James Dean - 52 Years as a Legend

James Dean - 52 Years as a Legend

James Dean - 52 Years as a Legend

James Dean - 52 Years as a Legend

After graduating UCLA Film School with an MFA in 1983, I took a much needed vacation. After spending a few days in Laguna Beach with an old girlfriend and a bottle of Stoli, I headed north to San Francisco by myself to join up with a house full of friends. Along the way and for the first time, I stopped by Cholame, more specifically, the intersection of highways 41 and 46 in central California where James Dean died in an auto accident on September 30, 1955 (just seventeen days after I was born). You get there from L.A. by following James Dean's trail. Before the 5 freeway was built, Dean headed north on the 99. He got a speeding ticket before he turned off 99 north and headed west on the 466 (now 46). After passing through Lost Hills he and his pal Rolf Wutherich stopped at Blackwell's Corner for a snack. Dusk was coming and they had a ways to go to get to the race in Salinas. Dean was driving his new Porsche down the hills on 466 headed toward the intersection with the 41. Driving east, student Donald Turnupseed started to take a left turn and didn't see Dean's silver car hidden in the sun's glare. They crashed and Dean died. Wutherich survived to die in another car accident. Turnupseed wound up hitchhiking home, ignorant of the celebrity of the man who died. James Dead became a legend.

Through the years, I've taken this path whenever driving north or returning south. It's a good way to beat the Santa Barbara traffic no matter which direction you are going. In 1984, I passed through Cholame with a friend about midnight and took a chilling bathroom break in the cold winds. The first time I stopped there with my wife sometime in the late eighties, we were returning from a trip to Big Sur. The elderly women who ran the cafe then served us marvelous biscuits and gravy. In 1999, I brought a film crew up to Cholame and filmed a sequence for my movie POSTMODERN BLUES, an experimental feature film with a main character who admires James Dean. Since then, more and more people have come to know about Cholame and stop by. I think they still serve the biscuits and gravy, but those ladies we met have moved on.

On the fiftieth anniversary, I drove up there to watch the celebration. There were fifties bands and replica cars and tons of fans. A dead-on James Dean impersonator in a red windbreaker spent the day combing his hair, smoking cigarettes and having his picture taken.

A local politician showed up for the anniversary to make a speech. He tried to dress up like Dean, but looked more like George W. Bush at a fifties party. (He's the guy dressed in a white shirt and beige pants in the background of the picture below.)

Towards dusk, we all trudged down to the intersection to watch the sunset.

An improvised memorial was set up on the side of the road where Dean's car landed.

At the designated time, fans cheered and trucks blew their horns. It was the moment we were all waiting for. James Dean was 50 years dead and those of us old enough felt every year of it.

The James Dean Monument at Cholame, California

James Dean - JamesDean.com

Deaners - A Fairmont, Indiana Website

The Death Drive - Who Killed James Dean

Cholame - Roadside America

Cholame - Wiki

Kerouac's Lowell 1985 - French-Canadian New England Mill Town

Paradise Cove, Malibu - Part IV

Lila's Photo Proofs - Part II

Paradise Cove, Malibu - Part III

My Parents' Wedding Steps 5/30/1950

Louis Aldrich and Doralice Parenteau
Precious Blood Catholic Church
Woonsocket, Rhode Island
May 30, 1950

(Cousin Maureen is the flower girl.)

Paradise Cove, Malibu - Part II

Aldrich Family Pool Party 1954 - Part II

Arthur Penn's 85th Birthday!

Arthur Penn, Born September 27, 1922

Seeing Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE in 1967 at the Vermont Drive In Theatre (or was it the Twin-Vue?) in Gardena turned out to be a better education than any junior high school history class I was then taking. As a drama student who had seen a lot of movies (including Penn's 1958 THE LEFT HANDED GUN on TV), I understood this new film was a highly-stylized, dramatic representation of true events. I wasn't looking for the movie to be a documentary. When those groundlings watched Shakespeare's MACBETH do you think they wanted a history lesson?

The movie stimulated my curiousity and from that point on I read everything I could in search of the "true story." Along the way and to this day, I learned that history is relative. Law knows even witness testimony can be innocently distorted. I haven't given up on truth, because essence and context is everything, but I've never expected literal literary or cinematic adaptations. The fun part for me has always been trying to figure out the "truth" (as I see it) compared to the fiction. As a die-hard, lifelong bookworm, I've approached a number of subjects in this manner.

My late father's birthday was 7 days prior to Penn. He would've been 85 this year too, but, for the record, he smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and ate like a pig. He loved every minute of it. He stroked out at 70. He loved to read, particularly books on WWII (he served in the Army in Europe), and taught me to love reading too.

Essentially, BONNIE AND CLYDE taught me to how to study history, as well as drama. Penn's work led me to study the "true stories" of BILLY THE KID, HELEN KELLER, ARLO GUTHRIE (his father WOODY), GEORGE CUSTER and the NATIVE AMERICAN HOLOCAUST.

We have a lot to thank Arthur Penn for. Happy Birthday!

Arthur Penn - Senses of Cinema

Arthur Penn - wiki

Arthur Penn - imdb

Arthur Penn's 85th Birthday!

Arthur Penn, Born September 27, 1922

Seeing Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE in 1967 at the Vermont Drive In Theatre (or was it the Twin-Vue?) in Gardena turned out to be a better education than any junior high school history class I was then taking. As a drama student who had seen a lot of movies (including Penn's 1958 THE LEFT HANDED GUN on TV), I understood this new film was a highly-stylized, dramatic representation of true events. I wasn't looking for the movie to be a documentary. When those groundlings watched Shakespeare's MACBETH do you think they wanted a history lesson?

The movie stimulated my curiousity and from that point on I read everything I could in search of the "true story." Along the way and to this day, I learned that history is relative. Law knows even witness testimony can be innocently distorted. I haven't given up on truth, because essence and context is everything, but I've never expected literal literary or cinematic adaptations. The fun part for me has always been trying to figure out the "truth" (as I see it) compared to the fiction. As a die-hard, lifelong bookworm, I've approached a number of subjects in this manner.

My late father's birthday was 7 days prior to Penn. He would've been 85 this year too, but, for the record, he smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and ate like a pig. He loved every minute of it. He stroked out at 70. He loved to read, particularly books on WWII (he served in the Army in Europe), and taught me to love reading too.

Essentially, BONNIE AND CLYDE taught me to how to study history, as well as drama. Penn's work led me to study the "true stories" of BILLY THE KID, HELEN KELLER, ARLO GUTHRIE (his father WOODY), GEORGE CUSTER and the NATIVE AMERICAN HOLOCAUST.

We have a lot to thank Arthur Penn for. Happy Birthday!

Arthur Penn - Senses of Cinema

Arthur Penn - wiki

Arthur Penn - imdb

Poe Forward's Bonnie Parker page

Arthur Penn's 85th Birthday!

Arthur Penn, Born September 27, 1922

Seeing Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE in 1967 at the Vermont Drive In Theatre (or was it the Twin-Vue?) in Gardena turned out to be a better education than any junior high school history class I was then taking. As a drama student who had seen a lot of movies (including Penn's 1958 THE LEFT HANDED GUN on TV), I understood this new film was a highly-stylized, dramatic representation of true events. I wasn't looking for the movie to be a documentary. When those groundlings watched Shakespeare's MACBETH do you think they wanted a history lesson?

The movie stimulated my curiousity and from that point on I read everything I could in search of the "true story." Along the way and to this day, I learned that history is relative. Law knows even witness testimony can be innocently distorted. I haven't given up on truth, because essence and context is everything, but I've never expected literal literary or cinematic adaptations. The fun part for me has always been trying to figure out the "truth" (as I see it) compared to the fiction. As a die-hard, lifelong bookworm, I've approached a number of subjects in this manner.

My late father's birthday was 7 days prior to Penn. He would've been 85 this year too, but, for the record, he smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and ate like a pig. He loved every minute of it. He stroked out at 70. He loved to read, particularly books on WWII (he served in the Army in Europe), and taught me to love reading too.

Essentially, BONNIE AND CLYDE taught me to how to study history, as well as drama. Penn's work led me to study the "true stories" of BILLY THE KID, HELEN KELLER, ARLO GUTHRIE (his father WOODY), GEORGE CUSTER and the NATIVE AMERICAN HOLOCAUST.

We have a lot to thank Arthur Penn for. Happy Birthday!

Arthur Penn - Senses of Cinema

Arthur Penn - wiki

Arthur Penn - imdb

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Family Trip to Tijuana - Part III

Paradise Cove, Malibu - Part I

Lila's Photo Proofs - Part I

Some Billboards in the City

Aldrich Family Pool Party 1954 - Part I

Graveyard Poet Horace Walpole's 290th Birthday

Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
September 24, 1717 - March 2, 1797

Happy 220th Birthday and Rest In Peace!

“It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance: the ancient and the modern. In the former, all was imagination and improbability; in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success. Invention has not been wanting; but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life. But if in the latter species nature has cramped imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally excluded from old romances. The actions, sentiments, conversations, of the heroes and heroines of ancient days, were as unnatural as the machines employed to put them in motion.”
--- Preface to THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO, Horace Walpole, 1764

“But Theodore's grief was too fresh to admit the thought of another love; and it was not until after frequent discourses with Isabella of his dear Matilda, that he was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.”
--- THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO, Horace Walpole, 1764

"He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin — to the severe and long-continued illness — indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution — of a tenderly beloved sister — his sole companion for long years — his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread — and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother — but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears."
--- THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, Edgar Allan Poe, 1839

Horace Walpole - wiki
The Castle of Otranto - wiki
Graveyard Poets - wiki
Poe Forward's GOTH POE Event Page

Another View From the Bridge - More Illiterate Office Workers Innocently Breaking the Law?

The Aldrich Family Kitchen - circa late 1960s - My Mom

Kerouac's Lowell 1985 - Lowell High School Clock

"It was a big boxlike clock hanging from the wall of the school, donated by some old class when the yellowbricks were new --- we'd had our first trembling meeting under it --- When she sang Heart and Soul in the cold night snow of fields it was the melting of our hearts we thought forever --- The clock was our big symbol."
--- MAGGIE CASSIDY, Jack Kerouac, 1959