In the summer of 1955 Hollywood descended on the tiny town of Marfa in Far West Texas. American film director George Stevens, whose notable films include A Place in the Sun, The Diary of Anne Frank andShane, had combed the West and into Mexico to find the perfect location to film the epic Western drama Giant, based on the novel by Edna Ferber. Presidio County, where Marfa is the county seat, had that bleak and inhospitable quality that Stevens was looking for. It was isolated, basically, but had a remarkable cultural story to tell. It was perfect.
A new kind of Western
It was also the epitome of just the sort of racial and social biases Stevens sought to address in the movie. Returning from a combat motion picture photography assignment in World War II — during which he was one of the first liberators to enter the Dachau concentration camp — Stevens no longer fancied the light comedies that had once held his interest. Instead, he aspired to make films that challenged the status quo.
Giant was to become, in Stevens’s mind, a new kind of western. It would mirror Ferber’s novel closely in its portrayals of power and greed. It would challenge assumptions about the role of women and tackle racial intolerance, daring and controversial subjects at the time.
Native Marfan Lucy Garcia was fifteen during the filming. “Discrimination was still very much a part of growing up in Marfa,” she recalls. “When people started finding out about Giant, everyone was very curious.”
Stars from afar
Giant was to star Rock Hudson as rancher Jordan “Bick” Benedict; Elizabeth Taylor as his wife, Leslie Benedict; and James Dean as romantic rival Jett Rink. Other marquee names included Carroll Baker, Jane Withers, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, Earl Holliman, and newcomer Elsa Cardenas. The locals in Marfa and beyond were starstruck.
As the town was inundated by trucks, trailers, and crew, residents lined the streets in awe. The movie industry was coming in en masse, and movie stars were arriving by train. (And it’s still the same these days: Alpine resident and self-proclaimed film nerd Mark Hinshaw said, “When filmmakers come out here, it’s all very much a circus-comes-to-town mentality, [since] these communities are so small.”) At the Evans Ranch, seventeen miles west of Marfa, the set for the Benedicts’ Reata Ranch house was built as the backdrop for the saga of cattle, oil, and changing times. The frame for the Gothic-style mansion was constructed by a team in California, brought to Texas by train, and finished on location. The Reata’s false front had no rooms or back — only a façade constructed of wood and plaster. All of the interior scenes would be filmed at the Warner Brothers Studio in Hollywood.
During that blazing hot summer of 1955, Marfa suffered one of the worst droughts in its history. Extra hands were needed, and many Marfans helped with building sets, getting sup- plies, and hauling water. Kids were paid a quarter for each tumbleweed they brought to the set. Many locals, mostly teenagers and children, were used as extras in the filming.
But in the evenings, intrepid fans would gather outside of the actors’ lodgings at the El Paisano Hotel in town, waiting for them to come out and visit.
Garcia remembers the summer viviidly. “We would pile a bunch of kids in the car and go out to the location to watch the filming. When we got back to Marfa we would hang around the Paisano and wait to see the stars.” James Dean was said to be the friendliest of the group, granting autographs and photos, hanging out with the locals, and buying bottles of Coke for the little kids. “Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor were nice enough, a little snooty though,” Garcia says. “But James Dean was really friendly and would stand around for hours with us making jokes and just being silly. And he had this sexy little giggle that made the girls crazy. I asked for a photo with him and he put his arm across my shoulder for the photo. I haven’t washed my shoulder since!”
Townspeople of all ethnic groups were explicitly invited to the set to witness the making of Giant, in fact, an uncommon practice in the film industry of the way. Stevens wanted an open set; he required only that onlookers be quiet and stay behind the ropes.
Elated fans cadged autographs and slipped in their cameras, of course. Press agents flew in and out of the abandoned Marfa Army Airfield, and the word about Giant got out pretty quickly. A big movie about Texas was in the works, and the world was enthralled.
GIANT HEART After shooting, the stars would retreat to Marfa’s Hotel Paisano (right), where the most generous, like James Dean (left), would greet fans for hours and provide bottles of Coke to the kids. The hotel now has rooms and suites named for the stars.
The making of a masterpiece
Filming was rough, not just due to the heat and fierce Far West Texas sunshine, but because of Stevens’s meticulous perfectionism. Sometimes calling for dozens of takes, Stevens shot over 875,000 feet of film in an era when the average for a feature was 80,000.
When filming finally wrapped in Marfa, the whole town, turned out to celebrate with music and salutations, and to see the cast and crew off on the train. After 44 days of magical and wonderful commotion, a saddened and subdued
Marfa returned to its customary quiet. Dean, killed in an automobile accident while Giant was being edited, didn’t live to see the finished film. Marfans were devastated as anyone. “Oh Lord, it was so sad when we found out,” says Garcia. “All of the girls were crying and we just couldn’t believe it, he was so young and such a beautiful, special person.”
Success and censorship
Giant opened in October 1956 with great success. Despite the praise heaped on it by the New York Times, which called it the best film of the year, not all Texans approved. The themes of feminism and racial injustice that Stevens had worked to depict so realistically made more than a few Texans uncomfortable.
At the same time, some Hispanic moviegoers in Texas still had to see the film in segregated theaters or were limited to the balcony or the back of the house.
According to the documentary Children of Giant, directed by Hector Galan, when the movie was released in Mexico, scenes portraying discrimination against Mexican Americans were deleted. Since Mexico’s release came later, Mexican viewers had already heard about the film and were confused — then later outraged — that the film had been censored. Stevens himself had been unaware of the changes. In America, Giant was nominated for ten Academy Awards and Stevens won the Oscar for best director. The uncensored version of Giant was released in Mexico three years afterward.
When the movie appeared at Marfa’s Palace Theater in 1956, practically all of Marfa attended. “It was there that they realized the story that was told in Giant was a reflection of themselves,” says Garcia. ““It would become a lasting chronicle of the way they were living in the summer of 1955. This was finally a story about them. It was their story.”
FINAL ROLE James Dean (left) with director George Stevens on the set of Giant. Sadly, Dean was killed in an automobile accident during the editing phase of the movie.
A lasting legacy
“Marfa certainly benefited greatly and economically from that summer in 1955,” says Mark Hinshaw, “—at least according to stories from bar and restaurant owners who all claimed to do well during filming of various movies here.” Though drought and a dwindling cattle industry shrank Marfa’s population in the ensuing decades, the cultural capital infused by Giant has contributed to the city’s artistic revival in recent years.
In today’s Marfa, where productions such as I Love Dick are under way and where locals might recall 1985’s Fandango and Sylvester, Giant still towers over them all. The Hotel Paisano reverently names several of its rooms and suites in honor of the movie’s leading men and ladies. The film plays continuously in the gift shop, where visitors can purchase Giant memorabilia. And the last skeletal remains of the Reata set survive, on a private ranch, as a lasting reminder of those glorious days.“It was such a special time in our lives and something that I will never forget,” says Garcia. “Since then, in Marfa, other movies have come and gone, but none were like Giant.”
