James Dean

A fully illustrated biography, including never-before-published photographs, of the archetypal screen icon who lived fast and died young

 

This official account is a detailed, chronological biography of Dean, fully illustrated with color and black-and-white images from classic movies, family archives, and private collections. Scattered throughout the book are special, self-contained feature pages that explore aspects of his life and times: his passion for cars, his films, America in the 1950s, and the famous black-and-white Dennis Stock photographs. The book contains more than 30 photographs and memorabilia never published before, with a narrative text giving the full account of his life and uncovering new details, all supported by a selection of both family and famous photographs and letters. Following Dean from the poor Quaker community of Fairmount, Indiana, via short-lived happiness with his parents in California, to the trauma of his mother's death, we see Dean enter the world of acting from drama school to the turning point in his career: the audition for his starring role in East of Eden. We go behind the scenes to see Dean the Hollywood Rebel and a new style-icon. The final chapter looks at his death and the aftermath—the legend of James Dean, who transformed our idea of what movie stardom could be.

George Perry, former film editor of The Sunday Times and past president of the London Critics' Circle, is an author, journalist, and broadcaster. He has produced over thirty books, many on film subjects such as The Great British Picture Show and Forever Ealing, and definitive studies of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, The Complete Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard; From Movie to Musical, as well as biographies of Rupert Bear, Monty Python, Miss Bluebell and James Dean.