In its place is a minimalist beat, so much so that it is now hardly disconcerting when a Christmas episode of Friends reaches us in high summer. Ultimately Spoto's well-researched and often empathetic account, like any account of this brief life, leaves the story unresolved And that, of course, is part of the appeal.. (or so it was assumed, as Dean and Taylor disappeared into his trailer; in fact, Liz was merely performing her allotted role of therapist to the sexually insecure.)The book opens and closes with the subsequent immortalisation of Dean, and his deification: the post-war teenager who spawned a horde of mumbling post-adolescents stumbling their way purposefully towards stardom only for it to destroy them, River Phoenix being only the latest casualty. Spoto expands his text with extensive accounts of crime in Dean's home state, Indiana, discursive essays on teen rebellion, speculation about how Dean might be responsible for the high suicide rate among the teenagers of the 1990s, plot summaries of the actor's tiny oeuvre.More illuminating are the peaks behind the sets. In Rebel Without a Cause, Sal Mineo's love for Jimmy and Dennis Hopper's hero-worship in Giant; overheated relations in the blistering Texas desert; Nicholas Ray and Natalie Wood; Ray and Dean; Dean and Elizabeth Taylor...

It was entirely fitting that he met his end in his newly-delivered Spyder, a frail thin-shelled machine capable of incredible acceleration; rather like Dean himself.A short life does not always make for satisfying biography; there is too little to get one's hands on, and there is no mature denouement. His only fulfilled relationship was, perhaps, with his fans, when he could be himself - and he paid for it.Dean may have outwardly rebelled against the Hollywood system, yet, as Spoto shows, he also used it, cynically, to his own advantage. He knew that subliminally, sex is the currency of fame, and he made sure he was photographed in the right places with the right people; many of his relationships with starlets like Pier Angeli or Ursula Andress were movie romances, short-lived and publicity-conscious.Jimmy only really wanted to make love to his car. Dean worshipped Kazan's work and for once tried not to alienate the director; Kazan found the process "like directing the faithful Lassie". He didn't like Dean: "He was never more than a limited actor and he was a highly neurotic young man obviously sick, and he got more so." As an actor, Dean could have been truly great; as a person, he was hell to be around.

Those pouting lips betray a petulancy which is more childish than rebellious; on innumerable occasions in this book Jimmy breaks down in tears. His narcissism is paradigmatic of the period ("Don't you think I look like Michelangelo's David?") and Dean was sharply aware of his own image, using it to promote a career which had little else to recommend it beyond a mercurial and brilliant instinct for the camera.Kazan directed him in East of Eden, his first major screen role. Yet the ambivalent, often inexpressed sexuality illuminates Dean's dysfunctional personality (Brando told a mutual acquaintance, "Why don't you get him to an analyst? Your friend is nuts!"). He could not reciprocate in any of his affairs with men or women; Spoto's admirably unsensational account puts paid to many of the more salacious rumours surrounding Dean: the infamous photograph of Jimmy up a tree, masturbating, is dismissed (the photo existed, but was of a mentally-retarded boy), as are rumours of Dean's "meat-rack" career. He annoyed virtually every director he worked with, and his bad manners (he habitually pissed where he stood) dug him deeper in the hole he dug for himself.

He was apparently determined to be disliked, but yearned to be loved. Like many actors, his talent seemed merely an extension of his personality and his fantasies.Spoilt, neurotic, brattish and beautiful, Dean made his way to New York, got handy with a switchblade, and was thrown out of the Actor's Studio. He hero-worshipped that other orphaned outlaw, Billy the Kid and got his first motorbike at 16, earning him the nickname of "One Speed Dean". Jimmy's recklessness lost him his two front teeth: the bridge he had to wear ever after accounts for his mumbling diction and disinclination to smile in photographs, a prosaic origin for a rebellious stance. By 1950, aged 19, there was still no evidence of Jimmy going out with girls; indeed, his first serious sexual relationship was with the appropriately- named Rogers Brackett, an advertising executive who would give Jimmy an "in" to his chosen career, chosen largely through his idolising of Marlon Brando.