Happy Birthday, James Dean

Today is James Dean's birthday.
He would have been 75 today.

"Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die today."--James Dean

Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause

Rebel Without a Cause in Entertainment Weekly

The February 10, 2006, Special Oscar Issue of Entertainment Weekly includes a piece by Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause co-author Lawrence Frascella called "Rebel Rousers: Ten Things You Didn't Know About Rebel Without a Cause." Here are just a few of the things we learned while writing the book, which he writes about in the piece and which we discuss in Live Fast, Die Young:

1. The 43-year-old director sleeps with his teenage star.
2. The studio balks at an onscreen kiss between James Dean and Sal Mineo.
3. Wild rehearsals lead to a mini-gang war.
4. Dr. Seuss takes a crack at the Rebel script.
5. Dean disappears on the first day of shooting.
6. The on-screen knife fight draws real blood.
7. Dean's classic red jacket was a last-minute inspiration.
8. An angry Dennis Hopper is stripped of his dialogue.
9. Wood was replaced by an extra in Rebel's most famous scene.
10. Jimmy Olsen is propositioned by Dean.

Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean, Nicholas Ray, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Film, Movies, Books, Oscars, Academy Awards, Entertainment Weekly

Moss Mabry 1918-2006

We were very saddened to learn that Rebel Without a Cause costume designer Moss Mabry has passed away. In Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause we reveal for the first time that according to Mabry he designed the legendary red jacket that James Dean wore in the film. Although other sources claim that the jacket had other origins, no one apparently had ever interviewed him about it before. "Even though the jacket looked simple, it wasn't," he told us. Mabry made three of them. He also told us that years later, while working on the film Continental Divide with John Belushi, Belushi ordered him to fly back to Hollywood and make three more red jackets just like James Dean's, one for him and two for each of his bodyguards.

Although Mabry was nominated for four Academy Awards, he never got credit for what may have been his most famous design until we talked to him for our book. Mabry also told us about a special bra he designed for Natalie Wood, which became known as the "Natalie Wood bra," though he declined to reveal the secret of its design. After Rebel Mabry worked on Giant, earning his first Academy Award nomination. Although we are very sad about his passing, we are happy we gave him the opportunity to tell his story, especially about the red jacket. Here is his obituary from The Los Angeles Times:

Moss Mabry, 87; Costume Designer Was Nominated for 4 Academy Awards

By Dennis McLellan, Times Staff Writer

Moss Mabry, an Academy Award-nominated costume designer whose credits include "Giant," "Rebel Without a Cause" and "The Way We Were," has died. He was 87.

Mabry, a former West Hollywood resident who retired two decades ago to Vista in San Diego County, died Wednesday at a hospital in nearby Oceanside after a long illness that included respiratory and heart problems, said longtime friend Gary More.

In a career that spanned more than 80 films between 1953 and 1988, Mabry worked with such stars as Lana Turner, Grace Kelly, Goldie Hawn and Liza Minnelli, as well as leading men such as Marlon Brando, John Wayne, Dean Martin and Robert Redford.

"I was really so sorry to hear about Moss because he was such a dear, sweet man," Doris Day said in a statement to The Times on Thursday. "He designed my clothes on many of my films, and we always had laughs and a great time working together."

Mabry earned four Academy Award nominations -- for "Giant" (with colleague Marjorie Best), "What a Way to Go!" (with Edith Head), "Morituri" and "The Way We Were" (with Dorothy Jeakins).

Among his other film credits are "The Bad Seed," "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962 version), "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," "Move Over, Darling," "Cactus Flower,"

"Butterflies Are Free," "King Kong" (1976 version), "The Shootist," "Continental Divide" and "The Toy."

"He was a totally delightful, witty and tremendously energetic personality,"
former Times movie reviewer Kevin Thomas said Thursday. "I always felt that as a designer, he had tremendous flair and imagination. And when it called for glamour, he could really deliver."

Mabry often said that his most difficult assignment was designing the clothes for Elizabeth Taylor in "Giant," the sprawling, Texas-set 1956 epic that also starred Rock Hudson and James Dean.

"The script called for 42 [clothing] changes, starting in 1924 and coming up to 1954," he once said in an interview. "George Stevens, the director, did not want to show any dates on the screen but let the clothes and hairstyles show the passing of time.

"It goes without saying, Miss Taylor's beauty is almost impossible to disguise under the worst clothes, and styles in 1924 though 1930 were pretty bad, but careful planning and her magic won me an Academy Award nomination."

Mabry said wardrobe tests can be "discouraging" because they are the first time the producer and director have seen the clothes, and "from the sketch to the real thing can come as a shock or a pleasant surprise," he said.

When he dressed Kelly for the first time -- for wardrobe tests for Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" -- it was a more than pleasant surprise.

"She 'sold' those clothes like I didn't dream possible, and it was actually difficult to decide which ones she should wear in the film," he said. "Miss Kelly knows exactly how to stand, how to sit and how to walk, and you have no idea how these three things can 'make' or 'kill' a beautiful dress."

What may be Mabry's most famous piece of costumery was more mundane than
glamorous: the red jacket worn by Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause."

Although one source reportedly claimed that an inexpensive red jacket was bought at a Hollywood men's store for use in the 1955 film, Mabry told Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel -- the authors of the recent book "Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making 'Rebel Without a Cause' " -- that he made three of the jackets from a bolt of red nylon and painstakingly worked on the size of the collar and the placement of the pockets.

"Even though the jacket looked simple," Mabry said, "it wasn't."

Born in Marianna, Fla., in 1918, Mabry earned a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Florida and began his professional life as an engineer.

But he had designed costumes and built scenery for high school plays, and his interest in clothing design lured him from a job with the Florida State Highway Department to Hollywood.

After attending the Chouinard Art Institute, he worked for renowned designer Don Loper for three years. That, in turn, led to his signing a contract with Warner Bros.

Mabry advised young people aspiring to a designing career to "find out all you can about fabrics, silk, taffeta, chiffon, how they wear, how they drape, etc. Then get a job with a manufacturer downtown; get exposed to the making of clothes."

A memorial service for Mabry, who had no immediate survivors, will be held at 11 a.m. Feb. 18 at Buena Vista Baptist Church, 145 Hannalei Drive, Vista.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-mabry27jan27,1,3011544.story

Moss Mabry, Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean, Natalie Wood, Film, Movies, Movie, Fashion

Editor's Choice: New York Times

Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause has been listed as an Editor's Choice by the New York Times.

Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean, Nicholas Ray, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Film, Movies, Books, New York Times

Shelley Winters Has Died

Shelley Winters, one of the most unique talents in the movies, has died. Winters was a friend and lover of Nicholas Ray and in Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause we tell the story of how she and Marilyn Monroe ended up one night in a game of chicken with James Dean. Here is an excerpt from her New York Times obituary:

Shelley Winters, Tough-Talking Oscar Winner in 'Anne Frank' and 'Patch of Blue,' Dies

Shelley Winters, who once described her life as a "rocky road out of the Brooklyn ghetto to one New York apartment, two Oscars, three California houses, four hit plays, five Impressionist paintings, six mink coats and 99 films," died yesterday. She was 83, although some sources says she was 85.

Ms. Winters died of heart failure at the Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills, her publicist, Dale Olson, said. She had been hospitalized in October after suffering a heart attack.

A major movie presence for more than five decades, Shelley Winters turned herself from a self-described "dumb blond bombshell" in B pictures to a widely respected actress who was nominated four times for Academy Awards.

Her first Oscar, for best supporting actress, was for her performance in "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1959) as the middle-age Mrs. Van Daan, one of eight Dutch Jews hiding from the Nazis in an attic.

She won again for best supporting actress as the vicious mother of a blind girl in "A Patch of Blue" (1965).

After a series of bit parts, Ms. Winters received her first big break as the waitress who was strangled by Ronald Colman's jealous actor in "A Double Life" in 1947.

Four years later, she dyed her hair brown, rubbed the polish off her fingernails, and convinced the director George Stevens that she could play the mousy factory girl who was made pregnant and then drowned by Montgomery Clift so that he could marry the rich Elizabeth Taylor in "A Place in the Sun." She was nominated for an Academy Award as best actress for that performance.

Tough-talking and oozing sex appeal, Ms. Winters was blowzy, vulgar and often pathetically vulnerable in her early films. In movie after movie, she played working-class women who were violently discarded by men who had used them.

Read the rest of the obituary here.

Shelley Winters, Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Nicholas Ray, Film, Movies, Books

New York Times Book Review of "Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause"

New York Times Book Review
January 8, 2006
By Stephanie Zacharek

Nicholas Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) is often considered a movie of symbols, all of them keyed to our feelings, and memories of youth as well as to our never-resolved disappointments: James Dean stands for youthful rebellion; Natalie Wood for the seemingly disparate appetites for wildness and tenderness; and Sal Mineo for the unpredictability, and the danger, of sexual desire. Sometimes it's easier, to grapple with what characters mean than with what they do.

But reducing "Rebel Without a Cause" to symbols only undermines its enduring vitality. It is really a movie of gestures, as Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel grasp in their lively and intelligent "Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making 'Rebel Without a Cause.'"

When James Dean's Jim Stark returns home, exhausted and troubled, from a game of chicken that has killed one of his classmates, the first thing he does is go to the refrigerator for a drink of milk. He holds the bottle to his forehead, then to his cheek, a movement so smooth and simple you almost miss how elemental it is. Frascella and Weisel trace this small moment to an improvisatory session between Ray and Dean, in which Ray challenged the young actor to find a way to cut to the scene's essence. "It was a startling yet entirely natural move," Frascella and Weisel write. "It possessed an electric charge that carried directly into the film, where it would read as completely true to the sensibility of the milk-fed American teen, caught between maturity and childhood."

So many making-of books seem like deadly procedurals, with the authors stuffing in tons of minutiae just to show how much research they've done; whatever affection they feel for their subject gets buried under all the paperwork. But "Live Fast, Die Young" reads as if Frascella and Weisel took a good look at the movie in front of them and simply asked how and why. That's the reason we learn the story of the milk bottle, as well as the several theories about the origin of the red jacket Dean wears so memorably in the film. Although one source claims the jacket was bought on the cheap at a Hollywood men's store, the movie's costume designer, Moss Mabry, says he made three of the jackets from a bolt of red nylon, carefully working out the size of the collar and the placement of the pockets. "Even though the jacket looked simple," he explains, "it wasn't."

The apparent simplicity of that jacket sums up the difficulties Ray faced in creating what might have been, in less capable hands, just a throwaway teenage melodrama. Frascella and Weisel suggest that Ray was probably motivated to make "Rebel" at least partly by his strained relationship with Tony, his own son from his first marriage.

At 13, Tony slept with Gloria Grahame, then Ray's wife. But the charismatic, temperamental Ray wasn't above scandalous behavior himself: he began an affair with the young Natalie Wood in 1954, when she was 16 and he was 43. Almost immediately after she took up with Ray, Wood also started sleeping with Dennis Hopper, whom Ray had just cast in "Rebel." When Ray learned of Wood's infidelity, months later, he punished Hopper by giving nearly all his lines to another character. (Even so, Hopper reconciled with Ray many years later, getting him a teaching job when he really needed work.)

But the director's truest love affair, though not a carnal one, may have been with Dean himself. The most fascinating sections of "Live Fast, Die Young" deal with Ray's relationship with his mercurial, seductive, frustrating star, a cosmically gifted performer prone to self-indulgence and erratic behavior. Immediately after meeting Dean (who had just completed "East of Eden" with Ray's mentor, Elia Kazan), Ray knew he wanted him for "Rebel." But the courtship wasn't quick or easy. "We sniffed each other out, like a couple of Siamese cats," Ray said. And even after Dean signed on to the film, the tension between actor and director never dissipated.

Although Dean is rightly considered one of the greatest Method actors, he often abused some of the Method's tenets. Dean was injured by one of his fellow actors, Corey Allen, after insisting that real switchblades be used in the movie's knife-fight scene. When Ray instinctively stopped the camera, Dean was furious: "Can't you see this is a real moment? Don't you ever cut a scene while I'm having a real moment!" Dean would sometimes curl into a fetal position before beginning a scene, or keep the other actors waiting as he holed up in his dressing room, preparing. "What the hell does he think he's doing?" one crew member grumbled. "Even Garbo never got away with that."

Had Dean lived longer, his obsessiveness might have become unbearable to his peers and everyone else. But he left so few perforamances behind - and such great ones - that we can allow him a few indulgences. In "Live Fast, Die Young," Corey Allen explains how Dean helped redefine Hollywood's idea of masculinity: "These days, we talk about vulnerability very easily, partially because of people like Dean who were willing to put it on the line." On the set, Dean may have gotten away with indulgences that wouldn't have been granted to any other actor. Then again, not even Garbo was James Dean.

Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean, Nicholas Ray, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Film, Movies, Books, New York Times

Philip Potempa in New Times

Philip Potempa mentions Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause in his Offbeat column in New Times:

"Our own East Chicago claim-to-fame actress Betsy Palmer, 79, has finally opened up to discuss her dating days and relationship with the legendary James Dean. "Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of the Making of Rebel Without a Cause" (2005 Simon & Schuster $24.95), by authors Lawrence Franscella and Al Weisel, includes some VERY detailed interviews with Palmer."

All Time Rebel Interview

Hydie Cheung has just posted an interview with Al Weisel, co-author of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, on her website All Time Rebel. You can see the interview here: http://www.geocities.com/alltimerebel/ft_weisel.htm

Rebel Without a Cause Christmas

Go here for a Rebel Without a Cause Christmas.

Hollywood Reporter on Live Fast, Die Young

In his review of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause in the Hollywood Reporter, Gregory McNamee writes: "Leafing through the opening of "Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making 'Rebel Without a Cause' " -- Us Magazine veterans Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel's book on the making of Ray's greatest film -- you'd be forgiven for thinking it tabloid gossip, full of sex and sorrow, embarrassment and embitterment. Yet, though there are plenty of steamy tales to follow, their book is an eminently serious, revealing look behind the scenes at a film that seemed ill-fated long before it opened. . . . At once gossipy and scholarly, this book is the most detailed look at its making that we have, and those who admire Nicholas Ray's creation will find much of value in it." You can read the entire review here. The review has also been picked up by Reuters.

Amazon Listmania

Several Listmania lists on Amazon include the book Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause. Here are some of them:

Best Books About Movies and Filmmaking

The Frank DeCaro Show Recommends: Books

Gay Hollywood History

James Dean

Rebel, Rebel: Remembering James Dean

Rebels

Read Books cited in Live Fast, Die Young

Rebel Without a Cause Production Timeline

If you want to see when every major scene in Rebel Without a Cause was actually shot go to this Rebel Without a Cause Production Timeline recently posted by the authors of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause.

David Dylan Thomas Interview and Review

David Dylan Thomas has posted an interview with the authors of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause and also a review of the book, which he calls "the definitive story of the making of a classic."

Boston Globe on Rebel Without a Cause

Chris Fujiwara has written a very nice piece on Rebel Without a Cause for the October 30, 2005 edition of the Boston Globe. ''Rebel"'s impact was so strong that it actually changed the society its protagonists found so dissatisfying," he writes. "In their compulsively readable, just-published ''Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause" (Touchstone), authors Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel make the bold assertion that the film 'invented the teenager.'" You can read the rest of the piece here:

http://www.insanemute.com/content/rebel.htm

Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause Excerpt

Here is an excerpt from the first chapter of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause:


Chapter One: Birth of a Rebel
In the early 1950s, director Nicholas Ray was a regular at the classic Saturday night parties thrown by actress Betsy Blair and her husband, Gene Kelly -- the kind of exclusive Hollywood soirees that would find Judy Garland singing at the piano, Leonard Bernstein playing charades or Greta Garbo sitting casually on the edge of the Kellys' kitchen sink. Blair remembers the tall, handsome, seductive Ray with great fondness. "He was always lively and iconoclastic and full of serious opinions," says Blair, who calls him "a Melville hero" for the way he chased dream projects and battled against the confines of the studio system. Blair knew Ray to be a compulsive womanizer, gambler and drinker, although "never a sloppy drunk." But one night in July 1951, after their weekly party broke up, Blair and Kelly looked out their front window and encountered a bizarre sight.

"There was a little slope in front of our house," says Blair, "and I remember Nick leaving and instead of getting into his car, he sank onto the grass, just sort of lying there. I was ready to go out and get him. But Gene said, 'Let's see if he gets up again.' And so we waited, fifteen to twenty minutes. I think Nick was actually planning to lie there all night. Eventually, we did go out and get him." Like everyone else in Hollywood, the Kellys knew that Ray had just filed for divorce from his second wife, the quintessential film noir blonde, Gloria Grahame, after a stormy three-year marriage, but they had no idea what precipitated the separation. "We didn't know in the beginning what had happened," says Blair, "just that they were fighting and breaking up and that he was desperate. And then, when I found out, it was hard to believe." The real story behind the breakup was shocking even by Hollywood standards.

Earlier that summer, everything seemed to be going well for Ray. In June 1951, he signed a lucrative contract with RKO Pictures, negotiated by his powerful new agents at MCA, making him RKO head Howard Hughes's right-hand man. That year, with the red-baiting McCarthy hearings getting under way in Washington and the Rosenbergs on trial in New York, having a protector like Hughes gave Ray -- who had a history of leftist affiliations -- a security and stability he rarely felt in his peripatetic career. Hughes kept him busy that summer doing uncredited patch-up work on such potential RKO disasters as The Racket and Josef von Sternberg's Macao.

One afternoon late in June, Tony, Ray's thirteen-year-old son from his first marriage to journalist Jean Evans, unexpectedly appeared on the doorstep of the Malibu beach house Ray was renting next door to his close friend, producer John Houseman. On vacation from military school, Tony had made the three-thousand-mile journey from New York all by himself, without telling anyone he was coming. Ray was not home when Tony showed up, so Grahame, who had met Ray's son only once, when he was ten years old, invited him inside. When Ray arrived home later that afternoon, he walked into the bedroom and stumbled on a sight almost too outrageous to believe. . . . Read more here

Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean, Nicholas Ray, Gloria Grahame, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Film, Movies, Books, Movie, Book

Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause

Welcome to the blog for the book Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause.