Wood and Mineo, who each received Academy Award nominations for their performances, would also die under mysterious and tragic circumstances in the following decades. Wood drowned off Catalina Island in 1981, and Mineo was fatally stabbed in 1976 outside his Los Angeles apartment—a murder many had speculated was related to homophobia.
The untimely deaths of its three stars seem today to undercut what Davis describes as Rebel’s “pat,” falsely tidy ending, with Jim and Judy essentially walking off into the sunrise together. This morbid legacy has also added further poignancy to their portrayals of troubled, alienated young people careening toward an uncertain future.
The Birth of the Teen Movie
Wood and Mineo did live long enough to see the impact Rebel Without a Cause had on Hollywood. The film is considered by many to be the first modern teen movie. Following its success and that of The Wild One and Blackboard Jungle, Hollywood studios began cranking out films for and about teenagers.
“You get this fascinating boom in that brief period in the late ’50s where you could not generate enough teenage movies,” Davis says, “and they coalesce into particular subgenres—horror films, rock ’n’ roll movies, even more films about delinquents, hot rod movies, musicals.”
Many of the tropes we see in teen films come directly from Rebel Without a Cause, Davis explains: the new kid in town, the high school setting, the search for a peer group, the rivalry over a love interest, the queer outsider.
“You get that big explosion [in teen films], and it doesn’t really go away,” he adds. “Teen movies persist over subsequent decades. And so, it’s a form that we can now refer to.”