Switchblades from "Rebel Without a Cause." James Dean is referred to as "Jimmie" throughout the museum.

James Dean Museum

Fairmount, Indiana

James Dean has been dead for seven decades, but he's still the most famous person ever to have lived in Fairmount, Indiana. That's not a knock against the subsequent citizens of Fairmount, who include Jim "Garfield" Davis, one of the most successful cartoonists ever. Outside of Fairmount's historical museum stands a statue of Davis's Garfield the cat -- but he's dressed as James Dean. And the museum itself was renamed the James Dean Museum in 2022.

James Dean monument and portrait by artist Kenneth Kendall.

Christy Berry, president of the museum's board of directors, said that the name change was made because, by her estimate, 80 percent of its collection had something to do with Dean. The museum even moved into a new, bigger building downtown in 2024, just so it could display more of Dean's things.

James Dean's mother died when he was nine, and his father sent Dean from California to Indiana to be raised by the Winslows, a Fairmount farm family headed by Dean's uncle. In 1955, when Dean died suddenly at the age of 24, most of his possessions were still at the farm, and many that weren't were returned posthumously to the Winslows -- as was Dean himself, whose grave is in Fairmount's cemetery. "My dad," said Christy, "was a pallbearer at James Dean's funeral."

1949 Ford and 1954 tractor, both driven by Indiana farm boy James Dean.

Farmers rarely throw anything away, so the Winslows simply kept Dean's things, not because he was famous but because he was family, and because much of the Dean-abilia could be reused by other Winslows. Over time, these artifacts found their way into the museum. "If the Winslows keep finding stuff in their barn," said Christy, "we'll have to expand again."

James Dean's crib and baby pictures.

These early pre-fame items are true relics; exceptional only because they were touched by mid-20th century celebrity giant. Examples on display include jarred soil samples collected by Dean in 1944 that won him a blue ribbon -- also displayed -- in the Grant County Fair. There's the 1949 Ford sedan that Dean drove to his senior prom, and the Winslow family tractor that Dean sat on when he returned to Fairmount as part of a publicity tour. Dean's bongos and conga drum are showcased, along with a photo of Dean playing the conga for a barnyard pig.

Dean's bedroom has been rebuilt to its exact proportions by the Winslows inside the museum, just to display his bedroom furniture. It includes the room's original window glass, which the frugal family also saved. Visitors can see Dean's childhood cap pistol, his high school report card, and a selection of his classroom book reports and projects, one titled, "My Career as a Farmer."

Soil samples collected by young James Dean earned him a 4-H blue ribbon in 1944.

Dean left Fairmount for New York in the early 1950s, and a relic from that period is the battered bathroom sink from his tiny Manhattan apartment. "The sink stopped working," said Christy, and the apartment's then-current occupant knew that James Dean had been a previous tenant. "So," said Christy, "he just threw the sink into his trunk and drove it to Fairmount and gave it to the museum."

Book reports by schoolboy James Dean showed artistic promise.

James Dean never won an Oscar, yet there are two Oscar statuettes in the James Dean Museum. One, carved from wood, is an unofficial "Greatest Actor of All Time" Oscar created by his German fan club. The other, a real Oscar, "was stolen from the Academy by some of his friends and given to him," said Christy. "They said he deserved an Oscar. We don't know whose it was or where it came from."

Film fans in the museum will see a pair of genuine switchblade knives from Rebel Without a Cause and the wind-up toy monkey that, with Dean, shared the opening sequence from that movie. There's the .22 rifle that Dean used to shoot jackrabbits in Texas while filming Giant, and a pair of fence posts on which Dean's character leaned in one scene of that film. "It's pretty remarkable that someone went down there and grabbed 'em," said Christy.

James Dean was sculpting this head of himself just before he died.

And there are everyday items from Dean's Hollywood years as well: pay stubs, scripts, his briefcase and coffee pot, and gifts and notes from his movie star girlfriend. There's a signed letter from Dean's doctor giving him the all-clear to enter an auto race, three days before he crashed and died. There's the grill emblem from Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder death car, taken from the accident site, although an accompanying placard questions the authenticity of this particular artifact.

The museum has a model of Dean's original bust-topped cemetery monument, which only lasted a few months before the sculpted head was stolen. And there's a full size copy of the current Dean monument in town, which itself is a copy of the one outside of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, marking the location of Dean's final scene in Rebel Without a Cause.

We asked Christy why people still come to Fairmount to visit James Dean's grave and museum after all these years, and after a Hollywood career that spanned only three films. "He never really aged, if that makes sense," Christy answered. "He never went out of style. He never got fat." Even so, and despite the glamor of celebrity, the James Dean Museum wants his fans to appreciate him for what he was, not for what they imagine him to be.

"People think that he had a death wish; he didn't," said Christy, "or that he was a rebel; he wasn't."

"He was," Christy said, "just a nice farm boy."