When James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and director Nicholas Ray converged, each was at a crucial point in his or her career. The young actors were grappling with fame, their burgeoning sexuality, and increasingly reckless behavior. As Ray engaged his cast in physical melees and psychosexual seductions of startling intensity, the on- and off-set relationships between his ambitious young actors ignited, sending a shock wave through the film.

Through interviews with the surviving members of the cast and crew and firsthand access to both personal and studio archives, Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel reveal Rebel's true drama — the director's affair with sixteen-year-old Wood, his tempestuous spiritual marriage with Dean, and his role in awakening the latent homosexuality of Mineo, who would become the first gay teenager to appear on film.

Complete with thirty photographs, including ten never-before-seen photos by famed Dean photographer Dennis Stock, Live Fast, Die Young tells the absorbing inside story of an unforgettable and absolutely essential American film — a story that is, in many ways, as provocative as thefilm itself.

-- Chris Fujiwara, The Boston Globe

-- David Ehrenstein, The Advocate

-- Kirkus Reviews

Through interviews with surviving members of the cast and crew and firsthand access to both personal and studio archives, Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel depict the explosive making of Rebel Without a Cause, complete with never-before-seen photos by famed Dean photographer Dennis Stock. A fascinating look behind the scenes of an unforgettable American film, Live Fast, Die Young tells a story that is as provocative as the film itself.

Introduction

Chapter One Birth of a Rebel

Chapter Two Seducing Dean

Chapter Three Child Star

Chapter Four The Script

Chapter Five Gang Wars

Chapter Six The First Gay Teenager

Chapter Seven Chateau Interlude

Chapter Eight The Red Jacket

Chapter Nine Starting Over

Chapter Ten Meet the Parents

Chapter Eleven A World of Their Own

Chapter Twelve Jim Kisses Plato?

Chapter Thirteen Chickie Run

Chapter Fourteen Last Good-bye

Chapter Fifteen Crash

Chapter Sixteen The Leading Lady

Chapter Seventeen The Erotic Politician

Chapter Eighteen Elegy for a Director

Afterword The Rebel Effect

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index