Trivia for
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

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• Director Nicholas Ray researched L.A. gangs by riding around with them for several nights.
  
  
• For the knife fight between Jim (James Dean) and Buzz (Corey Allen), the actors used real switchblades and protected themselves by wearing chainmail under their vests.
  
  
• James Dean did not get malaria during filming, as some have reported. Nick Adams had a relapse of an old case of malaria he got while he was a merchant marine.
  
  

• James Dean badly bruised his hand during the police station scene where he physically vents his rage on a precinct desk and had to wear an elastic bandage for a week.
  
  
• Frank Mazzola ("Crunch") had actually been a member of a Hollywood street gang, and taught James Dean how to fight with a real switchblade knife.
  
  
• Jim Stark is named after James Dean and his character "Trask" in East of Eden (1955).
  
  
• In the final scene where the camera pulls away from the observatory, director Nicholas Ray is the person walking toward the building. (possible director's trademark for it is rumored he appeared in all of his movies)
  
  
• Originally in the beginning of the movie, there was a gang beating up a father, who drops a toy on the sidewalk. The studio thought it was too violent, so it was cut. Jim Stark can be seen playing with the toy after he finds it on the ground during the opening credits
  
  
• T-shirt sales soared after James Dean was seen to wear one in this film
  
  
• Jim Backus who played James Dean's father and was the voice of Mr. Magoo, taught Dean how to do the Mr. Magoo voice which Dean then used to deliver the line, "Drown them like puppies."
  
  
• Natalie Wood was first considered too naive and wholesome for the role of Judy. She began changing her looks and eventually attracted the notice of director Nicholas Ray, who began an affair with her but still would not guarantee her the part, though he eventually relented. Both Ray and Wood later claimed that he changed his mind after she was in a car accident with Dennis Hopper and someone in the hospital called her a "goddamn juvenile delinquent".
  
  
• Jim Stark was actually first intended to be more of a nerd, wearing a brown jacket and glasses. However, when Warner Bros. told director Nicholas Ray to re-shoot in color, Ray, as well as costumer Moss Mabry, wanted him to wear red.
  
  
• The empty pool in which the characters sit and discuss their lives in one scene is the same pool that was specially built for Sunset Blvd. (1950). The pool had been built specially for the earlier film, as a condition of renting the site from its owner, Mrs J. Paul Getty.
  
  
• Margaret O'Brien tested for the role of Judy but was rejected by Nicholas Ray after he described her answers to his probing questions as "too pat". Jayne Mansfield also tested but Ray declined to film her audition, considering her 'an hallucination' from the Warners casting department.
  
  
• An alternative ending was shot in which Plato falls from the tower of the planetarium.
  
  
• All three lead actors, (James Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood) died under tragic circumstances. Dean died in a car accident, Mineo was shot and Wood drowned. All three died young.
  
  
• The opening scene in the movie with Jim Stark and the toy monkey was improvised by James Dean after the production had been shooting for nearly 24 hours straight. He asked Nicholas Ray to roll the camera, that he wanted to do something. Ray obliged and the improvisation went on to become the famous opening scene.
  
  
• James Dean was free to star in the film because Elizabeth Taylor got pregnant, which delayed production of Giant (1956).
  
  
• There's a fan photo of Alan Ladd in Plato's school locker.
  
  
• In his article "Dangerous Talents," published in Vanity Fair Magazine in March 2005, Sam Kashner writes that director Nicholas Ray, screenwriter Stewart Stern, costar James Dean, and Sal Mineo himself all intended for Mineo's character Plato to be subtly but definitely understood as gay. Kashner says that although the Production Code was still very much in force and forbade any mention of homosexuality, Ray, Dean, Mineo, and Stern all worked together to insert restrained references to Plato's homosexuality and attraction to Jim, including the pinup photo of Alan Ladd on Plato's locker door, Plato's adoring looks at Jim, his loaded talk with Jim in the old mansion, and even the name "Plato," which is a reference to the Classical Greek philosopher. For that mansion scene, Dean suggested to Mineo that Plato should "look at me the way I look at Natalie."
  
  
• The living room of the Stark's house was based on Nicholas Ray's bungalow (he did something similar for In a Lonely Place (1950)). James Dean and other cast members would rehearse there, and Dean felt most comfortable there. It was Dean's idea for Jim to be placed between his parents during the climatic fight scene, to reflect his inner turmoil.
  
  
• The movie was originally to be shot in black and white, and some scenes had already been filmed that way, when the studio decided to switch to color. The official explanation at the time was that Twetieth Century-Fox, which owned the wide-screen CinemaScope process, had ordered that all films shot in the process had to be in color, but some also believe that Warners ordered the switch to head off comparisons with Blackboard Jungle (1955) and because James Dean's increasing popularity gave the film more prestige.
  
  
• 2007: The movie's line "You're tearing me apart" was voted as the #97 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere magazine.
  
  
• Originally based on a non-fiction work by Dr. Robert M. Lindner, about the hypno-analysis of a young criminal. Producer Jerry Wald intended to make a film of the work and commissioned several scripts, including one by Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel), and Marlon Brando was set to star at one point, but the project was eventually shelved. When the studio bought Nicholas Ray's treatment "The Blind Run" it asked him to use the title of Lindner's work, but the film doesn't include anything else from the book.
  
  
• The "chickie run" was staged at a Warner Bros. property in Calabasas, California. The cars drove on flat land that led to a small bluff of only 10 -15 feet high. The cars drove over the small bluff, but the "cliff" supposedly overlooking the ocean was built on Stage 7 (now Stage 16) at the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank. The constructed cliff overlooked the stage's flooded water tank and the actors looked down upon the water from the edge. Even so, it became necessary to matte in shots of the Pacific Ocean in the final product.
  
  
• Frank Mazzola, who plays "Crunch" in the film, was an actual street gang member when he was a student at Hollywood High School. He was a member of a gang called "The Athenians." As such, he served as a technical advisor to Director Nicholas Ray and coached other actors in regard to street gang attitudes and mannerisms.
  
  
• Jim Stark, the name of James Dean's character, was derived from using the first name of the actor himself, along with an anagram of "Trask," the last name of Dean's character, Cal Trask, in his previous film, East of Eden (1955).
  
  
• James Dean’s characters surname 'Stark' is an anagram of 'Trask' the surname of the his character in East of Eden (1955).
  
  

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