George Stevens's

G I A N T

from the novel by Edna Ferber

The novel Giant is told as a single flashback giving the history of the Benedict family.  The grand opening of the Jet Rink Airport and Hotel in Hermosa is used as a framing device.  The film jettisons this framing flashback, but the film's narrative is significantly less linear than Edna Ferber's novel.  Events from the novel are often intercut or juxtaposed in the film, making them seem contemporaneous and giving the film a very novelistic feel.  Giant is one of the most important American films of the 1950s.  It was the highest grossing film in the history of Warner Brothers studios for over twenty years, and was rereleased in 1958 and 1967.

Wealthy Texas rancher Jordan Benedict (Rock Hudson) travels to Maryland to buy a thoroughbred stallion named War Winds (in the novel, a mare named My Mistake—War Winds suggests a lineage with Man of War and War Admiral.)  His host's (Paul Fix) daughter Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor) takes a liking to Jordan.  They marry, and she accompanies him to Texas. 

In sharp contrast to the lush greenery of Maryland, the Benedict's 595,000 acre ranch, the Reata, is a semi-arid desert.  Leslie faints from the heat on her first day.  She finds Jet Rink (James Dean), a young ranch hand, highly envious of Jordan's wealth, security, and position.  She only realizes later that he also envies Jordan his wife.  Jet readily points out the poor conditions under which the Reata's Mexican and Mexican-American ranch-hands work, though it later becomes clear Jet has far less sympathy for disadvantaged non-whites than Jordan. 

Conflict erupts between Leslie and Jordan as she challenges the status quo, often encouraged by Jet.  Though this abates when Leslie becomes pregnant, eventually the couple separate as Leslie returns to her parents' home in Maryland.  As stormy as their relationship could be, both realize they cannot live apart.

In the novel Jet is mentally unstable to the point of abusing animals.  He drugs My Mistake, possibly intending to injure Leslie.  This plan goes awry as Jordan's older sister Lutz (Mercedes McCambridge) rides the horse instead, is thrown, and killed.  In the film, Jet does not drug the horse, and Lutz leaves him a small tract of land in her will, Buffalo Waller.  Jet's first sight of Buffalo Waller is the most famous scene in the film, prominently showcasing Dmitri Tiomkin's music.  Although this land is worthless, Jet takes his inheritance as a talisman of attaining coequal status with Jordan as a landowner.  Developing Buffalo Waller is arduous and nearly kills Jet.  In the novel, this land is equally worthless but was given to compensate the Rink family when the Benedicts lynched Jet's father as a horse thief.

Jet strikes oil on Buffalo Waller and makes more millions wildcatting, but Jordan refuses to let him drill on the immense and immensely valuable Reata lands, until World War II starts and the oil is needed for the war effort.  As a wildcatter, Jet  receives one barrel of oil for every two given to the landowners.  Bob Dayce (Earl Holliman) and Angel Obregon (Sal Mineo) fight in the Army.  In the novel, Angel is a Medal of Honor winner, who is buried in Arlington National Cemetery after the local undertaker refuses to handle a Mexican-American's funeral. 

Angel's homecoming to Reata is one of the most touching scenes in the film, and signals the start of a change in Jordan's attitude and growth in moral stature.

Meanwhile Jet has become even richer than Jordan, though both are billionaires, and Jordan's oil money adds to his cattle money.  To better signal his wealth and position,  Jet builds the Jet Rink Airport and Hotel in Hermosa.  This facility and its grand opening mirror the 1949 opening of Glen McCarthy's Shamrock Hotel in Houston, and some of these scenes were shot at the Shamrock, where Edna Ferber stayed while researching her novel.  The green walls are a giveaway.  Ferber met the flamboyant McCarthy, who is both mentioned in the novel as a Jet Rink associate, and clearly inspired Jet's character.

In the novel, one of the Benedict party at the grand opening is the Spanish ambassador to the United States.  Guards hesitate to allow him to enter the hotel, until Leslie graciously defuses the situation with a joke.  In the film, guards turn away young Jordie's (Dennis Hopper) wife Juana (Pilar Del Sol), until Jordie points out they are both Benedicts and Jet Rink's guests.  Later Juana is refused service at the hotel's beauty parlor. 

Jordie then confronts Jet, who beats him up, setting up the final confrontation between Jordan and Jet.  This is the final event in the novel.  The film ends on a more positive note.  On their way back to Reata, the Benedicts stop at a restaurant where the owner is reluctant to serve Juana, and only does so because she is accompanied by Jordan, Leslie, and young Lutz.  When the owner refuses service to a Mexican family, Jordan speaks up, and when they get home, Leslie tells him how much she loves him for it. 

The novel details numerous humiliations visited on its Mexican characters, most of which are related in the film in some form.  The novel only asserts repeatedly that these injustices will result in some kind of reckoning for the class of Americans like the Benedicts who perpetrate or tolerate them, and typically Leslie, who does not share this attitude, is the only one who is even aware of these problems. 

George Stevens decided that social attitudes had to change, and he has Jordan gradually accept Mexican family members, first his daughter-in-law, and then one of his two grandsons.  He particularly identifies with Paulo Obregon (Alexander Scourby), the head vaquero, who had been a surrogate father to him, and his grandson Angel Obregon, Jr., a war hero.

In the novel Jet takes Leslie to a tent camp where sick Mexican guest workers are resting.  One is a young woman who has just delivered a stillborn baby.  There is no relation between these people and the Obregon family.  Angel Obregon, Sr., is the first person Leslie meets in Texas.  When Jet takes Leslie to the Mexican settlement in Vientecito, a shanty town in the film, but a bustling modern city in the book, she finds Angel's wife and son ill, and sends a doctor.  She improves public health there with clean drinking water.

Elizabeth Taylor (1922-2011) plays a small, uncredited role in Jane Eyre (1944).  She went on to star in National Velvet (1944), Father of the Bride (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Cleopatra (1963), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Taming of the Shrew (1967), and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).  She married eight times, twice to Richard Burton.  She was the first actor to receive $1 million, for Cleopatra.  Her performance for George Stevens in A Place in the Sun made her a star, and along with her performance in this film, is among her most effective and powerful.

Rock Hudson (1925-1985) saw his career take off in the mid-1950s, as he starred in a series of wildly successful Douglas Sirk melodramas for Universal International, Magnificent Obsession (1954), All that Heaven Allows (1955), both of which co-starred Jane Wyman, and Written on the Wind (1956) with Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, and Dorothy McGuire, who won best supporting actress.  After Giant, he made A Farewell to Arms (1957), Something of Value (1957), and Ice Station Zebra (1968).  He also made numerous popular comedies with Doris Day and Gina Lolabrigida.  His performance in Giant, like James Dean's, was nominated for best actor.

James Dean (1931-1955) made only three films, East of Eden (1955) for Elia Kazan, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) for Nicholas Ray, and Giant.  After finishing his location filming in Marta, Texas, he left the Giant company for Los Angeles, and was killed in a traffic accident en route.  His friend Nick Adams, a Rebel Without a Cause costar, dubbed some of his lines in post production.  He was nominated for best actor for both East of Eden and Giant.

Mercedes McCambridge (1916-2004) starred with Broderick Crawford in All the King's Men (1949), winning best supporting actress in 1949's best picture.  She also starred with Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden in the cult classic Johnny Guitar (1954), and acted again with Rock Hudson in A Farewell to Arms (1957), and with Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959).

Carroll Baker (1931-) starred in Baby Doll (1956) for Elia Kazan, an iconic role for her, The Big Country (1958), How the West Was Won (1962), and John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (1964) .  She was one year older than Elizabeth Taylor, who plays her mother.

Dennis Hopper (1936-2010) costarred with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.  He had minor roles with John Wayne in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and True Grit (1969), and he directed and starred in Easy Rider (1969).

Earl Holliman (1928-) starred in The Rainmaker, Forbidden Planet, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Paul Fix (1901-1983) began his acting career in silents, and often appeared with John Wayne.  He starred in The Bad Seed, To Kill a Mockingbird, and played the ship's doctor in one of the Star Trek pilots.

Ann Doran (1911-2000) played James Dean's mother in Rebel Without a Cause.  She appeared in approximately 500 films and over 1,000 TV episodes.  That she was actually quite talented can be seen by comparing her performances in Giant, Rebel, and her role as an astronaut in Allied Artists' low-budget It, the Terror from Beyond Space.

Chill Wills had a supporting role in Leave Her to Heaven, with Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde.  This film was Fox's highest grosser of the 1940s.

George Stevens was one of America's leading film directors.  He made A Place in the Sun, Shane, Giant, The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Dimitri Tiomkin had a particular affinity for scoring westerns, composing scores for Duel in the Sun, Red River, Giant, The Alamo, and Rio Bravo.  He also scored Land of the Pharaohs and Fall of the Roman Empire, as well as Dillinger.

Edna Ferber was one of America's best respected and best-selling writers from the twenties through the sixties.  She wrote the novels which were made into the musicals Show Boat and State Fair, as well as So Big, Ice Palace, and Giant.