You can often spot James Dean’s grave on a quiet hill in Park Cemetery by the cars parked nearby.
Thousands of people visit the site each year, even though it has been 40 years since the Hollywood star’s death.
The Fairmount Historical Museum, one of the town’s two museums with collections of Dean memorabilia, routinely records visitors from Canada, Germany, England, Japan, Australia and other countries.
One reason people come from all over the world can be found in the James Dean Gallery, which displays row after row of foreign movie posters and magazines with Dean’s likeness on the cover.
The gallery claims to have the world’s largest collection of Dean memorabilia, including thousands of items from the collection of Dean archivist David Loehr.
The collection fills seven rooms in the gallery, and includes clothing worn in his films, high-school yearbooks, and hundreds of tribute and novelty items that have been produced since Dean’s death, such as plates, mugs, busts, puzzles and collectible cards.
Not far away is the old Fairmount High School, closed since 1969 and showing evidence of vandalism. Dean was proficient at high-school sports (Fairmount teams had a limited pool from which to draw; Dean’s sophomore class included only 65 people). He loved drawing and painting in art classes, and developed an interest in drums.
It was here that as a 7th-grader, Dean approached Adeline Mart Nall, known locally as “Fairmount’s Speech Teacher” and “Coach,” for help with a speech he wanted to give.
She remained his speech coach through his senior year in 1949, when Dean won the Indiana State Forensic title and placed sixth in the national finals at Longmont, Colo.
Up the road from the James Dean Gallery, about a mile past the cemetery, is the 300-acre Winslow farm, handed down from the area’s first settler, Joseph Winslow, where Dean spent much of his childhood.
When Dean was 5, his father, a dental technician working for the federal government, was transferred to a Veterans Hospital in California. Four years later, Dean’s mother died of cancer and the family decided it would be best if he returned to Indiana to live with an aunt and uncle, Marcus and Ortense Winslow, and cousin Joan on their farm north of Fairmount.
The farm is private, but visitors stop there at times and occasionally a family member will come out and chat about Dean.
“Now, this was a real farm I was on,” Dean once told Hedda Hopper. “I worked like crazy-as long as someone was watching me. The 40 acres of oats was a huge stage, and when the audience left, I took a nap . . .”
Actually, Dean was best known around Fairmount for his antics on a Czech motorcycle Marcus gave him. He rode the motorcycle everywhere, bouncing through farm fields and careening through Fairmount’s lanes countless times during summer days. One of his tricks was to lie flat on his abdomen while going 50 miles an hour-adding to the number of eyeglasses the Winslows were constantly replacing.
“If he had only fallen once, things might have been different,” Marcus Winslow told Val Holley, author of “James Dean: Tribute to a Rebel.”
“Trouble is, he never got hurt and he never found anything he couldn’t do well almost the first time he tried it. Just one fall off the bike and maybe he’d have been afraid of speed, but he was without fear.”
Dean’s Czech bike is on display in the Fairmount Historical Museum, along with his Triumph motorcycle, which was tracked down through serial numbers and restored by the James Dean Foundation. The museum also has a collection of Dean memorabilia, including photographs and original drawings.
Dean’s tombstone, decorated with kisses, was stolen twice in 1983, but has been returned. It was replaced in 1985 because of damage.
A ’50s dance and other activities attract a small crowd in early February to honor Dean’s birthday-Feb. 8, 1931. (The event was held last weekend.)
There is also a Rebel Rockabilly festival (this year June 16-18) with about a dozen ’50s bands.
Bigger crowds, sometimes estimated at 20,000 or more, attend the annual Fairmount Museum Days Festival the last weekend in September, dedicated to Dean and other Fairmount notables (Sept. 22-24 this year). And there is a memorial service on Sept. 30.
The September festival includes daily screenings of Dean’s movies-“East of Eden,” “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant”-and an antique car show, the James Dean Memorial 10-K Run, and James Dean rock lasso, look-alike, and ’50s dance contests.
For moviegoers, Dean seemed to burst into their lives as a star and into their consciousness as a new teenage hero when “East of Eden” opened in 1954, but for Dean it was the culmination of years of hard work.
After graduation from Fairmount High School in 1945, he studied drama at the University of California at Los Angeles for two years. He landed a few bit parts in movies and seemed to be going nowhere when one of his teachers suggested he try New York.
There he found work in television, and eventually became known as one of its most promising young actors, appearing in TV shows including Studio One and Kraft Theater.
His first Broadway role was in “See The Jaguar” with Arthur Kennedy and Constance Ford. Later, as a blackmailing Arab in “The Immoralist,” he won the Daniel Blum award as the most promising newcomer in 1954-and a movie contract with Elia Kazan for “East of Eden.” (Kazan had originally cast Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift in the lead roles, but put the movie on hold because of Clift’s bickering.)
“East of Eden,” a Cain and Abel allegory released in 1955, touched a nerve with teenagers who clearly understood Dean’s portrayal of a son who challenged his father’s values rather than follow them. His performance won an Academy Award nomination, and a following he never lost.
Dean solidified his hold on teenagers and increased his popularity with the general public with “Rebel Without a Cause,” a glorified B movie released in 1955.
Only one of Dean’s movies, “East of Eden,” was released during his lifetime, but his future looked bright in the last week of September 1955.
He had signed with NBC for a television epic to be filmed in October, and Warner was getting ready to shoot his next film, “Somebody Up There likes Me” (Paul Newman inherited the role), and had agreed to six more films over the next nine years.
Warner was nervous about Dean’s love for auto racing and had forbidden him from racing while shooting films, but Dean had a new Porsche 550 Spyder and planned to enter races in Salinas, Calif., shortly after “Giant” was finished.
“At around 5 p.m. on Sept. 30, 1955,” according to the Fairmount Museum, “James Dean, after having received a speeding ticket earlier, traveled down Hwy. 466 where he would run into a black Plymouth limousine driven by a 23-year-old student, Donald Turnupsede.
“Dean’s last words were reported to be, `He’s gotta stop, he’s gotta see us.’ “
Dean had chosen to drive to Salinas to break in the engine in his new car, and it was estimated later that he had been averaging about 80 miles per hour for about three hours before the crash. Dean was trapped in the car, and according to medical evidence, died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
His passenger, Rolf Weutherich, a film stunt man and mechanic at the Porsche dealership who was to ride in the race with Dean, was thrown 19 feet from the car and suffered a broken left hip and shattered jaw. He required six months to heal. Turnupsede had only minor injuries.
Where Dean lives on
The Fairmount Historical Museum, 203 E. Washington St., is open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays March through November. Suggested donation $1. Call 317-948-4555.
The James Dean Gallery, 425 N. Main St., is open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (9 a.m. to 6 p.m. June to October) except Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Admission is $3. Call 317-948-3326.
