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This blog bit series is dedicated to three persons:
1: My Ma ('East Of Eden'), who first made me aware of James Dean.
2: My great friend and publicity photographer, Kelly "Andy" Anderson ('Rebel Without A Cause'), who committed suicide in 1986.
3: My great friend and professional acting buddy, Marty "Party" Brumer ('Giant'), who was killed by a car thief in Los Angeles in 1989.
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Yes, it's time once again for Battle Of The Bands (BOTB).
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Alright, let's get on it. Let's get ON this thing!...
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Bottom Line first: This is going to be a James Dean 'Battle Of The Bands' series which will take me up to December 1st and my traditional Christmas contest.
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I am using my four favorite songs which mention "James Dean" in the lyrics. But I didn't want to force all y'all to listen to all four songs at once, so I'm going to do a Round 1 and a Round 2, and then have a final Championship Round 3 between the two winners of Rounds 1 & 2. ALL votes and voters (whether we know each other or not) will be appreciated, as always - the more the merrier!
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Why James Dean? Can you think of a better actor to feature in BOTB?
No. You can't! Martin Sheen said that [link>, "[James Dean] was the greatest actor who ever lived. He was simply a genius." It's probably the ONLY thing Martin Sheen ever said that I agree with. Dean was the most inventive actor I've ever seen, and he brought all kinds of marvelous touches to his characters that were NOT written in the screenplays.
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My Ma was a major movie fan, and when I was 17 years old and she realized that I was very serious about trying to create an acting career for myself, she told me about James Dean. Dean and my Ma were both born in 1931, so when Dean died in an automobile crash on September 30, 1955, he and my Ma were both 24 years old. Ma told me that she was heartbroken when she heard of his death. James Dean starred in only 3 movies, and all 3 of those movies were on my Ma's 'Top 25 Movies' list when she passed away in 2005.
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During this 6-Part series (3 Battles & 3 Battle Results posts over the next three months), I am going to yak quite a bit about what I thought of James Dean's acting ability, what he meant to me as a wannabe actor, and where his inspiration and my passion took me in Hollyweird. If you're not interested in any of that, feel free to bypass all of my bibbidi-bobbidi-boo and go straight to the songs and cast your BOTB Botes in the comment sections below.
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Ma told me about James Dean when I was still in 12th grade at Santa Monica High School. Santa Monica High School was also known as "Samohi" (and also known as "Dawson High" - but more about that later).
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I was in the Theatre Arts Department. My only friend in the Theatre Dept. was [link> Marty Brumer, and as far as I could tell, we were perhaps also the only heterosexuals in the Dept. It wasn't until the last couple of months in my senior year in high school that I felt anyone in the Theatre Dept. even noticed me. Suddenly, with graduation only months away, it seemed that some of the most popular people in Theatre recognized that I had some acting talent. Nevertheless, at the Theatre Arts Department's year-end party, the only awards I won were for "Shyest" and "Best Body" (...because I was a high school wrestler). Those weren't exactly the awards that one would expect to go together: When had the "Best Body" ever been the "Shyest", also?
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After my Samohi graduation, I enrolled in Theatre at Santa Monica College (SMC). On the first day of class, the instructor told us which plays we would be analyzing that semester and, disgusted, I dropped out of SMC after that first day. I had spent 3 years analyzing plays in high school; I felt it was now time to learn how to *really* "Act".
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I had gotten hired by 'Central Casting' so, by day, I worked on Television, Movie, and Commercial sets, doing "Background" (or "Extra") work in Hollywood; by night, I attended professional acting classes in L.A. I told my acting buddy, Marty, about the professional classes I was taking and he quickly joined me. Years later, he thanked me for pointing him toward professional classes, as he felt they had been instrumental in turning him into a true professional actor in Hollywood.
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Circa 1978, I had read some things about James Dean in a couple books before I ever even saw him perform. I became aware that The Fox retro-movie theatre in Venice ("the ghetto by the sea") was going to be playing Disney's 'Lady & The Tramp' (1955) and 'East Of Eden' (1955), so I made it a point to attend the showing.
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Just in the first five minutes of 'East Of Eden', I was already blown away by James Dean's ability! It definitely exceeded, by far, my expectations! That very slight, little nervous tug he gives on his sweater as he's silently passing between the rough fishermen in an unpaved alley in Monterey -- THAT was *ALL* I needed to see in order to know that I was observing a genuine master at his craft!! That slight, nervous little tug on his sweater (blink and you miss it) was HUGE! Not one Hollywood actor in ten thousand would have conceived of that miniscule gesture, but to anyone who understood great acting, it was an unmistakable sign of a genius performer! ...Blink and you miss it, but his greatness was illustrated and foretold right there in that tiny tug, which clearly showed that James Dean had indeed BECOME his character, Cal Trask, nervously passing between rowdy fishermen while surreptitiously following an elderly woman through the streets of Monterey, California.
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Here's the tiny tug of nervousness which revealed SO MUCH! :
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I knew right then, in 1978 at the Fox Venice Theatre, that even before I'd been born, "the bar" had already been "set too high" for me to attain. I would never stupidly try to pretend that I was going to be "the next James Dean"; I would be satisfied if I could just be the genuine, authentic "me".
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For $35., I purchased a first edition copy of William Bast's 'James Dean', the very first biography about Dean, which sold for .35 cents when it was published in 1956. Below is a picture of that book which still sits on one of my bookshelves, surrounded by other books which illustrate the fact that, over time, I did indeed find my "genuine, authentic self" - unconventional as I may be:
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It should come as no surprise that good [link> James Dean fan clubs still exist around the world to this very day:
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Life can be surprising. I felt fairly confident that I was going to make it big in Hollywood, because at that time, there weren't many performers like me, and I honestly felt that Hollywood *needed* an actor like myself. Back then, my biggest competitor for roles in Hollywood was probably Kristy McNichol, and I was pretty sure I could beat her. :^D
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This is the first 8x10 publicity photo I used to promote my ill-fated acting career:
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My great friend "Andy" Anderson took the picture for me in late 1977 or early '78 in the alley behind Star Liquor store, across the street from Dogtown's now-famous [link> 'Zephyr Surf Shop' at the corner of Bay & Main streets. For nearly 20 years, I kept a small copy of that photo in my wallet to show to barbers, so they'd see how I wanted my hair cut.
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One day in the late 1990s, I sat down in a female barber's chair, showed her the photo and said, "Please cut my hair to look like this, as much as possible." This dark-haired, dark-eyed, smokin'-hot woman in her mid-twenties said, "Wow! Who is THAT?!!" And the disappointment in her voice was readily apparent when I said, "That's me" and she replied, "Really?!" I knew then, in that moment, that if I'd truly ever had "it", "it" was definitely gone at that point. No matter, as I'd already called it quits on the acting gig. By 1985, I had really begun to feel comfortable in my own skin, and thus the desire to "pretend to be other characters" had left me. I was already enough of a "character" when I was just being "me".
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For very valid reasons, James Dean has become an iconic American symbol and has been mentioned or alluded to in dozens of songs, including postmodern songs by Pop Tarts such as Madonna, Taylor Swift, and Lady GagGag. However, I won't be using their songs in this series because I know a couple of you shameless punks (who shall remain nameless as well as shameless, but you KNOW who you are) would vote for them just to make me mad. Punks! (Warning: Any illegal votes cast for Madonna, Swift, or GagGag will automatically be assigned to Phyllis Diller. Punks!!)
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Here are your two song options for voting in this first installment of the 'James Dean BOTB Series'. Please vote for your preference between these two songs, regardless of the James Dean aspect to them:
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'ROCK ON' by David Essex (1974)
[link> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDnRY0QkVio
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'AMERICAN PIE' by Don McLean (1971)
[link> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhX3b1h7GQw
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In future installments of this series, I will tell you about my first trip in 1980 to Fairmount, Indiana, James Dean's hometown. I'll also be relating some of my experiences on the set of the TV series 'M*A*S*H', which I appeared in almost weekly for the final five of its eleven seasons (1978-1983). More importantly, I once prominently appeared in a movie scene with "Jessica Rabbit" - but that's a story for another 'Battle Of The Bands' series.
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Please vote in the comment section below and then return to this blog on Sept. 8th (or so) to find out which of these two songs triumphed in Round 1 of 'Battle Of The Bands - The James Dean Series', and which song will be meeting the winner of Round 2 scheduled for October 1st.
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Me in downtown Los Angeles (circa 1982 or '83), photo by Pooh:
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
