Few towns go as all-out for their most famous son as Fairmount, Indiana.
For nearly 50 years, James Dean fans have flocked about an hour north of Indianapolis every September for an annual festival celebrating the late hometown hero and Hollywood heartthrob.
The sexy, mysterious star is best known for three films he made — “East of Eden” and “Rebel Without a Cause,” both made in 1955, and 1956’s “Giant” — before he died at age 24 in a horrific crash of his Porsche Spyder sports car in Cholame, California, on Sept. 30, 1955.
Yet his legend lives on, for fans both old and young: rebels seeking applause, or maybe just a giant adventure east of Eden — or at least east of the Mississippi.
“I suspect he always thought that he’d be famous someday,” Dean’s cousin Marcus Winslow, 81, told The Post. “I doubt that he thought that he’d be famous 70 years after his death.”
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the actor’s all-too-young passing, and James Dean Festival Director Christy Pulley Berry told The Post she expects a crush of 25,000 Dean-iacs over this weekend.
And it’s his aura — bolstered by a white T-shirt, or a leather jacket, or a cigarette dangling from his pouty lips — that still draws Dean devotees who want to embrace his brand of bravado, in an era when a Kardashian posing for a selfie has replaced old Hollywood cool.
“He never went out of style,” Berry told The Post. “Little boys come in, and they’re just fascinated. Everybody knows the James Dean image.”
Dean — just “Jimmy,” to locals — remains a generation-unifying icon decades later; even wistful Taylor Swift gave a nod to a beau’s “James Dean daydream look” in her 2015 ballad “Style.”
‘He looks like James Dean’
The town’s yearly gathering is punctuated with kitschy attractions worthy of a nostalgia-steeped carnival: a fair with rides and plenty of popcorn. Dancing in poodle skirts and rolled-up denim that evoke the 1950s. An antique car show, resplendent with Ford Mercury autos of “Rebel” drag-race infamy. Tribute band performances — this year highlighting Kiss and another Indiana-native, John Cougar Mellencamp — plus the crowning of a festival king and queen.
But the big draw — “my favorite,” admitted Berry — is a James Dean lookalike contest, with categories for both adults who remember seeing his movies in theaters and kids whose parents weren’t even born yet when the actor died.
“I’m just amazed at how serious the look-alikes take it and how they’ve really upped their game over the years,” Berry told The Post.
Gen Z fan Michael John Gross, 24, who won three of the past four contests, was a genetic shoo-in from a young age.
The Boston native recalled it was just a decade ago — “around 14, 15, a transitional period” — when he discovered Jimmy was his jam.
“You’re trying to figure out how you look, how you want to fit in and stuff,” Gross told The Post.
He gained his own fast fandom — by way of friends’ moms, who assessed Gross point-blank: “He looks like James Dean.”
Fairmount teen Cash Croy, who won second place in the children’s category last year, said he has been going to the festival as long as he can remember.
“I’m gonna be watching ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ a lot, and the other movies, just to kind of get his movements down,” Croy, 14, told The Post of his preparations this year, which will include wearing a scarlet “Rebel”-worthy jacket — because “whenever you think of James Dean, you think of race cars, red jackets or motorcycles.”
Some impersonators even recreate whole film scenes. One time, an entrant doused himself with gooey molasses to simulate a memorable “Giant” clip in which Dean’s character, Jett, struck oil that rained down, drenching him in front of his unrequited love, played by Elizabeth Taylor.
For Croy, though, there may be a simple explanation for the teen’s uber-fandom.
“Indiana is not, like, a really big state,” he said. “The only major thing we got going is the Indianapolis 500 and James Dean.”
Memorabilia central
The rebellious film legend is so popular, in fact, that Fairmount can support not only the James Dean Museum — Berry is its director — but also a James Dean Gallery, a Victorian space restored by Massachusetts native and owner David Loeher, 75. He and his husband moved to the “Norman Rockwell-looking town,” as Loeher called it, in 1984 and amassed what is considered among the largest private collections of Dean memorabilia in the world.
The museum, meanwhile, is celebrating its 50th anniversary after opening a new building in 2024, with 4,000 of its 6,000 square feet devoted to Dean, plus exhibits on other local notables, including “Garfield” comic creator Jim Davis.
The museum has some particularly treasured items, according to Dean’s cousin Winslow, who was 12 when the actor died.
“We found his original motorcycle a few years ago, which is pretty impressive,” Winslow told The Post.
There’s also a 1949 Ford that Dean used to drive his date to a school prom — a story that has an only-in-a-small-town twist.
“Matter of fact,” Winslow shared with a hint of scandal, “the date that he took to the senior prom was my wife’s sister. And so, a lot of memories in there.”
‘Preserved image of beauty’
The festival will come to a close on Sunday with a somber ceremony at Dean’s Park Cemetery gravesite — but his fame will likely carry on for generations to come as he remains, to many, an enigma.
“There’s a lot of things that we don’t know about James Dean. He could be seen as a queer icon, too, which could be another reason he has a hold on our generation,” Gross told The Post, alluding to rumors of the simmering star’s bisexuality that have swirled far past his demise.
“He’s this image of cool that, like Marilyn Monroe, is a preserved image of beauty.“
That level of fame continues to build cross-generational fan curiosity about a bygone era and a life still steeped in mystery and magnetism.
“He is this idea of this golden age of American culture,” Gross said.
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