The James Dean Story: The Early Documentary by Robert Altman

On James Dean’s 80th birth­day, this film prob­a­bly deserves its own lit­tle men­tion. The James Dean Sto­ry, a 79 minute doc­u­men­tary chron­i­cling the life and times of Jim­my Dean, came out two years after the young actor’s death in 1955. Most notably, the film was direct­ed by Robert Alt­man, a young direc­tor who would even­tu­al­ly make MASH, Nashville, The Play­er, Gos­ford Park, etc. It’s also cat­a­logued in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!