CARMEL, CALIF. -- It's odd listening to the clear voice of the 24-year-old James Dean as I head west through a gap in California's Temblor Mountains called Polonio Pass toward the intersection where the Hollywood legend died.
The recording, made just a week before his death on Sept. 30, 1955, is playing on the sound system in my 50th Anniversary Porsche Boxster S ($83,500), a limited edition intended to pay tribute to the legendary 550 Spyder. The star was driving his own brand new silver Spyder, on his way to compete in an automobile race at the Salinas Airport about 130 kilometres northwest of here, when the accident occurred.
Dean's Spyder was a sleek and very fast sports car with the words "Little Bastard" written across the rear deck. The name was given to him by Bob Hinkle, his Texas dialogue coach on Giant, Dean's third and last movie, which had just wrapped.
In a memoir titled The James Dean I Knew, Hinkle says Dean was something of a loner, often eating by himself on the movie set. Dean was dedicated to his craft, however: "I told Jimmy, 'If you are going to be a Texan, the best way is to be a Texan all day long. Get up in the morning, put on your hat, put on your boots. Dress like a Texan, eat the food Texans eat.' Dean told me, 'That's what I want to do.' "
By all accounts, Dean was not just a spellbinding screen presence, but also a talented amateur racer who was thrilled with his Spyder, a car much different from the hot rods he drove in the movie Rebel Without a Cause.
The 550 Spyder was specially designed with racing in mind. Low-slung, athletic and quick, the car was originally known merely as the 550; it became the 550 Spyder soon after the Paris Auto Show. Porsche adopted the name "Spyder" based on a term British coach builders were using for lightweight, open-air sports cars.
The car was all that and more. In its racing debut, Hans Herrmann drove a 500 Spyder to a class victory (third over all) in the 1954 Carrera Panamericana dash across Mexico. Only the more powerful Ferraris were better.
Dean's Spyder was one of just 90 built for special customers that year. That crosses my mind as I look down across the desolate, windblown vista, Highways 41 and 46 intersecting barely a kilometre ahead.
There is another distraction, too. I'm straining to listen to that recording made a week before the two-time Academy Award nominee was killed. Dean is talking about racing and how safe it is compared with driving on public roads. Race drivers train for years and years, he says, and they know and respect other drivers and the dangers of the sport. But you can't predict what everyday drivers will do. His word were prophetic.
Donald Turnupseed, a student at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo who was headed home to Tulare for a weekend visit with his parents, said he never saw Dean's silver Porsche in the twilight dusk of late summer.
The public records of a hearing held in nearby San Luis Obispo show that Turnupseed testified that, as he approached the intersection, he slowed and glanced up the hill looking for oncoming cars, then turned towards Highway 41. Dean's Spyder and Turnupseed's much-larger, black-and- white 1950 Ford Custom Tudor coupe met almost head-on at 5:59 p.m.
The Porsche was smashed with such horrific force that it ended up in a roadside ditch. Dean was pronounced dead on arrival at Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital some 40 km away. His passenger, 29-year-old former Porsche mechanic Rolf Wutherich, was thrown from the wreck. He survived with a smashed jaw, a broken leg, and many bruises, cuts and abrasions. A decade later, Wutherich and Eugen Bohringer finished second in the Monte Carlo Rally in a Porsche 904. Turnupseed suffered a gash to the forehead and his nose was bruised. He went on to live a long and healthy life in California.
Over the years, some have suggested that Dean was going as fast as 85 mph. Earlier in the day, he had been cited for doing 65 mph in a 45-mph zone on his way out of Los Angeles. But a 1998 computer simulation found that Dean was doing just 57 mph in a 60-mph area.
No charges were filed against Turnupseed.
As I approach the intersection, I slow my Boxster to look for anything that might indicate a tragedy occurred here so many decades ago. There is nothing but a road sign pointing right, to Highway 41. And, in fact, the highway itself is new. The old Highway 446, which later was shortened to 46, is a worn-down, two-lane stretch of dirt that runs parallel to the new highway.
A bit more than a kilometre down the road, however, is a small, almost anonymous memorial to Dean. A wealthy Tokyo businessman named Seita Ohnishi commissioned and paid for the stylized sculpture back in the late 1970s. The locals say Ohnishi admired Dean and wanted to pay tribute to his life.
The sculpture is composed of concrete and stainless steel, with a large sycamore tree growing in the middle. Dean's name, date of birth, day and time of his death, and a figure-eight turned sideways -- the symbol for eternity -- are all prominent.
Embedded in the sculpture is a plaque with a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince that says, "What is essential is invisible to the eye."
Dean reportedly spoke those words often.
