Discover the first appearance of this legendary Hollywood actor, appearing for the first time in the film “Bayonet to the Cannon”: James Dean.
Do you know James Dean’s first on-screen appearance? Died prematurely in a car accident at the age of 27, the young actor became a cinema icon with only three feature films in the lead. But do you know his role as an extra in Samuel Fuller’s Bayonet in the Cannon?
During the first winter of the Korean War, American troops were forced to retreat in the face of opposition from communist forces. A small squad led by Lieutenant Gibbs is sent to hide this retreat and make it appear that the American army is still there. But the cold is intense and the battles are deadly…
54 years ago, this little boy also made his cinema debut, but will you be able to recognize him without cheating?
His very first film role
Towards the end of the feature film, at precisely 1 hour 29 minutes and 37 seconds, a silhouette of a soldier appears running in the snow with his weapon and arriving near his superior saying: “I think I heard them coming”, “I think I heard them approaching.”. And this actor is the famous James Dean.
In Bayonet with a Cannon, he only has one line, and a screen appearance of barely a minute, but it is his first role in a feature film. Not bad for a first, he appears in a film directed by Sam Fuller, who years later will sign the excellent western 40 Killers, The Drug Port and Shock Corridor.
Fame at 24
After Bayonet, James Dean went to play in series or filmed plays. We find him on the big screen as an extra in The Sailors’ Polka, Who has seen my beauty? and A Man Like No Other, before he was chosen in 1955 to star in East of Eden, which launched his career. A few months later, he was killed in a car accident, not without having previously filmed two other masterpieces: La Fureur de vivre and Géant.
AGENCY / BESTIMAGE James Dean
As for Fuller, the same year as “Bayonet”, he will direct an even better war film, I Lived Through Korean Hell, with the same Gene Evans, but also Robert Hutton and Steve Brodie. Sergeant Zack and a young Korean orphan join forces with a group of left-behind American soldiers. They hide together in a Buddhist temple before realizing they are near a North Korean camp.