Sleeper of the Week - Giant

                         GIANT (1956)

Starting Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean - Directed by George Stevens

  Giant is a masterpiece-although it’s a little too preachy about social justice near the end - but what do you expect from the Yankee Edna Ferber. It was filmed in Marfa, Texas in an attempt to capture the atmosphere of the desolate oilfields of the Great Plains. It worked..

   Riata, the huge ranch house was a facade ( no roof, no walls, and no interior) and still stood rotting away in the beautiful emptiness of southwest Texas until a decade ago..

    Rock Hudson, in the only role he would ever get nominated for, plays BickBenedict -oilman, rancher, and head of an empire..He is the descendant of wildcatters and is extremely rich. ( Hudson was a genuinely all around nice guy..He personally picked Elizabeth Taylor for her part and they would become lifelong friends. Taylor would appear with him shortly before his death from AIDS in 1985..)

  Benedict travels to Tennessee to buy a stallion and to court the southern belle debutante, Taylor..She returns with him to Texas to be his bride. Elizabeth Taylor is at her pinnacle of physical perfection in Giant.. I’ve loved her since I was a kid. My mother looks like a cross between her and Lucille Ball..

    My favorite scene in this entire movie is at the “picnic”, a huge catered celebration.. As Taylor walks down the serving line she is offered calves brains, which she wisely declines.. The server scoops up a large ladle anyway and drops it on her plate with a sickening “Plop.”  She immediately faints but Rock catches her before she hits the ground and carries her inside.

    James Dean portrays the wastrel cousin, Jett Rink,  ( note the initials- his character was the inspiration for Larry Hagmans  JR Ewing in the series Dallas.) Dean had only made two films prior, East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, both in the same year 1955..He was incredibly talented and famous in a very short time.. Hudson and Dean didn’t care for each other due to a rumored rejected advance by the former.. On the last day of filming Dean had a new Porsche 550 Spyder delivered on set.. It was September 23, 1955..He would die in it one week later in a horrific high speed crash in California.  He was 24 years old..Dean was dead before the premiere of Giant - but his mangled Porsche would be displayed at one theatre and picked clean by fans collecting souvenirs..Elizabeth Taylor was so distraught upon hearing of the actor’s death she would be hospitalized for two weeks..

    Director George Stevens was one of the industry’s best ever..He had the patience of Job and handled the young mercurial Dean, who called him everything but a child of God, masterfully during filming..Stevens would also create Shane, Diary of Anne Frank, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and A Place in the Sun..

JBS Blackheart