Who Is James Byron Dean's Life And Accomplishments

On the night of February 8th, 1931, James Byron Dean was born in Marion, Indiana. He lived in Fairmount, Indiana before finally settling down in California. In California, James was able to further his acting career. He is best known for his role as Caleb Trask in East of Eden, Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause, and Jett Rink in Giant. James received a posthumous Oscar nomination for East of Eden, and his final film, Giant, was released posthumously. His role as Jim Stark, an emotionally tortured teen, in Rebel Without A Cause created him into the embodiment of his generation. On September 30th, 1955, at the age of 24, James died in a car accident, but after he quickly became an abided film icon whose influence on society still exists today.

In 1950, James landed a spot in Macbeth, UCLA’s first theatrical production. James managed to get the role a Malcolm, one of leads. Later that year he achieved his first professional job in a commercial for Coca-Cola through a fellow classmate, James Bellulah. The commercial was filmed in Griffin Park, which was also where Rebel Without A Cause was filmed, another movie James had a big role in, three years later. According to David Dalton’s book James Dean The Mutant King, he states that “the reason Jimmy had been chosen for the commercial was because the Coke people were looking for all-American teenagers. Little did they know that Jimmy was the teenage boy and that his face would become as classical an American image as the Coke bottle itself.”(Dalton 65) The name and face of James Dean would be well known throughout America, just like the Coke

James worked hard for what he wanted and made it happen. The American character through James was the idea of never giving up and going after what you want. His innocence made him mysterious. This mysteriousness was what made him the one to watch on television. He also had a sense rebellion and upheld the idea of rebelling against societal norms. James marched to the beat of his own drummer by ignoring what everyone else had to say and sticking to his American