Sometimes an actor can show a director how to see. Francois Truffaut said that James Dean's "power of seduction was so intense that he could have killed his parents every night on the screen with the blessing of the general public." Some were in love with him because they knew him, and many more because they would never have that chance.
``Here's to James Dean long live the dead!" cries Karen Black playing Joanne who was once a Joe in Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. If you think about that, you can see why, thirty years after the highway death of the actual Dean, his influence is undiminished. More than any one, and just before rock music, Dean pioneered a genre in which kids got their rocks off, hogged our attention, and enjoyed power. He allowed us to make and watch movies and television series in which kids were the center of the world for good or ill and in East of Eden he lent himself to a compelling teen. Never overtly violent, Dean was still the kind of killer who could talk rivals away. In Giant, he conjures up oil like a wizard in what may be the wildest and subtlest masturbation scene ever filmed. He drew us into his darkness and said ``See, this is how a loner might become a tyrant." And so, he is a landmark in the long American process that glamorizes murder.
Brando and Dean inspired a list of young artors Paul Newman, Steve McQueen,Warren Beatty, Elvis and Jack Nicholson to name a few. Could Dean play in West-Side Story as Brando did in Guys and Dolls ?
Using Dean as their inspiration without the debt clearly showing are some actors following in his tradition..
Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)
Like Dean, Newman was under contract to Warners, but he had made only The Silver Chalice and no one boasted about that. When Dean died, his next scheduled picture was Somebody, and Newman was assigned in his place. Newman play the middleweight champion is very good, no doubt because he was hungry and sure of his good luck.(De Niro's bull pehaps better) With Pier Angeli as Rocky's wife (real-life girlfriend of Dean), Dean's best friend Sal Mineo, is in the picture, as well as, another Dean follower in a bit part: Steve McQueen.
Wild in the Country (1961)
When Elvis Presley began his first film, Love Me Tender, in 1956, he was consulting with David Weisbart (the producer of Rebel) about doing The James Dean Story. ``I could do it easy," said Elvis. "I want to play that more than anything else." Elvis worshiped Dean and learned the eloquence of teen age frustration from him. Made in 1961, directed by Philip Dunne, Wild in the Country has Elvis as a country boy who wants to be a writer. It was written by Clifford Odets and it's a mixture of exploitation and heart felt material. There's a good girl, Hope Lange, and a bad girl; and, of course, the bad girl's better, because she's Tuesday Weld. Dean and Weld might have made a great screen team. Elvis wasn't really up to it, and he had to wait much longer for his early death. But Presley's debt to Dean shows how many of the moves and attitudes of rock 'n' roll came from someone who never sang in a film.
Splendor in the Grass (1961)
By 1955, Dean was discontented with Hollywood. He argued with George Stevens, and talked about directing. In comparing him with Beatty, we can wonder what Dean might have done. He might even, by now, have been a ghost or a prospect for presidential election, if he had survived the other risks of other highways. Splendor in the Grass: magnificent angst. Made only a few years after Dean's death, with his first director and the actress most identified with him, Splendor marked Warren Beatty as a natural successor. It's a period piece about kids who suffer their own insecurities as well as stupid parents. But it's actually a Natalie Wood picture as much because of Beatty's reticence as her brilliance. As a girl called Deanie, Wood is forever plunging herself into water to deny the fire burning inside her. It's a magnificent, hysterical performance.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
Am I imagining it, or was Dean being thought of for The Left-Handed gun? He looked more like Billy the Kid than either Paul Newman or Kris Kristofferson; and you can imagine Dean's slim hips so weighted down by six-guns that he's anxious to shoot off . What's more, Dean's myth is like Billy's"just a little boy trying to find himself," as Brando said of Dean. Although the real William Bonney was probably a psychopath, the movies treated the Kid as a victim of fate and misunderstanding, just as folklore made Dean a hero chopped down in his prime.Peckinpah never flinched from sad legend, and this film is really The Wild Bunch ruined by progress, with buddies hired to kill one another. It's one of the director's most touching pictures, with a gallery of Deaners sensitive guys dressing up like cowboys , acting tough. James Coburn, who emerged just after Dean's death and once had more dignity than MasterCard requires. There's also Kristofferson disappointed, hunched, mumbling and Bob Dylan, in his very first film, he shows the coolness of the real Kid, as plain as the promise. He does the best Dean act in the picture.
