Chilluminati Podcast Episode 52 Notes!

JAMES DEAN’S CAR

big shout out to the article

“The Death of James Dean” by underworldtales.com

as well as

“Cursed Cars” by Craig Fitzgerald at BestRide.com

and

“James Dean Spyder” by Deb Andres at HauntedVehicles.com

and last but not least the book

“James Dean The Mutant King” by David Dalton

So definitely your parents will know James Dean from just like, normal pop culture, but nowadays, unless you’re some kind of film buff or weird artsy teenager who’s expressing themselves by falling in love with teen idols from 70 years ago, you probably only know the basics:

James Dean was a famous young actor from the fifties, he was in Rebel Without A Cause, East of Eden, Giant, and that’s it, maybe he had something to do with Marilyn Monroe or maybe that’s just an association based off murals you’ve seen, and finally, most importantly for us here today at the Chilluminati, he’s perhaps most famous for dying when he was just 24 years old, on September 30, 1955.

It was a beautiful if slightly chilly morning that day at Competition Motors in Hollywood, just a couple blocks up from where the Cinerama Dome on Vine St is today, where James Dean was hanging out with a former Luftwaffe pilot and factory-trained Porsche mechanic named Rolf Wütherich.

See, Dean had purchased his brand new, rare, one of 90 Porsche 550 Spyder the week before on September 23rd, (or POSSIBLY the 21st) and took it in to be spruced up by man called George Barris, who you probably won’t know off-hand, but he’s a super famous car customizer who eventually went on to make Adam West’s iconic tv Batmobile…but James Dean wasn’t looking for some goofy shit like that, man.

This was going to be a racing car, and a classy one at that, so he added nice red tartan wool seats, red stripes on the rear wheel well, and some bespoke lettering by Dean Jeffries, the man who built the Monkeemobile:

The number “130” right across the hood, the engine cover, and doors, and just under the Porsche emblem above the license plate, a nickname that Dean received from legendary stuntman and his dialect coach on Giant, Bill Hickman, that would eventually, INFAMOUSLY, come to describe the car itself more than the man inside: “Little Bastard”.

Quote from Hickman:

“In those final days, racing was what he cared about most. I had been teaching him things like how to put a car in a four-wheel drift, but he had plenty of skill of his own. If he had lived he might have become a champion driver. We had a running joke, I'd call him Little Bastard and he'd call me Big Bastard. I never stop thinking of those memories.”

The plan for that weekend was to pack the car into a trailer behind his 1955 Ford Country Squire station wagon and caravan up North to Salinas with Wütherich, a photographer called Sandy Roth, and Hickman himself, to do a little road racing…but at the last minute, Wütherich decided that being brand new, the Porsche might need a little breaking in, so Dean decided to get into the rhythm by driving it up on the road himself, and bringing Wütherich with him in the passenger seat, leaving Hickman and Roth following slowly behind them in the station wagon with the trailer.

According to the very detailed account they have in The Mutant King, the whole group left a coffee shop across the street from Competition Motors around 1:15pm, and it only took them about two and half hours to get out towards Bakersfield, which we know because at 3:30pm, a CHiPs Patrolman by the name of O.V. Hunter stopped BOTH CARS to write them speeding tickets.

Dean got one for going 65 in a 55, just 10 mph over the limit, but Hickman’s was worse, for going 45mph, which was a whopping 20 mph over the speed limit you’re allowed to hit with a trailer. But the timing is significant most of all, because considering the distance travelled in such a short time, while they got some relatively tame tickets, it’s like Dean was hitting speeds of over 100 mph while he was out on the road at some points.

A little while later, they stopped for drinks at a charming little rest stop on Highway 46 called Blackwell’s Corner, which is well documented, as even today they refer to themselves as “James Dean’s Last Stop”, and you can stop in at the “Forever Young” Restaurant, or grab some Fudge at the “East of Eden” Fudge Factory to memorialize this film legend while you pee in the middle of nowhere. Also there’s a Dust Bowl educational display with a very scary fake old lady, but it has nothing to do with this so I’m just going to let you find it on Google.

Anyway, while they were there, they happened to run into the Woolworth’s heir Lance Reventlow and his racing driver Bruce Kessler, who were also on the way to the races in Reventlow’s Mercedes-Benz 300 SL coupe, which is how we know that at about 5:15pm, James Dean, Wütherich, Hickman, and Roth the photographer continued their journey heading west on Highway 46 toward Paso Robles.

About a half-hour later, heading the other way, East, in a black and white 1950 Ford Tudor coupe, was a 23-year-old student from Cal Poly, and I know I haven’t gotten into the possibly paranormal elements of this episode yet, but to me and many other people who’ve written articles about this online, it is VERY strange, though unrelated to anything else, that his name...just happened to be...DONALD…TURNUPSPEED.

Literally the words “turn” then “up” then “speed” all in a row as one word. Donald Turnupspeed. Absolutely unfair that that’s true. Insane.

Anyway, Turnupspeed was trying to make a left on Route 41, but James Dean, who was very excited about the idea of racing around in his brand new car, was likely going about 85 mph as he swerved to avoid the Tudor coupe, failed to get out of the way in time, and slammed into it head on, sending Turnupspeed’s car 39 feet backward into the westbound lane.

Now, I’m not sure if you know this about old cars, especially something like a 1950 Ford Tudor coupe, but if you have a second, why don’t pull up a picture of one for yourself on Google images so you can see what I mean. That thing is essentially just a big heavy hunk of solid metal, so when it comes into contact with a paper thin, extra light racing car like James Dean’s 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, it’s kind of like  hitting a soda can with a baseball bat. According to hauntedvehicles.com and The Mutant King, someone at the scene referred to the car as looking like a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Pretty evocative stuff.

Now, you can look up pictures of the crash if you want, but just take it from me that it wasn’t pretty. Wütherich was thrown from the vehicle and broke his jaw and leg, along with a few internal injuries, but he nevertheless lived, and Turnupspeed, thanks to his giant metal car, walked away with nothing but a scratched nose…but James Dean was not so lucky. He was pinned in the car with a broken neck and internal bleeding, and by the time he got to the hospital with Wütherich at 6:20pm, he was pronounced dead on arrival. Here’s another quote from Hickman about the scene out there. It’s pretty fucked up.

Another quote from Hickman:

“We were about two or three minutes behind him. I pulled him out of the car, and he was in my arms when he died, his head fell over. I heard the air coming out of his lungs the last time. Didn’t sleep for five or six nights after that, just the sound of the air coming out of his lungs.” 

(DISCUSS)

Okay, now know what you’re thinking: But Alex, you ask, why the hell did you just make us listen to that sad ass story where a promising young movie actor died in a horrible car accident? Isn’t this a podcast about weird mysteries and unexplainable phenomena?

Why yes, I do believe it is my boys, which is why we’re going to get into that shit right the eff now: And so, submitted for the approval of the Chilluminati society, I call the rest of this story “The Curse of the Little Bastard”.

Now as you can imagine, with the generation-defining Rebel Without A Cause dropping just one month after his (in the minds of some teenagers) extremely romantic death, even though he was only ever in 3 movies, this immediately catapulted James Dean to legendary status in popular culture, and as if often the case when celebrities know other celebrities who have died and then go on to write their memoirs, stories began to surface of people having dark premonitions about the car, even in just the short week that Dean owned it, hinting that beneath it’s sport custom exterior, lie something else, something...darker, something...possibly even...evil?

For example, while joyriding the car in LA the same day he bought it, September 23 1955, he ran into the man, Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, Alec Guiness, outside a restaurant. But here’s the thing, Guiness was so affected by the impromptu meeting, he wrote about it in his private diaries and letters, and here’s the quote:

“The sports car looked sinister to me…exhausted, hungry, feeling a little ill-tempered in spite of Dean’s kindness, I heard myself saying in a voice I could hardly recognize as my own: ‘Please, never get in it…if you get in that car you will be found dead in it by this time next week.”

Which, as we now obviously know, he literally was. But if this story simply amounted to Alec Guiness having one lucky guess, it just wouldn’t be pod material, so here’s a few other weird signs that it wasn’t just a fluke and that people actually were picking up bad vibes from the Little Bastard:

-Ursula Andress, the famous Swiss James Bond Actress and Dean’s girlfriend at the time of his death, who was even present when he actually bought it, refused to set foot in the car.

-Famous singer, sex symbol, Catwoman and Yzma actress Eartha Kitt was said to have quote “expressed feelings of unease around the Spyder”

-Nick Adams, a television cowboy and close friend of Dean’s and Elvis Presley, brought up that he was concerned about a bad feeling he was having about the car, but Dean brushed it off, allegedly even saying  “I am destined to die in a speeding car” in response.

-Another babe Dean was involved with, Maila Nurmi, the actress who played Vampira on TV, was supposedly so worried about something happening to him in the Little Bastard, that she even left a warning note on the windshield.

-Even Wütherich himself, at about 3pm while in the car with Dean, told him:

“Don’t go too fast! Don’t try to win! The Spyder is something quite different from the Speedster! Don’t drive to win; drive to get experience!”

And yet, in the end none of that made a difference. They couldn’t stop Little Bastard from claiming it’s first victim…BUT WHAT’S EVEN WORSE...IS THAT IT WOULDN’T BE ITS LAST!!!!

(DISCUSS)

Here’s the others (THAT WE KNOW ABOUT)

-Shortly after the crash, George Barris, the Batmobile guy, bought the wreckage for 2.5k, some say so that he could sell tickets to see it, though he only ever lent it to the Highway Patrol as part of safety exhibits, but when he was first transporting back to his shop in LA, the Little Bastard allegedly slipped off the trailer and broke a mechanic’s leg.

-Barris then sold off parts of the engine and chassis to two doctors/prospective racers, Dr. Troy McHenry and Dr. William Eschrid.

-On October 21, 1956 while racing their cars with pieces of the Little Bastard inside, Dr. McHenry’s Porsche Spyder spun out and killed him instantly when it slammed into a tree, and Dr. Eschrid rolled  his car going around a curve and was injured and left in critical condition.

-Barris also sold two tires to a young man from New York, which both blew simultaneously shortly thereafter, running him off the road and into a ditch.

-A weird obsessive fan type person tried to steal the steering wheel from inside the wreckage while it was in storage and ripped his arm open on the jagged metal, seriously injuring him. This may have actually happened twice with two different people, but stories are a little conflated.

-During an anti-speeding presentation at a local California high school, the Little Bastard allegedly fell off its display and broke a student’s hip.

-While being stored in a garage in Fresno CA, the garage caught fire and completely burned down, except for the Little Bastard, which was largely unscathed.

-While transporting the Little Bastard between a saftey display and it’s home storage spot, a truck driver lost control of his vehicle but was thrown clear of the wreckage, only to be crushed to death when the Porsche fell off the flatbed and rolled onto him anyway.

-Yet another innocent person was killed in another SEPARATE accident involving the Little Bastard falling off a flatbed and hitting a passing car.

-In 1958, a THIRD transport truck holding the Little Bastard smashed the windshield of the car parked downhill from it when the brakes gave out.

-And finally, in 1959, after being put on display in New Orleans and strangely falling apart into 11 separate pieces, the Little Bastard was allegedly loaded into a truck and shipped back to California, but neither the car or truck carrying it were ever heard from since.

However, Barris did keep one door for himself back at his shop, and in 2005, after much noise had been made about where the car was or who rightfully owned it, the Volo Auto Museum in Illinois issued a bounty on the car for one million dollars.

And that is where the legend rested for ten years, until randomly, in 2015, when this 47-year-old dude from Washington state called Shawn Reilly starting going through psychological counseling.

He apparently had always been troubled by a weird scar on his finger that he’d had for almost as long as he could remember, but he had no idea where it came from.

However, one day while in a therapy session, he started to remember that in 1974, his dad, who was a carpenter, took him along on some job he was working back when he was only 6 years old.

At an undisclosed building (which according to this guy’s lawyer, STILL EXISTED in 2015, though he was purposely holding back the location with respect to the reward), he remembered him and his father meeting with several men about a wrecked sports car which he thinks could have been the Little Bastard, hidden behind a wall in that building, and he even remembers cutting his finger on the car. Most surprising of all though, is that he thinks one of the dudes that was there could have actually been none other…than yep, George Barris, the Batmobile guy again.

Now, just in case you think that’s total horseshit, that story actually PASSED an impartial lie detector test carried out by the Volo Auto Museum, and they made it very clear to all parties involved that they still want to buy the car for a million bucks.

HOWEVER, according to the Museum’s Director Brian Grams, nobody INCLUDING Barris has been able to produce a single document proving that ANYONE owns the car, and that’s where the story’s been ever since.

Most notably of all parties gunning for it though, was actually a lawyer representing Dr Eschrid, the doctor who survived that race, since according to him, ownership of the Little Bastard was registered to the engine, which was the part that he bought and crashed, so he believes anything that remains of the car belongs to him.

But before you think the car is only physically dangerous and simply involved in a bunch of freak accidents, the last thing I wanted to take a look at was what happened to some of the people who stepped in and tried to warn Dean of the Little Bastard’s evil aura:

-Nick Adams, the TV cowboy who confided in Dean that he was worried about the Little Bastard, dubbed some of Dean’s lines in his final film Giant after his death, and started getting obsessed with the accident himself, often posing with fans at his grave, writing little articles in James Dean fan magazines, and even claiming to have been stalked by some of the crazier ones.

-He also told reporters that he’d taken up James Dean’s racing hobby and that quote:

“I became a highway delinquent. I was arrested nine times in one year. They put me on probation, but I kept on racing…nowhere.”

-Eventually in 1968 he was found dead in his home under extremely mysterious circumstances, with sources claiming it was everything from accidental overdose to a murder hit intended to keep him from publishing a book of closeted gay Hollywood secrets.

-Shortly after Dean died, tabloids printed stories alleging that Nurmi Maila aka Vampira, had been practicing black magic out of a shrine in her bathroom and that she cursed James Dean for rebuking him by cutting out pictures of his eyes and ears and sticking them on her living room wall with a ritual dagger, and that the knife fell from the wall when he died. This was likely not true, however, and according to her official website, she has been target by obsessive fans and it drove her to attempted suicide.

-However shortly after Dean’s death, she made sure to be photographed with her date at a halloween party, who came dressed as Dean’s corpse complete with his trademark glasses and jacket, but wrapped head to toe in bandages, and it was a matter of public record that she’d sent him a postcard of herself sitting next to an open grave with the text “Darling, Come and Join Me”, though it could have just been an unfortunately timed joke since after all, she WAS Vampira.

-Dean’s passenger Rolf Wütherich, who again, tried to convince Dean to drive slower that day, also developed severe psychological problems, like depression, suicidal tendencies, alcoholism, etc, plagued by stories of James Dean fans committing suicide over his death and sending him threatening letters for years.

-Wütherich had four marriages, and though the first ended before the accident for other reasons, the second ended because his wife accused him of killing James Dean, and he got so upset by it that he became violent and was committed to a psych ward.

-He also tried to stab his fourth wife Doris to death while she slept in 1967, and went back to a psych ward until 1970. After that he worked for 11 years as a mechanic and rally navigator until 1981 when he signed a 20,000 mark contract for a German TV show about the death of James Dean, and in the very same month, died in his own car accident at the age of 53.

And that’s the story of the Little Bastard. Was it really an evil car? Was it just a coincidence? And regardless of what you think, where the hell is it now?