It’s a paradox of the modern world that we use the latest in technology to look at really old images. Archive shots of actors and celebrities back in the day are Instagram-style catnip. We’re hungry to pore over what stars wore back in the day, especially when they were only shot in black and white, looking moody and, probably the ultimate anachronism, smoking a cigarette.
James Dean is the perfect example of this – the shots of him, pre-Rebel fame, by Dennis Stock, have fuelled menswear moodboards for years. And with Life, the film that documents Stock and Dean’s friendship and photo shoot, in cinemas from Friday, there’s yet another excuse to watch Dean walk through the rain, cigarette in mouth, greatcoat pulled about him, three-day dirty hair repelling water drops, tatty brogues and wide trousers peeking out the bottom of the coat.
The image is now cult, partly because it pre-dates the Jimmy Dean that the mainstream knows – red jacket, neat quiff – and partly because of the composition, with the backdrop of city streets and Dean’s shadow reflected by the wet pavement.
Stock’s shots of Dean, taken for Life magazine in early 1955, are poignant because we know what happened next, but they’re also fascinating because they show a man rather than the icon that Dean became; they are a portrait for an icon as a young man, as it were.
Published just before East of Eden was released in March 1955 (Dean died in September), Stock shows him walking the streets of New York, in his Manhattan apartment, at home on the farm in Indiana reading political tomes at the breakfast table in those perfect glasses, getting drunk with friends and in a diner on the way home after a night out. The clothes he wears (that greatcoat, the watch, the sweater and the long johns) are part of the appeal but, if you ask any menswear expert, it’s also the attitude – the cigarette, even in the face of a late-night ice-cream sundae, the stare and, of course, the hair. Almost half of Dean’s appeal is about the hair.
Dane DeHaan, the man charged with playing Dean in the new movie, has a hard task getting it right. Style watchers will be there to see if it passes muster. And, of course, to find an excuse to post Stock’s images on Instagram one more time.
