How tall was James Dean?
James Byron Dean was born in Marion, Indiana, on February 8, 1931, to Mildred Marie (Wilson) and Winton A. Dean, a farmer who had turned dental technician. His mother died when Dean was nine, and his aunt and uncle in Fairmount, Indiana subsequently raised him on a farm. His early film contributions were mainly small roles: a sailor in the unnecessarily frenzied romantic comedy of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Sailor Beware (1952); a GI in Samuel Fuller's moody study of a Korean War peloton, Set Bayonets! (1951) and a young man in the comedy Piper Laurie-Rock Hudson Has Anyone Seen My Gal (1952).His true starring role, the one that fixed his face in American culture for ever, was that of the brooding red-jacketed teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) by Nicholas Ray.
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