JAMES DEAN - JAMES DEAN MUSEUM TO CLOSE

An Indiana museum chronicling the life of JAMES DEAN is set to close on New Year's Eve (31DEC05), due to growing debts.

Owner DAVID LOEHR had moved the James Dean Gallery to Gas City from Fairmount, where Dean attended high school, less than two years ago. And while attendance has increased, it hasn't been enough to match the cost of maintaining the building.

Loehr says, "The operating expenses and upkeep and payments are just more than we can handle. I'm just getting further into debt and I just can't do it anymore."

Loehr opened the museum and gift shop in 1988 in a house near downtown Fairmount. After an electrical fire in early 2004, Loehr moved the gallery to the new building.

The gallery contains a dozen items of clothing worn by Dean in his films, school papers, paintings by Dean, and original movie posters, books and magazines. They will now be put into storage.

The REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE star was born in Marion in 1931 and was killed in a car crash in Cholame, California, in 1955 aged 24.