James Byron Dean was born on this site at 2 a.m. on February 8, 1931, the only child of Winton and Mildred Dean. The family lived in Unit A of the Seven Gables, a 2-story, 4-unit apartment house at this location, then moved shortly after his birth to nearby Fairmount, Indiana, where they lived until he was five, before relocating to Santa Monica, California. After his mother died at age 29, nine-year-old Jimmie returned to Fairmount, where his Uncle Marcus Winton and Aunt Ortense Winton raised him. He attended Fairmount schools, was an average student, participated in sports, excelled in basketball and track, belonged to the Debate Club, and took part in all of the school plays. After graduating from Fairmount High School in 1949, he returned to California, attended Santa Monica City College and later UCLA as a theater major, and performed in a 1950 production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. His first onscreen acting job was a Pepsi-Cola commercial in 1951 for which he earned $30, and after small film parts he left Hollywood for New York City, studied at The Actors Studio, appeared in more than two dozen live TV dramas, and made his Broadway debut in late 1952 in See the Jaguar. In his second Broadway play, The Immoralist (1954), director Elia Kazan noticed him, screen tested him, and brought him back to Hollywood for the leading role of Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955). He then starred as John Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and as Jett Rink in Giant (1955) opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. On the evening of Friday, September 30, 1955, at approximately 5:45 p.m., he was driving his new Porsche Spyder to a weekend race in Salinas when he was killed in a collision at the intersection of Highways 41 and 46 near Cholame, California, at age 24. His body was returned to Fairmount, where he was buried in Park cemetery on October 8, 1955, and he remains one of the most influential and remembered American actors of all time.