American Legends Interviews..... James Dean

Before the advent of film schools, directors learned their craft through apprenticeships (of sorts). John Ford was a stuntman, Henry King acted in silent films, and George Stevens broke into movies as a cameraman on Laurel and Hardy one reelers.

Nicholas Ray worked in radio in the East, then in 1944 followed Elia Kazan to Hollywood as his assistant on A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. During the filming, Ray wandered the set, notebook in hand, studying every aspect of production.

After leaving Kazan, Ray directed They Live by Night about Oklahoma bank robbers, and Knock on Any Door which was based on Willard Motley's novel about a cop killer. Humphrey Bogart played the criminal lawyer who unsuccessfully tries to save the young hoodlum (John Derek) from the chair with an impassioned plea that crime is the result of poverty and social injustice.

Ray worked on the scripts of both films, as well as on another Bogart movie, In a Lonely Place, that Ray directed in 1950. In the latter movie, Bogart played an alcoholic screenwriter falsely suspected of murder. Ray's personal involvement in creating these projects stamped him as a director whose work centered upon anger and despair. In France, Ray became a darling of the auteur critics---those who regarded the director as the film's true author.

     In the early 1950s, Ray became interested in tackling the subject of juvenile delinquency. Along with novelist Irving Shulman who later dropped from the project, Ray visited Los Angeles Juvenile Hall and interviewed judges and social workers for ideas.

     At the time Ray began his research, all he had was the title of a book Warner's owned the rights to, Rebel Without a Cause, Robert Lindner's study of a teenage sociopath.

     As Ray worked on the project, first with Shulman, then with Stewart Stern, a young graduate of the University of Iowa writing program, Ray began to assemble an extraordinary cast. He wooed James Dean who had just finished East of Eden and persuaded him to do the movie. Ray also recruited two former child actors, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, as the other juvenile leads. Nick Adams, a friend of Dean, Dennis Hopper, Corey Allen, and Frank Mazzola played the gang members and formed the young cast with whom Ray established a remarkable rapport.

     After Rebel Without a Cause, Ray's career went into decline. His personal life was plagued with alcohol, and then throughout the sixties, drug problems. During the filming of Wind Across the Everglades, Ray's behavior became so erratic that Budd Schulberg, who wrote the movie and was co- producer, finally fired Ray and finished directing the movie himself.

By the seventies, Nick Ray was surrounded by youthful disciples and projects that never got made. He died from lung cancer in 1979. Here in an exclusive interview with American Legends, Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel discuss Nick Ray and the making of Rebel Without a Cause. Messrs. Frascella and Weisel are the authors of a recent study of the movie, Live Fast, Die Young (Touchstone, 2005).

This interview is the second in our series of interviews with Dean biographers and was conducted by Peter Winkler, a Los Angeles writer and critic.

AL:	Rebel Without a Cause was a title borrowed from Robert Lindner's study of a teenage sociopath. Nick Ray developed the film from scratch. Some believe the script stemmed from Ray's own vision of adolescence.
LF:	Rebel did little to alleviate the self-destructive pattern in Ray's life. His habit of turning personal trauma into drama proved to be dangerous for him. Ray made several films after Rebel, including Bigger Than Life and Bitter Victory. But his version of King of Kings--in which some say he presented Jesus as a young rebel-- was his only sizeable hit after Rebel.
AL:	There were conflicts among Ray, Irving Shulman, and Stewart Stern over the writing credits for the film.
AW:	Ray had a very contentious relationship with writers. He liked to think writers were there to elucidate his vision, not the other way around. He felt that he and Shulman ultimately did not see eye to eye, although Shulman introduced such ideas as setting a scene in a planetarium and the chickie run. Much of the plot and dialogue of Rebel was contributed by Stern, and perhaps, more importantly, the 24 hour structure of the film. But Stern eventually was troubled by the way Ray would change scenes without telling him, though he had promised not to do so. When it came time to award credits for the film, both Shulman and Stern were shocked that Ray took the story credit all for himself and gave Shulman only a credit for adaptation and Stern credit for the screenplay, when both had contributed so much to the story. Ray even told Stern that the idea of setting the film in a single day was in his original treatment. Stern was bitter over the battle for credit and never worked with Ray again.
AL:	What discoveries about Rebel and the creative participants surprised you the most?
LF:	We were surprised to find out about the alternative endings. And we were amazed to discover how much improvisation went on, right up and throughout any day of shooting. Ray funneled the experiences and feelings of his actors into the movie on a daily basis. He instigated a sexual morass and worked the cast up into an emotional froth that he put right on film. In fact, one of the most amazing things about the movie is how well-structured and emotionally focused it is considering how chaotic the production was.
AL:	Dennis Hopper wasn't listed in the acknowledgements. Did you have difficulty finding people to interview or speak on record?
AW:	Although we tried on a number of occasions to speak with Hopper, he felt that he had said all he had to say about Rebel and declined to participate. Ray's last wife, Susan Ray, got Ray's son, Tony, on the telephone for us, but he said that his memories of his father were even now too "harsh" for him to speak about Ray with us.
AL:	Nick Ray pursued James Dean to get him to star in Rebel, but even after Dean committed to do the film, he almost backed out at the last minute. Why was Dean unsure about Ray and Rebel?
AW:	After Dean did East of Eden, there was a lot of buzz about the film and many of those around him were encouraging the actor to make another prestige picture. When Giant, which was to be directed by Geroge Stevens, was delayed by Elizabeth Taylor's pregnancy, Dean was suddenly free to make another picture. Although Ray was a protégé of Elia Kazan, who had done East of Eden, Ray did not have the reputation of Kazan or Stevens. At that point, Rebel was a black and white picture that didn't even have a script, all of which gave Dean pause about committing himself.
AL:	The late Jim Backus wrote that Dean practically co-directed Rebel.
AW:	Natalie Wood told Gavin Lambert that while it sometimes might have appeared that Dean was directing, she thought that Ray "saw so much of himself" in Jimmy that he gave him a great amount of leeway. I think this is probably closest to the truth.
AL:	Over the years, Ray seemed happy to cast himself in the role of the film's creator.
LF:	If we had to choose one person who created the film, it would certainly be Ray. He set down the raw outline of the film in a 17 page treatment called The Blind Run which he wrote in one crazy night. The outline contained many of Rebel's most essential ideas. Ray guided the film all along the way, and even contributed voluminous editing notes for the post-production phase (which was rare at the time).
AL:	Why has Rebel Without a Cause lasted?
LF:	Rebel endures because it is so good, so true, and because, as one critic has said, the film "breathes with adolescent lungs." Ray was determined to make a movie from the perspective of American teenagers and get everything right: the cars, the clothes, the attitudes. Rebel was the first Hollywood movie to look at the world through the eyes of these kids. Of course, Ray would not have been able to create such an intense film or intense experience of making the film if he hadn't had the right cast. Luckily, Ray insisted on having James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo who played Plato. They became a holy movie trinity of sorts.