is 3200ft², and we're building a 20,000ft² building, and it's going to have
some James Dean memorabilia. That doesn't hurt. People come in, and they know
that this was James Dean's last stop, so they want to stop here
and get the feel. It's kind of a neat story,
knowing that he stopped here, he drove 25 miles west and died. Towards the end of the afternoon, James Dean takes to the road
again in his sleek silver machine, heading for the final crossroads. The road was going straight
into the sun on September 30th and instead of the sun being up here,
it was down here, so you're looking right into it. In his car, they don't have
any sun visors to block this, so he's looking straight into the sun. He was driving a car
that was low to the ground. It was painted silver, and it blended right in with the road. It kind of went up a hill
right behind him. Of course, the fella
that made a turn in front of him, he'd made that turn
probably hundreds of times in his life because he was a local person there. As the intersections come together, there is a Y intersection. There was a mountain range over here with a sun going down over here
looking in this direction. Jimmy's car was approaching. The Porsche was approaching down here. The Donald Turnupseed car was approaching from Paso Robles in this direction. So Donald Turnupseed had the opportunity
to make the turn to Fresno to his left, as Jimmy had the right.
It was a yield intersection. Evidently what happened
is that Turnupseed didn't see him. The sun was setting to his rear, which reflected onto the asphalt and there were
waves in the road like this. So this little shorts Porsche
racing car coming over those waves, you could see something
and then you couldn't. It was as if you were seeing a mirage
or something out in a desert. What the accident report shows
is that there were two sets of skid marks. It was one set of skid marks
about 40ft long. Then there was an interruption. Then there was another set
of skid marks about 60ft long. He had no control
when he put the brakes on, so the car shifted
to the right into Jimmy's path. At that moment in time,
he was living life to its fullest. He was sitting in a brand
new, beautiful car, going fast with a wind
blowing in his hair, and he was speeding to a racetrack. He had everything going for him
and then it was over. What better way to die
than doing something you love and then in the midst of it,
it's like dying in the middle of sex. Great. It was a car
that was built to race. It was made out of aluminum. It was just like crushing a
piece of tinfoil against something hard. The control that Jim had with the car
and everything he did was right. Jimmy did what a professional
or a craftsmanship racing man would do. He would try to maneuver
around that automobile, not with braking,
but with force and power in your engine. He immediately geared it. He immediately put his foot down, put his brakes a bit, put his foot down,
turned his steering wheel, brooded a bit to the left, came back around
with his wheel to go around that car. If that car had just stopped 110th of a second, Jimmy would move away from him. But he was speeding. That's all there was to it,
and he couldn't stop in time. I think his last words, according to Wütherich, were,
"That car up there has got to stop," and that car up there didn't stop. The point of impact, which was here, and the car spun several times
and came to rest, it did not roll over. Jimmy, according to a tow truck driver
that I interviewed, said that his feet or Jimmy's feet
were tangled in the pedals, and he was laying across the other seat. Jimmy's neck is broken. He dies in the ambulance. Donald Turnupseed is unscathed. Everybody involved in the accident
was a victim. Donald Turnupseed, his life was never the same. He was a college student. He had to quit college
because he killed James Dean. People were hounding him
and coming after him and reporters. He didn't want to be known
as the man who killed Jimmy Dean. It wasn't his fault, any of it. I think it was certainly, for a while, uncomfortable for him
because he was in the newspapers, and every story about Jimmy had his name. Donald Turnupseed absolutely
refused any requests for interviews. He would not do that. He had a lot of death threats
on his life, I heard. He was always afraid that somebody
was going to do something to him. So we tried several times, but he declined all interviews
before he passed away. Today in Cholame, a monument commemorates the moment
on September 30th, 1955, when Jimmy encountered eternity. I visited the accident site
a couple of different times when I was living in California. I just kind of had sad feelings. It's a quiet and desolate highway.
There's nothing out there. You can't imagine an accident happening. There's just nothing in any direction, such a freak accident
that somebody would pull in front of him out in the middle of the desert. A lot of Deaners have told me that they don't feel complete until they
make the trip to Cholame, California, where he was killed. You can't just do Fairmount.
Fairmount is kind of a sacred place. It's very important
in the Deaners civil religion, but you have to go to Cholame, too. It's no different
from people's pilgrimage to Mecca. It's the same kind of observance
that makes them feel part, in this case, of their icon. News of Jimmy's death
spreads like wildfire. George Stevens,
director of his third film "Giant," is in a screening room checking
rushes Jimmy had shot just days before. The telephone rings
and falls from his hands. The next morning,
the accident is on every front page. My folks were on their way back home
here when the accident happened. Our dad said that he heard
on the radio on the way back that a young upcoming
movie star had been killed in a sports car accident. Well, he knew that Jimmy
had just bought that Spyder, and he just had a feeling
that it was Jimmy. Before they could go ahead
and tell who it was and everything, he just shut the radio off and didn't say anything
to my mom about it. He said he just made a point
not to read any newspapers or anything like that,
because if it was Jimmy, he didn't want to hurt her,
to know about it until he got home. Of course, when they got home
they found out it was him. I think that the car
was an instrument for his death, that his temperament to test things,
which was the very heart of his personality,
eventually caught up with him. He pushed that car a little too fast
in the wrong place, rather than on a racing course or
something like that, and it killed them. The myth initially builds around the idea that Jimmy was somehow
responsible for his death with his need for speed
and a tormented personality. Until 1992, when Exponent,
a Silicon Valley company, examined a case
studied umpteen times before, this time using
new computer analysis resources. No one since the time of his death in 1955 had done an engineering
or scientific evaluation of the accident. We had access to the police report. We had access to site photographs
of the accident scene. Working off the photographs
and doing an on-site evaluation down in Paso Robles,
we were able to put together a scenario to understand how the accident occurred. What we found was that Dean might have been speeding up
until the point of the accident, but at the time of the accident, his car was traveling
between 55 and 60 miles an hour, as was the Ford. The police report, which said that Dean
was traveling over 70 miles an hour at the time of the accident,
in our opinion, was wrong. The fact that he died
in a very tragic accident in a very high-performance vehicle, in a situation where
everyone said it was his fault, I think probably adds to the myth. The Dean effect is immediate. One week after the accident,
3000 unknown faces joined Fairmount, 2000 inhabitants, at their idol's funeral. The church was full, and they had opened
the windows of the church, so people outside
could hear the sermon and so forth. We came in to the church
and in the front row was the family. We just sat to the side,
and we let it all happen, sort of dazed, and then eventually when it was over, we walked up and went up to Marcus. Dennis Stock came in.
He hadn't been there yet, and he came in. He walked over to my dad, and dad got up, and they hugged each other. That was the first time my dad had cried, and he just cried and cried. You're always surprised when a young friend dies
and you're young yourself. You're invulnerable.
You're young. People don't die when they're young
unless they're in a war. It was traumatic.
I left Hollywood. I just stayed around,
went to Indiana for the funeral, and then I said, "I've had it enough." There were four girls
that I remember reading about. They committed suicide within a week
after Jimmy died, which was very unusual. When thousands and thousands of pieces
of fan mail went to Warner Brothers, they had no idea
what they had in his popularity. Popularity has a downside. Rumor. Books and magazines vie
for the hottest revelations and scandals. Jimmy's life is dissected and analyzed,
particularly his sexuality. I didn't know anything really
about Jimmy's sex life until after he died. Then, when he died,
I began to interview friends, many of them male,
and many of them claimed. I wasn't there, so I don't know
if they had a relationship with him. There were so many stories
that it seemed to me that it was likely that
there was some truth to the fact that he was bisexual, not homosexual. As he put it once to me, "I'm not going to go through life
with one hand behind my back." The difficulty was trying to
sort through all the things that had been said about him. Somebody would have a rumor,
and they would put it in a book, and then the next book
would expound on that rumor and turn it into a lie. It wasn't true about him at all, or they would take something he said,
and then take it out of context. That begin to build a legend
of what he was. His sexuality,
it's a question of your sexuality. You are gay.
You want to believe that Jimmy was gay. You're straight? You want to be
certain that Jimmy was straight. Hey, he was all things
to all men or women. What was true was that
he had an impact on people to make them want
to invent incredible tales about him. He made them want to make
him more important. It was amazing and they did.
They supplied everything. They were in themselves the best
public relations machine I have ever seen. The line between rumor
and mythology is a fine line. Fans are quick to cross it. They have prophecies, for example, the famous
car commercial that it would get young. Hi again. We asked Jimmy over today
because he's a racing man himself, a real one, not a crazy one. Jimmy, we have a many young people
watching our show tonight and for their benefit, I'd like your opinion
about fast driving on the highway. Do you think it's a good idea? A good point. I used to fly around a bit. I took a lot of unnecessary chances
on the highways, and I started racing,
and now I drive on the highways. I'm extra cautious because no one knows
what they're doing, half the time. You don't know what
this guy will do with that one. People say racing is dangerous, but I'll take my chances on the track
any day than on a highway. Wow Gig, I think I'd better take it off. Oh, wait a minute, Jimmy,
one more question. Do you have any special advice
for the young people who drive? Take it easy driving. The life you might save might be mine. Dean is referred
to as the prophecy commercial. There are prophecy pictures
and the most famous is the Dennis Stock one, where Dean is in the picture window
of the funeral home, and he's sitting up in a coffin. Another famous prophecy photograph
and that's how the Deaners talk about it. Prophecy photographs. There's a picture of James Dean
and his cousin Marcus Winslow Junior, when he was nine years old pointing
to a tombstone, "This is Dean on it." I don't know if you've seen it,
but that's another one. Deaners use it as part of the, "You could see it coming.
Probably it was a prophecy," that kind of stuff. They have all these different kinds
of things that tell us that this isn't Jesus Christ,
but it has the same symbolism. After all, the crucifix picture
is huge among the Deaners. And that and very good promotion
keeps them going. There's money
invested in the Jimmy Dean image, and there are very good
marketing people who keep pushing it, coming out with new dolls
or new ashtrays or what have you, and they keep plugging away at this. So that's part of it. To me, that's a major part
of the equation, it's commercial. The last weekend in September
is Fairmount's most lucrative. It's not easy for the fans
to leave the James Dean Fest without stopping by,
Rebel Rebel, the souvenir store probably the world's biggest collection
of James Dean memorabilia and spin-off products. $4.11, here's your change. One, two, three, four. -Thank you.
-Thank you. $4.22, $10. How about $7.50? -There you go. Enjoy it.
-Thank you. T-shirts are popular, of course. Books are always popular,
books with photos of him. Items of memorabilia
just make you feel closer to that person. They're gone.
You're never going to be close to them. I guess it's a spiritual, metaphysical
communication or closeness. At the peak of my collection,
I had to have everything, magnets, little doodads,
pens, writing pens, you name it, buttons, you know, right up to clothing
that he owned and wore and drawings
and paintings that he did. A metaphysical connection
which can be measured in dollars and which perpetuates the image. With new generations of Dean fans
appearing all the time, the James Dean business
has a healthy future, as the agent who manages
his image can confirm. We're talking about a property
that is really a brand. It's really no different
from a Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger
or something like that. James Dean is very big in Asia.
He's very big in Europe and South America. We're talking about hundreds
of different companies and obviously selling
many millions of dollars worth of products on the marketplace. It's hard to estimate exactly how many hundreds of millions
these products generate, but the machine is well-oiled
and takes over by itself. Those products do help
perpetuate the legend of James Dean. He's been deceased now for 52 years
and that's several generations of young people who continue to adore and want to buy products
associated with James Dean. For the past 52 years,
the Fairmount Cemetery has hosted a commemoration ceremony. On September 30th, fans from around the world,
from Indiana or Japan come to celebrate their icon. A lot of the same people
keep coming back year after year, event after event,
and it's really turned into a community. They make it a goal
of being there at death day, at birthdays, special events
like the premiere of a famous movie, and they do it religiously. I have seen people at the ceremony
and at the cemetery. When Marcus Winslow Junior arrives, I have literally seen people
approach him and go like this, just to touch him. I've even seen people with one finger,
the same way they do on the grave, on the stone itself. Usually when someone dies, you're kind of allowed to silently mourn over death or whatever, and you never forget them,
but as time goes on, they get further
and further back in your mind. With Jimmy, because of his popularity
and because of the people that he's inspired and so forth,
there's not hardly a day goes by that you aren't reminded
of him somehow. Just within the past couple of years, they've released
all his old movies on DVDs. There's talk of putting
his TV shows on DVD and so forth. James Dean's going to be around
for a long time.
