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This DVD is essential viewing for all fans of James Dean, the androgynous rebel and perpetual adolescent, and for students of the post-war counter-culture that briefly infiltrated the American TV networks in the 1950s.
James Dean had a mesmeric screen persona yet he only made three films: East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. It's an interesting, but little known fact, that he polished his craft through his long apprenticeship in front of the camera, albeit on the small screen. Between his arrival in New York in 1951 and his departure for Hollywood two years later, Dean appeared in some forty TV shows.
David Loehr presents three of Dean's rare movies alongside other footage of Jimmy on screen including a Pepsi commercial, a Highway Safety advert, movie trailers, race footage and East of Eden out-takes (plus an audio interview). In all three films Dean displays his archetypal screen characteristics: misunderstood angst-ridden youth with shades of crazy mixed up psycho delinquent.
Something For An Empty Briefcase aired on the Campbell Sound Stage on July 17th, 1953 and features Dean as a small-time thief with Susan Douglas as the dancer who saves the sad, made, passionate, pathetic, earnest, whimsical, smart alecky Joe from a life of crime.
In The Unlightened Road, first shown on May 6th, 1955 and Jimmy's last role for TV, he plays a young innocent hitchhiker thrust into the corrupt adult world who narrowly escapes being the subject of a murder trial for a 'cop killing'. Pat Hardy plays his girlfriend.
I Am A Fool features James Dean and Natalie Wood co-starring in a tale of personality fabrication and lost love which aired on the General Electric Theatre on November 14th, 1954. Less than a year later on a two-lane highway near the town of Cholame, on the way to a race meeting, Dean died in a car crash on September 30th, 1955. James Dean, the anti-establishment hero, exhibitionist, provocateur and movie star was just 24.
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