I just saw some of James Dean’s movies (East of Eden amd Giant) and damn I have to pit the motherfucker that killed him in that car accident. He could have made some damn fine movies.
Well, you better pit Jimmy himself, then. From a Dean web site:
“On September 30, 1955, James Dean & his mechanic were driving his Porsche Spyder from Hollywood to a sports car race in Salinas when, late in the afternoon around Cholame, a young Cal-Poly student turned left in front of them on his way home to Fresno for the weekend. The crash crumpled the tiny Porsche race car and killed Dean, with the mechanic being through out of the car and living. Donald Turnipseed, the student, lived until just a few years ago (November 2000), claiming to his death he never saw Dean’s car.”
Seems Dean was speeding, something he had done repeatedly.
Dean was very notorious for his speeding. Ironically, as I saw on television, shortly before his death he had finished making one of those movies they make for schools to watch, and what was it on? You guessed it: Speeding
He Darwined himself. And yet Yoko Ono lives on.
Sanscour
I don’t understand your logic, Hydrocortisone. Are you suggesting that “the motherfucker that killed him” should have pursued an acting career?
Dean was indeed notorious for speeding. On the Giant DVD, they talk about how Dean was forbidden during shooting from driving sports cars precisely because he was known to be a reckless driver with a lead foot. Too bad they couldn’t have mandated that during all of production, because Dean died driving on the way out of Salinas after he finished shooting the last of his scenes.
I saw a television special years ago that claimed to have proven that James Dean was not actually speeding during his fatal car accident, and a quick google search reveals a number of websites that believe this as well. Here is a short video of the computer simulation used to “prove” that Dean was not speeding: http://www.exponent.com/multimedia/cases/dean.html
Personally I am a little skeptical, but it is interesting nevertheless…
Even if he wasn’t speeding, there is some pretty clear indication of a “lack of due caution”. Supposedly his last words were something to the effect of “Surely he sees us, doesn’t he?”. The sun was setting almost directly behind him, shining right in Turnipseed’s eyes.
Dean identified a clear and present danger, then did nothing about it. Leave Turnipseed alone. He’s suffered enough over this already.