Some moments are beautiful because they are quiet, like the glimpses of Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn before they went on stage together at the Oscars. Or the photo of Sammy Davis Jr. eating spaghetti and watching the news on television. Or burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee sitting at a typewriter while in costume before she performs one of her strip-teases.

Or consider the photo of the cast of The Honeymooners all sitting and waiting, Jackie Gleason with his ankle on ice. It’s funny to see the cast of this all-time great sitcom together without a smile on their faces, or any expression at all, really. Each of these photos their own way feels like a glimpse of reality.

Some photos offer curious juxtapositions, such as Johnny Cash, dressed in his trademark black, coming backstage at production of the musical Annie. Same with Frank Zappa and his family posing with the cast of Broadway show Cats. You can also find unexpected couplings, such as Lucille Ball visiting with Shirley Maclaine in her dressing room, or James Dean helping actress Geraldine Page with her hair.

Also intriguing are the images of stars just before they go onstage. This gallery includes shots of Alec Guinness and Albert Finney before they have leapt into character, and singer Paul Anka stretched out across two beds, They are about to cross the bridge from private person to public performer, and give their audiences the performances they came for.

Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly backstage at the RKO Pantages Theatre during the 28th Annual Academy Awards, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Award presenters Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly waiting backstage at the RKO Pantages Theatre during the 28th Annual Academy Awards, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sammy Davis Jr. ate spaghetti in his backstage dressing room while watching The Huntley-Brinkley Report news show in 1964. “My only contact with reality,” he told LIFE. “Whatever I’m doing, I stop to watch these guys.” Reflected in the mirror: LIFE photographer Leonard McCombe.

Leonard McCombe/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Paul Anka, backstage at the Copacabana, 1960.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Albert Finney backstage during a production of the play Luther, 1963.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley tenderly kissing the cheek of a female admirer backstage before his concert, 1956.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ray Charles backstage talking with Eric Burdon and the Animals, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Shirley MacLaine preparing to perform the TV show “Shower of Stars” in 1955.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shirley MacLaine and Lucille Ball backstage during a benefit show for victims of the devastating Isewan typhoon, 1959.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marcia Diamond (right) watched as her husband Neil clipped their son Jessie’s nails in a dressing room at the Winter Garden Theatre, 1972.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee writes in her dressing room in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Bobby Darin in his dressing room, 1959.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dustin Hoffman in his dressing room for the play (which he also directed), Jimmy Shine, New York City, 1969.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mae West backstage at the Hotel Sahara with one of the co-stars of her Las Vegas show, 1954.

Loomis Dean/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

James Dean with the great Geraldine Page in her dressing room, New York City, 1955.

Dennis Stock—Magnum

Betty Grable, in her dressing room at 20th Century-Fox studios, pulled on black mesh stockings for a scene that would feature her famous legs, 1943.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker’s four-foot chignon is wound up into three tiers of buns in her dressing room, 1951.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Honeymooners cast—Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows and Joyce Andrews—in 1954.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Chorus girls watching the Ed Sullivan television show at the Roxy Movie Theater dressing room, 1958.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alec Guinness put on theatrical makeup at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada, 1953.

Peter Stackpole/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy relaxing in dressing room, waiting for show to begin, 1942.

John Florea/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Movie director Vincent Sherman (right) with actor Paul Newman in dressing room reviewing lines for the legal drama The Young Philadelphians, 1958.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash, with stepson John (right), posed with Annie star Alison Smith and Sandy at a Broadway production of musical, 1981.

DMI/Shutterstock

(Center, left-to-right) Musician Frank Zappa and children Moon Unit and Dweezil visited backstage at the Broadway musical Cats in 1983; the cast included actress Betty Buckley (center, bottom).

David Mcgough/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Insider’s View: LIFE Goes Backstage with the Stars appeared first on LIFE.

Stock was a young photographer working for the Magnum agency when he met Dean in the winter of 1954-55, at a party thrown by director Nicholas Ray at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. Dean, at the time, was still a relative unknown. East of Eden, the first of the three films he would make before his untimely death, was about to be released. When Stock attended a sneak preview as Dean’s guest, he knew he was witnessing the debut of a legendary actor.

Over breakfast the next morning, as Stock listened to Dean speak with nostalgia about his upbringing in Fairmount, Ind., Stock became determined to capture a portrait of a young man suspended between two worlds: that of the family farm where his aunt and uncle raised him after his mother’s death, and that of the Hollywood into which he would soon be embraced. Stock pitched a photo essay to LIFE magazine and though it was not an easy sell, given Dean’s anonymity, he got the green light to move forward.

The photos Stock made of Dean in Fairmount, New York and Hollywood—which were also the subject of a book, DENNIS STOCK: JAMES DEAN—paint a picture of a young man still more comfortable in his old farm clothes, playing his bongo drum to cows, than he was on a red carpet. In Fairmount, Stock captured Dean’s brotherly relationship with his young cousin Markie and Dean’s fondness for the Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley. In a series of eerie photographs that seem to foretell his death in a car accident just eight months later, Dean hops in and out of caskets at a local furniture store, beseeching Stock to take his picture.

These days spent together by Dean and Stock were the subject of a 2015 movie, Life, starring Robert Pattinson as Stock and Dane DeHaan as Dean. Director Anton Corbijn, a photographer himself, has explained that as much as the film was inspired by Dean’s iconic status and Stock’s ability to capture the truth behind it, the story at the core is a simple one, of “two males that bond to create a friendship.”

For Stock, who died in 2010, the power of the images was in the transition they depict, the crossing of a bridge that can never be traversed in reverse. “For Jimmy it was going home,” he wrote in the introduction to DENNIS STOCK: JAMES DEAN. “But it was also the realization that the meteoric rise to fame that had already begun that night in Santa Monica had cut him off forever from his small-town Midwestern origins, and that he could never really go home again.”

James Dean by Dennis Stock

©Dennis Stock / Magnum Photos

James Dean by Dennis Stock

©Dennis Stock / Magnum Photos

James Dean by Dennis Stock

©Dennis Stock / Magnum Photos

James Dean by Dennis Stock

©Dennis Stock / Magnum Photos

James Dean by Dennis Stock

Courtesy Thames & Hudson

The post James Dean on the Cusp of Stardom appeared first on LIFE.

Here, LIFE.com revisits a photograph that captures the essence of Dean’s enduring appeal. The picture, shot by Dennis Stock in early 1955, shows Dean walking alone in an eerily empty Times Square. It’s a lousy day. Wearing a long, wool coat, hunched against the chill, a cigarette loosely clamped in his lips, the actor is seen in mid-stride, stalking through the bleak Manhattan rain. At first glance, it might be a portrait of isolation, or even downright despair.

And yet . . . something in Dean’s expression lends a kind of quiet, mischievous elation to the scene. That he was not yet a star, much less a legend, when the photo was made is beside the point. In this picture, at this moment in his life, the Indiana native is a young, talented, blithely rebellious spirit in the big city, pursuing a dream.

He’s alive. He has his whole life ahead of him. Nothing can stop him.

James Dean, NYC, 1955

Dennis Stock Magnum

The post James Dean in the Rain: The Iconic Photo of Hollywood’s Most Enigmatic Star appeared first on LIFE.