Last time we featured Inside Story, we took a detailed look at the contents, concluded that there was good reason it was a strictly blah tabloid, and decided not to buy it again. But that doesn’t mean we can’t cull them from online, so today we have this February 1957 cover that promises to expose “the amazing James Dean hoax.” Make sure you’re sitting down when you read this. The globe-spanning conspiracy Inside Story uncovered is simply that Dean’s posthumous spike in popularity wasn’t entirely due to sincere outpourings of appreciation by fans, but also because of a deliberate, behind-the-scenes publicity campaign by Warner Bros., who had produced his last movie Giant. Warners had decided that, after dropping $5 million on production, they needed a major publicity angle to have any hope of recouping their investment in a movie whose star had been dead a year and a month. The money quote: “Unfortunately, Dean, living again only for the profits of the movie-makers, will never see a dime of that increased gross…” Well, no, because death will tend to put a crimp in one’s personal finances. At least Inside Story published a nice photo, from East of Eden, below. We have two more issues, with lots of scans, and you can see those here and here. 

The always-wonderful Japanese celeb magazine Screen produced this issue promoting James Dean’s epic drama Giant in January 1956. The film opened the next October, which means the magazine was put together well beforehand. Advance press isn’t unusual, of course, but advance press of this detail in Japan—it didn’t premiere there until nearly a year later in December 1956—suggests just how huge a worldwide star James Dean had become. Sadly, some of that had to do with the fact that he was already dead, killed in a September 1955 automobile crash as Giant was about to wrap. But while nearly all dead celebrities are eulogized as geniuses cut down too soon, Dean is one of the few whose work has actually withstood the test of time. Screen makes room for other stars in this issue, including Audrey Hepburn, who we've posted in panel two. On another note, we’ve shared quite a bit from Screen over the last two years, but if you missed those entries you can see some great covers here, here and here, and see a bit of what's inside here and here. 

Summer is dwindling in the parts of the world that have actual seasons. As a reminder of everyone’s favorite time of year we’ve searched the internet and cobbled together a collection of thirty vintage images featuring some of yesteryear’s fittest femmes and hommes enjoying the sun, and sometimes each other. If you haven’t had a summertime moment like one of those below, there’s still time. Get to it. 

Photo of actor James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder after his fatal head-on collision with another car on U.S. Route 466, fifty-four years ago today.     

Above is American star James Dean on the cover of two issues of Filmski Svet, aka Movie World, from the former Yugoslavia. Dean’s unexpected death still ranks as one of the most shocking in Hollywood history. In September 1955 he was driving his convertible Porsche 550 Spyder on U.S. Route 466 when a sedan in an oncoming lane turned in front of him and struck his small sports car head-on. Dean was alive when he was loaded into an ambulance, but was pronounced DOA at Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, aged twenty-four. Both of the above covers were published posthumously in 1967 (top) and 1957.

March 1957 issue of Uncensored magazine, with James Dean, Xavier Cugat (Cugie), Mrs. Bruce Cabot (Adrienne Ames) and a pretty funny juxtaposition at lower right that makes Winston (Churchill) appear to leer at Ethel Barrymore.