Gone too soon
You have to go all the way back to James Dean to find anything comparable to expectations of Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight.”
On Sept. 30, 1955 –less than a month before the release of James Dean’s second film “Rebel Without a Cause” –his Porsche Spyder 550 collided with a black and white 1950 Ford Tudor coupe on a California highway.
Dean’s car was affectionately known by all his buddies as “Little Bastard.” In fact, it was famous California customizer George Barris who’d painted “Little Bastard” on the car’s side.
Barris would later go on to design TV’s Batmobile.
Dean was struggling for breath at the scene of the crash and pronounced dead on arrival at Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital. The driver of the other car –who was apparently at fault –suffered a broken jaw and a gashed forehead. After several suicide attempts, he died in another car crash 30 years later.
Ironically, the car that driver drove –that 1950 Ford Tudor –was a model used constantly in movies and was a kissing cousin of the 1949 Mercury that Dean immortalized in “Rebel Without a Cause,” the archetypal James Dean movie that hadn’t yet been released.
Dean, by then, had already made three movies. The first, which was released in March 1955, was Elia Kazan’s “East of Eden,” now considered a movie classic, as are all the Dean films. With the electrifying cluelessness that ensured he’d be forever known as the Critic Who Always Missed the Point, the New York Times’ Bosley Crowther wrote of Dean in “East of Eden”: that he was “a mass of histrionic gingerbread. He scuffs his feet, he whirls, he pouts, he sputters, he leans against walls, he rolls his eyes, he swallows his words, he ambles slack-kneed –all like Marlon Brando used to do. Never have we seen a performer so clearly follow another’s style. Mr. Kazan should be spanked for permitting him to do such a sophomoric thing. Whatever there might be of reasonable torment in this youngster is buried beneath the clumsy display.”
Audiences, on the other hand, were stunned by Dean right from the start with “East of Eden.”
With the release of “Rebel Without a Cause” less than a month after Dean’s death, and then “Giant” a year later, Dean became one of the great and enduring legends in American movies.
And that’s how far back you have to go to find a truly comparable story of a major actor who died just before his career was about to ascend into the stratosphere.
Many thought Tupac Shakur’s potential enormous when he was murdered before the release of “Gridlock’d.” Brandon Lee died during a stunt gun misfire while making “The Crow.” Aaliyah died in a plane crash just before the release of “Queen of the Damned.” And the disreputable wild man and character actor Oliver Reed died before the release of “Gladiator.”
Peter Finch at least lived to see the enormous acclaim he received for Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet’s “Network,” although his death two months later meant that his Oscar had to be given posthumously.
Only Dean and Heath Ledger, then, died tragically in their 20s just on the lip of great moments in careers whose future greatness was a dead certainty.
— Jeff Simon
