James Dean: The Biography [Paperback]

Val Holley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 1996

For the first time in trade paperback, this is the most comprehensive biography of James Dean ever written, based upon over one hundred interviews with people who have never before spoken on record. Author Val Holley delves into Dean's early life and training on stage and in television using research that is astounding in its detail and frequently lets his sources speak in their own voices.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This September marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Dean in a racing accident, and with this anecdotal biography, his fans will have plenty of fresh fodder to chew. Born in 1931, Dean was nine when his mother died, and he was brought up by relatives in Indiana. After graduating from high school, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, which was advanced when he became sexually involved with an adman/director who introduced him to influential people in New York City. A bisexual, Dean used sex to promote his career by boating with a producer who cast him in the lead role in the Broadway-bound See the Jaguar. The book heavily concentrates on Dean's Manhattan years (groupies will have a field day visiting the myriad addresses where he lived) and gives a blow-by-blow description of almost every one of Dean's acting jobs, his years at the Actors Studio and his relationships with such actors as Arthur Kennedy, Martin Landau, Julie Harris and Betsy Palmer. Holley recounts Dean's manipulative friction with Raymond Massey in East of Eden; the confrontations with director George Stevens on the Giant set; and how studio head Jack Warner ended Dean's romance with actress Pier Angeli. Freelance writer Holley has produced a meticulously documented work that dissects Dean's personality as never before. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Published on the 40th anniversary of James Dean's death, Holley's biography admirably avoids buying into the mythos that has grown around Dean over the years, instead presenting a fascinating description of a flawed human being. Holley draws on diverse sources, many of them previously unavailable, to create a candid and fully realized portrait of this most enigmatic of actors. Dean was a shy, deeply insecure man who never recovered from the early loss of his mother. Charismatic, ambitious, and astoundingly gifted, Dean was also notoriously moody and difficult, his desperate need for affection and attention often manifesting itself in contradictory, ultimately self-destructive behavior. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, this is a worthy addition to the growing body of literature surrounding an actor whose life achieved mythic proportions as a result of his untimely death. Recommended for all types of libraries.?Cynthia Ward Cooper, Carrolton Libs., Tex.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (December 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031215156X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312151560
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,820,947 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( M ) > Martin, Dean

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A humane and absorbing biography, September 18, 2000

By 

Wyn Wade (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: James Dean: The Biography (Paperback)

Val Holley has written a humane and absorbing biography of an American icon who has curiously resisted demystification. The fact is that James Dean has inspired more movies than he actually made in his brief lifetime. The standard course of celebrity demystification is to strip away falsehoods and half-truths, leaving nothing of interest to remain. In contrast, Holley's work reveals Dean as a young human being--in most respects, a typical American youth--and altogether more sympathetic and interesting than the myths that have spiraled around him. Holley's book is made authoritative by exhaustive research, new information, and his easy familiarity with his subject. Happily, his scrupulous detail never hampers the narrative flow, and the book is a quick read. While there is much to praise, I must single out the chapters describing Dean's New York years and his early work in television, because this information is so new and so much more revealing of Dean's inner life and potential than the facts of his more celebrated Hollywood career. Here the reader comes into close contact with a young man struggling to overcome a troubled childhood and restricted education to express an immense talent of which he was only marginally aware. The uncertainty, loneliness and self-doubts he felt at this point of his life make him one of us all. What makes him stand out is the courage he summoned to keep on going. The fact that two things were happening--Dean's talent was suddenly and sensationally realized while his personal struggles still continued--when his life was catastrophically cut short makes his story a genuine tragedy, not a maudlin melodrama. And we can finally understand the fascination he's exercised over successive, changing generations. Likewise, it is Holley's sure and sensitive grasp of these aspects of Dean's story that makes his book far more interesting and valuable than the hagiographies that have preceded it. This is a thorough, humane portrait and a first-rate biography.

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Definitive Dean Biography, July 6, 2000

By 

Kristine Frailey - See all my reviews

This review is from: James Dean: The Biography (Paperback)

Val Holley's James Dean, The Biography is just that...THE biography! This is a wonderful book, utterly enjoyable and the most factual and well-researched of all the Dean biographies. Holley has sought out sources which other biographers have passed over and his recounting of Dean's life, through the stories of those who knew him, gives us an intimate, riveting picture of Dean as he must have been: sometimes likable, often impossible, but always original and completely fascinating. Other enjoyable aspects of this book are that Holley found interesting new insights into Dean's enigmatic character and that Holley doesn't blink when taking issue with other biographers. You can feel the enthusiasm in Holley's work and his recounting of Dean's NY years is spellbinding. While the author's knowledge of his subject is encyclopedic, the book is never pedantic, truly an accomplishment in a biography of this size and depth. This book is a MUST read whether you are a Dean fan or not, and the standard by which other Dean biographies should be judged.

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars truthful and engrossing, December 26, 2005

By 

Sandra L. Waters "Paul Waters" (Davenport, IA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: James Dean: The Biography (Paperback)

Ten years after the original publication, Val Holley's stunningly candid portrait of James Dean is, for me, still the most important biography on the subject around. Holley successfully moved mountains in his dogged research on Dean's mysterious life and career, the result being a first-rate biography of what some might see as an impossible subject, as far as getting at the truth. Holley's use of fresh interviews and a penchant for not taking sides while presenting different perspectives are among the better qualities of this great bio.His attention to chronology and detail, especially in dealing with Dean's time at UCLA,and the early television years, was fascinating. And no one has ever so clearly detailed the nature and effect of Jimmy's relationship with producer,Rogers Brackett,as Holley does from the get-go.Another aspect i like a lot about this Dean book is the hardball, unsentimental approach which is maintained from beginning to end. No punches are pulled, no stone left unturned in revealing the oppressive, conformism of Fairmount, Indiana, and how Dean essentially became a contradictory and highly elusive figure who led two different lives; one being the wholesome, all-American farmboy and basketball player who did his chores on the Winslow farm,and the mercurial, reckless and moody bohemian who caroused New York and Hollywood. Without sensationalizing and creating steamy, scandalous dialogue between individuals, Holley presents the most vivid and convincing case yet for Dean's ambiguous and convoluted sexuality. It has been said that the book is dry and boring, with no sense of a narrative storyline, yet I had a hard time putting the thing down. Nothing could be further from the truth. Val Holley's treatment of James Dean's fascinating, tragic life brilliantly fills an enormous gap in Dean literature that was repeatedly left open by previous authors, many of whom chose to ignore the inticate truths and perpetuate myth instead.
Paul Waters