James Dean: A Death Foretold, a Gruesome Publicity Stunt, and a Haunted Car

James Dean died in a high speed car crash at the age of 24, but his legend lives on. Fan clubs held monthly memorial services and wrote movie studios begging for relics of their patron saint. Professional illusionists swore they could resurrect his body. Rumors that Dean survived the deadly crash were spurred on, and in some cases planted, by a film studio with a financial stake in keeping his memory alive. The car that killed him had a grisly afterlife of its own, taking two more lives before mysteriously disappearing forever.

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Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's seth Lundy, good doctor here at Double

Speaker 1: Elvis and co host of Hollywood Lamb Podcast. Welcome once

Speaker 1: again as we wind the reels back for another story

Speaker 1: from our archive, this one on James Dean. The word

Speaker 1: iconic gets tossed around way too often, and an eye

Speaker 1: for one am guilty of this sin from time to time.

Speaker 1: But James Dean was and remains a true icon of

Speaker 1: Hollywood because everything about him seems predestined for immortality. He

Speaker 1: came around just as the culture was shifting a prelude

Speaker 1: to the Beatles and the Stones, and in the blink

Speaker 1: of an eye, set the template for the rebellious rock

Speaker 1: and roll idol. And he was gone just as fast,

Speaker 1: dead at the age of twenty four before two of

Speaker 1: the three movies he ever made had a chance to

Speaker 1: be released. The immortality thing happened fast and was capitalized

Speaker 1: on by the movie studios, which leaned into a rumor

Speaker 1: that he was in fact still alive in order to

Speaker 1: create posthumous buzz. You'll hear all about that rusome publicity

Speaker 1: stunt in our episode on James Dean, as well as

Speaker 1: the magicians who got audiences to believe they could resurrect

Speaker 1: Dean's corpse and the haunted afterlife of the car that

Speaker 1: he died in. I hope you dig it, and I

Speaker 1: hope you will join me again here on Wednesday in

Speaker 1: the rap party, where I'll respond to your calls and

Speaker 1: your texts, and then again on Friday in the screening room,

Speaker 1: when I'll do a deep dive into the nineteen fifty

Speaker 1: five film Rebel Without a Cause.

Speaker 2: Hollywood Land is a production of Double Elvis mid A,

Speaker 2: have a Niggy, O Me give me the.

Speaker 3: Hon The stories about James Dean are insane. He died

Speaker 3: in a high speed car crash at just twenty four

Speaker 3: years old. His death was foretold by a fellow movie

Speaker 3: star one week before it happened. Rumors he survived the

Speaker 3: deadly crash were spurred on and in some cases planted

Speaker 3: by a film studio with a financial stake in keeping

Speaker 3: his memory alive. The car that killed him had a

Speaker 3: grizzly afterlife of its own, taking two more lives before

Speaker 3: mysteriously disappearing forever, unlike James Dean, whose legend lives on

Speaker 3: because James Dean made great movies, and although he only

Speaker 3: made three in his lifetime. He remains one of the

Speaker 3: greatest American actors in the history of film. Unlike that

Speaker 3: clip I played for you at the top of the

Speaker 3: show that wasn't from a great film, that was a

Speaker 3: fair use sample from the Library of Congress of Bessie

Speaker 3: Smith performing Haunted House Blues in nineteen twenty four. I

Speaker 3: played you that clip because I can't afford the rights

Speaker 3: to a clip from Walt Disney's Lady in the Tramp.

Speaker 3: And why would I play you that particular slice of

Speaker 3: spaghetti sharing parmesan cheese? Could I have ford it? Because

Speaker 3: that was the number one movie in America on September thirtieth,

Speaker 3: nineteen fifty five, And that was the day that James

Speaker 3: Dean died in a brutal crash on a California highway.

Speaker 3: On this episode, a death foretold, a gruesome publicity stunt,

Speaker 3: a haunted race car and James Dean. I'm Jake Brennan,

Speaker 3: and this is Hollywood Land. There wasn't shit to do.

Speaker 3: Once the sun went down in Fayette, North Carolina, the

Speaker 3: Army grounds bust in from Fort Bragg were looking to

Speaker 3: fuck or fight, and this town had limited options for either.

Speaker 3: But they did find a lured poster plastered to a

Speaker 3: light post on what passed for the town's main drag,

Speaker 3: Karakum's International Mystery Show. It read Ghosts will talk and

Speaker 3: sit with you, Vampires and zombies will attack you. Karakum

Speaker 3: was the stage name of a Polish immigrant who'd been

Speaker 3: working the scare show circuit in the US since the forties.

Speaker 3: He had a thick mustache and wore a white tux

Speaker 3: and turbine. He touted the International Mystery Show as to

Speaker 3: show that it baffled millions in Paris, London, Shanghai. The

Speaker 3: truth was Karakom struggled to stand out among other professional illusionists,

Speaker 3: but he had something the others didn't have. He could

Speaker 3: resurrect James Dean. It was nineteen fifty seven. Karacomb's act

Speaker 3: was one of the bloodier ones out there. He called

Speaker 3: up volunteers from the audience and appeared to cut off

Speaker 3: their heads with a meat cleaner. Then he tossed the

Speaker 3: severed heads into the crowd. But it was the James

Speaker 3: Dean trick that put butts in seats Teenagers, especially teeny

Speaker 3: bopper girls, desperate to see Jimmy Dean one more time.

Speaker 3: Boys in red jackets and perfectly styled hair, trying their

Speaker 3: best to look like Dean's ghost. The trick was simple.

Speaker 3: Cara Coon brought out a life sized, high contrast negative

Speaker 3: of James Dean and invited the audience to focus their

Speaker 3: energy on it. If they did that, they could summon

Speaker 3: Dean back from the grave. Effectively, this meant the kids

Speaker 3: were staring at an image which left an impression on

Speaker 3: their retinss. Cara Coon let this go on for a minute,

Speaker 3: and then he suddenly shut off all the lights in

Speaker 3: the theater. There on stage a ghostly image of James

Speaker 3: Dean placed the picture of the audience was just looking at.

Speaker 3: Teenagers wept, they fainted. They were overwhelmed by this mystical

Speaker 3: visitation of a man from the great beyond. But not

Speaker 3: all though. From the back of the theater, a group

Speaker 3: of angry teens started to heckle the show. This is bullshit,

Speaker 3: one of them shouted, everyone knows James Dean never fucking died, died, died, died.

Speaker 3: When James Dean was killed in a car crash in

Speaker 3: nineteen fifty five at the age of twenty four, American

Speaker 3: teenagers went into hysterical mourning. It didn't matter that they'd

Speaker 3: only seen him in one movie. The press build up

Speaker 3: for Rebel Without a Cause, the follow up to his

Speaker 3: debut in East of Eden, successfully established Dean as one

Speaker 3: of the first teen idols, alongside Elvis Presley, who hit

Speaker 3: the top of the charts that same year and had

Speaker 3: his own movie in the works. A network of fan

Speaker 3: clubs calling themselves the James Dean Memorial Ring, sprung up

Speaker 3: around the country. The population of Dean's hometown of Fairmount,

Speaker 3: Illinois doubled when teenage mourners flooded in to watch Dean's

Speaker 3: ruined body get planted in the ground. This collective grief

Speaker 3: was enough to blow up the box office. When Rebel

Speaker 3: Without a Cause hit screens just one month after Dean's death,

Speaker 3: Devoted fans and the morbidly curious alike packed movie houses

Speaker 3: to see Dean rehearse his own car crash fatality in

Speaker 3: the movie's legendary chicky run scene. Rebel Rode Dean's ghost

Speaker 3: a huge financial success, but Dean had completed shooting on

Speaker 3: another film before he died, a Western epic called Giant.

Speaker 3: It would be a year before that movie hit screens.

Speaker 3: Conventional wisdom in Hollywood said nobody paid to watch a

Speaker 3: dead actor. There was something too morbid about watching a

Speaker 3: corpse walk around on screen in a room thick with

Speaker 3: cigar smoke and the smell of whiskey. Warner Brothers executives

Speaker 3: decided to write off the big budget epic as a loss.

Speaker 3: No point throwing good money after bad And then one

Speaker 3: of the execs noticed a note someone in the Warner

Speaker 3: publicity department had pass on what if James Dean wasn't dead?

Speaker 3: It was too blatant the stunt for a major company

Speaker 3: like Warner Brothers to even consider. If they released a

Speaker 3: statement claiming that James Dean's greatly survived the crash, it

Speaker 3: would be seen as a ghoulish and transparent cash grab.

Speaker 3: So Warners issued a press release that said the opposite,

Speaker 3: the studio vehemently denies any rumor that James Dean is alive,

Speaker 3: even though there were no such rumors, And then they

Speaker 3: created the very rumors they were denying. The first step

Speaker 3: was to engage the cult of mourning around James Dean.

Speaker 3: Warners hired a PR agent on the sly. He contacted

Speaker 3: the presidents of the many chapters of the James Dan

Speaker 3: memorial ring. He flew them to Hollywood, all expenses paid,

Speaker 3: of course, and he tore them around the Warner's lot,

Speaker 3: that sacred ground where their idol once walked. He told

Speaker 3: them they had to continue their vital work keeping the

Speaker 3: memory of James Dean alive. And they returned to their

Speaker 3: hometown's starr eyed and full of purpose. They held monthly

Speaker 3: memorial services. They wore black armbands with Dean's face on them.

Speaker 3: They bought over priced replicas of the Red Jacket from

Speaker 3: Rebel Without a Cause, and such ridiculous numbers that every

Speaker 3: soda counter in the US looked like a casting call

Speaker 3: for it James Dean biopic. And they wrote letters begging

Speaker 3: the studio to send them any piece of James Dean

Speaker 3: that might still exist. They were true believers, and they

Speaker 3: wanted relics of their patrons, saying thousands of letters addressed

Speaker 3: to James Dean poured into Warner's offices every month, a

Speaker 3: fact the studio's publicity department dutifully reported to the press.

Speaker 3: Alive Dean was on his way to becoming a teen

Speaker 3: idol dead. He was an object of cult worship and obsession,

Speaker 3: but nothing got to the core of the original pitch

Speaker 3: behind the viral PR campaign, the fan club memorial services,

Speaker 3: the for profit of cult shysters like carra Comb, even

Speaker 3: grieving co stars like Salminio alone in his apartment trying

Speaker 3: to summon Dean's ghosts with a Ouiji board. These things

Speaker 3: were all built on the very correct presumption that James

Speaker 3: Dean was dead. The trick was to make James Dean

Speaker 3: come back to life. The first story to make such

Speaker 3: a claim popped up on the other side of the country.

Speaker 3: York Newspaper reported that Hollywood was buzzing with the rumor

Speaker 3: that Dean had actually survived the crash, but he was

Speaker 3: so disfigured that the studio was hiding him in an

Speaker 3: institution somewhere, and there was no such buzz. The story

Speaker 3: was planted by Warner's hired PR hack. More New York

Speaker 3: papers ran with it, and the hack copied the articles

Speaker 3: to set them to his network at James Dean fan Clubs.

Speaker 3: Letters poured into the Warner Brothers offices addressed to Dean

Speaker 3: as if you were alive, trapped and in need of rescue,

Speaker 3: I know you are not dead. One of the letters

Speaker 3: were I will leave my husband and my children, get

Speaker 3: good doctors and heal you. In another, two women detailed

Speaker 3: their plan to set up a home where the three

Speaker 3: of them could live in polyamorous bliss, and in a third,

Speaker 3: a woman offered up skin from very sensitive parts of

Speaker 3: her body as grass for Dean's wounds. Warners leaked these

Speaker 3: letters to the press. Rumors of her room were expanded

Speaker 3: into a bizarre cult of Bobby Soxsers who believed, without

Speaker 3: any evidence, that James Dean had never died and then

Speaker 3: they might be the ones to find him and save him.

Speaker 3: It was enough to keep James Dean's image in front

Speaker 3: of a million eyes for the year between his death

Speaker 3: and the release of Giant, and the movie was the

Speaker 3: top box officer in her that year, scoring James Dean's

Speaker 3: second posthumous Oscar nomination. Once the film had earned its

Speaker 3: money back, Warners let the campaign die, but the rumors

Speaker 3: never entirely went away. Just like Elvis, James Dean was

Speaker 3: still alive. Jackie Curtis, one of the superstars of Andy

Speaker 3: Warhol's factory scene, claimed that Warhol was James Dean and

Speaker 3: that warhol Is so called acne scars were Dean's burn injuries.

Speaker 3: From the crash, but Jackie herself wound up the Warhol

Speaker 3: scene stir most linked with Dean after lou Reid wrote

Speaker 3: about her and walk on the wild Side, just speeding away,

Speaker 3: thinking she was James Dean for a day. You could

Speaker 3: hardly blame people for thinking they'd seen James Dean set

Speaker 3: free from his body. His image haunted the rest of

Speaker 3: the twentieth century in the body of every greaser, rocker

Speaker 3: and punk. No one would ever be more associated with

Speaker 3: that rock ol Mantra lived fast, die young, and maybe

Speaker 3: a good looking corpse than James ten except there was

Speaker 3: nothing good looking about what happened to him. Alec Guinness

Speaker 3: stood at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine. It was

Speaker 3: late and he was starving, but every restaurant turned him away.

Speaker 3: Maybe if his dinner day was Grace Kelly, the American

Speaker 3: actress co starring with him in his first Hollywood film,

Speaker 3: he could have gotten a table. But his lady friend

Speaker 3: was wearing trousers, and that was a blatant violation of

Speaker 3: the dress code. Had every respectable Hollywood establishment, and it

Speaker 3: didn't matter that Guinness had a medal from the Queen

Speaker 3: or that he had a lifetime of success in the

Speaker 3: British film industry didn't mean shit here in America. He

Speaker 3: was a nobody, a very hungry nobody. Fuck it. He'd

Speaker 3: just go back to the hotel. Maybe a room service

Speaker 3: could scare up a hamburger. Then he heard footsteps coming

Speaker 3: down Vine. Someone was running towards him, and the footsteps

Speaker 3: got faster and louder. Guinness panicked, here he was starving,

Speaker 3: and now he was about to get mugged to boot.

Speaker 3: He quickly turned around and saw a short, skinny boy

Speaker 3: running to catch up. The boys skidded to a stop

Speaker 3: and swept back his hair. He was undeniably gorgeous, but

Speaker 3: Guinness didn't recognize him. The boy spoke, while trying to

Speaker 3: catch his breath. I saw you get turned away at

Speaker 3: that Italian place up the street. My name's James Dean.

Speaker 3: Do you want to come eat with me? Guinness recognized

Speaker 3: the name. There was buzz around Dean's performance in East

Speaker 3: of Eden. In the publicity blitz leading up to Rebel

Speaker 3: without a Cause was in full swing, but the press

Speaker 3: painted the young actor as cool and aloof, sometimes even

Speaker 3: rude or stand offish. The kid standing in front of

Speaker 3: Guinness now was none of those things. Honestly, it didn't

Speaker 3: matter if the kid was nice or not. Alec Guinness

Speaker 3: just needed to eat. He took James Dean up on

Speaker 3: his offer, but before they sat down, Dean had something

Speaker 3: he was dying to show off. His new car. Parked

Speaker 3: out front of the restaurant was a Porsche of five

Speaker 3: point fifty Spider, a light weight loaded the ground speedzer

Speaker 3: with silver with bright red Tartan seats and the number

Speaker 3: one thirty custom painted in black on the hood and

Speaker 3: a little bastard and neat cursive on the trunk deep beamed.

Speaker 3: The Porsche was his baby. He picked it up from

Speaker 3: the detailing guy that afternoon. Alec Guinness wasn't much of

Speaker 3: a car guy, but he didn't want to be rude.

Speaker 3: How fast can he go in, though he asked. Dean

Speaker 3: said he could go one hundred and fifty. Guinness felt

Speaker 3: something like a cold hand on the back of his neck.

Speaker 3: He heard himself speaking, but it didn't sound like his voice,

Speaker 3: and the words came from nowhere. Please don't get in

Speaker 3: that car, Guinnis said. If you get in that car

Speaker 3: by ten o'clock next Thursday, you'll be dead. Alec Guinness

Speaker 3: and James Dean stood on the sidewalk and awkward side islence,

Speaker 3: Dean began to laugh. Guinness's reputation as a comedic actor

Speaker 3: was well known, and Dean figured this was some weird gag,

Speaker 3: some kind of British humor. Guinness apologized he didn't know

Speaker 3: why I'd said that, didn't know where those words had

Speaker 3: even come from. And they went into the restaurant and

Speaker 3: had a pleasant meal and made promises to see each

Speaker 3: other again. A week later, a Thursday, James Dean crashed

Speaker 3: the Porsche and was dead. James Dean's obsession with speed

Speaker 3: went back to his childhood in Fairmount, Illinois, a nothing

Speaker 3: down in the middle of nowhere. Dean got his first

Speaker 3: motorcycle when he was fifteen, a little nineteen forty seven

Speaker 3: one five cc. It could hit fifty on the flat

Speaker 3: open planes. Dean and some of the other boys met

Speaker 3: up on the weekends at the local cycle shop and

Speaker 3: they shot the ship, fixed their bikes and raced around

Speaker 3: the back law and if the weather was too shitty race.

Speaker 3: Dean would dream up races, casting each of his biker

Speaker 3: friends in an imaginary competition. He grabbed the mic, plugged

Speaker 3: into the shop speaker system and gave the play by

Speaker 3: play in his head, and the other bikers sat listening

Speaker 3: as Dean narrated, holding their breath as they made a jump,

Speaker 3: wincing as their imaginary bikes crashed. Dean never crashed. Some

Speaker 3: of the hacked biographies that were rushed to press after

Speaker 3: he died claimed he knocked his two front teeth out

Speaker 3: in a motorcycle accident. As a kid, Dean had knocked

Speaker 3: out his teeth. One of his favorite gags was the

Speaker 3: side the bridge that held his two fake teeth out

Speaker 3: of his mouth in the middle of a meal to

Speaker 3: shock his dates. But it wasn't a bike accident that

Speaker 3: cost him his choppers, just to fall in the high

Speaker 3: school basketball court. Maybe if Dean had crashed his bike

Speaker 3: even once, he would have been a little more inclined

Speaker 3: to pump the brakes now and then. But James Dean

Speaker 3: was all gas when it was time for him to

Speaker 3: try his luck in New York. Dean upgraded to a

Speaker 3: Royal Infield with five hundred CC's, the kind of massive

Speaker 3: engine bike to Army used, and while he was a

Speaker 3: student at the Legendary Actors Studio, Dean woke before dawn

Speaker 3: and rode around the empty Manhattan streets, listening to the

Speaker 3: sound of his engine echo in the canyon of the

Speaker 3: city's buildings. Fame and money brought better, faster bikes, and

Speaker 3: Dean bought a Triumph Ter five, the same bike as

Speaker 3: hero Marlyn Brando rode in the Wild One. Dean rode

Speaker 3: it to a party at the Chateau Marma. He spotted

Speaker 3: Shelley Winter's driving with Marilyn and road to the same party.

Speaker 3: He circled their car on his bike. He weaved in

Speaker 3: and out of traffic, and then he breaked hard right

Speaker 3: in front of him. Shelley Winters was not having it.

Speaker 3: She laid on the horn and Marilyn sat rigid in

Speaker 3: the passenger seat. Dean pulled in ahead of them at

Speaker 3: the Chateau Marma's parking lot, grinned like a little bastard.

Speaker 3: Shelley Winters wanted to deck them, and Marilyn wanted nothing

Speaker 3: to do with him. She refused to talk to him.

Speaker 3: At the party. It was the only time the two

Speaker 3: icons ever spent in the same room, and they spent

Speaker 3: it at opposite corner. James Dean's invite to the Chateau

Speaker 3: Marmond had come from Nicholas Ray, who was directing him

Speaker 3: and Rebel without a Cause. That film's the legendary chicky

Speaker 3: run scene where Dean and his rival race toward a

Speaker 3: cliff and the first one to bail out of their

Speaker 3: car gets branded a chicken, was based on a supposedly

Speaker 3: true account of a race gonebat and for the shoot

Speaker 3: all precautions were taken to make sure no one actually

Speaker 3: got hurt. It was shot on a plateau at the

Speaker 3: Warner's ranch, with the cars speeding toward a shallow ravine

Speaker 3: rather than a cliff. Dean was body doubled for the

Speaker 3: stunt where he jumps out of the moving car. The

Speaker 3: last shot, where Dean and the rest of the kids

Speaker 3: look over the edge of the bluff onto the flaming wreckage,

Speaker 3: was shot on a sound stage with everyone staring at

Speaker 3: a black cloth. Dean devoured an apple and then spattered

Speaker 3: ketchup on the court. He threw it under the black cloth.

Speaker 3: That's a focus point, a dead body abstracted. Dean's speed

Speaker 3: fixation soon turned to race cars. His first one was

Speaker 3: a little MG with enough muscle to get him in

Speaker 3: an amateur race. He had no experience, no pick crew,

Speaker 3: just some guys who knew him from the studio a

Speaker 3: lot and jumped in to help him out. Dean bounced

Speaker 3: off hay bills at every hairpin turn, refusing to tap

Speaker 3: the brakes, but he won. He upgraded to a Porsche

Speaker 3: Speedster with the money he got when he landed the

Speaker 3: role in Rebel. Nicholas Ray didn't even mind when Jimmy

Speaker 3: disappeared from the set to compete. Four days before the

Speaker 3: end of shooting, Dean was in a ten lap race

Speaker 3: in Santa Barbara. He clawed his way up from eighteenth

Speaker 3: to fourth place. On the fifth lap, he saw him

Speaker 3: opening and gun the engine. It was too much. The

Speaker 3: car blew a piston and Dean didn't finish, but he

Speaker 3: was lucky he wasn't hurt. He never got hurt. The

Speaker 3: studio heard about the race and they were spooked. They

Speaker 3: couldn't have James Kee messing up that pretty face of his,

Speaker 3: and they banned him from racing while he shot his

Speaker 3: next film, Giant, and that was fine. He registered himself

Speaker 3: in a race in SI that would take place immediately

Speaker 3: after shooting was set to wrap in September, and he

Speaker 3: bought a Porsche five point fifty Spider, the last car

Speaker 3: he ever rowed. We'll be right back after this word.

Speaker 3: We're were James Dean stood in front of the Porsche

Speaker 3: dealership off Maholland Drive and stared out at the open road.

Speaker 3: There was still a little of his last role in

Speaker 3: his blood, lingering like a cold he couldn't shake. When

Speaker 3: he was making Giant, director George Stevens would ask Dean

Speaker 3: to stare into the distance just like this for take

Speaker 3: after take. It got to be a habit, but there

Speaker 3: was something comforting about it. The morning sun behind him

Speaker 3: cast his shadow along across the pavement. It looked to

Speaker 3: be a good day. In the garage, Ralph Wertherick made

Speaker 3: final tweaks to Bean's new Porsche five fifty Spider. Tomorrow

Speaker 3: was the big day, the race in Salinas. Ralph was

Speaker 3: a former Nazi pilot, but he was also Dean's friend,

Speaker 3: a mechanic. The two of them bonded with their heads

Speaker 3: stuck under the hood of fast cars. Dean studied Ralph's movements,

Speaker 3: his accent, storing those details away. Sooner or later his

Speaker 3: studio would ask him to do a war film. All

Speaker 3: the big actors eventually did a war film. Wouldn't it

Speaker 3: be something though, to flip it, do it different and

Speaker 3: play a German would give you an Oscar if you

Speaker 3: could pull something like that off. Ralph came around from

Speaker 3: the back and gave the thumbs up. The Porsche was

Speaker 3: ready to go. Dean nodded. He caught his reflection in

Speaker 3: the showroom window. Hair and makeup had shaved his hairline

Speaker 3: back for the last act of Giant to age his character.

Speaker 3: He looked at himself and smirked. He wondered if that

Speaker 3: was what he'd really looked like when he got old.

Speaker 3: Dean and Ralph hitched the trailer to Dean's Ford station

Speaker 3: wagon and drove off the lock. It was Ralph who

Speaker 3: convinced Dean to buy the Porsche, not that it took

Speaker 3: too much convincing. It was the newest, fastest model, only

Speaker 3: a few dozen were made. The fact that there was

Speaker 3: one on the lob when Dean happened to stop by, well,

Speaker 3: it had to be fate, didn't it. They had lunch

Speaker 3: with Dean's father and uncle Charlie at the Farmer's Market.

Speaker 3: Uncle Charlie taught Dean to ride his first motorcycle, and

Speaker 3: Dean wanted him to come see the race, but the

Speaker 3: older men both had better things to do than haul

Speaker 3: their tired bones out to Selina's to watch cars. Was

Speaker 3: by Dean and Ralph kept moving. They stopped by the

Speaker 3: house of photographer Sandy Roth to pick up Roth and

Speaker 3: Bill Hickman, Dean's dialog coach from Giant, who were both

Speaker 3: set to come up to the race. Dean stared north

Speaker 3: toward an all day drive in perfect California weather. No

Speaker 3: fucking way did he want to be cooped up in

Speaker 3: the station wagon with three other guys. Besides, he hadn't

Speaker 3: really driven the car yet, except to show off around Hollywood.

Speaker 3: He hadn't opened it up. Ralph always said he never

Speaker 3: wanted to add or a car or to a race.

Speaker 3: Raw put a thousand miles on the engine to break

Speaker 3: it in get it race ready. Ralph offered a rod

Speaker 3: shotgun and the Porsche to Salinas so Dean could get

Speaker 3: used to the car, even though the car didn't have

Speaker 3: a passenger safety pelt. They left La at a quarter

Speaker 3: after one, the Porsche and the lead and the station

Speaker 3: wagons struggling to keep up, and they talked about the

Speaker 3: next day's races. Don't race to win. Rolph said, don't

Speaker 3: go too fast. He knew how Dean might to race,

Speaker 3: pedal to the floor on the straightaways, no thought to

Speaker 3: what was up ahead, like the car's engine. Dean needed

Speaker 3: some mileage on him, a little breaking in. Dean laughed,

Speaker 3: who didn't race to win? What the fuck was too

Speaker 3: fast supposed to mean? Dean pulled off the road south

Speaker 3: of Bakersfield so Rope could check the engine. Ideally, you

Speaker 3: broke in a car under track conditions, smooth pavement, no

Speaker 3: josts or bumps. The highway was no place for a

Speaker 3: car like this. Everything under the hood looked fine, and

Speaker 3: the pit stop gave the station wagon a chance to

Speaker 3: catch up, but we could barely keep you inside at sixties,

Speaker 3: Rod said. Dean smirked. They'd just have to go faster.

Speaker 3: On the other side of Bakersfield, Dean got pulled over

Speaker 3: by the California Highway patrol doing sixty five and a

Speaker 3: forty five, and the station Wagon got popped too, and

Speaker 3: their ticket was double because they were hauling the empty trailer.

Speaker 3: But nobody sweated it. They were riding with James Dean.

Speaker 3: Everything would be taken care of. Somewhere near Lost Hills.

Speaker 3: At around five o'clock, Dean caught a glimpse of a

Speaker 3: beautiful car at a gas station and laid on the brakes.

Speaker 3: The owner of the Mercedes was headed to the same

Speaker 3: races at Salinas, and they took turns looking under each

Speaker 3: other's hoods, a real, honest to god dick measuring contest.

Speaker 3: Dean sweet took the guy, but grinned devilishly as he

Speaker 3: turned back to his crew. He was going to bury

Speaker 3: that fucking relic. Paso Robles was an hour west. Dean

Speaker 3: and Rolf would meet the others there for dinner and

Speaker 3: then power through the last one hundred miles to Salinas.

Speaker 3: Dean knew he could make it there well under an hour.

Speaker 3: He bought a back to Apples and jumped into the

Speaker 3: driver's seat next to Ralph, not bothering to buckle his belt.

Speaker 3: He bit into an apple and the juice ran down

Speaker 3: his chin. He turned the key and the engine roared

Speaker 3: to life, and the little car vibrated with promise. Dean

Speaker 3: left the station wagon in the dust. He blazed through

Speaker 3: the desert into the setting sun west on Roote four

Speaker 3: sixty six, and the engine hung a lullaby Ralph dozed

Speaker 3: in the heat. Dean nuds ro off awake. He didn't

Speaker 3: want to be alone. Down the road, a college student

Speaker 3: in a Ford sedan came to the intersection of four

Speaker 3: to sixty six and routed forty one. He looked as

Speaker 3: far as he could along the flat expanse of highway.

Speaker 3: He didn't see anyone coming. He didn't see anything, not

Speaker 3: even the lowest slung race car, so low and so

Speaker 3: fast that it melted into the pavement and the kid

Speaker 3: started into his left turn. Dean saw the Ford but

Speaker 3: didn't care. The kid driving the sedan could worry about it.

Speaker 3: He'd see Dean coming and get the hell out of

Speaker 3: the way. There was one more chicky run. Just like

Speaker 3: in the movie. There would always be stunt doubles to

Speaker 3: execute the roll and fake body to toss out of

Speaker 3: tumbling cars. When it was over, Dean could stare at

Speaker 3: an apple core in the abyss and pretend he saw

Speaker 3: a flaming wreck, and then they'd do it again. James

Speaker 3: Dean didn't break, he didn't swerve, and the Porsche Spider

Speaker 3: slammed into the Ford at eighty five miles an hour.

Speaker 3: The light aluminum body of the Porsche crumpled like an

Speaker 3: empty candy wrapper against two tons of American steel. Ralph

Speaker 3: was thrown clear. The Ford spun out for forty feet

Speaker 3: before slowing to a stop. Its driver opened the door

Speaker 3: and walked away unscathed. James Dean, meanwhile, was pinned in

Speaker 3: the Porsche. His neck snapped. Racers had a word for it,

Speaker 3: stretched as close as you can get to being decapitated

Speaker 3: while your head is still attached. Minutes later, James Dean

Speaker 3: was pronounced dead on arrival at Passo Robles War Memorial Hospital.

Speaker 3: His Porsche five fifty Spider was still spewing smoke in

Speaker 3: the desert night. High school kids don't get riled up

Speaker 3: over an auto safety demonstration. It beats math class, But

Speaker 3: who wants some donut munching member of the California Highway

Speaker 3: Patrol lecturing you about checking your rear view and slowing

Speaker 3: the fuck down. But the demo at this high school

Speaker 3: in Sacramento is different. Kids there are buzzing. Then they

Speaker 3: wear their red jackets and they support their black armbands.

Speaker 3: They're about to see the car that killed James Dean.

Speaker 3: The line flies into the gymnasium and on the shittypa speaker.

Speaker 3: The cop talks about breaking distance and night visibility, but

Speaker 3: the kids aren't listening. They're focused on the hunk of

Speaker 3: twisted silver metal at the far end of the gym,

Speaker 3: and they wait for their chance to get close to

Speaker 3: it and maybe even touch it. At The cops who

Speaker 3: brought it aren't too busy being total cops. But the

Speaker 3: boy in the red jacket with the perfect hare, one

Speaker 3: of a dozen boys supporting the same look, gets his chance.

Speaker 3: He approaches the car on the pedestal like he would

Speaker 3: a casket at a funeral, only there's no body inside.

Speaker 3: He imagines James Dean sprawled backwards across the driver's seat

Speaker 3: like Christ on the Cross, his body broken but his

Speaker 3: face still perfect. The boy can almost see it. He

Speaker 3: reaches out to touch James Dean. There's a sudden creak

Speaker 3: of metal as the pedestal holding the car bends and breaks.

Speaker 3: The car tumbles forward, slow but intentional, as if it

Speaker 3: woke up hungry. It falls onto the boy. It shatters

Speaker 3: his hip. It pins him to the gym floor. Everyone gasps,

Speaker 3: everyone looks at him. This would be the way to go,

Speaker 3: the boy thinks, as the cops struggled to pull the

Speaker 3: wreck off of him. Everyone watching me, just like James Dean.

Speaker 3: James Dean's Poorsche fifty Spider was a twisted wreck. It

Speaker 3: was towed off to a salvage yard in Burbank, where

Speaker 3: eventually another racer named doctor William Esrich bought it for parts.

Speaker 3: He dropped the Porsche's powerful engine into his Lotus nine

Speaker 3: and sold the suspension to a friend and fellow racer,

Speaker 3: Troy McHenry, to fix up his own Porsche speedster. The

Speaker 3: two racers were scheduled to meet on the track at

Speaker 3: Pomona in August nineteen fifty six, and this is almost

Speaker 3: a year after James Dean's death. At the height of

Speaker 3: the Idol worshiping death cults, teens and red jackets and

Speaker 3: black armbands crowded into the stands to see relics of

Speaker 3: James Dean face each other on the raceway. In the

Speaker 3: first lap, Troy McHenry lost control of his Porsche. It

Speaker 3: veered off the raceway and smashed into the only tree

Speaker 3: on the track. He died instantly. Esridge sped past the

Speaker 3: wreck into another lap without any warning or apparent reason.

Speaker 3: His wheels locked up as he approached the next turn,

Speaker 3: his Lotus nine flipped and the little aluminum speedster bounced

Speaker 3: across the track like a dropped dime. It came to

Speaker 3: rest along the outer edge barricade in front of a

Speaker 3: the crowd shocked. James Dean worshippers. Esrich was seriously injured,

Speaker 3: and when he recovered, a reporter asked him if he

Speaker 3: thought the car that killed James Dean was cursed. No,

Speaker 3: he said, these things just happened, but his first order

Speaker 3: of business when he got home was to get the

Speaker 3: remains of James Dean's pushed the fuck out of his life.

Speaker 3: George Barris, who detailed the Porsche for Dean, bought it

Speaker 3: off es Fridge for twenty five hundred dollars. He claimed

Speaker 3: he was going to fix it up, but there was

Speaker 3: no fixing a wreck like this. Barriss bought the Porsche

Speaker 3: intending to turn a morbid profit off of it. It

Speaker 3: didn't work. While Barras's guys were loading it onto the

Speaker 3: truck to haul it out of es Frcistic garage, the

Speaker 3: Porsche slipped off the trailer and broke a mechanic's leg.

Speaker 3: Classified ads for tiny aluminum scraps from the car that

Speaker 3: killed James Dean started showing up in newspapers and in

Speaker 3: mailings to James Dean fan clubs. The scraps were as

Speaker 3: real as splinters, claiming to be pieces of the true Cross,

Speaker 3: but that didn't stop fans from paying for them. Barris

Speaker 3: decided to just rent the wreck out to the California

Speaker 3: Highway Patrol's Council on Safety, who wanted to tour it

Speaker 3: around as a cautionary tale. They housed it in a

Speaker 3: police guararge in Fresno, planning to display at an event

Speaker 3: the next day, and the garage caught fire that night,

Speaker 3: and the Porsche Spider was surprisingly unharmed. And then the

Speaker 3: Porsche harmed a student when it slipped off its stand

Speaker 3: and broke a kid's hip at that driver's at event

Speaker 3: at a Sacramento high school. And then as it was

Speaker 3: being transported to a road safety show on a flatbed truck,

Speaker 3: the Porsche rolled off the trailer, flipped forward, and crushed

Speaker 3: the truck driver, killing him. California Highway Patrol returned the

Speaker 3: Porsche to barras no particular reason given. Barris kept renting

Speaker 3: it out to other highway safety groups, not mentioning the

Speaker 3: gruesome afterlife of the car, certainly not using the words

Speaker 3: some people had started to mention when referring to it cursed.

Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty, the Porsche was supposed on its way

Speaker 3: back to Barris from a safety expo in Miami when

Speaker 3: it disappeared from a sealed box car. It was never found.

Speaker 3: In twenty twenty one, a transaxle was authenticated as the

Speaker 3: last surviving part of James Dean's Porsche five point fifty Spider.

Speaker 3: It's sold at auction for three hundred and eighty two

Speaker 3: grand to a paranormal investigator in reality television personality. He

Speaker 3: put it on display in his Las Vegas Museum of

Speaker 3: Haunted Objects. He keeps it behind glass so it can't

Speaker 3: hurt anybody else. It's a morbid shrine to a story

Speaker 3: that ought to be in pictures. I'm Jake Brennan and

Speaker 3: this is hollywood Land. Hollywood Land was created by Years

Speaker 3: Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Follow

Speaker 3: rate and review hollywood Land wherever you get your podcasts

Speaker 3: and get in touch with us on social media at

Speaker 3: double Elvis. If you like Hollywoodland, check out my other show,

Speaker 3: The award winning Disgraceland, which looks at the world of

Speaker 3: music through the lens of true crime. Just search for

Speaker 3: Disgraceland or wherever you get your podcasts. Good. There's a laugh.