THE REBEL OF THE '50S

REDISCOVERING JAMES DEAN

Being retired and stuck in a cruel Toronto winter that does not seem to end, I have been spending my leisure time watching movies, movies and more movies from my DVD collection.I collect these timeless gems from the '50s and '60s ever since I arrived in Toronto.. I have classified them roughly into War Classics, Westerns, costume/swashbucling pictures,sci-fi, drama, musicals, film noir ( gangster movies ) and a few ones which does not fit into any of the above categories.
This piece is about my three favorite movies,a trilogy of James Dean films: EAST OF EDEN, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and GIANT.
When these mvoies were first shown I was still a high school student in Asingan, Pangasinan. I never heard of James Dean until I heard Rudy Dumapias ( who also introduced 2001:Space Odyssey to me ) talk about him (JD) in one of our gab sessions.
Luckily for Rudy, his dad at that time was still working in the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila thus he frequently visited the "Big Apple" of the Philippines. That is how I remember Manila then and now.
So Rudy had the chance of watching good movies the first time they were shown in the first run theatres of Manila. The rest of his friends ( me and a few other country yokels ) went to Manila just once in a blue moon. Which is not very frequent. Can you remember the moon turning blue at one time? Some of us can only go to Urdaneta or Dagupan for our weekend movie forays. Urdaneta was not still a city then.
So Rudy talked about James Dean in his usual glowing rhetoric. Rudy is born with the gift of gab.He praised Jimmy Dean for his acting skills in all of his three movies. Thus I soon developed the yen to watch his movies. But where, when? It won't happen until a few more years when I will soon be a College student in Manila.
I first saw EAST OF EDEN in a campus auditorium in the University of the East. But I read the book first, a long novel written by American writer John Steinbeck. Then I was able to find REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE in one of those cheap movie houses in the city. You know one of those with no air conditioning and no cushioned seats. There were only wooden chairs with many bedbugs hiding in the cracks. The moment you sit down, you will feel the suckers start gnawing some parts of your ass. Some of them might come home with you when you go back to your boarding house. But I did not mind then, as long as I was able watch REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. Luckily I was already in Manila when GIANT premiered at the Avenue Theatre in Avenida Rizal. I saw it with some family members,. Somebody have to buy my entrance ticket.In real person, James Dean, was an introverted, taciturn, moody, hard to get along with, and these traits were carried over to his roles in all three movies. It was not easy to work with him ( said some writers ) but it sure is a treat watching do his roles in the screen. He always portrayed the troubled, unsettled teen ager.
In EAST OF EDEN he was always jealous of his brother whom his dad loved so dearly because the brother was an epitome of goodness and obedience. Jimmy on the other hand was rebellious, hates authority, hates religion: your typical teenager, just like many ( me included ) when we were in that stage of life.
In REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, he was the only child, but his psychological problems are rooted in his hatred for his dad's personality: a henpecked, dominated husband. Jimmy was not able to live with that. Similar to Elvis Presley's role in KING CREOLE.
In GIANT ( which refers to the Lone Star State of Texas ) he played a poor farm boy who became an oil millionaire. Money did not make him happy because his emotional insecurities dogged him to the end of the 3 hour epic when he was already old and still unmarried. According to some sources, Texans hated the book penned by Edna Ferber because of how she portrayed deresively the Mexicans who were abound in the state.
But the movie made by George Stevens changed all of that. He did a masterful job of creating a long but gripping movie of how the Texas oil industry grew and he portrayed in a good light all of the social classes in the movie struggling to find their proper place in society. Rock Hudson was such a bigot in the start of the movie, but in the end, his attitude changed. He and wife Elizabeth Taylor were baby sitting two of their grandchildren just before the end titles rolled in. Both children were half Mexicans. According to some movie writersThe movie GIANT became the National film of Texas,
A few days ater finishing his job in GIANT, Jimmy Dean was killed in an automobile accident. He was only 24 years old---#