American
T. T. Thomas is the byline on I, James Dean (catalogued here as Ja, James Dean), a paperback biography Popular Library rushed into stores in April 1957, sixteen months after James Dean's fatal car crash. No other book, article, or public record carries this name anywhere outside this one title, which points to a house pseudonym rather than a working writer's own name. Mass-market paperback houses of the era commonly assigned invented bylines to quickly produced, editor-driven tie-in books capitalizing on a recent death or a hot cultural moment, and this book's timing fits that pattern closely: it reached stores before Giant, Dean's third and final film, had even finished its theatrical run. Nothing about the person who actually wrote it has surfaced in bookseller listings, library catalogs, or paperback-history references consulted since. The name persists today only as a collector's curiosity among vintage-paperback and James Dean memorabilia dealers.