Corey Allen, an actor-turned Emmy Award-winning director who earned a slice of film immortality in the 1950s playing the doomed high school gang leader who challenges James Dean to a “chicken run" in “Rebel Without a Cause," has died. He was 75. Allen died at his home in Hollywood on Sunday, two days before his 76th birthday, said family spokesman Mickey Cottrell. The specific cause was not given.
Allen had Parkinson's disease for the last two decades, Cottrell said, but he remained active directing plays until a few years ago. Allen's death came a month after that of another “Rebel" alumnus, Dennis Hopper, who played one of the high school gang members.
A 1954 graduate of the UCLA theater department, where he won a best actor award, Allen had a few TV credits and un-credited bit parts in movies when he was cast as the arrogant, leather-jacket-wearing Buzz Gunderson in “Rebel Without a Cause."
The 1955 film, directed by Nicholas Ray, starred Dean as Jim Stark, the troubled new kid at school who is menaced by Buzz and his pals.
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