For audiences who have only seen James Dean and Natalie Wood act together in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), I'm a Fool (1954) is an eye opener. It was broadcast live on CBS on November 15, 1954, the eighth episode of the third season of the General Electric Theater, a half-hour anthology series sponsored by G.E. Hosted by Ronald Reagan, the production starred Eddie Albert as a man who looks over his life and the consequences of having pretended to be something he wasn't. James Dean plays Albert as a young man, and Natalie Wood plays the girl he loves.

I'm a Fool was directed by Don Medford from a script by Arnold Schulman. It was based on a story by Sherwood Anderson that was originally published in the February 1922 edition of The Dial magazine. I'm a Fool deeply impressed author William Faulkner, who wrote many years later that, with the exception of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, "I'm a Fool is the best short story I ever read."

The General Electric Theater presentation of I'm a Fool was produced by MCA and broadcast from the Republic Studios on 4024 Radford Avenue in North Hollywood, where other iconic shows like Leave It to Beaver, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Wagon Train were filmed.

1954 was a busy and life-changing year for James Dean. He began it on Broadway in The Immoralist, but left the production two weeks later to make a screen test for director Elia Kazan. The test won him his first starring film role - that of Cal in East of Eden (1954). After filming ended in August, Dean, who had acted in live television in New York, returned to the medium - this time in Hollywood. Only six months after he acted in I'm a Fool, East of Eden opened and James Dean was a movie star. After Dean's death in a car accident in September 1955, I'm a Fool was rebroadcast following an appeal by the public, who wanted to see him one last time. As host Ronald Reagan said, "It was a performance that helped attract nationwide attention to his talent, and we present it as one of the landmarks in his progress toward the great roles of his brief career. Those of us who worked with Jimmy Dean carry an image of his intense struggle for a goal beyond himself and, curiously enough, that's the story of the boy he portrays tonight."

By Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:

Anderson, Sherwood "I'm a Fool" The Dial Feb 1922
Clemens Warrick, Karen James Dean: Dream as if You'll Live Forever
Cohen, Philip "This Hand Holds Genius: Three Unpublished Faulkner Letters" Mississippi Quarterly Summer 1993
Lambert, Gavin Natalie Wood