Warren Beath at the East of Eden Location 1969

Dean Lit: A Cultural Re-Evaluation

By Paul Waters

A year or so after the thirtieth anniversary of James Dean's death in a car crash at Cholame, California, first time writer, Warren Newton Beath, published his groundbreaking landmark work on that legendary accident of long ago, titled The Death of James Dean; and the eerie, labyrinthine genre of the California Death trip was born. Actually, it had existed in scattered, desparate pockets of the devoted obsessed since the year Dean was killed, but this vastly important work shook many people up. Some of them had a negative reaction-those being the staunchly conservative nostalgia hardliners who excommunicated Beath from a Dean fan club prior to the book's publication, and then aligned themselves behind an Indiana museum curator who circulated a campaign to halt the publication of Beath's writing debut. However, there were still others, some of them old friends of Dean, who were greatly impressed by the obvious mountains moved by Beath in his quest to compile and finally tell, not only the story of James Dean's last days and violent death, but also the sad and chilling aftermaths of inquests into the accident, the subsequent cover-up; to say nothing of the author's vivid and engrossing scenarios of idol worship  and social intrique surrounding the die-hard fans who have enshrined the life and death of Dean. The episode of the petition to stop Beath's book was only one bizarre and extreme reaction among hundreds connected to Dean's memory, a brilliant young actor who had a massive impact on Hollywood and the entire world with his tortured, sensitive and world-weary portrayals of misunderstood post-war youth.

I was a single, 23-year old outcast and renegade rockabilly singer from Lubbock, Texas, who had relocated to Iowa to pursue my dream of being a musician, when I saw an ad for the Death of James Dean in a memorabilia list newsletter from a Hollywood bookstore. The same year, 1986, I had found out about a Dean club called We Remember Dean International and joined...Not long afterward, I remember writing to the club president, asking if she knew about the new book on Dean that purported to focus on his death. She quickly responded by sending a photocopy of a scathingly negative review for Beath's book, herself adding that the article "says it all". Not to be deterred by the effort to steer me away from learning all I could on Dean, I sent for the book anyway. I had become entirely focused on the life of Dean; the word obsessed wouldn't begin to cover how deeply I was affected by his image, the story of his meteoric career, the subtle brilliance of his screen portrayals, and last, but not least, what had happened to him in the final days of September, 1955.

It was two years earlier, 1984, that Jimmy Dean, that deathless, mercurial, "Hollywood Grotesque", as Warren recently described him to me, took hold of my imagination in a darkened college campus theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was there, in the sweltering, dysfunctional and lost summer of '84 that I saw Dean's three magnificient roles on the big screen.....and my life has never been the same since.

In myriad different ways it launched me on an emotional journey, a searing odyssey and desparate search for all things Dean, especially what went into the making of his roles, as was related to Jimmy's real life and emotional plight, how he funneled all manner of personal unrest from his chaotic inner life into those film characters .

But I'd have to say my obsession had more to do with how Dean created his image, how absolutely perfect it was (and to this day), and how, in those first few years of fan idolatry, I HAD to look and dress as much like the man himself as possible. I have to smile about that now, thinking back on the fastidiousness and frantic attention to detail I had back then, never realizing until years later that the most important message Jimmy could impart to any young person or anyone else, is to appreciate and be oneself, as long as you're not hurting or otherwise violating and other person in the process.

In the winter of 1986, I watched anxiously for the mail carrier in the days after I rushed out a postal money order, from the  Moline, Illinois post office, to Hollywood for my copy of Warren's epic and unprecedented story of Dean's fateful sayonara. I was spellbound by the dust jacket when it finally came; its stark blue and green lettering over a grainy black and white brooding shot of Dean in black leather, the back cover having what I would later learn was one of the final close-up shots of Dean in the speeding Porsche, with the dark-haired German mechanic, Rolf Wuetherich, by his side. For a long time I couldn't help but linger over the rare police photos, diagrams of the accident, the grim photocopy of Dean's final traffic ticket, doing 65 in a 55mph zone, and featuring the miss-spelling of his middle name "Bryron" (it was "Byron"). The reading of this gut-wrenching tour through the shadow world of lost souls reaching and grasping for anything close to Dean, and in particular, his death, as well as the minute-by-minute detailing of Jimmy's final drive was spine-tingling, disturbing, to say the least, but I couldn't help but identify with Beath's Howard character in all his troubled and vulnerable attributes. The Dean experience seemed , to have opened up a channel to this young guy's heart lighting a fire in his mind and sending him on a personal journey to find out who Dean really was, how his tragically short life played out and the real truth behind what happened in those terrifying and blistering final minutes at the infamous intersection of highway's 466 and 41. The saddest thing of the whole story, for me at least, was the feeling of horror that must have gripped Donald Turnupseed, James Dean, Rolf Wuetherich and the few witnesses, as Dean and Turnupseed each made a last desparate decision...both of which were wrong. One man paid with his life, the other's life was forever altered and haunted by the accident, while the third, the physically shattered Wuetherich, would live out his remaining years in constant pain, mental anguish, in and out of psychiatric wards, to die in a car crash in Germany in 1981. However, it would turn out that Warren Beath was only getting started with his myth-shattering and sensitive tale of how a brilliant talent died and a legend was born. The desolate and wistful tale would be given a darker, more startling and scintillating aura, some nine years after Warren Beath published his original tome on James Dean's Death. By 1995 I figured I had taken my Dean research and study as far as anyone could, that there probably wasn't anything new or provocative to uncover, that the American equivalent of King Tuttankamen's tomb had finally yielded up all of its precious scerets and dark tales of transient, doomed youth. However, nothing could have prepared me for the frightening complexity and demented nature of the inner Dean, the miasma of myth-making, idol-worship and the lengths to which human nature will go to achieve or bestow hero-status and the perpetuation of a godhead. Beath's vastly underrated and mostly overlooked Who Killed James Dean? came out in paperback in 1995. My late Dean friend, Larry Freel, knew I was one of the more hard-core Dean readers around and immediately picked me up a copy of the sinister-looking little book with the Tor horror publishing logo, and the haunted cover painting of Jimmy Dean in red jacket, walking down the middle of a two-lane highway, smoking a cigarette under an eerie full moon.

 As if the Death of James Dean hadn't shook me up enough, Warren's compellingly layered tale, with its deceptive "Note to Reader" about being "a work of fiction...although inspired from real life...", cut a white hot swath through my imagination, adding many more facets to Dean's life and death than what I ever dreamed existed. In short, to use a well worn cliche, it was impossible to put this dark little book down and accomplish anything else for several days. This harrowing tale of Hollywood, James Dean and the occult is engrossing and by far surpasses the depth and grit of the earlier Dean work. It's understandable that Warren had to protect himself with legalese on the flyleaf and in the detailed Author's Note at the end, what with the wailing maelstrom of detractors, in Dean circles, who attempted to quash his first foray into James Dean literature. Some twelve years later I have lost count of the number of times I have read Who Killed James Dean? In reality, it did take several trips through it to get a clear picture of the shifting time frame, how the setting changes with each chapter, from 1955 to 1995 and back again, which was difficult to navigate at first. In fact there were times in which I read only the 1955 era chapters, in sequence to get more of a focus on what are probably the most important aspects: those directly involving Dean and other historical characters and scenarios such as the sophisticated and debonair Rogers Brackett and the flamboyant and eccentric Rev. James DeWeerd, both key figures in the real life of Jimmy, and much maligned over the decades, what with revelations about possible sexual relations between DeWeerd and Dean; Brackett's role, on the other hand, was uncovered and explained long ago by Dean biographer, Ronald Martinetti, in his focused and dilligent 1975 book, The James Dean Story. In 1995 Val Holley skillfully navigated the controversial Dean and Brackett connection again, offering irrefutable proof of Brackett's importance in the tragectory of Jimmy's career.

It has only been in the last few years that other writers and fans have stepped up to the plate and offer other attempts at capturing all there is to know and study in the last hours and demise of James Dean. Probably the only other credible and dedicated Dean scholar to publish something on par with Beath's modest, but powerful work, is Lee Raskin, a noted racing enthusiast, Porsche owner and historian, with his beautiful coffee table hardback, James Dean :At Speed. Raskin's excellent and insightful book is a true work of art in which he poured 's his heart and soul, and together with Beath's incredible works on Dean, the die-hard fan will be hard pressed to find anything further that accomplishes so much, covers so much fascinating ground and contributes as much on James Dean's passion for cars and bikes and the poignant, disturbing story of how his dizzying quest for the absolute sent him hurtling inevitably, to a premature death and immortaity.

I had never written a fan letter to anyone until sometime around 1999 or 2001, when I re-read Who Killed James Dean? and felt compelled to try and contact Warren Beath. That letter pretty much opened the floodgates of correspondance, not only with Beath, Holley, Raskin and most of all, Dean friend and biographer John Gilmore, but also started me on the path of possibly doing some writing of my own. Initially, after I had written to Warren, he contacted me by phone saying how much he appreciated my enthusiastic letter about his Dean offerings. Then he asked me if I'd like to contribute something to a Dean encyclopedia he was planning on compiling items for, explaining it would be all things relating to the more bizarre , macabre and occult aspects of Dean's life, death and image. I was flattered, but ultimately declined as the only thing I could think of in that specific genre was a 1989 isssue of the National Enquirer, with the pulp-like sensationalized headline "Rock Hudson Murdered James Dean." Eventually, the book that would take shape and come to be published in 2005 was James Dean In Death: A popular Encyclopedia of a Celebrity Phenomenon, a fantastic collection of entries pertaining to all things Dean, with special focus on his accident and death and the dark culture it has spawned. With this book, Warren was assisted by Paula Wheeldon. As a result of my subsequent recontacting Beath via the website, I was honored to be invited to contribute something to it in the form of lengthy two-part interviews with my favorite Dean authors, John Gilmore and Val Holley. This has led to writing projects with the former, including an in-depth interview with Gilmore about his memoir of Marilyn Monroe and, most exciting and challenging of all, Gilmore asking me to write his biogarphy, literally my dream project that already promises to be richly rewarding and a big challenge as well. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Warren and Paula for the Dean site interview opportunities...many, many, thanks to you both for your offer of space on the site, and to Warren for putting me in touch with Gilmore in the first place. Let me extend my most sincere apologies for being so distracted and slow in finally contributing the interview I did with Warren.

There has been talk some time back about one more book on Dean by Beath. This would be sort of a grand finale capstone to all things Dean and the accident, as researched and experienced by Beath, a huge undertaking, hopefully yielding a big, lavishly illustrated coffee table book, surpassing all that Beath and some others, have set down thus far on James Dean's final days and death. Let us die-hard, devoted Deanophiles hope and pray the Warren, and whom ever assists him in this dream of the ultimate James Dean life/career/accident/death and subsequent death cult book will come to fruition and be biographical and a cultural masterpiece, which will completely over-shadow the stilted and publisher-cheated 'James Dean in Death' book. Warren has spent far too many years with this story to let "James Dean In Death" be the final installment of his efforts toward canonization of the immortal "Little Bastard"

PW