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"We took a walk that first day, and there was a building going up near Sixth Avenue, and we virtually became sidewalk superintendents by barking orders to people. And we proceeded to go over to Rockefeller Center where there was a young girl skating, and we applauded her and she did her command performance. Our minds, our ability to fantasize, and our ability to communicate was kind of an instant thing. I had an amazingly instant rapport with him, and as a result we became friends immediately. He used to come out to my house, my parents' house in Queens, and my little nephews adored him. [We had] Christmases and Thanksgivings [together]. We were sort of a surrogate family."
--
Martin
Landau
On their first meeting
"He turned out to be a fascinating and intelligent young man who talked fluently about artists in music. And he was surprisingly knowledgeable about such recondite
composers as Schönberg and Bartók."
-- Oscar Levant
"While we were making Giant, I think we all knew that young Jimmy Dean was giving a performance that not even the
extreme adjectives of Hollywood could adequately sum up.
It's not often a unit gets a feeling like that."
-- William C. Mellor
"What I remember most about him was the little boy quality shining forth at you from behind those thick glasses of his, tearing at your heart. He had that extreme and touching idealism of youth which made you wish that he would never have to be disillusioned. Now he won't
be."
-- Louella Parsons
"Jimmy Dean loved the feel of Indiana soil under his feet and I think that was the source of much of his strength."
-- Adeline
Nall
"It wasn't so much a matter of whom I was acting with, it was whom I was watching. Marlon Brando, Maureen Stapleton, Geraldine Page, Jimmy Dean . a
pretty hotshot group."
-- Paul Newman
on his apprenticeship at the Actors Studio
"Actually, the person I related to was James Dean. I grew up with the Dean thing.
Rebel Without A Cause had a very powerful effect on me."
-- Al Pacino
"The only time I ever worked with James Dean was in a 1953 off-Broadway production called The Scarecrow.
He played the Scarecrow's reflection in the mirror.
He was an unknown then but he was jolly good in every way.
I knew then that he was born to become an actor."
-- Patricia Neal
"Jimmy was not only an internal actor, but an expressionist, which came partly
from his studying dance. He would physicalize actions, such as the way he lifted
himself up on the windmill in Giant, or goose-stepped measuring off the land,
or his sleight-of-hand gesture as Jett Rink. He had the amazing capacity to pick
up and learn a new trick almost immediately, tossing a rope and making a knot,
a card trick from a magician, coin tricks, racing a car..."
-- Dennis Hopper
"I have never seen an actor as dedicated, with the extreme concentration and exceptional imagination as James Dean. He could take the written imaginary circumstance and make it his own by improvising - lying on the ground in a fetal position playing with a wound-up toy monkey beating its cymbals, giggling while being searched in the police station because it tickled, standing up in a drunken daze making the sound of sirens with his arms outstretched, hitting his fists into the sergeant's
desk, jumping off a diving board into a swimming pool with no water, or doing
the voice of Mr. Magoo throughout the movie, which was the voice of Jim Backus,
his father in Rebel - things that were not written on the page, things that were
invented by the actor."
-- Dennis Hopper
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