James Dean The World's Most Photographed

One chilly morning in February 1955, the actor James Dean set off

from Los Angeles for his home town of Fairmount, Indiana.

Travelling with him was photographer, Dennis Stock.

Dean was on the brink of stardom, and had agreed to take him on a nostalgic journey into his past.

Their intimate collaboration would result in some of the most revealing

and enduring photographs of James Dean ever taken.

But there was one shot that Stock felt was too dark and disturbing ever to be released.

An eerie premonition of his fate, it was a shot that Dean had set up himself.

Within seven months of the shoot, James Dean was dead, and this image would become his epitaph.

The first time James Dean had travelled from LA to Fairmount, Indiana, he was only nine years old.

The year was 1940, and the journey was to be one of the most traumatic events in his life.

His mother had just died of cancer.

And his father sent him 2,000 miles away to be raised by his aunt and uncle on their Indiana farm.

His father put him on the train

with his mother's coffin, and said,

"Take the body home and look after things", to a nine-year-old.

Well, that's a deeply traumatic experience.

The poor child was afraid that every time the train came to a stop,

they would have removed his mother's coffin

so he would jump down from the train and run to see that it was all right.

This is a memory at the age of nine that a child can never shake.

This insecure start in life awoke in Dean a fierce determination to make something of himself.

Acting would be the perfect outlet through which he would assume a new identity.

Later he would tell a friend, "I used to go to my mother's grave

"and cry, 'Why have you left me?', and that turned into, 'Mother, I hate you. I'm going to show you.

"'I'm going to be somebody.'"

He was very vulnerable.

But the determination to act was extraordinary from the very beginning.

It was so focused and so uncompromising.

There was never any thought of doing anything else.

Mom and Dad said several times that if Jimmy wanted to do something,

you might as well just let him do it,

because he was gonna do it one way or the other.

I believe he was nearsighted, he had to wear glasses all the time.

And he wasn't real tall, but he was very determined and had a lot of confidence in himself.

And of course his real interest was in acting.

Dean was an unlikely star in the making, but by the time he was 18,

the farm boy from Indiana had only one ambition - to escape his roots and become a movie star.

In the early 1950s, Dean headed for New York and The Actors Studio,

the only place to go if you wanted to become a serious actor.

Determined to stand out as an unconventional, new kind of star,

he immediately began the dramatic transformation of his image.

A series of promotional photos taken over a three year period

show just how consciously Dean changed his look.

They're absolutely incredible because the progression

from the pictures in '51,

where he kind of looks like this hazy farm boy -

very self conscious, very kind of stiff.

The next year he's kind of loosened up a bit, but he still looks slightly goofy.

By 1953, it's almost as if he had somehow moulded his own face.

I mean his face is entirely different - it's very focused,

it's very intense,

it exudes everything that, as an actor, he wanted to transmit.

Go on!

You're just like all the rest of 'em. You're all against me!

All of ya!

ALL OF YA!

In a series of early TV dramas, Dean perfected his new look

and set about developing the rebellious mannerisms that would become his signature.

-Put that gun down!

-He's got a gun!

-Come and get me!

-We can't take any more chances.

Let him have it!

Television was a new medium, looking for a kind of anti-hero type,

and James Dean was the perfect person for this

because he had a very volatile face and character,

and he could transmit things people hadn't seen in characters before.

"Yes, life in its every emotion leaps from the pages

"of John Steinbeck's best of all his best sellers."

Dean's big break came in early 1954 when director Elia Kazan,

who'd first spotted him at the Actors Studio,

cast him as the troubled adolescent, Cal, in East Of Eden.

Why don't you give Dad a chance?

Why don't you show him that you love him?

How?

Kazan rightly saw that here was the attractive, sensitive young man, who was tough and vulnerable,

not afraid to break down and cry, but not afraid to turn around and punch you in the nose.

In other words, it was a new kind of combination of the young American man.

As early preview screenings for "Eden" began to open

across Hollywood, word quickly spread about this exciting new talent.

And although not yet a full-blown star, Dean had set his sights on the biggest publicity coup possible -

to see his face on the cover of Life, the highest-profile, biggest-selling magazine in America.

James Dean was voraciously ambitious.

And although he was a rebel, he was also somebody who wanted to be mainstream.

He totally loved the movies, wanted to be a movie star,

and Life Magazine was where movie stars were showcased.

Dean knew he would need someone to help him get the high profile publicity he craved.

In February 1954, he met the photographer he thought could make it happen.

His name was Roy Schatt.

Roy Schatt was not just a photographer.

He was a friend and a teacher and a guru.

He was a very spontaneous photographer, never posed.

Roy liked to take pictures where one was relaxed

and the essence of the person came out.

There was something gritty and real about his work.

There was a spontaneity in the photographs, and that was impressive to Jim.

Schatt's Manhattan studio was a bohemian hang-out for musicians, artists and actors.

And it was here that Dean began a crash course in cutting-edge photography.

Often Roy would take the first picture, and Jim would then elaborate on it, in some way.

So it was all about exploration.

Jim was always impressed with the size of my mouth - the amount of teeth I had,

and we were taking pictures of all kinds,

and he wanted to get close and almost go into my mouth with the camera,

and I did something weird by opening my mouth extremely wide, and Jim snapped it.

They were spontaneous - on the spur of the moment.

For Dean, these sessions weren't just for fun.

His search for the picture that would get him the front cover of Life magazine

pushed him and Schatt to create some of the sexiest pictures of him ever taken.

They would become known as the "Torn Sweater" series,

and they would immortalize him as a new kind of Hollywood pin-up -

sensitive, but full of brooding menace.

James Dean's look in these "Torn Sweater",

with the head slightly turned and the hair just unkempt enough - the look says "Come on over here".

And the look also says "Don't come one step further,

"because I'm not available to you", and that's quite irresistible.

Dean was always kind of an ambiguous figure, sexually speaking.

Whereas huge stars, you know, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper - they were not people pushing you away.

They were people saying, "Hey, look, I'm gorgeous, I'm handsome,

"I'm available, I'm heterosexual, I'm pretty openly what I am".

Dean was delighted with the pictures,

but he and Schatt had pushed things too far for the editors of Life.

The photographs were rejected for being too brash and sexually charged.

But one way of making sure his photo did get into the celebrity movie pages

was for Dean to play along with the Hollywood press machine.

The studio wanted to have the fresh,

raw, ambiguous, slightly dangerous persona of James Dean.

But they wanted to tone it down and temper it

so that he would be acceptable to middle class American moviegoers.

Hence, James Dean, who was strictly T-shirt and jeans,

was forced to wear a dinner jacket,

and go to a movie premiere with an actress from the same studio,

also under contract, whom he met the previous day.

There's a photograph of James Dean and Terry Moore, who was a starlet,

and you can see Terry Moore is giving this typical, glamorous little smile for the press,

and he is looking like this sort of sullen werewolf character.

In fact, he's sort of pulling out of the frame. It's sort of like, "I don't belong in this movie."

In early 1955, Dean had a chance meeting at a Hollywood party with photographer Dennis Stock.

Dean and Stock were kindred spirits, part of a new generation determined

to challenge the superficial glamour of celebrity photography.

This was the partnership that Dean hoped would finally lead

to the photographic break he'd been searching for.

I had no idea who he was.

There was nothing of a star aura about him,

but we sat in a corner for at least an hour, talking, mostly about photography.

And at the end of the conversation,

Jimmy said, "I've got a new film coming out

"and there's a sneak screening over in Santa Monica.

Why don't you take a look at it?"

-Don't you ever touch her again.

-You're no good...

-And don't lie to me about trying to help!

I was totally, totally taken by his performance.

Jimmy just knocked me off my feet.

And so I said to him, "Could we talk further?

"Cos I think I'd really like to do a story on you."

He said fine, and we got together the following morning.

Stock quickly discovered that the one thing Dean loved more than acting and being photographed

was the thrill of driving at high speed.

He had his motorcycle, and he said "Get on the back", and I'd never been on a motorcycle.

So with great trepidation,

I wrapped my arms around his waist and I said

"If I go, you go."

And with that we took off and we raced up Laurel Canyon

and worked our way up to the hills.

And for five hours, we wrestled with the idea of a collaboration.

What I wanted to do really was an intimate coverage on who he was.

And that was, in a sense, very appealing to him.

Dean was even more delighted when Stock suggested selling the story to Life magazine.

In early February 1955, the pair set off on their photographic adventure.

First stop on their journey was Fairmount, Indiana,

the remote Midwestern town where Dean had grown up.

I had no idea what I was in for beyond

the generalities of we were going to live at a farmhouse in Indiana.

I wanted to show the incredible contrast that exists

when people become stars from where they once were.

Once back home, Dean chose to dress up in the old labourer's clothes he'd worn while working on the farm.

And as the shoot began, he immediately started to draw

on everything he had learned about photography.

One of the pleasures of working with Jimmy was that he was a very fine actor, so he had his own ideas

and I had mine, and it was like an actor with a director - you collaborate.

I would say "Why don't you stand next to that pig?"

and he would say OK, and then he would put his hat out and do what he did.

He was very good at miming and improvisation.

We were very very complementary to each other.

Tagging along behind them throughout their visit to Fairmount was Dean's young cousin, Markie.

I remember when Dennis and Jimmy came.

It was neat to have him home again and playing like he used to do.

Jimmy acted like an older brother in the presence of his young cousin, Markie.

He showed enormous sensitivity all the time that he was in Fairmount.

I'd gotten that little XK120 Jaguar for Christmas, and Jimmy,

he got down there on the floor with me and we took it apart and put it back together two or three times.

It certainly brings back a lot of memories.

Jimmy suggested we go to the cemetery in town,

and we came upon a gravestone that was "Cal Dean".

We were both fascinated by it, because the character that he played in "East of Eden" is called Cal.

And somehow or other, you start to wonder if people are destined.

JAMES DEAN: 'I play a character in the movie, East Of Eden...'

Throughout his stay at the farm, Dean was secretly recording his family on tape, for posterity.

Jimmy was interested in his ancestry

and he asked his grandpa Dean, "What kind of person was Cal?"

I think it was something that

he felt like knowing, those things, and having their voices on the tape,

brought them closer to him.

Dean had hoped this nostalgic return home would help him make peace with his roots.

But he made a more painful discovery.

His meteoric rise to fame had cut him off from his past.

These were pictures of a man who had gone home, only to find he was more alone than ever.

What I had concluded

near the end of our trip was that

Jimmy could never go home again,

that er...

this setting that had been very kind to him as a young man was no longer relevant to his life,

because he'd become a star.

I did this picture that I believe is

an illustration of the thought that you can't come home again,

where the tensions sort of pull, and the directions are in opposite.

And I had the good fortune that the dog then came up the path and turned away.

It's a very sad picture.

This was the last time Dean would ever see his home and family.

After saying his farewells, he and Stock headed for New York,

where the shoot would continue round the clock.

When we went to New York, life got more difficult.

He became a total insomniac...

..and it was hard to find him because he was roaming the streets

in the middle of the night and so appointments were missed.

But I got to know all his hangouts, so that if he didn't turn up

at a certain place at a certain time, I would just track him down.

In Manhattan, the pair continued to evolve a style that perfectly

reflected Dean's unconventional approach to life.

If you look across the photographs, the mix is kind of reportage and surreal.

He was very playful, and we ended up making a good amount of relatively funny pictures.

You capitalized on what you discovered at that moment.

One morning, hung over, with dark circles under his eyes, Dean met up

with Stock on Times Square, an old haunt from his early acting days.

Just as Stock pulled out his camera, it started to rain.

I shot exactly four frames in Times Square.

In the third frame, I sensed that I had it.

The result was the now legendary photograph, known as The Times Square Shot.

It would become one of the defining images of the young star

and a potent symbol for a troubled new generation.

It's astounding. It really is like a still from a movie.

It exudes all that sort of "Man alone in the universe",

the doomed poet, "Nobody understands me."

Times Square says to the world - crowds!

Busyness! Happiness!

Diversion, excitement, entertainment, nightlife, the city never sleeps.

And walking down the centre is a young, lonely man in a dark coat, looking out of place.

It's brilliant.

After four weeks on the road together, Dean and Stock headed back to LA.

When Stock handed his photographs to Life,

their unconventional approach was initially met with resistance.

The upper echelons of Life didn't like the pictures.

They found them too eccentric.

A guy with a pig or a guy sitting amongst cows?

Movie stars don't do what he did!

Dennis had an offbeat, novel approach - a way that when you

saw a picture of James Dean, you stopped and looked at it.

Stock would just sort of stand back and watch,

and let Dean do whatever he wanted, grab the pictures as they occurred.

And the thought was that those would be more profound and more revealing

than any kind of formal setup might be.

And, yeah, it's true.

That's where photography went, and that's where celebrity image-making went.

Life magazine finally grasped that Dean was a new kind of celebrity,

who called for a different editorial style.

They took a gamble, and agreed to go with the story.

On March 7th 1955, Stock's photo-essay

appeared in a three-page spread, under the title "Moody New Star."

Dean was now well on his way to conquering Hollywood,

but he would only have another six months to enjoy his success.

In that short space of time, he made the film

that would confirm his status as Hollywood's greatest teen rebel.

You're tearing me apart!

-What?

-You!

You say one thing, he says another and everybody changes back again!

He also found time to indulge his obsessive love of speed,

spending every available moment off set on the race track.

How fast will your car go?

In honest miles an hour, clocked, around about 106-7.

In the final days of shooting his last film, Giant, he made a road safety commercial.

Do you have any special advice for the young people who drive?

Take it easy driving. The life you might save might be mine!

It was the last time he would be captured on film.

On September 30th, 1955, Dean headed for a car race in Salinas, 350 miles north of Los Angeles.

This time, Dennis Stock would not be accompanying him on the journey.

Jimmy said to me, "Come with me this weekend.

"I'm going to race for the first time in a long time."

And I said, "Sure, I'd love to."

And a second later - till this day I have no idea why - I said, "Jimmy, I can't. I simply cannot."

And so he went off, and I had a very strong premonition that something was amiss.

-SPOKESMAN:

-'It occurred on US 466,

'at the intersection of 41,

'Friday, September 30th, 1955.'

Just hours after being given a ticket for speeding, Dean collided with another car.

He was killed instantly, his neck broken on impact.

The dead was James Byron Dean, DOA or Dead On Arrival at the hospital.

Even at the moment of his death, a photographer was on hand to record the scene.

Only 15 years after accompanying his mother's coffin on her final journey home,

James Dean's own body was transported across America from LA to Fairmount.

On October 8th, 1955, he was buried in the local cemetery.

It was one of the biggest funerals in the town's history.

With distraught fans hungry for any piece of the James Dean legend,

Stock's photographs were quickly elevated to the status of icons and published all over the world.

But there was one dark and disturbing image that Stock refused to publish.

At one point in Fairmount,

Jimmy asked me to follow him into a furniture shop, which was totally strange to me.

But anyway, I did it, and the next thing I know he makes a left turn and we end up in a room full of coffins.

And next moment - bingo, he's sitting in one.

And it spooked me at first.

I really didn't like it.

But I indulged him, and I kept photographing truly, truly infantile expressions

and I couldn't understand for the life of me what that was all about. But I waited it out,

and at the very end, he sat up,

and there was an expression that came over his face of being very lost.

Utterly lost.

Stock placed a strict embargo on these extraordinary images.

And kept them hidden from the world for over 30 years.

I didn't know that Jimmy Dean was going to die.

And I didn't realise that I was photographing what inevitably became a martyr.

So I've always had an ambivalence about the pictures in the coffin,

except for the one where he sits up and he really looks lost.

Because in my own mind,

the popularity of Dean all these many years is based on the fact that

the adolescent people of the world feel lost.

When James Dean set out with Dennis Stock on the road to Fairmount, he wanted to tell the story of

his life in a way that would portray him as a new kind of Hollywood hero.

But his tragic death would ensure that the shoot turned out to have even greater significance,

immortalising him as one of the 20th century's most enduring icons, it also became his epitaph.

Subtitles by BBC Broadcast 2005

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