Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film is Warner Brothers' 1956 epic, Western drama, "Giant," based on the novel by Edna Ferber and directed by George Stevens.

"Giant" stars Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean, with Mercedes McCambridge Chill Wills, Carroll Baker, Dennis Hopper, and Sal Mineo in supporting roles.

"Giant" tells a sprawling story, covering a quarter century.

It begins in the mid 1920s when Jordan Benedict, a Texas cattleman known as Bick, travels to Maryland to buy a horse from Dr. Horace Lynnton.

He is smitten by Lynnton's daughter, Leslie, and marries her after a whirlwind courtship.

They make the long train trip back to his family ranch, Reata, and to the family mansion, isolated in the middle of 500,000 acres of arid West Texas flatland.

Tensions quickly develop between Leslie and Bick's sister, Luz, who rules the household and ranch.

Luz reprimands Leslie when she is kind towards the Mexican servants and ranch hands, telling her not to be too nice to those people.

Leslie faints during a barbecue Luz throws for the newlyweds, but she's up early the next morning to prepare breakfast, showing her intention to replace Luz as head of the household.

When Bick, Leslie, and Luz go out to drive cattle, Luz sends Leslie back to the house with Jett Rink.

Rink is an ill-tempered young ranch hand who is always at odds with Bick, although Luz has a soft spot for him.

On the way back to the mansion, Leslie has Jett stop in the village where the ranch's Mexican laborers live.

She's appalled by the conditions there.

She's summons a doctor to the village to care for a sick baby, prompting Bick to lecture her about how to treat those people.

When an accident brings about a change in Jett's fortunes, his rivalry with Bick intensifies and threatens not only Bick and Leslie's future, but the future of Reata and the entire Benedict family.

[gentle instrumental music] Novelist, Edna Ferber, was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1885.

She dropped out of college to support her family as a journalist, eventually writing for the Milwaukee Journal.

Her first collection of short stories and her first novel both appeared in 1921.

She won Pulitzer Prize for her 1924 novel "So Big."

It was made into a silent film starring Colleen Moore the same year and was later remade with Barbara Stanwyck in 1932, and again with Jane Wyman in 1953.

Her next novel was" Showboat" in 1926, made into a musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II the following year.

A 1929 film version of the novel followed, with remakes based on the musical in 1936 and 1951.

Ferber published "Cimarron" about Oklahoma in the wake of the Land Rush in 1930, Made into a movie in 1931, it won three Academy awards, including Outstanding Production, one of only two such awards ever won by RKO Studios.

An MGM remake starring Glenn Ford followed in 1960.

When Ferber's 1952 epic novel "Giant" sold 52 million copies in four years, MGM bought the rights to make it into an equally epic motion picture.

Ferber also wrote a number of well-known stage comedies with George S. Kaufman, including "The Royal Family" in 1927, "Dinner at Eight" in 1932, and "Stage Door" in 1936.

All three plays made their way to the silver screen as well, with George Cukor directing both "The Royal Family of Broadway" for Paramount Pictures in 1930, and "Dinner at Eight" for MGM in 1933.

A much altered version of "Stage Door" starring Katherine Hepburn was produced by RKO in 1937.

The abundant changes to the story prompted co-writer, George S. Kaufman, to quip, "They should have called it Screen Door."

Edna Ferber's novels are notable for their strong female characters and their concern with instances of injustice or prejudice.

She would often focus her work on times and places out of the mainstream of American culture and filled her books with a myriad of secondary characters representing a broad spectrum of the human experience.

This is certainly the case with her story of one wealthy, West Texas family facing a changing world in "Giant."

"Giant" proved popular with both critics in the public on its release and earned a $39 million return on its $5.4 million budget.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote, "George Steven takes three hours and 17 minutes to put his story across.

That's a heap of time to go on about Texas, but Mr. Stevens has made a heap of film."

A critic for Variety called "Giant," "an excellent film, which registers strongly on all levels, whether it's in its breathtaking panoramic shots of the dusty Texas plains, the personal dramatic impact of the story itself, or the resounding message it has to impart."

That message had to do with the challenges presented to a powerful Texas family by the rapidly changing times in the first half of the 20th century.

There's the growth of oil as a major component of the state's economy, but many social changes as well.

Jett Rink becomes wealthy as a wildcatter, and his ostentatious displays of wealth stand in contrast to the more discrete indulgences of old money families like the Benedicts.

Leslie fiercely rebels against the expectations that Texas women will defer to their husband's decisions and stay away from men's business.

Bick's expectations for his children go unfulfilled when one daughter and her husband moved to a ranch of their own, and Bick's only son, Jordy, becomes a doctor.

"Giant" also explores the paternalistic racism of many white Texans in the mid-20th century with repeated instances of discrimination against Americans of Mexican descent who did so much to build and sustain the state's economy.

When Jordy marries Juana Villalobos and dedicates his medical practice to serving the Latino community, his father Bick regards it as betrayal in more ways than one.

[gentle instrumental music] The process of making "Giant" involved a different generational clash between what we now call Old Hollywood, represented by George Stevens, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Taylor, and the New Hollywood of young Method actors, like Marlon Brando, Montgomery Cliff, and notably, James Dean.

Method actors worked to identify with the characters they play by trying to emulate something like the character's inner world, emotions and experiences.

During breaks during the shooting of "Giant," for example, Dean asked the local cowboys to teach him how to handle a lariat and practiced so it would seem he had been working with one all his life.

Both director, Stevens, and Rock Hudson had conflicts with Dean.

Although Stevens was very complimentary about Dean's acting abilities, he also told him to drop some of the mannerisms, like mumbling, he'd picked up during his time studying Method acting at the Actor's Studio.

Dean, for his part, scorned Steven's habit of shooting the same scene repeatedly from many different angles and only deciding which version to use during editing.

As it happened, it took Stevens a full year to edit "Giant" before its release.

[gentle instrumental music] Rock Hudson had his own problems with Dean.

He felt Dean's Method acting was unprofessional and self-absorbed to the point it alienated his fellow actors since it provided little opportunity for give and take between them.

But Elizabeth Taylor became Dean's great friend and confidant during the shoot.

She later said, "We would sometimes sit up until three in the morning, and he would tell me about his past, his mother, minister, his loves, and the next day he would just look straight through me as if he'd given himself away or revealed too much of himself."

A good example of Dean's devotion to Method acting is his approach to his last scene in "Giant" when Jett Rink gives a drunken speech at the bank with celebrating the opening of his hotel.

Dean thought it would make the scene more realistic if he were actually inebriated.

In the event, he mumbled so much that the scene later had to be overdubbed.

Unfortunately, James Dean died in an automobile accident shortly after "Giant" wrapped.

Nick Adams, a good friend of Deans who had a small role in the film, did the overdubbing instead.

[gentle instrumental music] "Giant" was nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, but received only one Oscar, Best Director for George Stevens.

Ironically, the movie received two nominations for Best Performance by an Actor, one for Rock Hudson and the other, posthumously for James Dean.

Over 50 years later, a review in TV Guide provided this assessment of "Giant" and Dean's performance in it, "This was the last role in Dean's all-too-brief career, and his presence ran away with the film.

He performs his role in the overwrought Method manner of the era, and the rest of the cast seems to be split between awe of his talent and disgust over his indulgence."

[gentle instrumental music] Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm Glenn Holland.

Good night.