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The Faceless Everyman By Warren Beath James Dean pulled out of Blackwells Corner in his 550 Porsche Spyder and headed west. By all acounts his spirits were very high. He had told Lance Reventlow and Bruce Kessler that he had got his new Porsche 550 Spyder up to 130 mph on the flat straight stretch of 466 between Highway 99 and Blackwell's and he let Bill Hickman and Sanford Roth know he was pleased with the car. The sun was probably not directly in their eyes now but blocked by the Polino Range ahead. They climbed the range and there were a series of sharp turns on the narrow two-lane and white guard rails flickered past like spokes on a bicycle wheel. At the top of the pass Highway 466 uncoiled to a straight shot below. There were two dips where the car sank and rose. Dean passed a car in his lane at a high speed and an oncoming car skipped to the shoulder to avoid being hit. Dean zigged back into his own lane and closed the distance to the intersection in seconds. There was significant oncoming traffic in the other lane. There was a black and white 1950 Ford and a pickup truck some hundred yards behind it, and several other cars. But no problem. The Y intersection the eastbound highway spit off to the northwest did not have a signal and there was dry pastureland in all directions. A few minutes earlier the sun had dipped behind the gentle brown hills to the west. The 1950 Ford crossed over into Dean's lane and Dean swung hard right before slamming on the brakes in the last few feet with such ferocity his foot was jammed in the clutch-brake assembly. His rigid leg was shattered as the left front of his Porsche smashed into the left-front of the Ford, which, upended momentarily so that the driver was looking down into the interior of the Spyder. The grill of the Ford sliced through the Porsche and crushed car and driver as the racer's aluminim accordioned. Rolf Wutherich lay in shock in the dirt trying to raise himself up to get clear, but his femur was broken and his legs askew and helpless behind him. Dean did not move. He had smashed into the grill of the Ford and then been flung backwards until his trapped foot caught and he was slammed forward again. He lay with his foot in the pedals and his right hip resting on the back of the car and his head hanging over the passenger door not far from the barbwire fence.
Left on the highway were the etchings of the accident-a gray scrape marking the point of impact,skid from the Porsche in a sharp small circle as the car spun. Ninety feet of skids traced the five year-old Ford's arc into Dean's lane and disaster, and then sideways crossing smudges to its point of rest down the road. Almost fifty years to the day Dean's favorite cousin Markie, who was fourteen years old when Jimmy died, would return to the intersection in a suit and somber tie to consecrate the stretch of road as James dean Highway and unveil two signs announcing the new name. Then he and his entourage would return to their limousines and return to the nearby winery for an exclusive luncheon. The attorney for the marketing and licensing agency that represented Dean's image-the property he had become in death-recorded the event for the official James Dean website. The fifty-year anniversary of the accident saw the publication of a delirious confabulation that purported to be the recollections of the Ford's driver, Donald Turnupseed. "I was too scared to go near the car," Turnupseed purportedly told journalist Andrea Moretti. "I was maybe 15 feet away, but Hickman was saying something like 'Hang on old Son, hang on old buddy' Then he walked away from the car and went up to the photographer and I heard him say,"He's gone, Jimmy's gone'. The other guy just said 'Oh My God'.Hickman then asked who Mildred was and that Mr. Roth replied was the name of Jimmy's Mother.'Well said Hickman 'Jim said her name, then said thanks Bill, but I gotta go home now'. Then this Hickman guy walks over to me. I thought he was going to say something, but when he got close he gave me one hell of a punch in the guts. It was like being hit by a train. I just sat onto my knees and rolled over, so winded that I couldn't even speak and that lousy patrolman just looked the other way." The book was published in the United Kingdom, and besides Hickman and Turnupseed speaking in almost monocled Briticisms such as "old son" and "hitch a lift", the most ridiculous notion is that Dean in extremis would have called on his mother by her first name. Such a hoax would not have been pulled when Turnupseed was alive, but it gives some indication of the misrepresentation he endured during his life."Pure bullshit", said his son of the Moretti interview."It never happened."
Donald Turnupseed had a lung removed in 1993 and he succumbed to cancer in 1995. The Wikipedia online encyclopedia would categorize him in an entry as "American Folk Figure" and that is what he has become, his own status abetted by his silence in life and in death. He returned to the Cholame garage after the accident and took his own photos of his wrecked Ford, telling the garage owner Paul Moreno to sell it for whatever he thought it was worth and just give him half. It is a mystery whatever became of the ford. It was one of the series of cars Turnupseed had owned and customized. He was car crazy, and in kinder circumstances might have found a lot to talk about with James Dean. But he never spoke about the accident except in a brief interview with the local paper the next day,and in a 1958 deposition in an insurance action. He maintained to the end that he never saw the Spyder as he made the left turn and could not remember whether or not he applied his own brakes. Turnupseed was rational and coherent at the scene, according to Officer Ernie Tripke, though the fan magazine accounts had him crying remorsefully at the scene and saying "I swear....I didn't see him." Turnupseed was given a ride towards home in Tulare from the accident scene by a good Samaritan named Dale Kimes who recalled Donald was very concerned about Dean's condition and hoped he was alright. Kimes heard the radio report while Don was in the restroom at a roadside stop, but left it to the young man's family to let him know the boy in the other car had died. Three months later Turnupseed's wife gave birth to his first son, and his grandmother died the following month.Don took over his Father's industrial electric shop and that would eventually be livelihood to four generations of Turnupseeds. Donald rose to president of the electrical contractor's union in his home town and all the while he was in the phone book and an easy target for the journalists and reporters who called him in search of a story, and who were summarily ejected from his business by his employees. Always quiet and reserved, it was said by a close family member that he was such a poor speller he could not even abbreviate, and he was fond of saying "If all trees were the same, it wouldn't be a very interesting forest." His first wife died in 1976 and he remarried; his second wife soon followed him in death the next year. His face once appeared on the frontpage of a tabloid after a photographer who lain in ambush snapped him with a telephoto lens. Had he ever submitted to an interview or told his story he would have forfeited the right to privacy that was his protection. He maintained his silence all his life. Explaining the accident, the Moretti Turnupseed says, "Yeah, you see Maria I was going along listening to music on my radio; there was this station that played all the hit records all the time. You know Doris Day, Kay Starr." He resonds to a summons from the injured Rolf Wutherich Who tells him-in a thick German accent-"You know I was driving and I know the crash was your fault. Now we are both in a very dangerous situation,we could become known as the men who killed James Dean....how long would it be before both of us were gunned down by some lunatic fan (?) (sic). Turnupseed counters with a joke that they would get him first because he was the one pinned in the hospital bed. But the passage is riff on the confusion introduced at the inquest over who was behind the wheel of the Spyder at the time of the accident. If the car crash is a metaphor for sexual intercourse, Turnupseed was Jimmy's "Dark Lady", or at least the dark matter that drew and extinguished Jimmy Dean's star. Faceless and void of personhood in the public consciousness for almost fifty years-he would not allow himself to be photographed even when the local paper did a feature on the family business-he had become an implacable and and impersonal instrument of fate in the Jimmy Dean story. It was the custom 1950 black and white two-door Ford coupe that killed Jimmy on the highway that day. The inquest document takes us back to the day when he was only a frightened 23 year-old college student with a pregnant wife and a terrible event hanging over his head. When he was exonerated by the verdict he was naturally and enormously relieved as he sought out and approached witness Cliff Hord to confirm his estimate of Dean's speed at the time of the collision. Perhaps it is Turnupseed visable in one of the Roth photos-a man in a disusted posture contemplating his wrecked and leaking Ford. His back is to us and we cannot see his face. At any rate we are left with that image and to wonder. There is a perfection in his silence over fifty years. His non-personhood is his enduring contribution to the Dean mythos. His facelessness makes him everyman.
Letter Written By Donald TurupseedDear Jerry & Family How have you servived the new addition of the family, apparently all right as the announcement we recived said nothing of losing a father. I shore wish I could congratulate you and the Mrs. In purson but I suppose that will have to wait until we get together again of witch I hope will be soon. I will have to be satisfied as for now to say in wrighting CONGRATULATIONS.
The Hitchhiker's name was Turnupseed.From Warren Beath's Annotations to the James Dean Inquest of October 11, 1955
In his words as he came upon the aftermath of the crash: "The ambulance was there, the Highway Patrol and about a half dozen cars. Donald Turnupseed's car was still in the middle of the road. I'm the one he hitched a ride with. None of us at the scene knew Dean was dead. I knew who Dean was, but he wasn't an icon to me like he was to those boys. He (Turnupseed) kept saying over and over again, 'I hope he's going to be all right'. " According to Carole Roberts' interview with Kimes, they stopped in Reef City so Turnupseed could call his parents to meet him in Stratford and tell them he'd been in an accident. But by then Dean's death was on the radio.
When Turnupseed went to call and then use the restroom in an outbuilding, Kimes said he went into the cafe there "where everybody was talking about the accident and saying that Dean was dead." He asked the occupants not to say anything about it when Turnupseed came inside. "I wanted him to be with his family when he found out, not with a bunch of strangers." Again according to Roberts' interview and according to Kimes, "Turnupseed seemed undecided about whether he was really at fault in the accident because Dean had been going so fast." Kimes said during the ride Turnupseed told "how he tried to pull his car to the right once he saw Dean's Porsche bearing down on him." "One salesman (at the scene) that night said Dean had passed him going about eighty-miles-per-hour shortly before the accident. I heard later that Dean had gotten a ticket for speeding down the Grapevine south of Bakersfield that day. He (Turnupseed) seemed like such a nice caring kid. He was so worried about Dean being hurt." "When Turnupseed's parents finally arrived in Stratford, Turnupseed got out of the car to wait for his family. But he turned back to thank me for the ride...You know, I never did think Donald Turnupseed was at fault for Dean's death. The fault was Dean's excessive speed."
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