![]() ![]() He quit college to act full-time and was cast in his first speaking part, as John the Apostle in Hill Number One, an Easter television special dramatizing the Resurrection of Jesus. Acting career Early careerĭean's first television appearance was in a Pepsi Cola commercial. In January 1951, he dropped out of UCLA to pursue a full-time career as an actor. At that time, he also began acting in James Whitmore's workshop. While at UCLA, Dean was picked from a group of 350 actors to portray Malcolm in Macbeth. He pledged the Sigma Nu fraternity but was never initiated. He transferred to UCLA for one semester and changed his major to drama, which resulted in estrangement from his father. He enrolled in Santa Monica College (SMC) and majored in pre-law. After graduating from Fairmount High School in May 1949, he moved back to California with his dog, Max, to live with his father and stepmother. He played on the baseball and varsity basketball teams, studied drama, and competed in public speaking through the Indiana High School Forensic Association. ĭean's overall performance in school was exceptional and he was a popular student. Other reports on Dean's life also suggest that he was either sexually abused by DeWeerd as a child or as a late teenager. In 2011, it was reported that Dean once confided in Elizabeth Taylor that he was sexually abused by a minister approximately two years after his mother's death. Their alleged sexual relationship was suggested in Paul Alexander's 1994 book Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean. Harbin, Dean had "an intimate relationship with his pastor, which began in his senior year of high school and endured for many years". James DeWeerd, who seems to have had a formative influence upon Dean, especially upon his future interests in bullfighting, car racing, and theater. In his adolescence, Dean sought the counsel and friendship of a local Methodist pastor, the Rev. Dean's father served in World War II and later remarried. ![]() Unable to care for his son, Dean's father sent him to live with his aunt and uncle, Ortense and Marcus Winslow, on their farm in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was raised in their Quaker household. She died of uterine cancer when Dean was nine years old. In 1938, she was suddenly struck with acute stomach pain and quickly began to lose weight. According to Michael DeAngelis, she was "the only person capable of understanding him". The family spent several years there, and by all accounts, Dean was very close to his mother. He was enrolled at Brentwood Public School in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, but transferred soon afterward to the McKinley Elementary School. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, Dean moved with his family to Santa Monica, California. He also claimed that his mother was partly Native American, and that his father belonged to a "line of original settlers that could be traced back to the Mayflower". James Byron Dean was born on February 8, 1931, at the Seven Gables apartment on the corner of 4th Street and McClure Street in Marion, Indiana, the only child of Mildred Marie (Wilson) and Winton Dean.
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