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Giant Love
Edna Ferber, Her Best-selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film
1 of 1 copy available
The stupendous publication of Edna Ferber's Giant in 1952 set off a storm of protest over the novel's portrayal of Texas manners, money and mores with oil-rich Texans threatening to shoot, lynch or ban Ferber from ever entering the state again.
In Giant Love, Julie Gilbert writes of the internationally best-selling Ferber, one of the most widely read writers in the first half of the 20th Century – her evolution from mid-west maverick girl-reporter to Pulitzer Prize winning, beloved American novelist, from her want-to-be actress days to becoming Broadway's acclaimed prize-winning playwright whose collaborators – George S. Kauffman and Moss Hart, among them, were, along with Ferber, herself, the most successful playwrights of their time.
Here is the making of an American classic novel and the film that followed in its wake. We see how George Stevens, Academy-Award winning director, wooed the prickly, stubborn Ferber, ultimately getting her to agree to everything including writing, for the first time ever, a draft of a screenplay, to her okaying James Dean for the part of the ranch hand, Jett Rink, something she was dead set against.
Here is the casting of Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean and their backstory triangle of sex and seduction – each becoming a huge star because of the film; the frustrated Stevens trying to direct the instinctive but undisciplined Dean, and the months long landmark filming in the sleepy town of Marfa, Texas, suddenly invaded by a battalion of a film crew and some of the biggest stars in the rising celebrity culture.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
December 3, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781524748449
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781524748449
- File size: 47398 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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November 1, 2024
Gilbert (Ferber: Edna Ferber and Her Circle), a great niece of Edna Ferber, explores the life of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright, with a focus on the publication of her controversial novel Giant in 1952 and the subsequent successful film adaptation, which starred Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean and earned director George Stevens an Oscar. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2024 Library Journal
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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December 1, 2024
Edna Ferber was a household name in her time, if no longer. Ferber was a popular novelist (Show Boat, 1926) who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (So Big, 1924); a collaborator with George S. Kaufman on classic plays (Dinner at Eight, Stage Door, andThe Royal Family); and an insider at the famous literary Algonquin Round Table. She was also the great-aunt of author Gilbert, who brings personal insights into both a previous Ferber biography and this in-depth account of the writing of Ferber's greatest novel, Giant (1952), and its transformation into a classic American film. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1885, Ferber experienced Midwestern antisemitism that fueled her lifelong contempt for all forms of prejudice.Giant, the story of three generations of a cattle-raising, oil-rich Texan family, "blatantly points to racial inequality" and the mistreatment of Mexican Americans in the Lone Star State. Gilbert methodically shows how Ferber's "rapacious research," her "digging in for regional authenticity," helped her depict Texas "as virile as it was vast." Readers will enjoy the book's thorough analysis of the filming of director George Stevens' masterful adaptation. Larger-than-life actors fleshed out this Western epic, among them Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean, who met his tragic end before completion of the movie's production. Months of shooting on location in Marfa, Texas, provide the book's highlights: Hudson was initially a "dark horse" for his starring role, Taylor became a precursor of liberal feminism in hers, and Dean "performed like a gifted angel and behaved like a juvenile delinquent" on set. Gilbert describes plaudits and brickbats among reactions to both novel and film, but her focus is squarely on the idiosyncratic creative dynamo behind theGiant phenomenon. The story behind the making of what became "the national movie of Texas."COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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December 1, 2024
Gilbert wrote a biography about her great-aunt Edna Ferber in the 1970s, and now returns to Ferber's remarkable life story with this in-depth chronicle of the writing of her Texas novel, Giant, and its adaptation into a classic Hollywood movie. First, Gilbert makes sure we know exactly who Ferber was. A Jewish Midwesterner born in 1885, she ignored gender expectations and worked as a reporter, publishing her first novel in 1911, and rapidly attained success and renown as her fiction was adapted for Broadway and the silver screen. Sharing excerpts from letters, notes, and Ferber's autobiographies, Gilbert tracks the research and writing of each of Ferber's socially conscious novels, then zeros in on the challenges and controversies Giant generated. Gilbert details every aspect of the production, including Ferber's interactions with the now legendary James Dean. With extensive passages in Ferber's voice, this is an extraordinarily illuminating account of the making of an essential literary and cinematic work and a vital portrait of brilliant, righteous, and gutsy Ferber, who fervently protested injustice and "believed in hard work and deep hope."COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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