James Dean, Posterized

Since he only starred in three features, I thought that James Dean would be the easiest "Posterized" episode, a fill in on a Friday when I was short on time. But because I can never leave well enough alone, I had to make this one complicated, too. Here's three sets of posters for his three classics East of Eden (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956).

What a batting average, eh?

I think these are original release posters (?) Might be wrong. Tough to find dates to coincide with poster designs. But note that the book was actually the initial selling point of East of Eden and that Dean was only top billed once (for Rebel).

Reissues and such. Note how Dean takes over.

And a few foreign versions for fun. I find it quite interesting that Sal Mineo gets to pull focus on the Italian poster (photo src) but then he does have the gun and what is that they say about movies? All you need is a girl and a gun. Speaking of the girl, Natalie Wood rarely gets much focus in Rebel Without a Cause merchandising which is strange since she's such a classic screen icon herself.

But I bet if you lined up all the posters ever made for these three pictures including original release, subsequent reissues, television airings, repertory house / specialty showings and vhs/dvd/blu-ray covers, you'd find the most conflict in the Giant posters. What do you do when you have three mammoth stars in one movie? Giant's credit hierarchy has always been.

• Elizabeth Taylor
• Rock Hudson
• James Dean

...but they don't always get equal billings on the posters. Sometimes Rock & La Liz are the focus (as they were in the 40th anniversary release) sometimes Liz & James are the focus like you see in the 70s rerelease version of the poster from Japan above. And though it's another discussion entirely you know that if the film were released in our current era James Dean would've been nominated (and won) posthumously for supporting actor instead of lead, since they're so scared of 'same sex but both leads' campaigns these days.

Another entirely different discussion: Is it just my imagination or is La Liz the actress of beauty sharing? Which is to say that she always made her co-stars look yet more handsome than they already were. It's as if her glorious beauty was too much for just one face so some of it drifted over to the actors, too.

Have you seen all three films? If the answer is no, you'd best explain yourself. They're all quite terrific in their own ways.