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No primates were harmed in the making of this page.
As Rebel Without a Cause begins, a drunk James Dean encounters a toy monkey lying in the street. Find out where the monkey comes from in our book, Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause.
In a scene that was cut from the final film Dean shows the monkey to a little girl in the police station. According to the original screenplay, Plato (Sal Mineo) watches Jim play with the monkey and smiles but Judy (Natalie Wood) is not amused.
Plato's first words to Jim in the movie are: "You shouldn't monkey with him." Coincidence?
One theory holds that the monkey is Plato. At the end of the film Dean's Jim Stark covers Plato with his red jacket just as he covers the monkey with a piece of wrapping paper in the opening scene.
Or is Judy the monkey? After the chickie run when Jim gives Judy back the mirror she left behind in the police station, he says to her, "You want to see a monkey?" This line, which was not in the script, was improvised by James Dean.
If James Dean Were a Monkey. . .
According to David Givens' Nonverbal Dictionary: "A curious sign emanates from Rebel's studio posters: James Dean conspicuously displays his derrière. If Dean were any other primate than a human, primatologists would say he was presenting his hindquarters."
Did the simian references in Rebel evolve from monkey business of the past?
In her most famous pre-Rebel role as a little girl who doesn't believe in Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street Natalie Wood learns to use her imagination by pretending to be an ape.
James Dean, too, had an early simian-related role. When he was a sophomore, Dean starred in a high school production of The Monkey's Paw, a dramatization of the classic horror story by W.W. Jacobs. In the play Dean's character dies when he gets what he wished for.
One of the key sequences in Rebel takes place at the mansion that was used in Sunset Blvd., which features a bizarre midnight burial of a monkey in a satin-lined coffin. Note the candelabra that Gloria Swanson is holding, which is eerily echoed by the candelabra Plato uses to light the way in this very same garden.
The year Robert Lindner's book Rebel Without a Cause was published, 1944, was the Year of the Monkey according to the Chinese zodiac. Ray, Dean, Mineo and Wood were all nominated for Oscars in 1956--also the Year of the Monkey!*
*The year Rebel was made,1955, was actually the Year of the Goat. But uncannily, the first line of Sal Mineo's professional career was "The goat is in the yard" in the Broadway production of The Rose Tattoo . Unfortunately, "The Goat Page" is still under construction.
Throughout their careers, many Rebel alumni apparently could not shake the monkey off their backs as various primates continued to run amok in their work.
A year after directing Rebel, Nicholas Ray made Bigger Than Life, about a cortisone-addicted schoolteacher played by James Mason. At a PTA meeting Mason takes a swipe at the youth of America when he tells one parent "your daughter at her present intellectual development is roughly on a par with an African gorilla."
On Gorillaz' 2005 album Demon Days Dennis Hopper narrates an apocalyptic tale called "Fire Coming Out of a Monkey's Head."
Primates continually terrorized the castaways of Gilligan's Island, starring Jim Backus as Thurston Howell III. In the episode "Diamonds Are an Ape's Best Friend" Mrs. Howell is kidnapped by a gorilla; in "Our Vines Have Tender Apes" an ape-man steals their food; and in "Voodoo Something to Me" a chimpanzee raids their camp.
Nick Adams died mysteriously before his last film, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, was released in the United States. Godzilla's name is a combination of the Japanese words for gorilla and whale, and originally he was supposed to be a fire-breathing ape.
And sixteen years after Rebel, Sal Mineo actually played a monkey (well, technically, an ape) in Escape from the Planet of the Apes. Mineo reportedly found the make-up so uncomfortable that he asked to be killed off early in the movie. Sadly, it turned out to be his last major film role, giving rise to the idea of a "Monkey Curse."
