Nicholas Ray's (1911-1979)

Rebel without a Cause

(1955)

Starring

James Dean .... Jim Stark

Natalie Wood .... Judy

Sal Mineo .... John 'Plato' Crawford

Jim Backus .... Frank Stark

Ann Doran .... Mrs. Carol Stark

Corey Allen .... Buzz Gunderson

William Hopper .... Judy's Father

Rochelle Hudson .... Judy's Mother

Dennis Hopper .... Goon

Edward C. Platt .... Officer Ray Fremick

Steffi Sidney .... Mil

Marietta Canty .... Crawford family maid

Virginia Brissac .... Mrs. Stark, Jim's grandmother

Beverly Long .... Helen

Ian Wolfe .... Dr. Minton, Griffith Observatory lecturer

Frank Mazzola .... Crunch

Nick Adams .... Chick

Jack Grinnage .... Moose

Paul Birch .... Police Lieutenant

Screenplay by Stewart Stern, from an adaptation by Irving Schulman and an original story by Nicholas Ray. The title "Rebel without a Cause" came from an otherwise unrelated non-fiction study of juvenile delinquency published by psychiatrist Robert Lindner in 1944, Rebel without a Cause: the Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath.

Music by Leonard Rosenman

Photographed in CinemaScope and WarnerColor by Ernest Haller

Edited by William H. Ziegler

Produced for Warner Brothers by David Weisbart

Teenager Jim Stark (James Dean), who is shown drunk on the sidewalk behind the opening credits, is brought in to Juvenile Hall on an underage drinking charge. He is counseled by Officer Ray Fremick (Edward C. Platt) while waiting for his parents (Jim Backus and Ann Doran). Also at Juvenile Hall are Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo). Judy feels rejected by her father (William Hopper) and has been picked up for soliciting prostitution. Plato has been turned in by his maid (Marietta Canty). His parents are divorced, and he feels rejected by both. His mother keeps a loaded pistol in her bedroom, which he has used to kill some puppies, presumably to spare them from the rejection he experiences.

Sobered up the next morning, Jim leaves for his first day at his new high school. The Starks recently moved to escape the consequences of Jim's delinquency in their old home town. Jim finds Judy lives in a neighboring house, but she is in with a group of unpleasantly unwelcoming delinquents presided over by her boyfriend Buzz (Corey Allen), recently released from reform school. Their class goes on a field trip to the Griffith Observatory, where the planetarium show terrorizes Plato. Jim and Buzz fight with switchblades, though Jim fights only reluctantly, possibly because he may feel guilt over injuring another boy in his old town. Buzz effectively loses, but challenges Jim to a "Chicken Run," in which stolen cars are drag-raced off a cliff into the sea. The winner will supposedly be the boy who jumps out last. Before the race, Jim puts on a red windbreaker which he wears for the rest of the film, except for briefly loaning it to Plato. The red jacket has better visual presence in a color film, especially in night scenes, than the black leather jackets worn by Buzz and the other delinquents.

Because of his kindness to both her and Plato, Judy becomes increasingly tolerant toward Jim, and Buzz respects him for standing up to him. The knife fight and drag race serve as initiatory rituals, after which Buzz makes it clear Jim will be accepted into the group. Buzz actually welcomes Jim as a friend just before they race, though this is not witnessed by anyone else in the group. This group's dysfunctional and sociopathic dynamic make it exactly the social context Jim should avoid. The result of the race prevents Jim's acceptance by the rest of the group, though it does lead to his pairing with Judy. For the rest of the film, Jim and Judy act as surrogate parents to the increasingly disturbed Plato.

The gang tries to hunt down Jim, who hides with Judy and Plato in an abandoned house. It is shown as being visible from Griffith Park, but the actual location was the Getty mansion on Wilshire Boulevard. Its swimming pool had been built by Paramount for Mrs. Getty in exchange for her allowing the studio to use the house for filming Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950). The now empty swimming pool was used for Rebel, but the house was torn down shortly afterward. In evading the pursuing gang and eventually the police, Jim is finally revealed as a hero.

Rebel without a Cause is one of the three films of James Dean, and had not been released when he was killed in a car wreck in 1955. Elia Kazan's East of Eden (1955) had been released earlier in the year. East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause were two of Warner Brothers' first films in widescreen, and Warner's licensing contract with 20th Century Fox for CinemaScope resulted in Rebel's transformation from a cheap and noirish B-picture, as originally envisioned by director Nicholas Ray, into the major release it became. Fox's licensing contract stipulated that all widescreen films be made in color, and all credit CinemaScope, even if filmed in a competing format. When Warners made some films in Superscope, it was credited on the screen as Warnerscope. When Universal International switched 1957s The Land Unknown from color to black-and-white as a cost-saving measure, Fox made it clear they were displeased, though they didn't otherwise interfere with the film's completion.

James Dean completed his scenes for his third and last film, George Stevens' Giant (1956) from the novel by Edna Thurber, just before his fatal wreck, and Nick Adams dubbed some of his scenes in post-production. Though Giant remains one of the most epic films of the 1950s, it was not filmed in widescreen, though it was clearly designed for projection onto the newer extra-large screens which were coming into vogue to compete with television.

Kazan and Ray never had anything but highest praise for Dean, who at 24 was both more mature and responsible than most of the rest of Rebel's young cast, but George Stevens thought he was just a young punk and worked with him only reluctantly. The young actors who portray the gang of delinquents (besides Corey Allen as Buzz, Dennis Hopper as Goon, Steffi Sidney as Mil, Frank Mazzola as Crunch, Nick Adams as Chick, and Jack Grinnage as Moose)

were particularly nervous and awkward with each other during the first three days of black-and-white filming. When all these scenes had to be reshot in color, the actors found it much more natural to behave as if they were old friends, albeit mostly sociopathic ones. Corey Allen and Frank Mazzola frequently argued.

The existing WarnerColor master print is of extremely high quality, but in 1955, WarnerColor processing was vastly inferior to the much more expensive Technicolor. Because of the expense of Technicolor processing and prints, many studios were beginning to process Eastman Color negatives in house. Fox's trademark for in-house processing was, and remains, DeLuxe; MGM's Metrocolor only emerged toward the end of the decade. Much wardrobe and set design had to be redone from scratch because of WarnerColor's idiosyncracies. For example, ordinary blue jeans photographed green in WarnerColor, so they had to be a dark, almost violet shade.

Star Natalie Wood, only 17, was having an affair with much older director Nicholas Ray. When her boyfriend Dennis Hopper, found out, he was furious at the director, who retaliated by reassigning most of his lines to other characters. Wood eventually married Robert Wagner and tragically died in 1981. Ray notably directed King of Kings with Jeffrey Hunter for Samuel Bronstein in 1961, and had a nervous breakdown working on 55 Days in Peking for Bronstein Spain in 1962. He later taught filmmaking at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He doubles for Dr. Minton the astronomer under Rebel's end titles.