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Short Stuff: James Dean's Car · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. Josh here, Chuck here,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Jerry here, let's go short stuff.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: That's right, this one is about James Dean.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Scar and Jamesteen too. He plays a part in it.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: It amounts in his death, that's right, the results in
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: his death.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when he drove that little silver Porsche five
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: fifty spider Man, one of the fastest. It was like
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: a little race car, basically one of the fastest cars
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: in the world at the time, had a top speed
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: of about one hundred and forty three miles an hour.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Sat how high off the ground like forty two inches
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: or something.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like that was really really low to the ground.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I saw that really go right under a railroad arm.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you were crazy.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So yeah, And Jamesteen was known to be a little crazy.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: The studios that he worked for were like, you cannot
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: race your car while you're under contract with us, or
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: while you're filming a movie. You have to wait until
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: it's in between movies. And it just so happened that
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I take it it was in between movies. I think
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: it was after he had filmed Giant, which turned out
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: to be his last movie, that he was heading toward
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Salinas to race at a sports Car Club of America race,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: and he had his mechanic, Ralph Watherich Wortherich, Yeah, in
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the seat beside him, and he was going about eighty
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: five and came upon an intersection that's known today to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: still be pretty deadly. It's the intersection of Route forty
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: six and forty one. And there was a guy named
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: with the improbable name of Donald turn up Speed who
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: turned in front of him, and that was that for
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: James Deen.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never heard of that name before. I had
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: not either not turnip Seed, right, That's.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: What I thought. It was a misspelling, but no.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Not turn ip Speed right, literally turn up Speed.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the last name of the guy who
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: got in the fatal wreck with James Dean. Isn't that crazy?
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: It's pretty crazy, and it was very sad. And people
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: have gone back since then and said, like, you know
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: that that intersection there, the sun hits really bright where
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: James Dean would have been at that time. He would
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: have been very low to the ground, being in that
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: car eighty five miles an hour, clearly too fast, and
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: when the guy turned, they think that James Dean may
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: not because of the path of the sun. May not
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: have even seen this car taking a left and it
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: was just lights out for him.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: There's another thread or another camp that says that Ralph
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Wilderich later said that James Dean's last words were he's
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: gotta stop, I think he sees me, and then caboo.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: And apparently when they collided, Donald Turnip's speed was driving
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: a Ford Sedan and when you put an aluminum race
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: car that's I think thirty nine inches of a meter
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: off the ground up against the Ford in a t
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: bone collision, the Ford wins and that little Porsche with
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: James Deane still in it. Rolf Weatherwich got ejected from it,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: which is what saved his life. James Dean was still
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: in the car when it started cartwheeling, just end over
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: end over end into a ditch and he broke his
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: neck while he was doing that, and that's ultimately what
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: killed him. That in his skull fracture.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: They say, did you see the car after the wreck?
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, I just texted to you, so sorry,
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: but that's okay, take another look at it. It's it's
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: crazy that anyone survived this crash. But he was the
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: only fatality. And I guess we should take a break
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: a little early here because the story about what happened
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: to that car gets a little bit strange from this
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: point on. So we'll be right back. Well, now we're
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: on the road, driving in your truck.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I want to learn a thing or two from josh
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Am Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right, Okay, Chuck.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: So James Deen is dead. But the death of James
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Dean is just like the preface to this story. Because
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: James Den's car, even though it was considered it total,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it was totaled. It had a strange afterlife, and it
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: ended up taking more lives if you go in for
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: this kind of stuff.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: That's right that it was sent to a salvage art
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: at first. Of course, then there was a guy who
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: knew James Dean from the car racing circuit. His name
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: was William S. Rich. He was looking for this car.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: I don't think we said the nickname of the car
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: was a little Bass. Found the car in Burbank, took
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: out the engine, kind of stripped it for parts or
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: some of the parts. At least he got the engine
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: put it in his own race car. It was a
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: lotus nine and gave the transmission and some of the
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: suspension to a friend named Troy Lee McHenry, another car racer.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Eleven months later, both of them crashed. Each of them
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: crashed their car in the same race at the fifty
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: six Pomona Road Races, which killed McHenry. Esrich survived, but
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: both of them had parts from James Dean's car and
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: thus began this idea that this car was cursed.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: So the car itself was pretty much cherry picked by
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: this point. But even after Troy Lee McHenry died, his
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: widow gave some of his racing car parts to other
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: racers friends of his, and among them were some of
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the ones from James Dean's car. So put a pin
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: in that, because that's kind of one direction that these
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: things went. Yeah, there was another direction that a man
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: named George Barris came along and said, here's where the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: story really begins. If you listen to George Barris, and
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: we'll just go ahead and caveat this with not everybody
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: believes what George Barris has to say, much like Chuck.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, Barris was a pretty famous guy. He
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: designed the Batmobile, he designed the Munster's car from that
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: TV show. So he's a Hollywood movie TV and movie
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: car guy. I believe he has a museum. If not,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: he donated some cars to one of the movie car museums,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: but was pretty famous in entertainment circles for doing stuff
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: like that. He says that he bought the frame and
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: the body from James Dean's family, sold two of the
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: original tires away, which apparently those tires were blown at
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: the same time in another car. He'd verify that. I
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: just take that for what it's worth, right, And then
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: he lent the car frame to the LA National Safety Council.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: They had like a traveling display, you know when they'll
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: show like a mangled car from a duy or something
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: and as a warning signal. Supposedly that was what James
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Dean's car was used as in this thing reportedly keep
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: saying all these qualifier words, but reportedly fell off its
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: display on several occasions, one time injuring someone, another time
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: killing a guy named George Barcas.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a truck driver who was transporting that
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: car around from place to place for the National Safety Council.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: So James Den's car has now claimed at least one
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: more life and injured multiple others.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: You believe it.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: It's getting more efficient at it because it's now been
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: taken into pieces and spread out, so now it can
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: become a kill machine more efficiently. So that car that
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: the National Safety Council had touring around was supposedly put
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: into storage in nineteen sixty and it was again allegedly
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: in storage with other cars when it caught on fire.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: No other car in this storage facility caught on fire,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: just James Den's car. It melted like a tire and
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: singed I think some of the interior, and then after
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: that it supposedly disappeared, and George Barris continued on and
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: was like, hey, I've got the chassis still, can you
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: believe it? Like these things just keep coming out of nowhere,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: like I'm a magnet for James Dean car parts. And
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: he toured it around and it was around this time
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I think that people really started to be like this
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Barris fellas, he's talented, but he's really playing up this
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: James Dean death car legend.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. In his book, he claimed that a guy tried
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: to steal the steering wheel and broke his arms trying
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: to steal the steering wheel. Pretty good story. So now
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: we can go back to the other path, right.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, because at that point the Bear's car has suddenly disappeared,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: and then we don't know what, Like if the Bear's
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: car was not the James Deen car, we don't know
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: what happened to the original.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: One, right, But you told that story about the car
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: being in storage and catching fire. In twenty fifteen, it
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: appeared that they found the frame because a guy got
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: in touch with a museum director for the Volo Auto Museum, Volo, Illinois.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: His name was Brian Grahams, and he said that this
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: guy told me that when he was a kid, he
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: saw his father and some friends of his hiding the
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: body of that Porsche in a building in a false
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: wall in the building when he was just six years old.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: And it looked like that story checked out.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Brian Grahams, who directed the museum, like
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: you said, he believed it enough to ask the guy
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: to submit to a polygraph. And he said that there's
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: been tons of stories over the years. Because the Volo
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Auto Museum put out a one million dollar offer for
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: James Dean's original car that again had disappeared back in
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, and he said that all the other stories
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: just never checked out except for one, and he was
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: referring to that one from the guy who said that
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: he saw his father hide it, and you said that
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: his dad did it with some friends. Among those friends,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: according to this guy, was George Barris. So all this
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: would have checked out because this would have been the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: time that the car disappeared, around nineteen sixty. And even
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: though he passed the polygraph test, this anonymous man who
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: was trying to collect this million dollars, I feel for him,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: he couldn't get his hands on the car. I'm not
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: sure at first why. But eventually they found that the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: building that it was hidden was no longer there.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: It had been demolished, that's right, And so they don't
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: really know what happened. It could have been just a
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: part of the overall demolition of that building, since it
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: was supposedly hidden in a false wall and gone down
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: like the Telltale Heart. But no one really knows what
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: happened to the rest of Little Bastard. Supposedly there was
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: a transaxle in March of twenty twenty that I don't
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: think supposedly. I think this was actually confirmed to have
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: been a part of the car because it came from
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: McHenry's widow, and McHenry was the one who bought those
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: original parts and died in the wreck.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Right that transaxle, I guess it combines the differential, the transmission,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: and the axle all into one compartment. If you know
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: what those three things are, then you'll know what a
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: transaxle is. It went for I think almost four hundred
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars at auction. I think it was bought by
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Zach Bagans, the ghost guy who probably has it in
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: his Las Vegas museum.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Now, I guess, so, uh, four hundred grand for a transaxle.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: I know it's a famous car, but I don't know.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: That seems a little I don't know. It's just not
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: a not the sexiest part.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: A cursed transaxle.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was the whole point that it was
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: his car. I get it, but I don't know. But
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is coming from the guy who had
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: the sheriff's door from Jackie Gleason's Sheriff's cruiser from smoking
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: the bandit in my garage for years and years.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Wow, what happened to it? Oh?
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: I've told the story before who knows.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: My dad.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: My dad somehow got it added Chick fil a uh,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: and it was just in our garage forever. And I
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: think it was eventually as I can just get that
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: thing out of here. Wow, I wish I had it. Man,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: that thing would be a coffee table or something.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or a great Halloween costume.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or you me would be cursing me because I
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: would have gifted you that coffee table made out of
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: a car door.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome. That would make a great coffee table.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Chuck, Yeah, and a good wedding gift.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Thank you for the thought. It's the
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: thought that count. So I appreciate the smoky and the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: bandit sheriff's car door coffee table that you thought about
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: giving you me and I for our wedding. That's right. Short,
• 13:17
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• 13:23
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• 13:30
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