James Dean: Features Photographs from the Dean Family's Private Collection

Customer Reviews

50 Years On: - By: , 20 Mar 2005
Speaking as a Dean fan, this book is a worthwhile purchase. DK have some decent film publications on the market right now(AFI Desk Book, & Cinema: Year by Year). Yet this 'biography' fallls short in comparison.

I say this is a 'worthwhile' buy mainly because of the pictorial content. The visual format of the book is impressive & some content is unique. Rare photographs from private collections are included because the book was fully endorsed by the JD Estate. Ironicallly, it is this fact (I suspect) that means the book never manages to get past the superficial.

The text fails to confront the more bizarre episodes of Dean's life, documented by other biographers (despite many of these books being listed in a bibliography at the end). That would seem to indicate certain details that seemed undesirable to Dean's surviving family, are completely omitted. The result is that you never feel this portrait is as intimate as it should be. It is also the case that way too much time dwells on Dean the movie star - & not the person that existed off camera.

This book, in fact, buys into the whole idea of manufacturing movie stars that was prevalent in the 1950's film industry. His family might like this but others may feel cheated by the author's failure to provide a more accurate 'warts & alll' account of Dean's short life.

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