I was never particularly a James Dean fan until I researched him for an article in 2012 and read the note he wrote as he left for the trip on which, as it turned out, he died. It was instructions for feeding his cat. For the first time, I really saw his tender beauty; my heart broke and my tears flowed 57 years after his death.
Clearly a mega-star, James Dean may not seem to fit here. But beyond his three break-out movies, you probably know that he did a lot of television in the early days and appeared with some of the most prolific of supporting players. I invite you to read about the annual September celebration of James Dean in his hometown of Fairmount, Indiana in a post I made to HubPages. The details are from the 2012 festival but the event has a basic annual structure and there are links to the 2015 updates. (There’s still time to plan a late September road trip to Fairmount!)
And there’s always time to catch Dean’s television performances amongst some of TV’s most familiar faces such as the omnipresent William Schallert; serious brunette Catherine McLeod; the stoic, weathered Vaughn Taylor; mousy, demure Virginia Vincent, and many more on the 2009 2-disc collection James Dean: The Fast Lane. Rentable from Netflix.
~ FW