According to MTV Movies Blog:
“[T]he idea of a big screen retelling of the story behind the famous photos is reason enough to look forward to “Life.”
 Stock got his start it Life magazine as an apprentice in 1947 and won a contest for young photographers there in 1951, the same year that Dean got his start in television. The young actor wouldn’t break out until four year later, in 1955 when Elia Kazan’s adaptation of “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck.
When Stock met Dean at a party thrown by the actor’s “Rebel Without a Cause” director Nicholas Ray before the release of “East of Eden,” the photographer didn’t know he was an actor until after they spoke at some length. Stock told the Sarasota Herlad-Tribune that Deans’s appearance didn’t hint at this star quality. “He was not a neat dresser per se,” he said. “He looked tired, but he was pleasant and interesting.”
Shortly after Stock was made aware of Dean’s life as a movie star, he caught a preview of “East of Eden,” and he immediately knew that his new friend was going to be big. It was a short time after that Stock got the idea for a “visual biography” that would follow Dean back to his boyhood home in Fairmount, Indiana and then to New York City, where his career started.
“The story, as I explained it [to Jimmy] was to reveal the environments that affected and shaped the unique character of James Byron Dean,” Stock wrote in his book “James Dean: Fifty Years Ago.” “We felt a trip to his hometown, Fairmount, Indiana, and to New York, the place of his professional beginnings, would best reveal those influences…. I would solicit an assignment guarantee to cover expenses. The obvious magazine to approach was LIFE…. It took only a week for LIFE to approve the assignment.”
After a trip to his uncle’s farm in Fairmount, Dean posed in the rain in Times Square, smoking a cigarette with his collar turned up. It would be on the most iconic photographs ever taken of the 24-year-old actor. The pair took several pictures around the city, including one of Dean lying in a casket, an eerie reminder of the tragic car accident that would take his life less than six months later.
Read more about the photographs at LIFE
The more I read, the more interesting this project becomes and the excitement grows and grows. Are we there yet?!!
Thanks for this, Maria. I loved clicking on the LIFE link too. Seeing those photos of James Dean, many of which I’d never seen before, was wonderful. Very excited to see Rob take on this role of such an amazing photographer.
Thank you Maria! This was most interesting and you are Always sooo up to it. very professional as ever.
Wonderful article and link – thanks so much Maria. I’m really fascinated with this project – it sounds amazing and so interesting. Just loving these projects he’s choosing – taking us with him on this amazing journey. It’s brilliant <3
Did I mention the more I read the more my excitement grows 😀 This was such an interesting read & loved looking through those photos at the LIFE link. Rob takes us on the most amazing ride with the wonderful, interesting & refreshing roles that he chooses. Cannot say enough how much I LOVE his choices. Thanks for sharing Maria.
‘What did it feel like to see that picture, for the very first time, long before the man in the raincoat with the inscrutable, lopsided grin had become something far larger than a mere movie star?’
I know this is about Dean but I believe we might know this feeling
RPAU – not only uplifting and bursting at the seems with beauty, but educational too! Thanks for the research, Maria. I believe some of Dior’s tactics of slow release of information has rubbed off on you – all of this history is whetting my appetite for this project, and it’s not even official yet! If Rob’s movies were reliant on crowd-funding, the man would never stop working.