During the filming of “The Silver Chalice” in 1955, Italian actress Pier Angeli and James Dean fell in love with each other. Dean called her Annarella like Cinderella and exchanged items of jewelry as love tokens. James Dean did love her, but Angeli’s mother was not happy with their relationship because Dean was not a Catholic. After breaking the relationship, Angeli quickly married Vic Damone in 1953.
During an interview, Angeli described her relationship with Dean as:
“We used to go together to the California coast and stay there secretly in a cottage on a beach far away from prying eyes. We’d spend much of our time on the beach, sitting there or fooling around, just like college kids. We would talk about ourselves and our problems, about the movies and acting, about life and life after death. We had a complete understanding of each other. We were like Romeo and Juliet, together and inseparable. Sometimes on the beach, we loved each other so much we just wanted to walk together into the sea holding hands because we knew then that we would always be together.”
Dean died in a car accident in 1955 at the age of 24. And Pier Angeli was founded dead in her home at Beverly Hills. The official cause of her death, according to the reports, was barbiturate overdose. She was only 39 years old.
