On September 23, 1955, a man predicted the death of someone he had not seen before with a devastating phrase: "If you drive this car, you will die within a week." Seven days later, the prediction came true. This event could be part of a Stephen King novel like
The Dead Zone
–whose protagonist can foresee what will happen in the future–, but it is not part of the imagination of a writer, but a real fact that we know because its protagonists They are two movie legends: James Dean (Indiana, 1931-California, 1955) and Sir Alec Guinness (London, 1914-Midhurst, 2000).
66 years ago today, British actor and screenwriter Thelma Moss had just arrived in Los Angeles from Copenhagen. After sixteen hours of flight they were exhausted and after being rejected in three restaurants because Moss was wearing pants, hungry. In the fourth, Villa Capri, the problem was the lack of free tables. As they walked away disappointed, the solution arrived.
"I heard footsteps running down the street, and it was James Dean," Guinness told
Parkinson Talk
during an interview that the British diction makes a perfect example of ASMR. The young star had recognized Guinness, who by then was already a celebrity who had dazzled critics by playing nine roles in
Eight Death Sentences
and had a best actor Oscar nomination for
Gold Bars
.
“I was in the restaurant and I saw that you had not been able to get a table. My name is James Dean, do you want to join us? They accepted, of course. As they walked to their table, they passed the car that was to be legendary. "There, in the patio of this little restaurant, was that little silver thing, very elegant, all wrapped in cellophane and with a bouquet of roses tied to the hood." The Briton asked him what speed he was reaching, to which Dean replied that he would reach "250 kilometers per hour." "Then something strange came over me," Guinness continues. “In an almost different voice I said, 'I must say something: please don't get in that car. If you do, if you get in that car, now it's Thursday, at 10 o'clock at night, at 10 o'clock at night next Thursday, you will be dead. "
Promotional portrait of British actor Alec Guinness taken in 1945. Hulton Archive / Getty Images
Dean, for whom racing cars and racing were his great hobby, laughed and the group proceeded to have a "lovely dinner," as also recorded in the Briton's autobiography,
Blessings in Disguise
.
“He died the following Thursday afternoon in that car.
It was one of those weird things.
It was a very, very strange and scary experience.
I really liked him.
I would have loved to have known him more, "Guinness said.
Dean's death a week after those words made him a myth, despite the fact that only one of his three films had been released,
East of Eden
.
His death had an emotional impact such as had not been seen since Rodolfo Valentino.
It was a symbol for youth: rebel, maverick, attractive ... and epitomizes the phrase attributed wrongly: "Live fast, young man dies and leaves a beautiful corpse" (actually pronounced by another aspiring teen idol, John dered in
Knock Any Door,
by Nicholas Ray).
Dean neither said the phrase nor left a nice corpse.
The aftermath of the accident caused the coffin to remain closed by order of the family.
Small incidents
A death so traumatic for a generation needed to have a higher cause than speeding. Just as Valentino's "vulgar" peritonitis was overshadowed by a disproportionate funeral that transcended borders, Dean's was adorned by a "curse" whose origin is attributed to George Barris, the self-styled king of customizers. The creator of the designs for the original 1966 Batmobile and the Munster Koach of the Monster family, after purchasing the remains of the Spyder Barris he dedicated himself to exaggerating small incidents to increase his legend and, with it, his value. His initial idea was to rebuild it, but it was so damaged that he could only get a reportable replica that was enough to turn it into a traveling exhibition as "James Dean's Last Sports Car", until in 1960 he reported it missing.A maneuver that Lee Raskin, author of
James Dean: At Speed
considered a trick to increase interest in his work, something feasible considering that from then on Barris dedicated himself to spreading rumors about how the parts of the car that had been sold had been involved in various accidents. None really as serious as that he intended to profit from a tragedy.
The proven facts show that there was no curse, only coincidences.
The car that Dean was going to race in his first race after the recording of
Gigante
- during filming, Warner Brothers had banned Dean from racing - was going to be a Lotus MK X, but how could it not be ready for the day? of the competition ended up accepting a Porsche 550 Spyder of which only 90 units had been manufactured and to which Dean asked to have the 130 painted temporarily, which was to be his number in the race, and the words
little bastard
(little bastard) .
A nickname whose origin has several versions, but perhaps the most credible is the one that attributes it to Jack Warner, the angry owner of the studio with whom the
rebel without a cause
It had a tug of war.
James Dean at a gas station with the Porsche 550 Spyder, hours before the accident that ended his life.Bettmann / Bettmann Archive
The remains of the Porsche Spyder that James Dean was driving when he had the accident that killed him in 1955. Hulton Archive / Getty Images
On September 30, free from the studio's impositions, Dean was ready to compete again. He was traveling in the company of his friend Bill Hickman, in charge of driving the station wagon that was towing the Porsche, while his mechanic, Rolf Wuetherich, and a photographer, Sandford Roth, were in another car. To give him a break in before the competition, in the last kilometers Dean got into the Porsche with Wuetherich and stepped on the gas with such enthusiasm that he was fined by Officer Otie Hunter, the last person to receive an autograph from Dean, although at that time that police had no idea who it was.
"For me, he was just another guy who was going too fast," he declared years later. The subpoena urged Dean to appear in court in Lamont on October 17, but the final outcome of the case was later written on the ticket: "Deceased void."
Despite the fine, Dean barely took his foot off the gas until at the junction of Route 41 and 466 the heavy Ford Custom Tudor driven by a 23-year-old student named Donald Turnupseed fatefully crossed the Spyder that at that time It was going at a speed of 140 kilometers per hour.
Dean could not stop and the light race car shot out, doubled over and crashed into a post, now a mass of metal.
The actor died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Rolf Wuetherich suffered several minor injuries.
Turnupseed, just minor injuries.
The young man assured that he had not seen Dean's car.
After being interviewed by a local network, Turnupseed hitchhiked home and never gave an interview again.
James Dean and Ursula Andress.Hulton Deutsch / Corbis via Getty Images
Ursula too
Sadly and ironically, just a few days earlier, while filming
Giant
, Dean had recorded a public service announcement for the National Safety Council.
Dressed as Jett Rink, his character in the film, he raised awareness of the dangers of driving too fast.
"Do you have any special advice for young people who drive?" Asks the interviewer.
Dean responds: "Take it easy driving, the life you save could be mine."
Since no one in Hollywood is exempt from a good story, years later that interviewer, Gig Young, would win the Oscar for best secondary for his role as master of ceremonies in the infernal
Danzad
contest
, damn damn
and many more years later he would commit suicide after shooting his fifth wife with whom he had married three weeks before.
Like Guinness, legend has it that Ursula Andress also had a feeling about the Spyder that made her avoid riding in it.
But as revealed to
Paris Match
In 2015, the reasons that led her not to accompany him on that fateful day were very different. “Jimmy wanted to shoot the famous Porsche 550 Spyder that we had gone to buy together, so he asked me to accompany him to Pebble Beach, and I accepted right away. We had met at my house at 8 in the morning. Jimmy arrived with his mechanic and with the trailer that, once the race was over, was to take the Porsche. I hadn't been there for ten minutes when I saw John Derek's car arrive [the same Derek who uttered the phrase attributed to Dean, and with whom Andress had an affair forbidden by his studio because the actor was married and she was a minor ]. My luggage was already in the trailer and I was ready to go. I'll never forget Jimmy's look when he saw him arrive. 'Not coming?'. Since I didn't answer, he went to the car,without looking back, and took off abruptly. A few hours later, he had the accident. The mechanic, who was sitting to his right, where I should have gone, ended up in pieces, but he survived. Jimmy broke his neck. "
A couple of years later, as soon as he came of age, Andress married Derek.
Alec Guinness, the man who, possessed by a hunch that he could never explain, predicted his death, won an Oscar a couple of years later for
The Bridge on the River Kwai
and got three more nominations, including one for his role as Obi Wan Kenobi in
Star Wars
and became a legend, this real and not very tragic, of British cinema.
Screenwriter Thelma Moss, a witness to the sinister prophecy, left the cinema to focus on the parapsychologist, Kirlian photography and the human aura and wrote a pseudoscience best seller.
It is titled
The Odds of the Impossible
.
Interestingly, no chapter is dedicated to predicting the death of a stranger.
You can follow ICON on
,
,
, or subscribe here to the
Newsletter
.