Down the Road to Eternity, Part 3

 

After a stop in Bakersfield for lunch we turn left onto California 46 and head west. We immediately enter farm country and traffic trickles. Its easy to speed on this stretch, even without Dean’s legendary lead foot.

At Corcoran Road, we briefly leave the route to journey north to find another iconic site from the 1950s. It was here at the intersection of Garces Road that Cary Grant was chased by the murderous crop duster in the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock classic North By Northwest. It’s about a 25-mile detour from our trek to take in this site. That’s a long way to go to see an empty intersection made famous in the 1950s, but that, in a nutshell, is exactly what this day is all about.

It’s while returning to Highway 46 that Kim sees the farm that was seemingly lifted from Tatooine. We may not be in the middle of nowhere, but it feels like we could hit it with a rock from here.

Back on the 46, we head west stopping briefly at Blackwell’s Corner to snap photos next to a large billboard of Dean who stopped here briefly to stretch his legs before heading west. His final twenty minutes of life would be spent inside the Spyder.

Minutes later, we crest a ridge of mountains and look below into a large valley. At the base of the valley is the intersection. We’re almost there.

We try to slow down to approach the site at a more safe, and what we feel to be a more reverential velocity, but traffic and inertia speeds us through. We hardly have time to glance up at the green James Dean Memorial Interchange sign that undoubtedly informs many of the passersby of something we have known for years: James Dean died here.

We pass through the intersection and head west for another mile. Near the crest of a hill we see the sign for the non-existent town of Cholame (pronounced Sho-lam), and pull into the parking lot of the Jack Ranch Café. It is here that the faithful traditionally gather. Their totem is a stainless steel monument that bears Deans name, birth and death dates and times, and the infinity symbol. It surrounds a tree that has come to be known as the “tree of heaven.”

I expect to see dozens of Dean fans milling about, perhaps even a replica Spyder or two, but the only people we see are two men in T-shirts and cowboy hats sitting behind several tables of James Dean memorabilia. Their names are Matthew Grant and his father Glen, who live nearby. The collection was assembled by Glens mother who was the postmaster of Cholame for many years.

The collection is impressive with copies of the coroners report, newspaper clippings from the accident, and fan magazines sent from Japan by the Japanese businessman who paid for the memorial. I get excited when they show us a license plate that was found one morning at the memorial that appears to be signed by Elvis Presley. Elvis was a big Dean fan and I try to imagine what something like that must be worth. I calm down when I realize that the relic isn’t authentic when they mention that it was found in 1983 when The King was already long in his grave in Memphis.

I ask Matthew if we missed the crowds and he explains that there weren’t any this year. He estimates that only about a dozen showed up during the whole day. I’m surprised by this, especially since this is the year of the death of Heath Ledger, another talented young actor struck down on the verge of superstardom.

If you wanted crowds, you needed to be here in 2005 on the 50th anniversary, Glen tells us. I counted 325 people that day, he adds.

(I guess even Lourdes has the occasional down day.)

 

Down the Road to Eternity, Part 1

(I started working again at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank today, a place that’s figured prominently in my life. It was here during an earlier gig where I met Kimi, the love of my life, and the lot was also the subject of my first book. It was also paramount in importance to the story of James Dean, who filmed parts of his three films on the lot before dying tragically in a car crash. A couple of years ago, Kimi and I, along with our pal Alan Pollack, traced his final day. Here is what we saw along the way.)

“Along came a Spyder and picked up a rider, and took him down the road to eternity.”

James Dean, The Eagles

 

“It looks like the planet where Luke Skywalker grew up,” jokes my lovely wife Kim, motioning towards a desolate San Joaquin Valley farm whose main crop appears to be sagebrush.

I know what she means. We’re only a couple of hours outside of Los Angeles, but it’s easy to imagine we’ve entered an extraterrestrial home of jawas, droids, and sand people.

We find ourselves on this lonely highway heading towards a destination that has become an annual pilgrimage for many.

On the morning of September 30, 1955, 24-year-old actor James Dean drove from his home in Sherman Oaks to a garage in Hollywood to get a tune-up for his newest toy, a Porsche 550 Spyder. Dean had purchased the Porsche a few days earlier to celebrate signing a new $1 million Hollywood contract and would be running it in a race that weekend in the Central California town of Salinas.

Dean had originally planned to tow the car to the racetrack, but changed his mind at the last minute. With his mechanic, 29-year-old Rolf Wutherich, riding shotgun, and a pair of friends following behind in Dean’s station wagon, he set out for Salinas. He never made it.

At approximately 5:30 PM, a young Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student with the unusual name of Donald Turnupseed was driving eastbound in a black-and-white 1950 Ford. At the Y intersection of California 41 and 46 (California 466 at the time) near Cholame, Turnupseed crossed into the oncoming traffic lane to head north. He apparently didn’t see the hip-high, silver Porsche with Dean at the wheel approaching from the opposite direction. They collided nearly head-on.

Turnupseed walked away with minor injuries, Wutherich was hospitalized for several months, but Dean died at the scene.

Dean was a fast-rising star in Hollywood at the time of his death, having appeared in numerous roles on television, and as the star of the feature film East of Eden, which had been released the previous spring.

During the intervening months, Dean found himself back in front of the camera in starring roles as the brooding Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause, and alongside Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor in the oil epic Giant. Both of these films would be released after his death and would prove to be hugely popular with both critics and the public.

Dean had been barred from racing – his second greatest love after acting – during the filming of Giant, but with the wrapping of the film just two weeks

earlier, he was off to Salinas. (Ironically, East of Eden, for which Dean was to receive his first of two posthumous Best Actor nominations, was set in Salinas.)

Dean’s tragic death, coupled with the rave reviews he received later with the release of Rebel, immediately insured his legacy, and made the 41/46 intersection a site of veneration.

The weekend closest to the anniversary of Dean’s death has become the annual time of pilgrimage for many of his most faithful fans. It has taken on the macabre name of the “Death Ride” for some who feel that an official pilgrimage only occurs when Dean’s entire route is followed.

(More on the Death Ride tomorrow.)