Live Fast, Die Young

The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause

Lawrence Frascella, Al Weisel

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN:
  9780743296182
• eBook ISBN:
  9780743291187
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

The complete story behind the groundbreaking film Rebel Without a Cause is vividly revealed in this fascinating book as provocative as the film itself. The revolutionary film Rebel Without a Cause has had a profound impact on both moviemaking and youth culture since its 1955 release, virtually giving birth to our concept of the American teenager. And the making of the movie was just as explosive for those involved. Against a backdrop of the Atomic Age and an old Hollywood studio system on the verge of collapse, four of Hollywood's most passionate artists had a cataclysmic and immensely influential meeting.James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and director Nicholas Ray were each at a crucial point in their careers. The young actors were grappling with their fame, burgeoning sexuality, and increasingly reckless behavior, and their on- and off-set relationships ignited as they engaged in Ray's vision of physical melees and psychosexual seductions of startling intensity.Through interviews with the surviving members of the cast and crew and firsthand access to both personal and studio archives, the authors reveal Rebel 's true drama: the director's affair with sixteen-year-old Wood, his tempestuous "spiritual marriage" with Dean, and his role in awakening the latent sexuality of Mineo, who would become the first gay teenager to appear on film. This searing account of the upheaval the four artists experienced in the wake of Rebel is complete with thirty photographs, including ten never-before-seen photos by famed Dean photographer Dennis Stock.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One Birth of a Rebel
• Chapter Two Seducing Dean
• Chapter Three Child Star
• Chapter Four The Script
• Chapter Five Gang Wars
• Chapter Six The First Gay Teenager
• Chapter Seven Chateau Interlude
• Chapter Eight The Red Jacket
• Chapter Nine Starting Over
• Chapter Ten Meet the Parents
• Chapter Eleven A World of Their Own
• Chapter Twelve Jim Kisses Plato?
• Chapter Thirteen Chickie Run
• Chapter Fourteen Last Good-bye
• Chapter Fifteen Crash
• Chapter Sixteen The Leading Lady
• Chapter Seventeen The Erotic Politician
• Chapter Eighteen Elegy for a Director
• Afterword The Rebel Effect
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Photographs