Product Description

A comprehensive biography of James Dean draws on more than one hundred interviews and covers such areas as Dean's early life and training on stage and television, as well as the self-destructive streak that culminated in his early death.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #459824 in Books
• Published on: 1995-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 324 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This September marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Dean in a racing accident, and with this anecdotal biography, his fans will have plenty of fresh fodder to chew. Born in 1931, Dean was nine when his mother died, and he was brought up by relatives in Indiana. After graduating from high school, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, which was advanced when he became sexually involved with an adman/director who introduced him to influential people in New York City. A bisexual, Dean used sex to promote his career by boating with a producer who cast him in the lead role in the Broadway-bound See the Jaguar. The book heavily concentrates on Dean's Manhattan years (groupies will have a field day visiting the myriad addresses where he lived) and gives a blow-by-blow description of almost every one of Dean's acting jobs, his years at the Actors Studio and his relationships with such actors as Arthur Kennedy, Martin Landau, Julie Harris and Betsy Palmer. Holley recounts Dean's manipulative friction with Raymond Massey in East of Eden; the confrontations with director George Stevens on the Giant set; and how studio head Jack Warner ended Dean's romance with actress Pier Angeli. Freelance writer Holley has produced a meticulously documented work that dissects Dean's personality as never before. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Published on the 40th anniversary of James Dean's death, Holley's biography admirably avoids buying into the mythos that has grown around Dean over the years, instead presenting a fascinating description of a flawed human being. Holley draws on diverse sources, many of them previously unavailable, to create a candid and fully realized portrait of this most enigmatic of actors. Dean was a shy, deeply insecure man who never recovered from the early loss of his mother. Charismatic, ambitious, and astoundingly gifted, Dean was also notoriously moody and difficult, his desperate need for affection and attention often manifesting itself in contradictory, ultimately self-destructive behavior. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, this is a worthy addition to the growing body of literature surrounding an actor whose life achieved mythic proportions as a result of his untimely death. Recommended for all types of libraries.?Cynthia Ward Cooper, Carrolton Libs., Tex.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
On September 30, 1955, en route to a car race in Salinas, James Dean, in a Porche Spyder, crashed head-on with a Ford and died instantly; he was 24 years old. This year he will have been dead 40 years; Holley's biography is the most definitive biography yet written, and it is quite interesting without being sensational. Holley does take off into flights of verbosity at times, but his general style is so forthcoming that his work gains in credibility, albeit slowly, as the very first chapter, "A James Dean Primer," is too breathless, dazzling readers with his subject's legendary achievements and controversies. But then the pace slows, and Holley begins building his portrait with fine use of the 100 or so interviews with people who have never before spoken on record. His presentation of Dean's career in New York onstage is surprising in that for most people his image is filmic. But, like Brando, he worked well on the stage, gained notoriety, and became a member of the Actors Studio. Holley reveals that Dean's television work was extensive and continued after he became a Hollywood star. It seemed before that James Dean came from nowhere, a total myth, who in the last 18 months of his life acted in three films--East of Eden, Rebel without a Cause, and Giant, and only East of Eden had been released when he crashed. Now it's different; an icon has human dimensions. Bonnie Smothers

Customer Reviews

A humane and absorbing biography
Val Holley has written a humane and absorbing biography of an American icon who has curiously resisted demystification. The fact is that James Dean has inspired more movies than he actually made in his brief lifetime. The standard course of celebrity demystification is to strip away falsehoods and half-truths, leaving nothing of interest to remain. In contrast, Holley's work reveals Dean as a young human being--in most respects, a typical American youth--and altogether more sympathetic and interesting than the myths that have spiraled around him. Holley's book is made authoritative by exhaustive research, new information, and his easy familiarity with his subject. Happily, his scrupulous detail never hampers the narrative flow, and the book is a quick read. While there is much to praise, I must single out the chapters describing Dean's New York years and his early work in television, because this information is so new and so much more revealing of Dean's inner life and potential than the facts of his more celebrated Hollywood career. Here the reader comes into close contact with a young man struggling to overcome a troubled childhood and restricted education to express an immense talent of which he was only marginally aware. The uncertainty, loneliness and self-doubts he felt at this point of his life make him one of us all. What makes him stand out is the courage he summoned to keep on going. The fact that two things were happening--Dean's talent was suddenly and sensationally realized while his personal struggles still continued--when his life was catastrophically cut short makes his story a genuine tragedy, not a maudlin melodrama. And we can finally understand the fascination he's exercised over successive, changing generations. Likewise, it is Holley's sure and sensitive grasp of these aspects of Dean's story that makes his book far more interesting and valuable than the hagiographies that have preceded it. This is a thorough, humane portrait and a first-rate biography.

The Definitive Dean Biography
Val Holley's James Dean, The Biography is just that...THE biography! This is a wonderful book, utterly enjoyable and the most factual and well-researched of all the Dean biographies. Holley has sought out sources which other biographers have passed over and his recounting of Dean's life, through the stories of those who knew him, gives us an intimate, riveting picture of Dean as he must have been: sometimes likable, often impossible, but always original and completely fascinating. Other enjoyable aspects of this book are that Holley found interesting new insights into Dean's enigmatic character and that Holley doesn't blink when taking issue with other biographers. You can feel the enthusiasm in Holley's work and his recounting of Dean's NY years is spellbinding. While the author's knowledge of his subject is encyclopedic, the book is never pedantic, truly an accomplishment in a biography of this size and depth. This book is a MUST read whether you are a Dean fan or not, and the standard by which other Dean biographies should be judged.

A Fascinating, Close-Up Account
I found Holley's "James Dean: The Biography" a fascinating book, or rather, books: it's simultaneously a thorough and original Hollywood biography; an intriguing New York theater and TV history; and a sophisticated contribution to gay studies. Holley's frame is close-up: drawing on extensive research, he skillfully narrates the daily and weekly events of Dean's life, and punctuates the story with testimony - derived principally from interviews, letters, and journalism -- from Dean's companions and co-workers. Moreover, Holley lets the sources speak in their own voices; they paint a varied, truly convincing, first-hand portrait of Dean. Reading the book gave me a powerfully authentic experience of Dean's life. By keeping the story-line close to daily events, Holley conveys the evolution of Dean's complex personality over time. By allowing a wide range of first-hand sources (gay and straight folks; women and men; lay persons and artists; friends, lovers, and colleagues) to speak for themselves, Holley creates a nuanced portrait of the enigmatic actor. "James Dean: the Biography" seems to have something for every kind of reader: Dean's movie fans will relish the detailed accounts of Dean's Hollywood life; theater and TV history buffs will marvel at the vivid depiction of theatrical New York in the 40s and 50s, and will value the extensive TV and stage credits; gay studies scholars will find rich factual evidence of Dean's homosexual social life, and of the crucial role gay patrons like Rogers Brackett played in Dean's rise to stardom. I think Holley's book exemplifies one vital function of gay historical scholarship: letting rich oral history inform authoritative published accounts of gay life and culture. "James Dean: The Biography" testifies with abundant evidence and great subtlety that Dean's homosexual life and relationships lay at the heart of his career and his extraordinary personality.