James Dean

James Franco is an actor-turned-artist-turned-author-turned-actor-playing-an-artist-named-Franco in the soap opera "General Hospital" — who has made a movie, "Francophrenia," that documents the experience. He's about as "meta" as it gets. Now Franco has brought his knack for melding pop culture and fine art in unorthodox ways to a new exhibition for Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art. "Rebel," which opens Tuesday, is a high-concept group show that is a loose, interpretive ode to the 1955 James Dean film "Rebel Without a Cause.

James Franco is an actor-turned-artist-turned-author-turned-actor-playing-an-artist-named-Franco in the soap opera "General Hospital" — who has made a movie, "Francophrenia," that documents the experience. He's about as "meta" as it gets. Now Franco has brought his knack for melding pop culture and fine art in unorthodox ways to a new exhibition for Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art. "Rebel," which opens Tuesday, is a high-concept group show that is a loose, interpretive ode to the 1955 James Dean film "Rebel Without a Cause.

James Dean died 55 years ago today, killed in a dramatic car wreck east of Paso Robles that became the stuff of legend. He was 24 when he died, and he inadvertently managed to take a lot of my generation with him, creating a cultural template for the risks we should take with our own lives. Had he lived, he'd be 80 in February. I was 13 when I first saw him in the movies, and his films offered me an introductory course in how to be a teenage boy in the 1950s. I saw "Rebel Without a Cause" half a dozen times, mostly because I was studying James Dean ?

Thanks to the conveniences of the wired world, Peter Winkler was able to write a book and find an agent and a publisher without ever having to leave his North Hollywood home. Winkler raced to produce the first biography of Dennis Hopper to come out after the actor died in May 2010. It was only when the book was on the shelves that his agent learned how he had done it. "My God, I had no idea," said Robert Diforio of Weston, Conn., who sold "Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel" to a small East Coast publisher, Barricade Books.

If living icon Elizabeth Taylor could not suppress the kind of pap being served up by dollar-grabbing opportunists disguised as professionals, how is it that James Dean, dead and gone nearly 40 years, can warrant a spic-and-span bio-pic (Film Clips, April 30)? Is it a result of the copyright-law prowess of family attorney Mark Roesler, the slick marketing skills of the second generation of "name and image" entrepreneurs, or plain ol' Midwestern homophobia? Dean cousin Marcus Winslow Jr.'s reiteration that "you can rest assured that there won't be anything about him (Dean)

If it weren't for the fact that James Dean was killed about a mile up the road, you probably would have never heard of Cholame. It's a dreary little town in San Luis Obispo County on a stretch of highway that connects 101 with I-5, slicing through countryside that contains almost nothing notable, unless you're one of those who still cries yourself to sleep at night over an actor's long-ago death. About the only visible structure in the community of 116 souls is the Jack Ranch Cafe, a rustic wood building whose grounds contain a memorial to Dean around what is known as the tree of heaven.

Agents said he was strange. Others considered him weird. The one thing everyone agreed on was that he was brilliant. Cool and classy, the TNT biopic "James Dean" (8 p.m., 10 p.m. and midnight Sunday) offers a persuasive portrait of the gifted young rebel who died at 24.

When the BBC announced to viewers that the Princess of Wales had died in a car crash early Sunday, it did so to the image of the Union Jack waving at half-staff and the strains of "God Save the Queen."

Near sunset on Sept. 30, 1955, actor James Dean was killed when the two-seat Porsche Spyder he was driving slammed into a Ford sedan on Route 41 near Paso Robles. The death launched a Hollywood legend. To commemorate that fateful day--as well as publicize a new movie based on Dean's life--a 50-car caravan will depart Bob's Big Boy restaurant in Burbank this Saturday morning.

As a California Highway Patrol officer in San Luis Obispo County, Ernie Tripke had never heard of James Dean before Sept. 30, 1955. But from that day forward, Tripke never quite escaped being asked about the day he responded to the two-car crash that took the life of the young Hollywood star at the rural junction of Highways 41 and 466 (now Highway 46) near Cholame. Tripke, 88, one of two CHP officers who arrived at the scene of the crash, died of heart and lung problems Tuesday in a skilled nursing facility in San Luis Obispo, said his daughter, Julie Tripke.

As a California Highway Patrol officer in San Luis Obispo County, Ernie Tripke had never heard of James Dean before Sept. 30, 1955. But from that day forward, Tripke never quite escaped being asked about the day he responded to the two-car crash that took the life of the young Hollywood star at the rural junction of Highways 41 and 466 (now Highway 46) near Cholame. Tripke, 88, one of two CHP officers who arrived at the scene of the crash, died of heart and lung problems Tuesday in a skilled nursing facility in San Luis Obispo, said his daughter, Julie Tripke.

Griffith Park isn't just the home of Griffith Observatory, the Greek Theatre, the Los Angeles Zoo and train rides. It's also long been a favorite backdrop in films, including "The Terminator," "Back to the Future," "Transformers" and even "The Birth of a Nation. " D.W. Griffith shot battle sequences in the park for his controversial 1915 Civil War epic. But perhaps the most famous film to use Griffith Park is Nicholas Ray's 1955 teen drama "Rebel Without a Cause" starring James Dean.

30,000 BC: Stone Age man begins using sharpened flint and seashells to scrape the hair from his body, inventing the morning shave. 1150 BC: Biblical hero Samson, whose feats of strength allegedly included slaying an entire army with the jawbone of an ass, confides to Delilah that losing his hair means losing his strength, making this perhaps the earliest recorded lament about premature baldness. 1700s: Elaborate powdered wigs ? for men, not women ? become an 18th century status symbol in Europe.

As photographer Richard C. Miller documented the construction of the four-level freeway interchange in mid-20th century downtown Los Angeles, he was overwhelmed by its man-made beauty. "I saw it and just went out of my mind," he later wrote. "I thought, 'My God, this is how people must have felt when they first saw the cathedrals in Europe.'" Miller forged a career in the 1940s and 1950s photographing celebrities. But the images Miller took for his own pleasure, especially of the unfolding of the Hollywood Freeway, showcase an independent vision, said Craig Krull, whose Santa Monica gallery this year staged a show of Miller's work.

At age 8, Emily Melville lost her mother, father and older sister along a stretch of Highway 46 when a big-rig collided with the family's minivan in May 2006. The family was returning home to the Central Coast after visiting Disneyland. Earlier this year, Aaron Salgado, 26, died as he attempted to turn off Highway 46 into the driveway of his home. His car was struck from behind and propelled into an oncoming pickup truck as his wife watched in horror from their frontyard. And perhaps most famously, actor James Dean died on the same highway 55 years ago last Thursday as he was heading to Salinas to compete in an automobile race.

James Dean died 55 years ago today, killed in a dramatic car wreck east of Paso Robles that became the stuff of legend. He was 24 when he died, and he inadvertently managed to take a lot of my generation with him, creating a cultural template for the risks we should take with our own lives. Had he lived, he'd be 80 in February. I was 13 when I first saw him in the movies, and his films offered me an introductory course in how to be a teenage boy in the 1950s. I saw "Rebel Without a Cause" half a dozen times, mostly because I was studying James Dean ?

On Easter Sunday, 1951, a 20-year-old James Dean played John the Apostle on Father Patrick Peyton's "Family Theater" production "Hill Number One." It was his second professional job, following a commercial. His performance so mesmerized Catholic school girls at a local parochial school in Los Angeles that they formed the Immaculate Heart James Dean Appreciation Society.

I drove up to the Griffith Observatory the other day to give myself the illusion of being away from the city. I loitered around the grounds for a while, staring with dumb admiration at the familiar, slender white sculptures of history's pioneering astronomers gracing the front lawn.

Corey Allen, an actor-turned Emmy Award-winning director who earned a slice of film immortality in the 1950s playing the doomed high school gang leader who challenges James Dean to a "chicken run" in "Rebel Without a Cause," has died. He was 75. Allen died at his home in Hollywood on Sunday, two days before his 76 t h birthday, said family spokesman Mickey Cottrell. The specific cause was not given. Allen had Parkinson's disease for the last two decades, Cottrell said, but he remained active directing plays until a few years ago. Allen's death came a month after that of another "Rebel" alumnus, Dennis Hopper, who played one of the high school gang members.

Dennis Hopper knew how to talk to reporters, if my memory of a 1990 Toronto Film Festival press conference is an accurate gauge. It was early one gray morning, and he was jawing about "The Hot Spot," a neo-noir thriller that he'd directed, starring Don Johnson and Virginia Madsen. The questions were friendly and the banter jocular and relaxed in the packed hotel conference room. Then someone asked Hopper about how he'd dealt over the years with the premature death of his friend and former colleague James Dean.