James Dean, Television Actor

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When I was looking up pictures of James Dean this morning to commemorate what would have been his 81st birthday today, I stumbled upon this, an account of an episode of "Family Theater" in 1951 called "Hill Number One," which is Dean's very first credit on IMDb. The episode told the well-worn tale of Jesus' resurrection, and Dean, only 19 or 20 at the time, plays the sultriest-lipped John the Apostle you ever done seen. And because the internet's an amazing thing, you can actually watch the whole thing on YouTube now.

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From there I saw that there's actually a lot of Dean's early TV work on YouTube - he famously only made three feature films before his early death at 24 years old (I reviewed all three right here, by the way), but there are a couple dozen other credits listed for him at IMDb, and at least several of them seem to have made their way onto YouTube. If you're a fan you should definitely go search around. Bless the internet! I'm going to take a look at one of them - it's an episode of the "Armstrong Circle Theater," which was an anthology drama that ran for thirteen years first on NBC, then on CBS - the episode with Dean aired in 1953 and was titled "The Bells of Cockaigne," and it's notable because Dean spends most his screen-time shirtless in some sort of Querelle-ian homoerotic box factory.

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As you should know by now, I don't give history lessons unless they end in nipples. (And or tears.) Hit the jump for a few gifs I made from this video if you feel like it.