During the 1940s, Warner Brothers bought the rights to Robert Lindner’s book, Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath, and began turning it into a film. A partial script was written, and a 23-year old Marlon Brando was asked to do a five-minute screen test in 1947. For whatever reason, the studio abandoned the original project, and eventually revived it eight years later with a new script and a new actor — James Dean, of course. Dean’s own screen test for Rebel Without a Cause appears here.
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Related Content:
The Godfather Without Brando?: It Almost Happened
The James Dean Story by Robert Altman (Complete Film)
Paul Newman and James Dean Screentest for East of Eden
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