Rebel Without a Cause (Griffith Observatory)
(site)Griffith Observatory
2800 East Observatory Road
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: Rebel Without a Cause (Griffith Observatory)
The Griffith Observatory, located in LA's Griffith Park, was featured prominently in two key scenes in the 1955 film classic Rebel Without a Cause.
2800 East Observatory Road Los Angeles CA
The Griffith Observatory, which sits atop the southern slope of Mount Hollywood in LA's Griffith Park, was featured prominently in the 1955 classic Rebel Without a Cause.
The Observatory is the center of some of the film's climactic action, positive and negative. It's where James Dean is bullied by toughs (including a very young Dennis Hopper) during a field trip, and faces off with one of his tormentors in a knife fight that has been parodied, ripped off, and paid homage to in countless films and television shows. It's the hostile realm where Dean is challenged to a "chickie run" and where Dean's sidekick, Sal Mineo, is ultimately killed by cops. But the Observatory is also a place of refuge for Dean, Mineo, and Natalie Wood when they're on the run from teen thugs and the police. It's an oasis of peace in an otherwise violent adolescent realm (source for this paragraph: AV Club)
A bronze bust of the film's star James Dean, sculpted by Hollywood artist Kenneth Kendall, is on the grounds just outside the observatory dome on a walkway on the western edge of the front lawn.
