Focus Features

To mark 55 years since the release of Nicholas Ray’s classic Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean and Natalie Wood, Faber & Faber’s Walter Donohue presents an extract on the movie from Gavin Lambert’s biography Natalie Wood.

Before Rebel Without a Cause, teenagers didn’t exist. You were a kid, then an adult – with nothing in between.

Rebel changed all that – just look at James Dean in white T-shirt and jeans – he could be in a Levi’s advertisement right now.

The film became a hit because the anxieties felt by the main characters played by James Dean, Natalie Wood and Dennis Hopper were recognized by a generation of young people who then modeled themselves – and their look – on the characters up there on the screen.

Gavin Lambert – a close friend of Natalie Wood – has this to say about the film, which was directed by Nicholas Ray:

“Perhaps no movie that communicated so directly with audiences, especially the young, emerged from so many conflicts in the making. To Dennis Hopper, it often seemed that Dean was “the real director of Rebel, and controlled every scene he was in.” To Natalie it seemed that Nick got everything he wanted from Dean because “he absolutely understood him, and Jimmy reminded Nick of himself a great deal.” I remember Nick saying the same thing to me a year or two later.

To arrive at the heart of a scene, actor and director both liked to explore it from different angles; and if Dean suddenly became unsure about the angle they’d agreed on, he refused to shoot the scene until he’d thought it over. Nick understood this, and before calling “Action!”, he always waited for Dean to signal that he was ready. In one way this validates Dennis Hopper’s impression that Dean “controlled every scene he was in”, but in another it confirms Natalie’s belief that Nick controlled Dean’s performance because “he absolutely understood him”.

As deeply introverted loners, distrustful of all authority, hungry for love but wary of involvement, both Nick and Dean took refuge in self-dramatisation. Nick liked to confuse and unnerve strangers with long, mysterious silences. Dean preferred to disconcert them by turning a cartwheel when he entered a room. But of all the misunderstandings that occurred before and during the shoot, the most ironic was that Dean felt he could trust Kazan, while Kazan had warned Nick that he’d found Dean surly and narcissistic on East of Eden and advised against using him on Rebel Without a Cause. 

As well as cross-purposes, erotic crosscurrents developed on the set. When Natalie arrived for her interview with Nick Ray for the part of Judy, it was not only her youth that appealed to him. How quickly did Natalie realize that he found her extremely desirable, and how soon did Nick make his move? By the time Natalie made her first test for the film ten days later, they were lovers. Talented dreamer, obsessive gambler, with a wearily handsome face, robust physique and fractured psyche, Nick Ray had mood swings that took him to the verge of manic depression. But his sexual appetite was not yet dulled by twenty years of heavy drinking. Natalie, although a virgin, had already developed highly responsive sexual antennae, and they picked up Nick’s signals. He seemed mysterious, laconic and powerful, like an aging Heathcliff, and the timing was right for an act of open rebellion. Her parents, she knew, would be horrified when they learned about it.

When Natalie made her first test, James Dean was in New York. Dennis Hopper, already cast in the film, had taken Dean’s place in previous tests and did so again with Natalie. Although it was a rainy night, Nick shot the test on the studio back-lot since he wanted to see how the new CinemaScope lens would register darkness and rain. Hopper recalled: “By the time we finished, Natalie and I both felt like wet unhappy animals. Next day she phoned and asked for a date. I was astonished. We’d never met before, I came from a conventional middle-class family in San Diego – although not as restrictive as Natalie’s – and this was the 1950s, when girls who’d turned sixteen only a few months earlier just didn’t do things like that.”

But Natalie did a thing like that, because Nick Ray had awakened her sexual drive, and she’d also tasted the excitement of release from convention. Hopper, recently turned twenty, was on the same road to emancipation. Once over the shock, he caught Natalie’s excitement and agreed to pick her up in his car at the Chateau Marmont the next day at five o’clock when she’d be leaving Nick’s bungalow. (He liked love in the afternoon). Obviously, they couldn’t go to Natalie’s parents’ house and Dennis shared his apartment with a roommate, so as night fell they drove up to the Hollywood Hills and, on the unlighted, rustic ‘Lover’s lane’ stretch of Mulholland Drive, made love for the first time. 

Hopper said:” When I think of those early days with Natalie, the way she handled two affairs at the same time, I realize that Natalie was way ahead of her time.” She was certainly “way ahead of her time” in her responding so directly with her need for sexual adventure with Dennis, and again when she realized that the affair with Nick was also his sexual adventure, not a deep involvement. In fact, as Dennis remembered, when Nick learned about the situation, “he accepted the threesome.”  

Another crosscurrent developed when Sal Mineo echoed the character he played by becoming strongly attracted to Dean. Both Dean and Nick were aware of it; and Nick, who was also aware of Dean’s bisexuality, asked him to “use” it in their scenes together. Accordingly, Dean told Mineo “to look at me that way I look at Natalie,” and a subtle erotic tension develops when the screen threesome spend a night in the deserted mansion. Mineo’s Plato glances longingly at Dean’s Jim Stark, who gives him a quick smile with an undercurrent of flirtation, while Natalie’s Judy is too involved with Jim to notice.

Hopper remembers that he and Natalie continued their relationship as “great friends who occasionally went to bed together. I never had a friend like Natalie again. She was a very important part of my life until we lost touch after I left Warners.” Then he gave a thumbnail sketch of the person he remembered:” Apparently very vulnerable, yet somehow in control.”

In fact, although Natalie sometimes lost control, she nearly always managed to regain it. But otherwise the sketch exactly defines the tightrope that Natalie walked for the rest of her life.’ 

Extract taken from Natalie Wood by Gavin Lambert (Faber & Faber, 2004).

To mark 55 years since the release of Nicholas Ray’s classic Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean and Natalie Wood, Faber & Faber’s Walter Donohue presents an extract on the movie from Gavin Lambert’s biography Natalie Wood.

Before Rebel Without a Cause, teenagers didn’t exist. You were a kid, then an adult – with nothing in between.

Rebel changed all that – just look at James Dean in white T-shirt and jeans – he could be in a Levi’s advertisement right now.

The film became a hit because the anxieties felt by the main characters played by James Dean, Natalie Wood and Dennis Hopper were recognized by a generation of young people who then modeled themselves – and their look – on the characters up there on the screen.

Gavin Lambert – a close friend of Natalie Wood – has this to say about the film, which was directed by Nicholas Ray:

“Perhaps no movie that communicated so directly with audiences, especially the young, emerged from so many conflicts in the making. To Dennis Hopper, it often seemed that Dean was “the real director of Rebel, and controlled every scene he was in.” To Natalie it seemed that Nick got everything he wanted from Dean because “he absolutely understood him, and Jimmy reminded Nick of himself a great deal.” I remember Nick saying the same thing to me a year or two later.

To arrive at the heart of a scene, actor and director both liked to explore it from different angles; and if Dean suddenly became unsure about the angle they’d agreed on, he refused to shoot the scene until he’d thought it over. Nick understood this, and before calling “Action!”, he always waited for Dean to signal that he was ready. In one way this validates Dennis Hopper’s impression that Dean “controlled every scene he was in”, but in another it confirms Natalie’s belief that Nick controlled Dean’s performance because “he absolutely understood him”.

As deeply introverted loners, distrustful of all authority, hungry for love but wary of involvement, both Nick and Dean took refuge in self-dramatisation. Nick liked to confuse and unnerve strangers with long, mysterious silences. Dean preferred to disconcert them by turning a cartwheel when he entered a room. But of all the misunderstandings that occurred before and during the shoot, the most ironic was that Dean felt he could trust Kazan, while Kazan had warned Nick that he’d found Dean surly and narcissistic on East of Eden and advised against using him on Rebel Without a Cause. 

As well as cross-purposes, erotic crosscurrents developed on the set. When Natalie arrived for her interview with Nick Ray for the part of Judy, it was not only her youth that appealed to him. How quickly did Natalie realize that he found her extremely desirable, and how soon did Nick make his move? By the time Natalie made her first test for the film ten days later, they were lovers. Talented dreamer, obsessive gambler, with a wearily handsome face, robust physique and fractured psyche, Nick Ray had mood swings that took him to the verge of manic depression. But his sexual appetite was not yet dulled by twenty years of heavy drinking. Natalie, although a virgin, had already developed highly responsive sexual antennae, and they picked up Nick’s signals. He seemed mysterious, laconic and powerful, like an aging Heathcliff, and the timing was right for an act of open rebellion. Her parents, she knew, would be horrified when they learned about it.

When Natalie made her first test, James Dean was in New York. Dennis Hopper, already cast in the film, had taken Dean’s place in previous tests and did so again with Natalie. Although it was a rainy night, Nick shot the test on the studio back-lot since he wanted to see how the new CinemaScope lens would register darkness and rain. Hopper recalled: “By the time we finished, Natalie and I both felt like wet unhappy animals. Next day she phoned and asked for a date. I was astonished. We’d never met before, I came from a conventional middle-class family in San Diego – although not as restrictive as Natalie’s – and this was the 1950s, when girls who’d turned sixteen only a few months earlier just didn’t do things like that.”

But Natalie did a thing like that, because Nick Ray had awakened her sexual drive, and she’d also tasted the excitement of release from convention. Hopper, recently turned twenty, was on the same road to emancipation. Once over the shock, he caught Natalie’s excitement and agreed to pick her up in his car at the Chateau Marmont the next day at five o’clock when she’d be leaving Nick’s bungalow. (He liked love in the afternoon). Obviously, they couldn’t go to Natalie’s parents’ house and Dennis shared his apartment with a roommate, so as night fell they drove up to the Hollywood Hills and, on the unlighted, rustic ‘Lover’s lane’ stretch of Mulholland Drive, made love for the first time. 

Hopper said:” When I think of those early days with Natalie, the way she handled two affairs at the same time, I realize that Natalie was way ahead of her time.” She was certainly “way ahead of her time” in her responding so directly with her need for sexual adventure with Dennis, and again when she realized that the affair with Nick was also his sexual adventure, not a deep involvement. In fact, as Dennis remembered, when Nick learned about the situation, “he accepted the threesome.”  

Another crosscurrent developed when Sal Mineo echoed the character he played by becoming strongly attracted to Dean. Both Dean and Nick were aware of it; and Nick, who was also aware of Dean’s bisexuality, asked him to “use” it in their scenes together. Accordingly, Dean told Mineo “to look at me that way I look at Natalie,” and a subtle erotic tension develops when the screen threesome spend a night in the deserted mansion. Mineo’s Plato glances longingly at Dean’s Jim Stark, who gives him a quick smile with an undercurrent of flirtation, while Natalie’s Judy is too involved with Jim to notice.

Hopper remembers that he and Natalie continued their relationship as “great friends who occasionally went to bed together. I never had a friend like Natalie again. She was a very important part of my life until we lost touch after I left Warners.” Then he gave a thumbnail sketch of the person he remembered:” Apparently very vulnerable, yet somehow in control.”

In fact, although Natalie sometimes lost control, she nearly always managed to regain it. But otherwise the sketch exactly defines the tightrope that Natalie walked for the rest of her life.’ 

Extract taken from Natalie Wood by Gavin Lambert (Faber & Faber, 2004).