On the 50th anniversary of his death, citizens of James Dean's hometown of Fairmount will honor his memory with a celebration of the actor, best known for playing angst-ridden, troubled youths.
David Loehr of The James Dean Gallery said the event should be a poignant one.
"It's a major anniversary, the 50th anniversary," Loehr said. "Every year, they have the service at the church, but this year there will be more with the fireworks and everything. The procession will be somber and sad, and the film will be more of a joyous tribute."
The event will include a candlelight procession beginning at 6:30 p.m. today at the Friends Church in downtown Fairmount and ending at Dean's gravesite. Following the procession, "James Dean: Forever Young," a documentary about the actor's life, will be shown in Playacres Park, the press release said.
The Fairmount Historical Museum played host to the James Dean Festival, an annual three-day event celebrating the actor's life, last week. It featured bands, films and a James Dean look-alike contest.
Despite the star's enduring fame, there is a great deal of misconception surrounding his life, particularly his years spent in Indiana, Ball State University Professor of Telecommunications Wes Gehring said.
Gehring, who wrote "James Dean: Rebel with a Cause," a recent biography of the actor, said other books about the Dean tend to downplay his time in Fairmount.
"Even though there is a lot of literature out there, a lot of it is faulty," Gehring said. "I found that Indiana gets trashed in the books or just isn't mentioned."
He said Dean gained confidence in Fairmount where he got a great deal of media attention in high school for his athletic and scholastic achievements.
"He made the newspaper front pages all the time," Gehring said. "That might have made him think he could have done a lot of other stuff."
Gehring said another common myth about Dean was that he was a morbid and unhappy individual.
"Within his circle of friends, James Dean was very funny," Gehring said. "He was great at doing imitations. His friends hated it when he'd do imitations of them; he was so dead-on."
Gehring said despite Dean's image as a super-cool teenager in "Rebel Without a Cause," the real actor was shy with extremely poor vision.
"He was blind without his glasses," Gehring said, "That famous, distant look in his eye might have been just him not wearing glasses. His greatest acting skill might have been navigating a set."
As for the actor's sexuality, Gehring said there has been a lot of misinformation circulating in the media.
Gehring said there is no doubt Dean had homosexual relationships, but he was likely using them as a way of getting better roles, much like other stars of the period, such as Marilyn Monroe.
"If he used sex to advance his career, that's not terribly surprising," Gehring said. "At that time it was very common. At that point it did open some doors for him and got him into some places."
This was in keeping with the actor's personality, he said.
"Dean was a kind of an intellectual vampire," Gehring said. "He would pull something out of somebody then basically move on. He didn't have a lot of patience. He was a bit of a user who probably used the sexual card once or twice."
Gehring said Dean's passion didn't end with furthering his acting career. He was nuts about photography and obsessed with bullfighting, but it was his intense fascination with race car driving that would result in his death.
"He was careless; an awful driver," Gehring said. "On a track, he was a good, traditional driver, but put him in a normal driving situation, he was terrible."
In popular culture, Dean's death and the famous "Rebel without a Cause" chicken scene are often blended, giving the impression that the actor didn't care if he lived or died.
The circumstances of Dean's death have become larger than life. The brand new Porche 550 Spider racing down a stretch of dusty Califronia road with the ill-fated Dean at the wheel has become the stuff of legend. He was on his way to race in Salinas, Calif., when his car slammed into a truck driven by local farmer Donald Turnipseed.
"Dean had been busy filming 'Giant,' and he wasn't allowed to race, so he was driving his car to the race," Gehring said. "His mechanic, who was in the car during the accident, thought it was a good idea to drive the car to the race for practice."
Gehring said if the weather had been different that day, Dean might have lived.
"If it had rained, they would have taken it to the race in a trailer instead of driving it there."
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