James Dean's Birth Anniversary

 

James Dean, born on 8 February 1931, in Marion, Indiana, U.S.,  was an American film actor who was enshrined as a symbol of the confused, restless, and idealistic youth of the 1950s. Although he made few films before his death in a car accident at age 24, his performances, perhaps most notably in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), have proved enduring.

Dean’s family moved from Indiana to California when he was five. Following the death of his mother four years later, Dean returned to Indiana where he was reared on a farm by an aunt and uncle. He moved back to California after high school to study theatre for two years at the University of California at Los Angeles. His first professional acting assignment was for a soft drink commercial, which led to a speaking role as John the Baptist in the television Easter special Hill Number One (1951). He played bit parts in three Hollywood films—Fixed Bayonets (1951), Sailor Beware (1952), and Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952)—before moving to New York City on the advice of actor James Whitmore, with whom he had briefly studied. After a series of short-term jobs, including a brief period as a “stunt tester” for the CBS Game Show Beat the Clock, he was cast in a key role in the Broadway flop See the Jaguar (1952). More successful was his sly, insinuating performance as a blackmailing homosexual houseboy in another Broadway production, The Immoralist (1954), a stage adaptation of André Gide's book.

The Immoralist brought Dean to the attention of film director Elia Kazan, who cast the 23-year-old actor in the leading role of troubled teenager Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955), the screen adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel. On the set, Dean perpetuated his reputation for constantly changing his character interpretation and line readings and for deliberately baiting and challenging his fellow actors, including Julie Harries, Raymond Massey, and Burl Ives. When East of Eden premiered, however, Dean was seen as a movie star of the first magnitude and was nominated for an Academy Award; it was the first acting nomination to be granted posthumously.

Dean’s second starring film appearance, as sensitive high-school misfit Jim Stark in director Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause  (1955), made him into the embodiment of his generation. His character defiantly rejects the values of his elders while desperately aching to “belong” and attempting to find a purpose in life. Dean’s performance spoke eloquently on behalf of disenchanted, disenfranchised teenagers and gave them a hero they could respect and admire. The classic drama also featured Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and Dennis Hooper.

Dean was next cast in producer-director George Steven’s Giant (1956), a drama set on a Texas ranch that also starred Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. Shortly after completing the film, the restless Dean drove off in his silver Porsche to compete in a sports car rally in Salinas, California. Speeding down the highway, he crashed headlong into a Ford sedan and was killed instantly. Almost immediately an intensely loyal cult was established, and within days of his death he became a film icon. Both Rebel Without a Cause and Giant were released posthumously, and he received an Oscar nomination for the latter film. The James Dean mystique continued to flourish into the 21st century.

Jules Verne's Birth Anniversary

 

Jules Gabriel Verne, born on 8 February 1828, in Nantes, Brittany, Kingdom of France, was a French novelist, poet and playwright.

His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules-Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels, always well-researched according to the scientific knowledge then available, are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time.

In addition to his novels, he wrote numerous plays, short stories, autobiographical accounts, poetry, songs, and scientific, artistic and literary studies. His work has been adapted for film and television since the beginning of cinema, as well as for comic books, theater, opera, music and video games.

Verne is considered to be an important author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His reputation was markedly different in the Anglosphere where he had often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children's books, largely because of the highly abridged and altered translations in which his novels have often been printed. Since the 1980s, his literary reputation has improved.

Jules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare. He has sometimes been called the "father of science fiction”, a title that been given to H.G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback. In the 2010s, he was the most translated French author in the world. In France, 2005 was declared "Jules Verne Year" on the occasion of the centenary of the writer's death.