9-30-1955

[953 nut 51,893]

                                  9-30-1955

       James Dean dies in car accident

At 5:45 PM on this day in 1955, 24-year-old actor James Dean is killed in Cholame, California, when the Porsche he is driving hits a Ford Tudor sedan at an intersection. The driver of the other car, 23-year-old California Polytechnic State University student Donald Turnupseed, was dazed but mostly uninjured; Dean’s passenger, German Porsche mechanic Rolf Wütherich was badly injured but survived. Only one of Dean’s movies, “East of Eden,” had been released at the time of his death (“Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant” opened shortly afterward), but he was already on his way to superstardom–and the crash made him a legend.

James Dean loved racing cars, and in fact he and his brand-new, $7000 Porsche Spyder convertible were on their way to a race in Salinas, 90 miles south of San Francisco. Witnesses maintained that Dean hadn’t been speeding at the time of the accident–in fact, Turnupseed had made a left turn right into the Spyder’s path–but some people point out that he must have been driving awfully fast: He’d gotten a speeding ticket in Bakersfield, 150 miles from the crash site, at 3:30 p.m. and then had stopped at a diner for a Coke, which meant that he’d covered quite a distance in a relatively short period of time. Still, the gathering twilight and the glare from the setting sun would have made it impossible for Turnupseed to see the Porsche coming no matter how fast it was going.

Rumor has it that Dean’s car, which he’d nicknamed the Little Bastard, was cursed. After the accident, the car rolled off the back of a truck and crushed the legs of a mechanic standing nearby. Later, after a used-car dealer sold its parts to buyers all over the country, the strange incidents multiplied: The car’s engine, transmission and tires were all transplanted into cars that were subsequently involved in deadly crashes, and a truck carrying the Spyder’s chassis to a highway-safety exhibition skidded off the road, killing its driver. The remains of the car vanished from the scene of that accident and haven’t been seen since.

[Jerry77 1,218]

Richard - just wanted to say - sure do enjoy your history articles every day ....keep up the good work.

[JC 1965 1,528]

         

[WHX?? 46,865]

 Never knew that it was a spyder ... gives new meaning to this song, never knew about it being cursed either!

 

[Ed Kennell 35,904]

3 hours ago, Jerry77 said:

Richard - just wanted to say - sure do enjoy your history articles every day ....keep up the good work.

 

 

                                                                                                                          

[953 nut 51,893]

7 hours ago, WHX8 said:

never knew about it being cursed either!

I had heard some of these spooky tidbits years back but always wondered about the validity of these stories; being included in The History Chanel's write up sort of verified it for me.