Photograph of Dean next to his Porsche 550, a few hours before his death. (Public Domain)
On this day in history, September 30, 1955, 24-year-old actor James Dean died in Cholame, California, when the Porsche he was driving crashed into a Ford Tudor sedan at an intersection. The motorist in the other car, 23-year-old California Polytechnic State University student Donald Turnupseed, was stunned but mostly unscathed; Dean’s traveling companion, German mechanic Rolf Wutherich was severely injured but pulled through. Only one of Dean’s three movies, “East of Eden,” had been released by the time he died (“Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant” opened soon after that), but he was well on the way to fame – and the accident made him a superstar.
At precisely 5:45 p.m., a black and white, two-tone 1950 Ford Tudor was traveling east on Route 466 just west of Shandon, California. Its motorist, 23-year-old US Navy veteran and Cal Poly student Donald Turnupseed, negotiated a left turn onto Route 41, moving north toward Fresno. As Turnupseed’s vehicle moved across the center line, Dean (clearly anticipating an accident) seemingly attempted to maneuver the Spyder in a “side-stepping” racing tactic. Still lacking time and space, the two vehicles crashed almost head-on. One witness reportedly viewed the Spyder slam into the ground two or three times end over end, settling in a ditch beside the shoulder of the road, northwest of the intersection. The force of the crash sent the much-heavier Ford broad-sliding 40 feet down Route 466 in the opposite lane. The accident was observed by several other motorists who stopped to assist. A woman with a nursing background attended to Dean and discovered a weak pulse in his neck.
Police officers were dispatched to the scene. Before they arrived, Dean had been removed from the Spyder’s jumbled frame, his left foot being trampled between the clutch pedal and the brake pedal. He was brutally wounded as his automobile took the brunt of the collision, experiencing a broken neck and massive internal and external wounds. An unconscious and dying James Dean was put into an ambulance, and a scarcely conscious Wutherich, who had been thrown from the vehicle, was lying on the shoulder of the highway next to the smashed Spyder. Dean and Wutherich were transported to the hospital in the same ambulance, 28 miles from the scene. Dean was declared dead on arrival at 6:20 p.m. by the emergency room physician, Dr. Robert Bossert. The cause of death was a broken neck, multiple upper and lower jaw fractures, both right and left arms broken, and internal injuries. Wutherich lived but suffered a fractured jaw and severe hip and femur injuries requiring urgent surgery. Turnupseed only experienced slight wounds, namely facial bruises and a bloodied nose.
James Dean was born in Marion, Indiana, on February 8, 1931, where he lived until his father moved the family to California. His mother passed away when James was nine years old.
Dean appeared to exude cleverness and talent constantly. He excelled at playing the violin, he tap-danced, and he sculpted. Dean enrolled at the Junior College of the University of California in 1949 but dropped out at the prompting of his drama teacher to follow an acting career in New York.
After doing bit parts and commercials for a couple of years, Dean moved to New York to study acting under director Lee Strasberg in 1951. Over the next few years, he developed his signature (and, at the time, eccentric) acting technique and scored parts in numerous television shows and Broadway plays.
His breakthrough occurred in 1955 when he received a part in the film East of Eden, an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel. Dean’s mostly improvised performance and his classic depiction of the restive American youth of the 1950s were universally lauded, and his pathway to fame seemed assured.
His dramatic rise to stardom could not have foreseen Dean’s death – as unexpected and shocking as it was.
James Dean loved racing cars, and he and his new $7000 Porsche Spyder convertible were traveling to a race in Salinas, 90 miles south of San Francisco. Observers upheld that Dean had not been speeding at the time of the crash – in fact, Turnupseed had negotiated a left turn right into Dean’s pathway – but some people maintain that he must have been driving exceptionally fast: He had received a speeding ticket in Bakersfield, 84 miles from the accident location, at 3:30 p.m. and then Dean had paused at a diner for a Coke, which suggested that he had traveled a long distance in a relatively short period. Still, the glare from the setting sun would have made it difficult for Turnupseed to see the Porsche coming at him, no matter the speed it was traveling.
Dean’s car, nicknamed the Little Bastard by the owner, was rumored to have been cursed. After the crash, the vehicle rolled off the back of a truck and flattened the legs of a mechanic standing close by. Later, after a used car seller sold its parts to customers all over America, the bizarre occurrences increased: The car’s engine, transmission, and tires were all put into vehicles that were later involved in fatal accidents, and a truck transporting the Spyder’s chassis to a highway-safety exposition slid off the highway, resulting in the death of its driver. The remnants of the car disappeared from the scene of that accident and have never been located.
Wutherich, whose guilty feelings in the aftermath of the car accident never lessened, attempted suicide twice during the 1960s – and in 1967, he stabbed his wife 14 times with a knife in a failed murder/suicide – and he subsequently died in a drunk-driving accident in 1981. Turnupseed died of lung cancer in 1995.
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