James Dean

Flashback

So long the international symbol for teenage angst, James Dean would have been 63 this year if he'd swerved and missed that Ford sedan in 1955. But in the American mind's eye, he's perpetually 24, thanks to a thin but powerful screen legacy and a never-ending stockpile of archival photos. Dean's lengthy posthumous career last got a big boost in the Eisenhower 80s, when conformity came back and red jackets and Jimmy Dean followed. But now the eternal teen is poised for an image overhaul that might make Madonna swoon (and could even steal a few column inches away from Kurt Cobain). Paul Alexander's book Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Viking) painstakingly documents Dean's hidden homosexual life in an account that could wreck his run for sainthood, but do wonders for his out-of-body career.

MATTHEW TYRNAUER