Dec. 29, 1954 – James Dean, Roy Schatt, And Me

James Dean, Roy Schatt, and me — my walk in the footsteps of the icon.

On Dec. 29, 1954, photographer Roy Schatt took photos of James Dean – photos he dubbed the “Torn Sweater” series.

Nine months later Dean was dead.

Schatt met Dean in February, 1954, through mutual friends in New York City’s artistic communities. They hung out with actors Martin Landau and Jim Backus, dancer Eartha Kitt as well as musicians, composers, and many others.

“I knew him as a friend and as a student,” Schatt wrote in his book about Dean. “He was a disrupter of norms, a bender of rules, a disquieter of calm.”

The previous August, Dean filmed his first major role, East of Eden, which opened April 10, 1955.

His second film, Rebel Without A Cause was in production from March 28 to May 26. Dean immediately began work on Giant in Hollywood, before traveling to Texas in June. Filming wrapped in October.

Dean died in a car accident on Sept. 30.

A month later, Warner Bros. released Rebel Without a Cause, enshrining Dean as a cultural icon.

Dean was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations.

In August, 1984, I met Schatt in that same apartment studio where he took these photos. He was older, but the apartment was exactly the same. The furniture and decor virtually unchanged since James Dean strolled in 30 years before.

*Thirty years after this photo was taken, my dad and I sat on this couch and I thought, “I’m sitting where James Dean sat.”*

I was 17 that summer, passing through New York City as we sailed down the east coast. (When we made our way down the East River, I sat on the bow looking for railroad ties and logs large enough to put holes in our wooden boat. I stopped counting after seeing more than 100 condoms floating in the water.)

I looked Schatt up in the Yellow Pages and scheduled an appointment the next day. After signing my copy of his book, he offered to sell me a calendar with his photos, but I didn’t have the money.

I asked Schatt why Dennis Stock got the Life magazine assignment to travel to Indiana with Dean.

“I thought you said you read my book,” he replied.

Photo of James Dean

To this day, I don’t remember why Stock went, and not Schatt. Schatt took the Torn Sweater photos on assignment from the same magazine, but Life didn’t publish the photos.

In December 1984 I made my first trip to Dean’s grave in Park Cemetery in Fairmount, Ind., less than a mile down the road from where he grew up on his aunt and uncle’s farm.

I toured Fairmount and visited the places captured in Stock’s photos three decades before.

From the streets of Fairmount, to Schatt’s studio, to his grave in Indiana, like so many others, I followed in Dean’s footsteps.

And now, 70 years after these images were captured, 40 years after I stood in the same room, Dean remains untouched by the passage of time. His eternal emotional depth and physical beauty continue to captivate young people around the world.

While the rest of us have grown old and all of us will die, Dean remains frozen in time.

Forever young.