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Legend of the patron saint of cool

When James Dean was on the screen you couldn’t take your eyes off him writes Sunita Rappai

FIFTY years after his untimely death on a Californian highway, James Dean is still the patron saint of angst-ridden teenagers.
He is also the patron saint of cool. There is something in the Dean swagger, in the way he holds a cigarette, the cadence of his speech patterns that seems to defy age and trends.
For William Hall, the Highgate-based biographer and film critic whose 1992 biography of Dean is being re-issued this month, the answer is simple.
“In the end it comes down to watchability,” he says. “All the great actors had that quality about them.
“When James Dean was on the screen, the other guy could be acting his socks off but you couldn’t take your eyes off him – even if he wasn’t saying anything.”
With his urbane charm and 30 years plus as a seasoned hack in the murky world of showbiz, Hall, 62, is not the obvious choice for a book about a tortured, sensitive method actor – even one as famous as Dean.
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