Interminable. Giant is 19 minutes longer than Avengers: Endgame (2019), and it doesn’t even feature an intergalactic war for the fate of the universe.
Giant starts with “Bick” Benedict (Rock Hudson) taking new bride Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor) from her Maryland home to Reata, his massive Texas ranch. A fish out of water, Leslie clashes with Bick’s sister, Luz (Mercedes McCambridge), and fights Thanos for the infinity stones struggles to find her place in the unfamiliar Texas culture. Then there’s 30 years of multigenerational familial melodrama that I watched so you don’t have to.
But let’s talk about the James Dean of it all, since the tragic arc of his hired-help-cum-oil-baron Jett Rink is one of the key parts of this sweeping drama. As in East of Eden, Dean disappoints. While Rock Hudson feels authentically Texan, James Dean looks like he’s cosplaying, sounding like Boomhauer and walking like a newborn deer.1
Rating: 4/10, in the D tier of giants with Pantagruel and Daniel Jones.
Cast and Crew
James Dean had been dead for two years when Giant netted him his second Oscar nomination. His three credited film roles—East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant—are legendary. I have not enjoyed watching James Dean, but you can’t deny that he was doing something markedly different and doing it at a young age.
Giant catapulted Rock Hudson2 to top-tier stardom, but he didn’t leverage that newfound wattage into meaty, difficult roles. Instead, rom-coms became his niche; one, Pillow Talk (1959), started the profitable pairing of him and Doris Day.3
As Hudson’s career as a movie star waned, he found a second life on TV, including on “McMillan & Wife” (1971-1977) and in a big-deal guest spot on “Dynasty.” But Hudson may be known best for his closet homosexuality and for being one of the first public figures to be diagnosed with and die from AIDS. After he died, Elizabeth Taylor helped start the National AIDS Research Foundation, which eventually became AmFAR.4
It was Edna Ferber’s novel that was adapted into Giant, and she wrote many other works you should know.
“So Big” (1924), about a woman farmer outside of Chicago5
“Show Boat” (1926), adapted into a musical with the song “Old Man River”
“Cimarron” (1930), about the Oklahoma land rush; the film adaptation was the first western to win Best Picture
“Ice Palace” (1958), her pro-statehood book about Alaska.
Notably, Ferber was also a playwright who collaborated with George S. Kaufman on plays like “Stage Door” and “Dinner at Eight.”
The Trivia
Leslie, during her courtship with Bick, mentions how the U.S. “really stole Texas.” Unfortunately, that sounds controversial, and “controversial” ain’t really our brand, so here’s a Brian Kilmeade-approved history of the birth of Texas.6 Stephen F. Austin, the “Father of Texas,” spearheaded the bold American colonization of the completely empty territory. Everything changed when the Mexicans invaded the territory that definitively didn’t belong to them, done exclusively because they hate freedom and America.
The Alamo7, a thing you must remember, was the site of a 1836 siege led by General Santa Anna, a character from The Mask of Zorro (1998). Some of the Alamo martyrs were Jim Bowie (knife guy), Davy Crockett (hat guy), and William B. Travis (the guy who requested “victory or death” and got death). General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna a few weeks later at the Battle of San Jacinto, where the just and heroic Texans secured their God-given independence.8 And, most importantly, none of this had anything to do with slavery.
Okay, now that you know everything about Texas’ spotless history, let’s talk cattle! The variety most associated with Texas is the Texas Longhorn9, big in Texas because it can withstand the climate. Some other well-known cows:
Holstein (originally known as Holstein-Friesians): the black and white dairy cows
Jersey and Guernsey: Channel Island cows with high butterfat milk
Hereford: red cows
American Brahman: a hybrid known for its distinctive hump10
So what have we learned? Texas was always part of America and there are no moral concerns with eating living creatures. Knowing Without Understanding is fun!
Odds and Ends
Bick’s uncle keeps playing “Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy11…the wheel on the back of a spur is called a rowel…Bick tells Leslie she’s carrying on like Carrie Nation; Carrie Nation was a temperance advocate famous for smashing up taverns with a hatchet12…Giant features “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” a traditional song that Mitch Miller took to #1 in 1955…ELIZABETH TAYLOR MARRIAGE COUNT: 1956 Liz is on to her second husband, British actor Michael Wilding…Jett plans on giving a speech that mentions Louis Agassiz; Agassiz was a geologist who discovered that glaciers move and proposed the idea of ice ages…the Lucas gusher at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas in 1901 launched Gulf Oil and ushered in the Texas oil industry.
Dean’s mumbling is so bad here that director George Stevens had to bring in someone to overdub many of Dean’s lines while the film was being edited. Speaking of Stevens: we last saw his staid direction in A Place in the Sun, but his work here is far more dynamic. It doesn’t save the movie, but it’s still a welcome change.
His real name was Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. He took the stage name “Rock Hudson” from the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River.
We discussed Day’s career when we covered Love Me or Leave Me.
AmFAR stood for the American Foundation for AIDS Research. They dropped the “American” from their name in 2005.
Ferber won a Pulitzer for “So Big,” but watch out, since its title is sorta like “Giant.” “So Big” was named for the nickname of the main character’s baby. Giant, on the other hand, was named for its runtime the immensity of Texas and the scope of the story it tells.
Meaning I’ll be giving you the broad outlines of “Fox and Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade’s book “Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers: The Texas Victory That Changed American History,” which I gave two stars on Goodreads. That means we won’t be wrestling with the question of the morality of war for independence, providing counternarratives of the Tejanos or Mexicans, or discussing slavery at all.
A former Franciscan mission located in modern-day San Antonio, Texas,
Two things to know about Sam Houston. One, he was the first president of Texas, winning an election over Stephen F. Austin. Two, he’s the only person to serve as governor of two different states (Texas and Tennessee).
They lend their name to the Longhorns of the University of Texas (“hook ‘em horns”).
It’s descended from the Indian humped Brahman, or zebu.
You may already know “Clair de Lune,” so a deeper trivia fact for you: Texas pianist Van Cliburn is well-known for his rendition of it.
A fun tavern sign at the time: “ALL NATIONS WELCOME EXCEPT CARRIE.”