James Dean: Little Boy Lost

Summary

He made only three movies—East of Eden, Rebel without a Cause, and Giant—and became an international icon after his tragic death at the age of twenty-four. He was James Dean, and no one has told the real story of the man, the actor, or the myth as fully, as powerfully, and as intimately as the authors of James Dean: Little Boy Lost. This is the book drawn from extensive interviews with Dean's friends and colleagues, many of whom speak out for the first time. It is the book written by one of Dean's confidants: noted celebrity biographer Joe Hyams.

Who was James Byron Dean? To his friends—fellow actors like Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Dennis Hopper, and Julie Harris—he was both generous and mean-spirited, solitary and social, macho and feminine, wise for his years and incorrigibly adolescent. To directors like Elia Kazan, Nicholas Ray, and George Stevens, he could be guilelessly open to suggestion one moment yet arrogant and impossible the next. Most of all, the compelling enigma known as James Dean lived life joyously, painfully, and without restraint, embodying like no one else the conflicts and passions that are part of young people everywhere.

This book follows its fascinating subject from the Indiana farm where he spent an active but troubled boyhood to the crucial, early training ground of the New York theater world to his meteoric rise to international stardom in the movies. It shows how postwar Hollywood was still a charmed, leisurely community, yet one ripe for the explosive ascension of a dynamic new presence like James Dean. It reveals details of the making of his three landmark films and candidly explores Dean's many love affairs, discussing with great insight the surprising truth about Dean's much-talked-about bisexuality. It exposes, as only an insider's book can, the true story of Dean and actress Pier Angeli—his one real love—and the shocking outcome of their liaison. James Dean: Little Boy Lost is the definitive story of a stunning young talent who lived too fast and died far too soon but whose memory will live on as long as the youth of the world dare to hope, love, and dream.