James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain. All are frozen in time. They will never age. They will always be as fresh in our mind as the moment before they departed. The earliest of these was the remarkable young actor James Dean. What made him so special? To understand that, he needs to be put into the context of the style of acting that had been developing in New York in the 1950s. Lee Strasberg formed the Actors Studio and he worked along the principles of the Russian Theatre Director Constantine Stanislavski. It became known as ‘The Method’ and it infected a whole generation of young American actors. Most notably Marlon Brando, who in fact, contrary to popular belief, did not study at the Actors Studio with Strasberg, but at the breakaway theatre school run by Stella Adler – another inspirational acting teacher using the Russian technique. But while we all (well, some of us) witnessed Brando develop into an astonishing actor in his early days, we also had to endure his slow demise, disillusionment with the craft of acting and his ballooning into a vast frame while wasting away his talent.
Not so with James Dean, he didn't even get into his stride. He killed himself in a car crash in 1955 at the age of 24 with only 3 major films under his belt, two of which earned him Oscar nominations. But for us Dean is left intact on celluloid in those films. Look at any of them and you cannot fail to be taken with his highly naturalistic performances. His eccentric charm. His look...
so alien to those other actors around him at the time. Here are two short
moments. The first is from East of Eden The second is a scene from Rebel Without A Cause Take a look at the ever fresh. Ever beautiful. James Dean.