The Fairmount Historical Museum contains artifacts from and information about the county, the former high school, and notables (including Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield), but the bulk of the museum focuses on James Dean.
So how does it differ from the James Dean Gallery? Well, the gallery seems to be comprised of a collection of James Dean memorabilia from David Loehr. The James Dean collection at the Fairmount Historical Museum is more a history of Dean’s life and personal items from different periods in his life.
The museum is located in a house on the National Register of Historic Places. This Queen Anne house was built around 1888. Prominent local physician JW Patterson resided in the house from 1889 to 1953. (I was unsuccessful in eliciting additional information about Patterson from the museum staff.)
The downstairs rooms are mostly devoted to James Dean. A small side room contains information about Jim Davis and Garfield knickknacks. Upstairs is devoted to a mishmash of things you typically would find in a county museum.
I was surprised to see things about Jim Davis. I associate him with Muncie. (He went to Ball State University.) Turns out that he was born in nearby Marion but grew up in Fairmount. On a farm. With 25 cats. (Yes, 25 cats. Probably outside farm cats.) He suffered from asthma and turned to drawing when he was confined to house or bed. The picture that the museum paints is that of a sickly kid with a lack of natural drawing talent. Apparently with practice he was able to strengthen this anemic skill.
The jewel of the museum is the James Dean collection. The museum contains lots of items from his life—childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The front room contains the CZ motorcycle that his uncle bought him when he was 16. (Another room has the Triumph motorcycle that he later bought.) The collection is well labeled with detailed explanations of the artifacts of his life laid out in chronological order.
The museum shows all aspects of his life, starting with the artwork and writing that he did in childhood. His sketches and drawings are quite good. He had more technical drawings, such as one of the Gutenberg printing press and one that detailed the anatomy of a grasshopper. But others were pure artistic pieces. I was smitten by a pastel crayon drawing he did of a moon high in a dark sky, reflecting on water.
I noticed with a smile a “book” he wrote in childhood titled “My Career as a Farmer”. (It reminded me of a book that I wrote after my first hamster died. I wonder what happened to my biography about Oscar.)
When he was young, his father was transferred to California. Unfortunately, a few years later Dean’s mother died of cancer. At age 9, James was sent back to Indiana to live with his aunt and uncle. After graduation, he moved back to California, attended first Santa Monica College and then UCLA. He switched from pre-law to drama, and then dropped out for his acting career.
Exhibit cases contain numerous personal items and photos, including items taken from his New York apartment following his death. A volunteer at the museum pointed out two items in particular for me to look at. One was a list of phone numbers on a piece of paper. This paper was nearly falling apart from being folded (and presumably carried around in a wallet). At the top of the list? Elizabeth Taylor, his co-star in his last film (Giant). She was followed by Competition Motors (related to his racing career?) and Coulter and Gray (his business manager). A few more down on the list was the number of an exterminator. (Clearly, even the famous have mundane needs.)
The other item that the museum volunteer pointed out to me was a handwritten letter that Dean wrote to his young cousin Marcus Jr. He was beseeching Marcus to change the subjects that he drew. The younger Dean was drawing subjects of confinement, destruction, and war. This weighed heavily on James.
A shot glass caught my eye. It was no ordinary shot glass with the ounces marked on the side. “Say When!” appeared on the glass. The different amounts were labelled: 1 oz for ladies, 2 oz for gentlemen, 3 oz for pigs, and 4 for jackasses. (Hmmm. I see which I am. Definitely not a lady.)
The description on another item made me do a double-take. In 1979, Martin Sheen donated a shirt that Dean wore in East of Eden. Martin Sheen? Martin Sheen wore it himself when he acted in the TV mini-series Watergate. (How did Sheen come to wear it?)
Dean’s love of art, music, and racing were evident in the museum. He drew, he sculpted. (The museum includes a bust that he carved.) He commissioned an artist (Kenneth Kendall) to create a bust of him. (Intriguingly nothing indicated his reasoning behind seeking to have a bust made.) The museum houses one version of the bust. Another version lives at the Griffith Observatory in LA. (Why that location? I later discovered that the Observatory was the setting of a James Dean movie.) A bronze version was made for the James Dean Memorial Park in Fairmount. A few days after it was installed, the bust disappeared from the park, never to be found again. (A new one was installed.)
Some cases house a multitude of items from his racing career—trophies, photos, pit passes. Other cases contain a number of items from movie sets such as rope that he used in Giant, railing from the house in Giant, a monkey toy that appeared in another film. Strangely, one of the cases includes an Oscar statue—which he hadn’t won. Somehow it had come into Dean’s possession and he passed it on to someone else (who apparently gave it to the museum). Origins unknown.
The upstairs is more of a quirky county museum, though most is devoted to the city of Fairmount itself. There are the ever-present arrowheads and archaeological finds, including a mastodon leg bone. The items aren’t labeled or described nearly as well as in the James Dean collection, leading me to wonder what I was looking at. (Were those items from the railroad? What’s the deal with all of these 19th century dresses and hats?)
Individual people are called out but not explained. Olive Rush was a native-born artist, I presumed. James Huston a local writer of non-fiction. And Dr. Henley? Why was I looking at pictures of him? (I wasn’t able to tease much more about him out of the museum volunteers other than that a street is named for him.) I did read about his innovative approach to protecting his blueberry bushes from birds—the use of removable wire cages. (A later investigation into Olive Rush revealed that some of her paintings are at the Haan Mansion Museum of Indiana Art!)
Another room houses old cameras, typewriters, and phones. I was tickled to see a switchboard live in-person. And then immediately to its left was a payphone. (Sobering to realize that is a relic of the past too.)
As with all local museums, the museum contains rooms devoted to military service and high school sports. (Go Quakers!) (Side note: Fairmount was a big Quaker community. Dean himself was raised in the Quaker faith.)
When the Fairmount High School closed in 1986, several people had the foresight to place items from the school in storage. At least some of these items made it to the Fairmount Historical Museum in the high school sports room and in the music room. Various annual class photos of students at the high school line the walls on the second floor. (One point that struck me about the photos: the lack of girls wearing long hair until the 1960s. The change came presumably with the rise of commercial hair dryers?)
The Fairmount Historical Museum is a wonderful complement to the James Dean Gallery. Seeing only one would be an incomplete James Dean pilgrimage.
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