Giant Love
Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film
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Giant Love
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Narrated by:
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Maggi-Meg Reed
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By:
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Julie Gilbert
About this listen
A book that explores the great American novelist and playwright Edna Ferber, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Ficton, whose work was made into many Academy Award-winning movies; the writing of her controversial, international best-selling novel about Texas, and the making of George Stevens’ Academy Award winning epic film of the same name, Giant.
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.
Critic reviews
“In this riveting narrative, Gilbert deftly balances first-person encounters with reportorial objectivity—the result is a multi-dimensional portrait of a writer’s creative process, accompanied by a vibrant history of the making of the film Giant. While details of the film’s production are well-known, Gilbert, tuned in to her characters and her subject, endows them with new life. Nonetheless, the enigma of Ferber, an instinctive and unwavering feminist, forever alone and forever vigilant, hovers over the chronicle, and Edna herself is the star here, stealing the spotlight from all the others. Gilbert’s writing has the snap, the love of piling on adjectives in a flowing, unstoppable rhythm, the descriptive power and eye for riveting detail of a Ferber best-seller. Ferber could sweep the reader into the worlds she created in her meticulously researched novels; Julie Gilbert displays the same family gifts in her chronicle of the making of an American epic.”—Foster Hirsch, author of Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties
“The magnificent Julie Gilbert proves that there is no better biographer of the life and work of her aunt Edna Ferber, than she. Giant Love is a study in the development of source material in Hollywood, including the importance of the translation of the voice from novel to script and a juicy behind the scenes look at how great movies are made. It's all here, through Edna's point of view, peppered with the personalities and talents of the time. In the author's hands, the vibrant story comes to life, and it feels a lot like the first time I saw Giant on a big screen in a revival house. Mesmerizing!”—Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone
“For much of the 20th century, Edna Ferber wrote novels in which resolute women gradually civilized lunk-headed men against the backdrop of changing times. Ferber’s earlier works, Show Boat and Cimarron, were just coming attractions for Giant. In Giant Love, Julie Gilbert writes the story of her grand-aunt’s novel, and especially of George Steven’s landmark movie adaptation, from the inside, with an intimate knowledge of family and the passion of a great narrative historian.”—Scott Eyman, author of Charlie Chaplin vs. America