James Dean: The Mutant King: A Biography Review

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James Dean: The Mutant King: A Biography ReviewDalton's biography of James Dean is a very good book about the cinemic legend. He seems to have interviewed many people who were close to Dean, and he focuses as much on the real man as on the icon. Dalton also writes quite well.
The only problem I have with this book is I wonder how carefully it was fact-checked. There was at least one blatant gaffe in the book, which alleged that James Dean was a big fan of Elvis Presley. Now every Elvis fan knows Presley was a huge fan of James Dean, even to the point where he is said to have memorized all of Dean's lines in the classic "Rebel Without a Cause." The question I have is, was Dean really a fan of Elvis?
On page 195 of the paperback 1983 edition, a friend of Dean's is quoted as saying how much James Dean loved the Elvis hit "Hound Dog," and how Dean loved to wake people up in the middle of the night by calling them on the phone and playing the record when they said "Hello." It's a compelling tale.
Unfortunately, this story cannot be true. By the end of 1955, Elvis had signed on to RCA and had obtained Col. Tom Parker as manager. Elvis was still a regional performer in 1955, and his Sun recordings (today big collectors' items) sold only modestly in the South. Elvis did make appearances on "The Louisiana Hayride," and he made some other appearances on local and regional television programs, but it wasn't until January 1956, when he made his first national television appearance on the Dorsey Brothers program "Stage Show," that he became a sensation. Furthermore, Elvis did NOT record "Hound Dog" until July of 1956, almost a year after Dean's death. Now it is possible Dean might have heard "The Louisiana Hayride" or bought any of Elvis' five Sun singles, but more likely he, like most of America in 1955, had never heard of Elvis. This blatant error, while only taking up one paragraph in the book, calls into question how accurate the rest of the book is. Dalton doesn't call this tall tale into question, so the gullible reader is led to believe Dean was a big fan of Elvis. Since I haven't seen a newer edition of this book, it's possible the error was corrected, but I doubt it.
Because people's memories can fade or they can simply exaggerate, most biographies have to be read with caution. Even though I enjoyed the book and refer to it often, it is certainly no exception.James Dean: The Mutant King: A Biography Overview

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