Dean James Popular Books
Dean James Biography & Facts
James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was an American actor with a career that lasted five years. His roles typified teenage disillusionment and social estrangement of his time. He had several uncredited roles from 1951 to 1953 before starring as a rebellious son attempting to win his father's approval in East of Eden (1955). In Rebel Without a Cause (1955), he portrayed a teenager struggling to make sense of his emotions, who feels frustrated with his family and social life. His last lead role was playing a Texan rancher who discovered oil and became rich, in Giant (1956). Dean died in a car crash in 1955. He became the only actor to receive two posthumous Academy Award acting nominations, being nominated in the Best Actor category for East of Eden and Giant. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him the 18th best male movie star of Golden Age Hollywood in the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list. Dean's film roles, fashion, and manners became celebrated in popular culture and influenced the development of rock and roll in the 1950s and 1960s. Early life and education Dean was born on February 8, 1931, in Marion, Indiana, the only child of Mildred Marie Wilson and Winton Dean. He claimed that his mother was partly Native American, and that his father belonged to a "line of original settlers that could be traced back to the Mayflower". Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, Dean moved with his family to Santa Monica, California. He was enrolled at Brentwood Public School in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, but transferred soon afterward to the McKinley Elementary School. The family spent several years there, and by all accounts, Dean was very close to his mother. According to Michael DeAngelis, she was "the only person capable of understanding him". In 1938, Dean's mother was suddenly struck with acute stomach pain and quickly began to lose weight. She died of uterine cancer when Dean was nine years old. Unable to care for his son, Dean's father sent him to live with his aunt and uncle, Ortense and Marcus Winslow, on their farm in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was raised in their Quaker household. Dean's father served in World War II and later remarried. In his adolescence, Dean sought the counsel and friendship of a local Methodist pastor, the Rev. James DeWeerd, who seems to have had a formative influence upon Dean, especially upon his future interests in bullfighting, car racing, and theater. According to Billy J. Harbin, Dean had "an intimate relationship with his pastor, which began in his senior year of high school and endured for many years". An alleged sexual relationship was suggested in Paul Alexander's 1994 book Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean. In 2011, it was reported that Dean once confided in Elizabeth Taylor that he was sexually abused by a minister approximately two years after his mother's death. Other reports on Dean's life also suggest that he was sexually abused by DeWeerd either as a child or as a late teenager. Dean's overall performance in school was exceptional and he was a popular student. He played on the baseball and varsity basketball teams, studied drama, and competed in public speaking through the Indiana High School Forensic Association. After graduating from Fairmount High School in May 1949, he moved back to California with his dog, Max, to live with his father and stepmother. Dean enrolled in Santa Monica College and majored in pre-law. He transferred to University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for one semester and changed his major to drama, which resulted in estrangement from his father. He pledged the Sigma Nu fraternity but was never initiated. While at UCLA, Dean was picked from a group of 350 actors to portray Malcolm in Macbeth. At that time, he also began acting in James Whitmore's workshop. In January 1951, he dropped out of UCLA to pursue a full-time career as an actor. Acting career Early career Dean's debut television appearance was in a Pepsi commercial. He quit college to act full-time and was cast in his first speaking part, as John the Apostle in Hill Number One, an Easter television special dramatizing the Resurrection of Jesus. Dean worked at the widely filmed Iverson Movie Ranch in the Chatsworth area of Los Angeles during production of the program, for which a replica of the tomb of Jesus was built on location at the ranch. Dean subsequently obtained three walk-on roles in movies: as a soldier in Fixed Bayonets! (1951), a boxing cornerman in Sailor Beware (1952), and a youth in Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952). While struggling to gain roles in Hollywood, Dean also worked as a parking lot attendant at CBS Studios, during which time he met Rogers Brackett, a radio director for an advertising agency, who offered him professional help and guidance in his chosen career, as well as a place to stay. Brackett opened doors for Dean and helped him land his first starring role on Broadway in See the Jaguar. In July 1951, Dean appeared on Alias Jane Doe, which was produced by Brackett. In October 1951, following the encouragement of actor James Whitmore and the advice of his mentor Rogers Brackett, Dean moved to New York City. There, he worked as a stunt tester for the game show Beat the Clock, but was subsequently fired for allegedly performing the tasks too quickly. He also appeared in episodes of several CBS television series, The Web, Studio One, and Lux Video Theatre, before gaining admission to the Actors Studio to study method acting under Lee Strasberg. In 1952, he had a nonspeaking bit part as a pressman in the movie Deadline – U.S.A., starring Humphrey Bogart. Proud of these accomplishments, Dean referred to the Actors Studio in a 1952 letter to his family as "the greatest school of the theater. It houses great people like Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Arthur Kennedy, Mildred Dunnock, Eli Wallach... Very few get into it ... It is the best thing that can happen to an actor. I am one of the youngest to belong." There, he was classmates and close friends with Carroll Baker, alongside whom he would eventually star in Giant (1956). Dean's career picked up and he performed in further episodes of such early 1950s television shows as Kraft Television Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, The United States Steel Hour, Danger, and General Electric Theater. One early role, for the CBS series Omnibus in the episode "Glory in the Flower", saw Dean portraying the type of disaffected youth he would later portray in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). This summer 1953 program featured the song "Crazy Man, Crazy", one of the first dramatic TV programs to feature rock and roll. Positive reviews for Dean's 1954 theatrical role as Bachir, a pandering homosexual North African houseboy, in an adaptation of André Gide's book The Immoralist (1902), led to calls from Hollywood. During the production of The Immoralist, Dean had an af.... Discover the Dean James popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Dean James books.
Best Seller Dean James Books of 2024
-
Rise the Dark
Michael KorytaRise the dark. These were the last words written in Lauren Novak's notebook before she was murdered in a strange Florida village. They've never meant anything to the police or to h...
-
The Missing Pieces of Sophie McCarthy
Ber M CarrollThe Missing Pieces of Sophie McCarthy is a gripping, impossibletoputdown exploration of betrayal and revenge.'Intriguing, compelling. Impossible to put down and irresistibly good' ...
-
Hollywood Hellraisers
Robert Sellers'I don't know what people expect when they meet me. They seem to be afraid that I'm going to piss in the potted palm and slap them on the ass.' Marlon Brando'I should have been dea...
-
Partisans
Alistair MacleanIn wartime, people are either friends or enemies. In wartime, friends are friends and enemies die…PARTISANSWhile Tito’s rebel forces resist occupation, the Germans infiltrate and p...
-
Ice Station Zebra
Alistair MacleanA classic thriller from the bestselling master of action and suspense.The atomic submarine Dolphin has impossible orders: to sail beneath the ice floes of the Arctic Ocean, and som...
-
Denial
Peter JamesIntroducing policeman Glenn Branson...When actress Gloria Lamark takes her own life, her devoted son, Thomas, is heartbroken. Something must be wrong with a world in which such a t...
-
Floodgate
Alistair MacleanThe tense tale of a deadly terrorist plot set in Holland, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.AMSTERDAM AIRPORT HAS DISAPPEAREDBLACKMAILThe mass of water in its place ...
-
Moving Target
Ross KempFormer Special Reconnaissance Regiment Sergeant Nick Kane always stands by his friends. So when an old comrade is leaned on by gangsters, Nick's only too happy to help. But Nick qu...
-
The Real James Dean
Peter WinklerIn the decades following his death, many of those who knew James Dean best––actors, directors, friends, lovers (both men and women), photographers, and Hollywood columnists––shared...
-
The James Dean Affair
Robert S. LevinsonFor years Hollywood has buzzed with rumors of a curse on the actors who worked on the '50s classic film Rebel Without a Cause, a curse that caused them to die tragically and young....
-
HMS Ulysses
Alistair MacleanThe novel that launched the astonishing career of one of the 20th century’s greatest writers of action and suspense – an acclaimed classic of heroism and the sea in World War II.Co...
-
The Castle on Sunset
Shawn LevyThe definitiveand salacioushistory of the iconic hotel that Hollywood stars have called a home away from home for almost a century.“Fascinating, dishy, and glimmering with insight....
-
Circus
Alistair MacleanThe classic tale of espionage set in Cold War Europe, where the world’s greatest circus acrobat must break into an impenetrable fortress, from the acclaimed master of action and su...
-
The Children on the Hill
Jennifer McMahonFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Drowning Kind comes a genredefying novel, inspired by Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein, that brilliantly explores the eerie...
-
Giant Love
Julie GilbertA book that explores the great American novelist and playwright Edna Ferber, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Ficton, whose work was made into many Academy Awardwinning movies; the...
-
James Dean
Darwin Porter & Danforth PrinceWritten to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the violent death of a star who lived fast, died young, and became a legend, this book was compiled after fifty years of input from J...
-
The Way to Dusty Death
Alistair MacleanThe classic tale of highoctane adventure set in the world of 1970s Formula One, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.Johnny Harlow seems to have it all: he's good looki...
-
River of Death
Alistair MacleanThe classic tale of adventure and the dark secrets of a lost city in the Brazilian jungle, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.THE LOST CITYHamilton knows the way to t...
-
Alistair MacLean Arctic Chillers 4-Book Collection
Alistair MacleanFour classic tales of adventure in the frozen north, from the master of action and suspense, available for the first time in this ebundle.Discover why Alistair MacLean was the most...
-
Scandals of Classic Hollywood
Anne Helen PetersenCelebrity gossip meets history in this compulsively readable collection from Buzzfeed reporter Anne Helen Peterson. This guide to film stars and their deepest secrets is sure ...
-
The James Deans
Reed Farrel ColemanStill reeling from his wife's recent miscarriage, Moe Prager is bullied into taking the case of an upandcoming politico whose career has stalled over the suspicious disappearance o...
-
Innocent Monster
Reed Farrel ColemanWhen his estranged daughter Sarah comes to him with a request he cannot refuse, Moe Prager takes a deep breath and plunges back into the icy, opaque waters of secrets and lies.
-
Natasha
Suzanne FinstadThe New York Times bestselling definitive biography of Natalie Wood, Natasha is the haunting story of a vulnerable and talented actress whom many of us felt we knew. We watched h...
-
When We Get to Surf City
Bob GreeneIn a dazzling and exhilarating display of narrative ontheroad reporting, awardwinning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Bob Greene takes readers on an unforgettable ...
-
The Last Frontier
Alistair MacleanAn undercover mission beyond the Iron Curtain to recover a defected scientist goes disastrously wrong – a classic early Cold War thriller from the acclaimed master of action and su...
-
Sinatra and Me
Tony Oppedisano & Mary Jane RossThis intimate, revealing portrait of Frank Sinatrafrom the man closest to the famous singer during the last decade of his lifefeatures neverbeforeseen photos and new revelations ab...
-
Dear Los Angeles
David KipenA rich mosaic of diary entries and letters from Marilyn Monroe, Cesar Chavez, Susan Sontag, Albert Einstein, and many more, this is the story of Los Angeles as told by locals, tran...
-
Elizabeth Taylor, a Passion for Life
Joseph PapaFrom the time she appeared in National Velvet, the film that skyrocketed her to international fame at age twelve in 1944, until her death, Elizabeth Taylor's beauty, allure, and pe...
-
My Darling Girl
Jennifer McMahonFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Children on the Hill, a psychological thriller “that delivers both chilling scares and genuine emotion” (Chandler Baker, New York ...
-
Fear is the Key
Alistair MacleanA classic novel of ruthless revenge set in the steel jungle of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico – and on the sea bed below it.A sunken DC3 lying on the Caribbean floor. Its cargo: ...
-
The Four Symbols
Giacometti & RavenneFrom multimillion copy bestselling authors Giacometti & Ravenne comes a Nazi spy thriller for fans of Dan Brown, Steve Berry and Wilbur Smith"I couldn't put it down ... the aut...
-
Lights Out Liverpool
Maureen LeeNumber One bestseller Maureen Lee's first novel of the hugely popular Pearl Street series.'With her talent for storytelling, queen of sagawriting Maureen Lee weaves intrigue, love ...
-
The Golden Rendezvous
Alistair MacleanA timeless classic of modernday piracy from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.Aboard the SS Campari, all is not well.For Johnny Carter, the Chief Officer, the voyage has ...
-
West Texas Kill
Johnny D BoggsAn American original, the great Johnny D. Boggs weaves a Texassized tale of an 1880s badlandsunder the grasp of a lawman gone rogue. . .In For JusticeIn For The KillBetween the Pec...
-
The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals
Michelle MorganMurders, suicides, unexplained deaths, scandalous romances, illegitimate children, coverups, and more, from the 1920s to Hollywood's Golden Age in the 1960s and right up to the pre...
-
The Dark Crusader
Alistair MacleanA classic tale of espionage, secret missions and exotic locations which outBonds Bond, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.Eight job advertisements.Eight jobs. Eight s...
-
Athabasca
Alistair MacleanThe nailbiting tale of sabotage set in the desolate frozen wastes of two icebound oil fields, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.SABOTAGE!THE VICTIMSTwo of the most i...
-
Death Gone A-Rye
Winnie ArcherIn the Northern California seaside town of Santa Sofia, a killer is trying to get a rise out of baker’s apprentice Ivy Culpepper . . . Vincent van Dough focaccia is being tou...
-
Goodbye California
Alistair MacleanThe classic tale of terrorism, where a criminal fanatic is hellbent on blasting San Francisco into the ocean, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.'Earthquake country,'...
-
Tom Swan and the Keys of Saint Peter
Christian CameronTHE BRAND NEW ADVENTURE FROM 'THE MASTER OF HISTORICAL FICTION' (SUNDAY TIMES)TOM SWAN SOLDIER, SCHOLAR, BASTARD, SPY.Tom Swan and his friends are trying to save Europe from the T...
-
Behind the Shoulder Pads
Joan CollinsUSA TODAY BESTSELLER“I’ve had many amazing adventures in my life. Some stories, though, I have only ever shared with my friends.… Until now!”Dame Joan Collins has always believed t...
-
Travels With Casey
Benoit Denizet-LewisA New York Times bestseller and People “Book of the Week”: This hilarious, charming road trip through canineloving America is “essential reading for dog lovers and armchair travele...
-
Facing Michael Jordan
Sean Deveney & Kent McDillRelive the magic of the greatest player to ever step on the court.“Air Jordan,” “His Airness,” “MJ.”Whatever you call him, Michael Jeffrey Jordan can be considered one of the great...
-
Seawitch
Alistair MacleanThe tale of murder and revenge set on a remote oil rig, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.SEAWITCHThe massive oilrig is the hub of a great empire, the pride of its b...
-
The OMD Plan
Suzy Amis CameronChange the World by Changing One Meal a Day Suzy Amis Cameronenvironmental advocate, former actor, and mom of fivepresents “a timely and empowering guide to take charge of your hea...
-
The Death of James Dean
Warren Newton BeathWith extensive research, this account of the Hollywood star and his legion of fans offers “the best narrative yet of Dean’s final ten hours” (San Francisco Examiner). Just b...
-
The Lonely Sea
Alistair MacleanA collection of riveting tales of the sea including the story that launched his writing career and the account of the epic battle to sink the German battle ship, Bismarck.THE MASTE...
-
Pomegranate
Helen Elaine LeeLONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION The acclaimed author of The Serpent’s Gift returns with this “deep and beautiful” (Jaqueline Woodson, New Yo...