Being James Dean

James Dean’s death in a car crash at age 24 immortalized him as a cultural icon of youthful rebellion. His few screen performances captured haunting pain with unprecedented intimacy; now, on the 60th anniversary of Dean’s death, celebrated biographer Paul Alexander delves into the sources of that pain in Dean’s life: his mother’s death, his father’s absence, and his own turbulent sexuality.
Dean’s relationships with women were infamous. His relationships with men—first broached publicly in Alexander’s internationally bestselling biography Boulevard of Broken Dreams—remain hotly debated. This portrait uncovers new evidence on Dean’s sexuality, including reports from the people who knew him, and will also detail for the first time in the US the relationship Dean had with legendary actress Geraldine Page.
James Dean’s electric performances played a fundamental role in changing the direction of contemporary acting. Where did that pain, that vulnerability, come from? What was it like for the young man behind the myth?