Well, I watched Rebel Without a Cause last night, on DVD. It was released in 1955, shortly after the lead actor, James Dean, died of a broken neck in a 2-car accident in rural California.
Some DVDs are better than others. Sometimes the DVD extras take as long to view as the film itself (~2 hours).
The Rebel Without a Cause DVD is in letterbox format(+) but has no "commentary version"(-). It did have the 3 movie trailers of James Deans' films(+) along with some campy interviews of James Dean; Jim Backus and Natalie Wood(+). The film was going to be made in black and white, but Warner Brothers switched it to a color production after a few days of shooting.
Since I lived in Los Angeles for many years, and have been to the Griffith Observatory, it's amusing to see the artistic license that's taken with the local geography. You would think that the planetarium, the oceanside cliffs and the suburban neighborhoods are a 5-minute drive from each other. Not so .. especially in 1955!
After the movie, I Google'd for Donald Turnupseed (the driver who turned in front of Jimmy Dean's Porsche) and see that he died of lung cancer in 1995, at age 63, after a successful career in the electrical contracting business. Based on the various web postings, he must have been tormented for the last 40 years of his life, by those who blamed him for Dean's death (Turnupseed walked away from the crash, and Dean's passenger survived).
Dean: 1955 Porsche Spyder
Turnupseed: 1950 Ford Custom Tudor (there's a huge set of 1950 Ford photos on carnut.com)
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