Great novels and great films are rare enough, but a great novel that becomes a great film is a unicorn. Julie Gilbert adroitly tells a double-success story in Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film, and because Gilbert is a biographer and great-niece of Giant author Ferber, her dive goes especially deep.
After introducing readers to Ferber (1885-1968), Gilbert covers the 13-years-in-the-making 1952 publication of Giant, a multigenerational saga about a wealthy Texas ranching family into which a cultured Virginia woman marries, bringing along her freethinking ideas, which include redressing the cruel treatment of Mexican Americans. Gilbert hazards that this character, played by Elizabeth Taylor in George Stevens's 1956 film treatment, was conceived to be fiery liberal Ferber's "Greek chorus." Both book--the most successful of Ferber's 14 novels-- and movie were sensations.
Gilbert reproduces Ferber's finicky notes on the novel and, deliciously, her complaints about the Giant script ("Unless Leslie is suddenly a dull boring stodgy old mess she CAN'T say this"). Better still, Gilbert's personal ties to the film's two male leads make for a couple of exclusives: she includes snippets from her 1977 interview with Rock Hudson and shares her childhood memory of receiving a sickbed visit from James Dean, who had a special bond with the half-century-older Ferber. (Dean gave Ferber rides on his motorcycle.) Giant Love is a celebration of two great American works and a gentle entreaty to remember Ferber, once a giant in her field. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer