Initially the T-shirt was worn exclusively as an undergarment, but that changed in the 1950s. The fame of the T-shirt skyrocketed when actors John Wayne, Marlon Brando, and James Dean wore their underwear on the big screen. In 1951, Marlon Brando caused a sensation in his film A Streetcar Named Desire when his T-shirt was ripped off his body to reveal his naked chest. Then James Dean made the T-shirt a contemporary symbol of rebellious youth in the movie Rebel without a Cause. It became fashionably cool to wear it as an outer garment.