James Dean was 24, loved acting, loved racing, and Hollywood loved him back. He was "a rebel without a cause," a daredevil who was in the papers and on the screens of cinema theaters across the country from the moment his Pepsi commercial debut shot him to stardom. And then, everything screeched to a halt. He lost his life in a terrible car crash. How does the crash site look now, almost 70 years later?
It was the summer of 1955. James Dean had just completed filming "Rebel Without a Cause" and started working on the set of "Giant," starring alongside Elizabeth Taylor.
James Dean had his heart split in two between movies and car racing. He spent every dime he made in Hollywood on motorcycles and cars. However, the "Giant" team had introduced a clause in James Dean's contract that did not allow him to race.
So he had to wait. He was planning to trade in his Speedster for a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder. Powered by a four-cylinder, air-cooled engine, it only weighed 1,200 pounds. He wanted to go racing in the Porsche. And he did right after he finished filming for 'Giant." He traded in his car for that Porsche that he had been dreaming of and took it racing.
On September 30, 1955, he was heading from Hollywood to Salinas Road, where he was supposed to race on October 1 and 2. He had decided to drive the car he was to race all the 300 miles to Salinas.
Photo: Bring a Trailer | Swift Motoring
So, instead of towing it with a station wagon, as originally planned, Dean decided to drive it to Salinas to put miles on the odometer. The station wagon was a Ford Country Squire.
Stunt coordinator Bill Hickman, Collier's photographer Sanford Roth, who was working on a feature about Dean, and German factory-trained mechanic Rolf Wutherich accompanied him.
But only the mechanic was with him in the Porsche, a car that Dean affectionally called the "Little Bastard." The other two were on board the Ford Country Squire, which was planned to only tow the Porsche on the way back home. But the Porsche was never to return home.
At 3:30 PM that day, James Dean was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol, and Officer Otie V. Hunter gave him a ticket for overspeeding. He was doing 65 mph (105 kph) in an area where the speed limit was 55 mph (89 kph).
Photo: Bring a Trailer | Swift Motoring
That wasn't going to stop him from pressing that pedal to the metal. One hour and 15 minutes later, as they were driving westbound on US Route 466 (now called the SR 46), near Cholame, California, Dean slammed into the passenger side of a 1950 Ford Custom Tudor coupe, driven by a 23-year old California Polytechnic State University student, Donald Turnupseed, who made a left turn toward Fresno, right in front of the oncoming Porsche.
Dean tried to avoid the collision with the car that had come to a stop right in front of him. But he did not have enough time and space. James Dean's Porsche hit the Ford head-first and bounced across the pavement. The mechanic who was in the passenger side was thrown out of the car. Dean remained trapped in the wreckage of the Porsche with fatal injuries. It was 5:59 PM.
Passersby pulled over and rushed in to help, extricating him from the vehicle. A woman who reportedly had nursing experience is said to have detected a weak pulse in his neck. James Dean was pronounced dead shortly after he arrived at the Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital in an ambulance at 6:20 PM.
According to his death certificate, he had suffered a broken neck, multiple fractures of the upper and lower jaw, both arms broken, and serious internal injuries.
Photo: Lamont At Large | YouTube
Turnupseed kept saying to everyone, "I hope he is all right." He had no idea, at the moment, that his reckless move was the one that caused the crash that killed James Dean.
He told the police that he had not seen the Porsche approaching, and the charges were dismissed. Over the years, he refused almost any encounter with the media that would try to interview him every year on the day James Dean died. Donald passed away at the age of 63 from lung cancer.
Right before the impact, when Wutherich told him to slow down when he saw the Ford Tudor turning left, James Dean reportedly replied: "That guy's gotta stop. He'll see us." Apparently, he did not see them. However, in an interview in 1960, Wutherich said he did not recall the dialogue.
A monument in his honor was built by a Japanese businessman on the former US Route 466, not at the site of the crash but some half a mile from the location where it happened.
Almost seventy years later, the place is packed with messages related to James Dean, placed on a wire fence as a tribute to the actor and racer.
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