It was on this day in 1955 that the first real teenage idol, actor James Dean, died at age 24 in a car wreck in Cholame, California. He had bought a new Porsche 550 Spyder (for $7,000, which was a fortune in those days!) and was on his way to take part in the Salinas Road Races.
As you might have heard, the star of "Rebel Without A Cause" died at the intersection of California highways 466 and 41, about a mile east of Cholame. Dean's passenger was his mechanic, Rolf Wuthering.
Wuthering had been a German Luftwaffe glider pilot, paratrooper, and aircraft mechanic.
The two were intending to stop in a diner at Paso Robles for dinner, but at 5:45 PM Dean's car T-boned a Ford driven by 23-year-old Donald Turnupseed, a Navy veteran student at Cal Poly.
Estimates of the Dean car speed range from 85 to well over 100 miles per hour. In the setting sun, Turnupseed likely did not even see the small low-slung silver car approaching as he pulled onto Highway 41.
Just a few weeks prior to the accident, Dean had filmed a public service announcement asking that people drive safely on the highways.
Dean had the nickname "Little Bastard" painted on the car as a middle finger to his boss, Jack Warner, of THE Warner Brothers. Jimmy had been squatting on a studio lot in what was supposed to be his temporary trailer while filming "East Of Eden." He incurred the wrath of Warner by refusing to vacate the trailer, so Warner called him a "little bastard."
Dean was pronounced dead while in an ambulance on the way to a hospital, and Wutherich was transported to a hospital with broken bones and rather serious internal injuries.
Wutherich died at 53 in 1981 after crashing his Honda Civic into a house.
Turnupseed was slightly injured. There was an official investigation into the wreck, and some weight was given to the possibility of charging him with negligent driving, but that went no further. From that day until his death in 1995, he spoke not one word about it all.
He built the electric service company he inherited from his father into a million-dollar business.
Oh, and after the accident, the police wouldn't even give him a ride home, telling him to hitchhike to his family home in Tulare.
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