Friday Man Babe - James Dean

1. Dean once said, “Being a good actor isn’t easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I’m done.”

2. While filming Rebel Without a Cause, Dean’s director, Nicholas Ray, 44, had an affair with his costar, Natalie Wood, who was 16. Also, Sal Mineo, a closet homosexual who played the role of John “Plato” Crawford, was hopelessly in love with Dean.

3. As a child, Dean would disassemble and then reassemble his bicycle over and over again.

4. Dean told more than one friend that he did not expect to live past 30. When discussing the risk involved in racing cars, he said: “What better way to die? It’s fast and clean and you go out in a blaze of glory.”

5. Dean was once suspended from high school for three days after attempting to throttle a heckler during one of his readings for an upcoming acting competition.

6. Before he was famous, Dean would sleep in his car if he couldn’t afford rent, and go on dates with gay men to get a free meal.

7. Dean died before the release of his most well-known film, Rebel Without a Cause.

8. While shooting Giant, Dean wore the same shirt for two weeks straight without washing it.

9. In high school, Dean was a champion pole vaulter.

10. The first Broadway show Dean starred in, See the Jaguar, closed after only six days.

11. At a Hollywood party, Dean once put an apple on his head and told an archer to shoot it off with his bow and arrow. The host, Joan Davis, put an end to the dare just before the archer released the string.

12. A few weeks before his death, Dean appeared in a short public announcement about road safety, where he said, “Take it easy driving. The life you save might be mine.”

13. Dean kept a copy of The Little Prince on his nightstand and frequently quoted from it.

14. Dean claimed his middle name, “Byron,” came from the Romantic Poet, Lord Byron.

15. For a time, Dean dated Liz Sheridan, an actor who later become well-known for her role as Helen Seinfeld, Jerry’s mother on Seinfeld.

16. George Stevens, director of Giant, preferred to shoot each scene from a variety of locations. He quickly grew frustrated with Dean’s unwillingness to deliver the same performance twice.

17. More men than women have claimed to have slept with Dean.

18. Growing up, Dean enjoyed imitating the voices of radio personalities, such as Jack Benny and Bob Hope.

19. As a child, Dean knocked out his front teeth in an barn accident and had them replaced with a dental bridge. As an adult, Dean liked to remove the bridge and place it in the bottom of different people’s drinking glasses as a prank.

20. Martin Sheen once said, “…there was a saying that Marlon Brando changed the way actors acted, James Dean changed the way people lived. I believe that.”