{"id":9318,"date":"2021-10-19T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9318"},"modified":"2022-01-13T08:32:37","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T13:32:37","slug":"james-deans-home-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9318","title":{"rendered":"Touring James Dean’s Home Town"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Taking a trip to central Indiana? Consider a detour to the two-stoplight town of Fairmount, Indiana, boyhood home of actor James Dean. Maybe he\u2019s not the household name he was fifty or sixty years ago, but even younger generations know about\u2014or through the magic of video streaming\u2014have seen the three movies where he had a leading role: East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, <\/em>and Giant<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was near the end of the Giant<\/em> filming that he had the car crash that killed him at age 24. Filming of Giant <\/em>was still under way when Dean died, which devastated his co-star and friend, Elizabeth Taylor, a year younger than he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fairmount hasn\u2019t forgotten him. When we visited in mid-September, the town was gearing up for the annual James Dean festival. Although he graduated from high school in Fairmount, he soon relocated to California attended Santa Monica City College and UCLA, majoring in theater, then to New York and the Actors Studio. The James Dean Gallery (a private museum in town) shows clips from the several dozen live television dramas where he had small parts. He also appeared on Broadway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A certain amount of mythology grows up around someone who dies so young, so tragically, and many people believe he wrecked his car by driving way too fast. Not exactly true. Late afternoon, Friday, September 30, 1955, he was driving his new rear-engine Porsche Spyder to a race to be held the next day. In the car with him was his mechanic. Yes, he was driving about ten miles over the speed limit, but who hasn\u2019t? A 1950 Ford Custom Coupe in the approaching lane turned left just in front of him. Dean was killed. The mechanic was thrown clear and survived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sedans in those days were not the aluminum and plastic vehicles we have today. Steel, baby. One and a half tons of it. Engine in the front, of course. The Porsche never had a chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can visit the Gallery, see the farm where he grew up, the cemetery where he\u2019s buried, and other modest sites, all in and around Fairmount, 70 miles north of Indianapolis. Take the country roads. One reason we went is because James Dean is my sixth cousin, with our common ancestors being our 5th<\/sup> great-grandfather. I had the list of intervening generations with me and asked the historian at the museum whether it looked right to him. \u201cThose are all familiar names,\u201d he said. A certified genealogist wouldn\u2019t be satisfied, but I am!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Taking a trip to central Indiana? Consider a detour to the two-stoplight town of Fairmount, Indiana, boyhood home of actor James Dean. Maybe he\u2019s not the household name he was fifty or sixty years ago, but even younger generations know … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"James Dean's Home Town - where they keep alive the memory of their hometown hero and his tragic death. ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,56,266,57,35,104,78],"tags":[1925,1923],"class_list":["post-9318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-film","category-history","category-movies","category-real-life","category-the-morgue","category-travel","tag-fairmount-indiana","tag-james-dean"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2qi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9322,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9318\/revisions\/9322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}