What you need to know
More than 70 years have passed since James Dean’s untimely death, but the other man involved in the accident, Donald Turnupseed, has spent most of his life avoiding talking about the accident.
On September 30, 1955, the 24-year-old Oscar-nominated actor was driving his brand new Porsche Spyder west on US 466 in Cholamet, California, on his way to a racing event in Salinas, 90 miles south of San Francisco, when a turn-up seed traveling the wrong way crossed the center line as he attempted to turn left onto Route 41.
Whether it was the glare of the 5:45 p.m. sun or the Porsche’s low ride height, Mr. Turnupseed was unable to see Dean’s silver sports car coming, and his Ford Tudor sedan collided almost head-on with the lightweight actor nicknamed “Little Bastard.”
The Los Angeles Times reported, “The Spider cartwheeled in the air and came to rest against a telephone pole in a gutter.”
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Dean was taken to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, 45 miles from the crash site, but was pronounced dead on arrival. Another man in his car, Porsche mechanic Rolf Wütterich, was also taken by ambulance to the East of Eden star, but his injuries were not fatal.
Meanwhile, Turnupseed reportedly suffered facial lacerations and bruises.
Turnupseed, who was a student at the California Institute of Technology at the time of the accident, was not mentioned and then hitchhiked in the dark to his home in Tulare, California.
“I didn’t see him coming,” Turnapseed, 23, told the Tulare Advance Register in the only interview he gave about the accident hours after the accident.
After an inquest, the coroner’s jury found the death to be an accident with no criminal intent.
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Still, the Navy veteran’s life was filled with requests from the media, especially around September 30th of each year.
When Mr. Turnupseed died of lung cancer in 1995 at age 63, family friend Wally Nelson told the Advance Register, “It was something that bothered him all his life.”
Another friend, Al Pagi, said Turnnupseed had always been an introvert, but the incident had “likely made him even more so”.
“I’ll never get close to Don,” he said.
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Dean biographer Warren Bees, who once met Turnupseed, said on the American Legends website, “Everything around him seemed alert and cautious. He even seemed to be moving in slow motion, as if he were walking through a minefield. He was completely withdrawn.”
Rather than reliving his role in Hollywood legend, the man forever associated with Dean focused instead on his successful business. The Tulare Advance-Register reported that Turnupseed founded Turnupseed Electric Services Inc., an electrical contracting company whose customers included Kraft Foods, Haagen-Dazs, U.S. Cold Storage and California Milk Producers. From 1990 to 1994, he served as president of the San Joaquin Valley Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association.
“They were a tough competitor,” Pagi, owner of Pagi Electric, told the Tulare Advance Register. “As a businessman, (Turnupseed) learned from his father. His father was a very, very tough-minded man. But they never shortchanged anyone in their work.”
As time passed, it became clear that Turnup Seed was determined to distance itself from the 1955 accident. Bies asked an experienced electrician to comment on the accident.
“I told him I was looking into the accident and wanted to know if we could talk about it,” Bies recalled in 2003. “He said, ‘There’s no chance.'” Then, “I’m sorry.” He had a condescending sense of humor, but was kind under the circumstances. ”
In 2006, a letter allegedly written by Turnupseed to a friend was sold at auction. The transmission also included images of the crash.
“I’m certainly disappointed that I haven’t heard from you until now, but I’ve been pretty excited over the past year or so, first starting to go back to school and then starting my relationship with Dean,” he wrote to a friend. “I bought another car and a house, so I’m taking some time to catch my breath. Here are some shots of my car and Dean’s car…Thank God we made it out. But that’s in the past, and as I said at the poker game on the ship, ‘That was yesterday.'”
Almost a month after Dean’s death, Rebel Without a Cause was released. The following year, Dean’s last film, Giant, was released in theaters and was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award.
