VOCES

Filmed in 1955, "Giant," based on a novel by Edna Ferber, opened to critical acclaim. Nominated for 10 Academy Awards, it starred Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. It would be the last movie James Dean would make. This is the story of the people who were there, who witnessed the making of "Giant." It would be a reflection of the very lives they were living in the summer of 1955.

HENRY CISNEROS

This towering frame in West Texas is all that remains of a Hollywood movie set. Weather-worn ruins are the last remnants of the Reata mansion, an iconic image for the film that would become a classic in American cinema. Filmed in 1955, Giant, based on the novel by Edna Ferber, opened to critical acclaim. It starred Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson and was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. It would be the last movie James Dean would make. Giant is the epic drama of three generations of a Texas ranching dynasty. It would be a new kind of Western. Director George Stevens would challenge the frontier myth with themes of power and greed, the role of women, and racial intolerance, daring and controversial themes for a changing America. This is the story of the people of who were there, many of them children, who witnessed, firsthand, the making of Giant. What they saw was a reflection of themselves, not realizing that Giant would become a lasting chronicle of the very lives they were living in the summer of 1955. June 4, 1955. What seemed like all of Hollywood descended on Marfa, Texas. Grip trucks, lights, and genetotors signaled the start of the movie Giant. It was like they woke up one morning and here comes the troops, you know?, and here comes the cavalry and movie stars are in town and famous people, you know?

THOMPSON

They came by plane. They landed out here in the airport and there was a news story describing the landing of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. People flocked out to see them disembark and then, they had a parade in town to greet them as they came in.

Whistle blows

THOMPSON

The remaining cast and crew would come to Marfa by train, including James Dean. George Stevens Jr, while on furlough from the Air Force, visited his father on the Marfa set. When I arrived, there were trucks and honey wagons and tents and actors and, you know, a movie was going on and that was the dominant thing.

HOWARD McKNIGHT

It was wonderful for our area. Not only, I think, commercially, you know, financially, but it's kind of what put Marfa on the map, I think. Construction of the huge set for the film was begun at the Warner Bros. lot. It would be transported 1,000 miles to Marfa, Texas, by train. The opulent headquarters for the Reata ranching empire would be finished on location.

STEVENS JR

The wonderful production designer Boris Leven designed that house, which expressed so much about the film and it was so striking an image, that big, Gothic house out on the plains all by itself. A film location was needed that captured the vast grandeur of the land. Many locations in the Southwest and Mexico were considered, but George Stevens was convinced that Giant belonged in Texas.

NAFUS

He sent his locations manager on a 6,000-mile tour of the Southwest. When the location scout finally drove into Marfa, which was flat, but with mountains on the horizon, it was like a very fascinating image of West Texas. George Stevens made a brilliant decision to shoot Giant in Marfa, Texas, because the landscape, that extraordinary, bleak landscape, makes a statement and that landscape is inescapable. When casting Giant's three main characters was announced -- Bick Benedict; Benedict's wife, Leslie; and Jett Rink -- it electrified Hollywood. Newspapers and magazines wanted to be the first to announce the cast. Rock Hudson was chosen to play Bick. One of the reasons that George wanted Rock Hudson for Bick Benedict is because he loved the way that he aged in Magnificent Obsession. He thought he could be the young Bick and the older Bick and so that was one of the things that he liked about him. Having worked with her in the film A Place in the Sun, Stevens cast Elizabeth Taylor to play Leslie Benedict. Elizabeth also brought an extraordinary commodity to this movie, the same commodity that had caused her to be George Stevens's only choice

for the role of Angela Vickers in A Place in the Sun

she could fill theaters. -It's Elizabeth Taylor, so you got one of the most beautiful women in the world, but George knows there's more to Elizabeth Taylor than this physical beauty. There's a great strength there and she's a really good actress. The fact that she's so gorgeous conceals that from a lot of people. The most difficult role to cast was that of Jett Rink. Warner Bros. drew a wish list of major stars to play the role.

Stevens finally settled on a newcomer

James Dean. People like Marlon Brando were considered, Montgomery Clift, for the role that James Dean finally got, so he was the last major one to be chosen for Giant. A lot of people told Stevens "Don't take a chance on this kid," but he saw something in James Dean that could be Jett Rink. Casting of the supporting roles continued for almost a year. Dennis Hopper would play Bick Benedict's son, Jordan. Earl Holliman was chosen to play Bob Dace, Bick's son-in-law. George said "Follow me." Well, he took me outside and we walked around the set and I fully intended to say to him "Thank you very much, but no, thank you," you know, "I just would love to, but, no, thank you." Well, he just charmed the pants off me, you know? 16-year-old Mexican actress Elsa Cardenas would play Juana. Her role would be pivotal in framing the racial tension in the film. To be cast for one of the biggest movies that, ever, Hollywood made, you know, after Gone with the Wind, a big, big movie, I was just amazed; I couldn't believe it. In the 1950s, the old studio way of doing business was coming to an end. So why don't you stop in at your Westinghouse dealer -- The rise of television posed a serious threat to the box office. At the right time and place in his career, George Stevens, now an independent, had the power and credentials to get the studio behind Edna Ferber's controversial novel. I think Warner Bros. was definitely taking a chance with this film, in spite of the fact that it was the bestseller of its year and that Ferber was already a presold, you know, phenomenon in American literature. Everybody liked her work; or wanted to comment on it, if they didn't. She was enormously controversial and controversy sells. My father made a deal with Jack Warner for the making of Giant, in which he took no salary -- he worked for 3 years on the film -- but he owned a piece of the film and he had total control. Stevens enlisted longtime collaborators Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat to adapt the 447-page novel into a screenplay. I spent that year working with my father and Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat on the screenplay of Giant. We worked out in North Hollywood, in the living room of my father's apartment and we'd meet each day and work on the script. As a leading Hollywood screenwriter, Ivan Moffat was key in developing the character sketches in the novel.

LOOSELEAF

The portraits, the profiles, were used to fully flesh out the characters. It was very descriptive and this would come across on the page. I think it was a really good match because he filled in the blanks, so to speak, and I'm sure George Stevens found Ivan to be somewhat fascinating. Maybe America wasn't ready for the class struggles and issues in Giant, but Ivan felt it was important to be part of this.

SMYTH

Edna Ferber wanted to involve herself and Stevens wanted that as well, too. There are some hilarious letters that Ferber was writing to her editor at Doubleday and some of her friends, about the process. They wanted to know what it was like, going out to Hollywood, for her, because she had always resolutely stayed in New York and just done her work and she just said, you know, "This young man knows about as much about Texas as I know about Iran -- even less." -Ivan had his opinions and he would voice them. Whether Edna was a real bugaboo, which we think she was, involved with every aspect, it got overcome. The thing that the American people can do is to... be vigilant, day and night.

STEVENS JR

It was interesting. It was during the time of the McCarthy hearings and we used to take breaks. Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you and, if there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. We'd get preoccupied with the McCarthy hearings and very little screenwriting would get done on that day, but it was interesting that that was the climate in the United States when that screenplay was being crafted. Edna Ferber read the screenplay and made some comments, from time to time, and she really became totally pleased with the resulting script. It was a revisionist look at Texas, it was a new inside view of what was going on, and it was a dark picture of a typically American narrative.

NAFUS

That screenplay was the screenplay that George Stevens wanted to shoot. Marfa residents were offered parts as movie extras. My aunt and uncle were actually extras in the movie. They were in a barbecue scene. We could see the big backdrop of the house that was at the ranch the; it was a neighboring ranch of ours. Mexican American town residents were also hired as extras, many of them children. When I told my mother, I said "You know what? I'm going to be in the movie Giant." She said "Really?!" I said "Well, yeah." So she bought a brand-new pair of pants, a brand-new shirt. That's not what they wanted. They didn't want to see a little Mexican kid, at the time, with a brand-new shirt on, you know? -They put out a call for boys. They specifically asked for boys with dogs and I had a little mutt. I think his name was Pinky.

RENTERIA

Some of us, they asked us to remove our shirts. Years later, I wrote "Well, presumably, they wanted us to look more Mexican." If I had known it was that easy, to be an actor, I would've probably chosen that path, instead of journalism. They wanted tumbleweeds. They were paying us, I think -- I wish I remembered -- a quarter a tumbleweed, so we're out there, in the boonies, getting tumbleweeds, the bigger the better. They wanted big ones. Why? When they were having the dust storms, they had these huge trucks with an airplane motor in the back of them, with a big propeller, and they'd back them up and uhuhuhm, and it picked up the dust and, every once in a while, they'd throw a tumbleweed in there. I remember that. I made a few dollars, doing that, chasing tumbleweeds.

STEVENS JR

When Elizabeth Taylor

and Rock Hudson -- -LESLIE

Is that Texas? the newlyweds, arrive and they look out and they see wind and dust and blowing tumbleweeds, and nothing else, as far as the eye can see, it visually dramatizes this hunt-riding girl from Virginia coming to this different land and it becomes kind of a metaphor for the differences that she and her husband, Bick Benedict, the Rock Hudson character, would grapple with throughout the film.

SMYTH

Ferber and, I think, to a certain extent, Stevens, was very interested in refocusing the idea of the Western and looking at the impact that women could have on the West, looking at Leslie's role as a kind of major protagonist and seeing where that would take the Western and issues in American history. Good morning.

STEVENS JR

The Elizabeth Taylor character was a feminist before, I think, it was a subject of discussion in this country. -Why, you don't look as if you've been dancin' all night, Miz Leslie.

RAMIREZ BERG

It's her journey, you know. Her story is, you know, she's basically an early feminist, you know, and she's asking all the questions that nobody else will ask. We really stole Texas, didn't we, Mr. Benedict? I mean, away from Mexico. She isn't a clichd feminist. We're just talkin' business, just business. -Oh, well, please don't mind me. Do go on.

LORD

She's stunningly beautiful. The men are captivated by her beauty, but they're aghast at the fact that she wants to participate in a political discussion and that she accuses them of behaving like Neanderthals. -You ought to be wearing leopard skins and carrying clubs! Politics?! Business! What is so masculine about a conversation that a woman can't enter into it? -Leslie, you're tired. Perhaps I am. In a way, she's like the Virginian, going West. She is a newcomer in this, she's a tenderfoot,

but she goes out West and she's always questioning Bick

his way of reading Texas history; where Mexican Americans fit into this situation; wasn't the land actually stolen, back during the Mexican War? He doesn't want to deal with this at all, but she's always wanting to read and to learn and to question. She was very independent and very strong and, you know, she had to be strong, to put up with her husband, Bick. People went to the theater to see Elizabeth Taylor and what they got was an unrelenting feminist message and message for social justice.

WANDA GARCIA

You know, Edna Ferber was very strong, herself, so, of course, she portrayed another strong woman in Giant. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Jewish parents, Edna Ferber began her career as a newspaper reporter before finding success as a novelist. She produced much of her bestselling work from her home base in New York City. The Pulitzer-Prizewinning novelist was known for writing strong female characters and novels about America's frontier. Wanda Garcia, as a young girl, met Edna Ferber in South Texas. Edna Ferber decided, at that point, that she wanted to write a novel about Texas. Edna Ferber spent 2 years researching the new oil wealth and the old ranching business in Texas. She was invited by the Kleberg family to stay at the King Ranch, known for its crossbreeding of cattle. At 825,000 acres, it was the biggest spread in Texas. While there, she took particular interest in the history and relationship between Anglos and Mexican Americans. She began documenting the poor living conditions of Mexican Americans in the region. In South Texas, Ferber met with Hector P. Garcia, a World War II veteran and physician. Dr. Garcia founded the American GI Forum, that fought for Mexican American civil rights. Edna Ferber spent 3 weeks with my father. She became like a twin. She came to our house and sat and talked to us. She wanted to find out about what was going on in Texas, with regard to Mexican Americans. Edna Ferber called her finished novel Giant. A lot of people, reviewers, who were hostile to this book, said that this was the work of a woman and a New York Jew. People, in Texas newspapers and all over the country, were basically saying that she needs to be burned at the stake for what she's saying about Texas and that she doesn't know what she's talking about; she's a woman, why is she talking about the West and about Texas? It's this kind of bastion of American ideology and she was going after it with a hatchet. They were furious. Because everyone knew who the book was about. They didn't want that stuff exposed, I don't suppose. I suppose they just wanted to do whatever they wanted to do and then you just don't talk about it. But she talked about it and the people down here in Texas didn't care for her book and didn't care for her and the King Ranch did not care for it one iota.

SMYTH

She stayed in some very prominent homes and met a lot of people, including the Klebergs. They did feel that she overdid a few things, talking about their enormous wealth, the waste, the greed; caricaturing their attitudes to Mexican Americans, the way that they behaved. And how about the enormous wealth, for example, of Glenn McCarthy and his Shamrock Hotel? Many people see him as a model for James Dean's character, Jett Rink. -It's not my opinion Miss Ferber wrote my life in that story. I didn't like the story on Texas. -Why not? Well, I think that it was an opportunist writing -- The studio legal department was very nervous. They didn't want to annoy people like Glenn McCarthy because, if it could be proved that Ferber actually modeled her characters directly on these people, they could be sued for libel. People went after her as a Jew and she responded. She was writing to a friend and said, you know, "This is real Nazi stuff. I've never encountered it before," you know. "They are incredibly anti-Semitic and it is not only the fact that I'm a Jew, but also that I'm a woman. And this is happening yet again. Why does it always have to be when I write about Westerns?" In Giant, Leslie Benedict learns, for the first time, about Mexican American class structure in ranch life. Although a class apart, Mexican Americans were vital to the success of the ranching industry in Texas. My great-grandfather, with a group of cowboys, decided they were going to come to West Texas. At that time, this was just virgin country; it was untouched. But, gradually, just grew his ranch and obtained more adjoining land to it and thrived. -The Mexican Americans, they were the ones that did all the ranch work. They're the ones that'd fix the fence and, you know, milk the cattle, planted a garden, maintained the properties. They were the labor force. -They have a natural knowledge of the horses. I've seen many gringos try to go ride a roundup and they don't know which way is up, where the Mexicans are always the ones who can get the work done, they don't complain, they work hard. -They were the ones that did the work. On the big ranch -- that is, a rancher has 100,000 acres -- there might be 10 in the family that are white; and then, there might be 50 or 60 Hispanics there, living on the place.

CANO

We were treated very well. I always like to say some of my better years were growing up. Tony Cano's parents worked on the Brite Ranch. We always had a nice place to live, we had food, meat, vegetables, a truck. I didn't lack for anything.

CROCKETT

There's many Mexican families that have been here as long as my great-grandfather has been here. There were times when, you know, they couldn't sit down to dinner with us, but, if they needed something, we were there for 'em. Back then, the ranchers and the Hispanic people were very close, but those who weren't ranchers, who lived in town, felt, I think, some ravages of discrimination. In town, there was a line of demarcation. Mexican Americans were segregated. Isolated in their own neighborhood, they were kept apart from local residents in all aspects of daily life. We had to stay over there on the other side of the tracks. This was not our territory. -It was kind of like a nonverbal agreement, you'd stay on the South side of the tracks, because the town is divided by the tracks. -If you look back to those days, I mean, civil rights was happening, but it was usually understood as a black-and-white thing. In the Southwest, it's about, you know, Mexican Americans and Anglos. George Stevens paid particular attention to the themes of discrimination in Edna Ferber's novel.

MOSS

George Stevens probably went to Marfa knowing, already, that that was going to be a major part of the story and I'm sure that that had to do with his choice of Marfa and, whatever the environment was, I'm absolutely sure that he knew. -He saw the way that those Mexicans were really living. I mean, that was the way they lived and you saw all them little old kids out there and I think George just, he saw that. He said "You know, we should show this. In Texas, Jim Crow laws were used against Mexican Americans in the 1950s. Marfa was no exception. Blackwell School, named after Jesse Blackwell, its first teacher and principal, was a segregated Mexican school. We were segregated, in the sense, in learning, teaching. We did have the same teachers, but, really, it wasn't quite the same. We didn't know the difference. I did not know the difference. I didn't realize I was a nobody in that little community. -At its big height of it, there was anywhere between 600 to 800 students here at one time, all Mexican kids. The arrival of Giant in Marfa captured the attention of the whole town. Unlike Marfa itself, there was

no line of demarcation on the set of Giant

Stevens opened it up to everyone. When they said that there was going to be big stars coming, well, then, everybody got excited, you know, Mexicans and Anglos and all. -The press from all over the world came there, every day, you know. There was one particular house that was just for the press. So they would fly in; as they would fly in, another group would be coming in, you know, passing each other en route, you know? Dad let it be an open set, where we arranged for visitors who wanted to watch the shooting. -Whenever they were shooting, there were always crowds around, you know, watching, and he said "All these people are press agents. They're going to go talk about Giant," you know? And they did, you know. It was a brilliant thing that he did. We'd stay there hours and hours and hours and talk to them and they would shoot their thing. We just had to be real quiet. We'd be over here in the back, just enjoying them filming, you know? -I was starstruck, of course. I think I was about 11. I have a lot of memories. One of the memories of going out there was I asked Elizabeth Taylor for her autograph and she wouldn't give it to me. -It was shot out on the Evans Ranch, in the open. I went to the shooting one day. They were filming a scene between James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor and, of course, they were right out in the blazing sunshine. We were in a severe drought. That was one of the worst droughts we've had. Some of the men worked on location, hauling water and, you know, manual things like that. I remember, one time, we were coming in from location. I had a carful of friends and along comes James Dean from the location. Zoom! He bypassed us real fast. And there's a little, steep hill, you know? When we got to the top, there he was, on the side of the road. He had stopped and he waved us on out. And then, he got in his car and zoom!, again.

laughs

no line of demarcation on the set of Giant

-Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson stayed in homes here in Marfa, right across the street from each other and, every night, Elizabeth Taylor would go across the street in her nglige and have dinner with Rock Hudson in the backyard. And so it got to be such a common thing that people would be driving by, you know, kind of peek over the fence and the kids would always go up and look over the fence. This is actually the script from Marfa. Born in Germany, Wally Cech, a war bride living in El Paso, Texas, was hired as part of the catering team that fed the cast and crew. This was $4.50 a day. The cast and crew took a liking to Wally, then 26 years old, and Stevens have her special access to the set. I took them with this camera. I asked Mr. Stevens if I could make some pictures and he says "You're welcome to it, Wally. Make all the pictures you can." Nobody got that close, as a civilian. He says "I'll let you go there, as close as you can, right behind the camera. Don't cough, because the camera picks it up there." And I promised, I said "I won't. Everybody was at the Paisano. That was the place that everything was happening, at the Paisano. People would go there. We'd all sit on the cars. We'd park right in front and sit on the cars and wait for them to come out and visit with us.

Soft music plays

no line of demarcation on the set of Giant

They would all mingle outside. James Dean was real good to be outside and take pictures with us, give us autographs and real, real friendly. - If the moon It's true, James Dean was the nicest person. - That a love like yours and mine James Dean was coming out of the hotel and I took my picture with him there. - But the clouds got in your heart and tore our last love away Jimmy and I'd, whatever time we'd go out there, we'd take 8 or 10 Cokes. They liked Coca-Colas. And we'd get us a bucket and put some ice in it and take 'em out there and give them little old kids Cokes. They'd follow us around. Half of them couldn't even speak English. - Old as the moon Spanish was the primary language for the majority of Mexican Americans in Marfa. For years, the teachers at Blackwell tried numerous methods to force the students to stop speaking Spanish. At times, intimidation and humiliation were used. She was a young teacher and she wasn't from around here. I don't know where she was from. She came up to us and said "Are you boys speaking Spanish?" Well, you know, we got caught. I said "Yes, ma'am, we sure were." She said "You better start speaking English, or do you want to go back to Mexico and starve?" And I go "Ma'am," I said, "I've never been to Mexico. I was born here." I know that, at one time, my mom said that they had to bury their heritage at Blackwell, you know, that they couldn't speak Spanish. A 7th-grade teacher came up with a novel idea to eliminate Spanish-speaking in the school. In her memo, titled "The Last Rites of Spanish Speaking," she wrote... -There was a hole dug and it was quite deep and they had this little chest, coffin, imitation-type thing. The teacher told us to write "I will not speak Spanish" and we did that little paper and we put it in a box and they took us outside around the flag. They buried that box and, after they buried it, it was like a little funeral for Mr. Spanish. The whole school went outside -- it was all Mexicans -- and we buried it under the American flag.

HOWARD McKNIGHT

It was a shame, you know? It was terrible, that it was like that, but that's just the way it was. And it stayed like that, probably, until, well, way after I graduated. In real life, James Dean was friendly to the Mexican Americans he met in Marfa. In Giant, it was a completely different story in his rags-to-riches role of Jett Rink. Jett Rink, of course, is the kind of working-class hero in this. He is at the same economic level, basically, as Mexican Americans, but he is the character, in a way, that everyone focuses on because he is the great success story. A few miles away from the main set is the small town of Valentine, where the Mexican Reata workers were filmed. Here, Jett Rink introduces Leslie to Angel Obregon's family. Them's your neighbors, live there. -Who? Them kids there. Them's your ranch people. Them's Angel Obregon's kids. -It's Jett, ironically, that's the one that gives Leslie her first lessons in how Mexican Americans are racially exploited and he takes her to see Angel Obregon and his mother. He's the one that, to a certain extent, raises her social consciousness, even though he, as much as Bick, believes in this system of racial segregation.

CECH

I cannot explain it, you know? Because I was looking forward to meeting the stars, like everybody else was, you know? And George Stevens, he asked me, he says "Where are you from?" And I said "From Augsburg, Germany" and he says "Yeah, I know. I went through it." In World War II, Hollywood director George Stevens became Lt Colonel George Stevens.

STEVENS JR

He gave up his moviemaking career and took a commission in the Army and went overseas to head the combat motion picture photography for the war in Europe. Stevens met Ivan Moffat during the war. He, too, had enlisted in the signal corps and worked under Stevens as a writer. Ivan Moffat and George Stevens would become lifelong friends. He saw a lot during that time and he also ended up, at the end of the war, his unit was among the first people into the concentration camp at Dachau. They shot film there that, really, no one would ever be able to say, with any credibility, that nothing had been going on. -I, George C. Stevens, Lt Col, Army of the United States, hereby certify that... these motion pictures constitute a true representation of the individuals and scenes photographed. They have not been altered in any respect...

SILKE

You're seeing something profound in the human makeup, you know, and that just confounded him. "How do you do that? What's going on? What's in us?", you know? -Since the war, he had been playing around with the idea, in his head, that America might be a canvas for ideas. He wasn't doing that before the war because he was making, you know, comedies and he was still moving his way up the ladder, but he really came into his own after the war. He wanted to make a film that engaged people and, while they were engaged, they, perhaps, gained some new awareness of how the world was working.

MOSS

This is the direction he was going in, to get a chance to articulate his human-rights beliefs. Stevens's war experience was a catalyst for the Angel Obregon scene he crafted for Giant. iAngel, no! -Let him ride, Polo. Let him ride. Angel Obregon grew up on the Benedict ranch. In Giant, it's the homecoming of Angel, played by Sal Mineo; and of Bob Dace, Bick's son-in-law, played by Earl Holliman.

Explosions in distance

MOSS

Bob Dace and Angel Obregon had both gone to fight in World War II. It was my homecoming, coming back from the war. I had gone into the service and the train was there. The whole town had turned up. Aah!

SILKE

That's so beautifully crafted. -

Band plays "I've Been Working on the Railroad"

SILKE

It starts with the party and it's gorgeous. There's light and activity and joy and celebration. And then, he stops it cold, graphically, with a newspaper headline. And he goes in on Angel Obregon's coming home. -

Horn honks

SILKE

And then, the screen fills with the side of that train, total motion. It's completely abstract and it's gone and you have no motion on the screen and what you've got is this wonder of this land and a coffin. And then, from your point of view, the veteran -- all these were careful choices -- the veteran comes out, a Latino veteran, with his little cap, and he salutes the coffin. He made millions and millions of people, all ages, all races, all religions, cry for Angel Obregon, all over the world. The fact that Stevens spent so much time on this one funeral, I always thought, was saying so much about the equality of every one of his characters in the film. -That is so powerful. The way he shoots it, it's so powerfully shot, you know, and it's just all about loneliness and isolation and the separation of the Mexican Americans from the mainstream society and they have to just handle their grief the best they can. -On behalf of the United States Army, I'm proud to present to you the flag of our nation, that your son defended so valiantly. -Those choices that he's making, he's really bringing home the message,

over and over again

"These are Americans and they sacrificed, just like every other American did during World War II." And history's not telling that part of the story, but he tells that part of the story.

SILKE

That's a big element for the Bick Benedict character, taking that Texas flag to the father of Angel Obregon. That funeral is played against a little Latino boy playing in the dirt. That's very important, the dust and the dirt of the land, and all these elements are mixed into this one moment and that's just magical filmmaking. You know, you send a poet to war and you get something different.

Choir sings

SILKE

Merced, in Marfa, used to be called the Mexican cemetery because it was segregated. Today, it is still segregated. Filled to capacity, it will soon run out of space. The only reason why we had to bury here, because they put the fence up there and separated us from the Anglos. They separated us then and we're still separated. That fence there is a symbol of like somebody waving a Swastika, or something. It's a symbol. For the sake of Marfa, so that Marfa will not show this kind of discrimination anymore, knock that fence down. On Ferber's advice, George Stevens met with Dr. Hector Garcia to get a firsthand account of the history of Mexican American life in Texas.

RAMIREZ BERG

George Stevens, you know, he's driving home this theme. He was making it very,

very clear

"This is a story about discrimination in the Southwest; in Texas, specifically." -He's got the book in hand. I'm sure he's aware of what things are like and he's telling the story, you know, he's getting it out there.

MOSS

Stevens would prefer to act things out for actors. Rather than tell them how to do it, he would prefer to show them.

HOLLIMAN

He was a perfectionist, you know? He was so good with actors.

NAFUS

James Dean, who was already interested in making films himself and had a little movie camera on the set of Giant, would go around, shooting things. So he was fascinated, not just with acting, but also with directing. And so, to be able to study with Stevens seemed like a fantastic experience. -When we did the scene, George covered it from every conceivable angle. I mean, literally every angle, including he moved the set and shot it from the back of our heads. George shot everything. I mean, he wanted to be able to play with it, you know? -When he wanted me to be very upset, he didn't say hello to me in the morning. He didn't even say "Hi, how are you? How do you feel this morning?", nothing. And I started to get very upset. Then, I did the scene and, when I finished the scene, he just came and said "Thank you, darling. How are you? That was great." Robert Hinkle, the dialogue coach of Giant, spent days teaching James Dean all things Texan. When I first met him, he says "I want to be a Texan 24 hours a day." He says "'Cause, when I do a movie, I want to get into that part and that's what I want to do. I want to be that character until that movie's over." So I said "Well, we can handle that." I have a picture in there, where he is in the lunchtime and when he looks like this. He was working and seeing how he's going to play the scene. He was practicing that in the dining room. Mercedes McCambridge played Bick's sister, Luz. In the movie, Luz is killed in a horse riding accident. She had been close to Jett Rink and had left him a parcel of land in her will. He called it... One of the most evocative scenes in the film is when he has just received his inheritance from Luz, that little worthless piece of land, and you see him alone and he walks across and marks his territory very carefully. He's the pioneer. He's reenacting one of these old stories from Texas history and from the frontier. You can see him just totally enjoying this sense of owning land and being beholden to no one and out, finally, from that economic structure of the Benedict ranch, where he was just basically a white-trash servant. People identified with him as a nobody who became somebody. -I guess you're about the best-lookin' gal we've seen around here in a long time. I think -- Liz Taylor mothered James Dean on the set, in reality, but, of course, in the film, she's his impossible love interest. -And I'm going to tell my husband I met with your approval. -He loves the woman that Rock Hudson is married to, but he can't have her. -I wouldn't do that. I mean, well -- No, I -- whew! But she's the one who makes him wealthy. She's gone to visit him. She steps into some mud and she goes on home and then, that's when the oil bubbles up. So she's the catalyst for his wealth. He now will be richer than her husband, Rock Hudson, but she's not going to leave Rock for him. Me? I'm gonna have more money than you ever thought you could have! You and all the rest of you stinkin' sons of Benedicts.

CECH

This is when they were shooting the fight on the porch with James Dean striking oil. What he had on was molasses. This was not oil; this was molasses. So they had to take six takes before they actually got it on the film right, because George Stevens was a perfectionist. He was really rattled up and he said "Son of a bitch."

Laughs

CECH

And George Stevens said "One more time." You sure do look pretty, Miz Leslie. -This was not James Dean's way of acting. He was so intuitive, he would find that action, that way of delivering his dialogue, within 2 or 3 takes, and that's all he wanted to do.

BICK

Oh! Ah!

NAFUS

So he detested this style of filming.

Triumphant music plays

NAFUS

Bick, you should've shot that fella a long time ago. Now, he's too rich to kill. With his father in California, unable to raise him, and his mother dead at a young age, James Dean was raised in Fairmount, Indiana, by his uncle and aunt, both Quakers. Quakers did not try to guide their children a particular way. They certainly had guidelines about appropriate social behavior, but, as far as picking out a profession, you were just to follow your dream and he had already proven himself in his drama classes in high school. He had an excellent high school theater teacher who encouraged him and he decided to go off to Hollywood. Well, I know now. It's -- But now, now look here. Now look. -No, you look. I have made up my mind, Pop. I got to get money for my kid and I'm going to get it. He was in, probably, 25 different TV shows and I think that's really where the awareness of James Dean began. -I'm sorry, but I don't seem to -- Well, uh, uh, Mathers. Yeah, uh, Walter Mathers. I'm from Marietta, Ohio. Oh, you're from out of town, too. -Yeah. -So are we. We just came down for the day to visit Miss Woodbury. He did go to the Actors Studio and he hated the way that Strasberg tried to deconstruct people's performances, so he's not a product of the Actors Studio; he's not a product of method acting. He really was just an intuitive actor. Dennis Hopper was cast to play Jordy, Bicks's only son, heir to the Reata Ranch. I never would be any good, runnin' this place. Instead, Jordy becomes a medical doctor and marries Mexican American nursing student Juana, played by Elsa Cardenas. His marriage to a Mexican American sent shockwaves through the Benedict family. I was a little bit afraid to do it because of Mexicans, because of my country. Because I did not know if they were going to understand why this discrimination. And sometimes you are just doing a role and, for me, it was a part, a very important thing. Elsa was surprised at the amount of makeup used to make her skin dark. They were looking to make me dark and look a little bit more Mexican -- the way they thought Mexicans were. I was wondering "Why are they putting so much makeup on her?" Man, she looked like she'd been working out in the sun, you know, in a garden, 12 hours a day. I mean, they had her dark. They wanted that contrast between old Dennis Hopper, you know, and her. -You're operating in a Hollywood system that is striving to make sure the audience understands everything and there's no ambiguity at all, and one of the ways you do that is stereotyping, you know? And you indicate "This is a Jew, this is an Italian, you know, and this is a Frenchman" and you do it with stereotypes. Stereotypes are not good, but I think, maybe, one of the things George Stevens was trying to say is "This is a Mexican, okay? Let there be no question about her ethnicity, her background." A dark-skinned Mexican that Bick Benedict's son marries has got to be that much more an affront to Bick Benedict. So he has to deal with, in his own family, his son marries someone who's that dark-skinned. -Friends and neighbors, um, I want y'all to meet my wife! -You know, he's a racist and, when he sees a dark-skinned Mexican, he goes "Oh, my gosh," you know? And so he works his way through that and he finally accepts her. While filming Giant, Elsa was unaware of the extent of discrimination in Texas. Elsa, you know, having come from Mexico, she didn't grow up where she was separated from other people, you know, and I think, she did realize that it was different in Texas, you know, and I don't know if she got that when she was there or just later, when people told her what it was like, but I know she did not expect that. At 16 years old, Elsa was one of the youngest cast members. She was chaperoned by a member of the Department of Education, who stayed with her at the Paisano Hotel. One day,

she told me what a woman had told her

that how could she bear sleeping with a Mexican girl in the same room? And I said "What? What are you saying?" And that made me aware of the situation.

CECH

There was still lots of prejudice. There was lots of prejudice, because I could tell this, on the little Mexican movie star. She felt out of the place. Hello, Dr. Guea. -Hello, Dr. Benedict.

RAMIREZ BERG

Elsa's role was, you know, a very small one. -Oh, I know, it takes time. Oh, Jordan? This is Juana. -I think she transcended, you know, the fact that it was relatively small, just by her presence, you know, it was very dignified. She's very beautiful and, you know, very restrained and, you know, she was not acting stereotypically. In Giant, until Jordy steps in, Juana was denied entrance to Jett Rink's homecoming party in his new hotel. Jett Rink had become a millionaire from his oil wealth. People love this role precisely because he is this great outsider and you forget what a rampant racist he is and how it's his hotel that won't allow Juana in, that has separate toilets for Mexican Americans and whites, that he is one who used to live with Mexican Americans and, now that he's wealthy, he is reinforcing that color line with a vengeance. Anybody here? -

Soft instrumental music plays

RAMIREZ BERG

We're all booked up. -I just called. I'm Mrs. Benedict. I'm sorry, but we're busy. -They didn't even want to do her hair. All of those incidents come across as portraying the way Mexican Americans were treated during that time period. Well, I'm rry, but it happens to be Mr. Jett Rink's orders, himself, and I'm just workin' here. -It's everybody's orders. Same all over town. The young lady should've gone to Sanchez's, the place where they do her people. -Giant was about Mexican American race prejudice. It was about looking at the color line in Texas. This was something new, because you hadn't seen this kind of film before. Tony Cano and his family moved from the Brite Ranch into town. He played basketball at Marfa High School. He was a freshman when he went on his first out-of-town game. We walked in and everybody's staring at us. We were all Mexican, 10 Mexicans on the team, no Anglos. The coach and his friend, that drove the other car, they were Anglos, of course. We get there, we size everything up, we're going to go eat. They wouldn't serve us at the restaurant. They would not serve us at the restaurant. The scene in Sarge's diner was one of Stevens's most complex, and not found in Ferber's novel. Stevens created the scene and it took a week of filming to get it right. My father had a very strong sense of fairness and justice. -

Bells chime

RAMIREZ BERG

And he saw the opportunity, in this film, to really address that subject in a way that motion pictures in America had not yet done. - There's a yellow rose in Texas The film is a very strong articulation of how the Mexican Americans in that time were discriminated against. - Broke my heart and if I ever find her, we never more will part -My mother had already seen Giant when it first came out, so, when it was in rerelease, she took me to see it. What do you recommend, landlord? How's the fried chicken? Little Jordy wants ice cream, Grandpa. -When we got to the scene in Sarge's Diner, my mother leaned over to me and she said "Pay attention to this."

BICK

Give the little feller some ice cream.

SARGE

Ice cream? I thought that kid would want a tamale. -I think it was her way of saying "This is part of our experience and this is part of my experience. These are some of the things that we had to go through." -

Bells chime

SARGE

-As Mexican Americans, we read it as our story, you know? And it's a story about the discrimination that we were being subjected to and we were experiencing, particularly in the Southwest, and this was a story that was rarely seen anywhere in the media, and, for sure, not in a big-budget, epic Hollywood movie. Your money's no good here. Come on, let's go. You too. -Hold on a minute!

SILKE

That's key to the movie, that moment, you know? That's the final transformation of the Bick Benedict character. You're outta line, mister! -You know, the journey of the film and the story of the film is he finally stands up for somebody who's outside his family, who's Mexican American, and that's the turn that he makes. The thing is, Bick Benedict loses. And it didn't matter to us, as Mexican Americans. It was like "Somebody did something. Somebody stood up and fought against this thing." -

"Yellow Rose of Texas" plays

MOSS

He loses the fight, but wins the war. He is humiliated by this racist, because he ends up on the floor, but he has towered over him because he's free, he's freed himself. That's why Leslie tells him how proud she is of him, how he ends up her hero. After 44 days in Marfa, the cast and crew wrapped up location filming. The movie would now move to the Warner Bros. Studio for the rest of the filming. You know, it's gone; there's no more big movie trucks moving around. And, you know, there's always something going here and there, but, all of a sudden, it just slowed down.

Band plays march

MOSS

The whole town, it seemed like, came to see us off on the train. -On the way out from that train, in comes Rock Hudson with his fiance, and I looked at him, up, and I went like this and I stood up, you know, on my toe, and I gave him a smacker on the cheek. And he gave me a hug. This is the way I said goodbye to him. For 3 more months, Stevens filmed the interior scenes for Giant on the Warner Bros. soundstages. After a total of 114 days of shooting and 875,000 feet of film, principal photography was complete. For Stevens, getting into that editing room, he would stay in there for months and that's where his creativity really came to the fore. He was a brilliant editor. He worked with his editors and I think Giant took up to a year to edit. Miles and miles of film. -It was phenomenal, how many feet of footage he shot, probably enough to do two or three movies. He's got Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson all in there, watching the rushes. At Warner Bros., James Dean was waiting to record his final dialogue retakes. He took a weekend off and entered an auto race. He asked his father to join him, but his schedule wouldn't permit it. He had applied to race in Salinas, California, way north, close to San Francisco. He loved speed. Ever since he had lived in Fairmount, he had motorcycles. I think, by the time he was 10 or 11, they let him get a motorcycle and he'd progressively get larger and larger motorcycles. As soon as he could afford it, he bought sportscars in L.A. He had this mechanic, this German Porsche mechanic go with him on his trip north. A fellow named Donald Turnupseed was pulling out onto the highway and James Dean couldn't see him, until it was too late, and he hit the back of the station wagon. Did not kill the other fellow. Instantly killed James Dean, neck broken. And then, the German mechanic was thrown from the car and was in the hospital for like a year.

HINKLE

George Stevens was over at the soundstage. -We were in the cutting room and he said "Stop the rushes." They put on the light and he told us. And I told him that Jimmy got killed and I explained to him and Liz started screaming and she was just devastated.

CARDENAS

Elizabeth Taylor started crying. She started to cry. We walked back on the backlot there, crying. We'd stop and we'd cry and cry and, you know, and just talk about something; we'd start crying again. -I really, really was real brokenhearted when he passed away. It was really, really hard to see that. I couldn't believe it, you know? Because he was so full of life, you know? He had ideas, you know? He loved his work. He loved his work. And then, you know, when this happened... I still say some rosaries for him; I really do. -Ferber and Dean got along like a house on fire. There are some wonderful images from the production of that film where they're talking together and laughing and I think she was hypnotized by his ability to convey this kind of charisma, but also menace. She adored Dean. He got paid, I think, only just over $18,000 for his role, compared with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, who were getting nearly $200,000 apiece. You know, he got peanuts for this, but she thought he was brilliant. She liked the fact that, like his character, Dean was a newcomer, that he had a chip on his shoulder, that he represented something new and powerful. George Stevens was now ready to show Giant. The studio was nervous. A final cut was a very rare thing for a director to have, in those days and, when the picture was ready for release, Jack Warner objected to a scene in the picture and came to see Dad about it and it was the scene where the senator friend says "Well, we did all right for you, Bick, making that oil depletion allowance law," which was of great benefit to the oil people. How about an exemption for the depreciation of first-class brains, Senator? -Whose, yours? My father's, for instance. He spent his life saving other people's lives. How about some tax exemption there?

STEVENS JR

The head exhibitor in Texas, a man named Bob O'Donnell, told Jack Warner he would not release Giant in Texas if that scene was in the film. And Warner came, once, to Dad and talked to him about it and he said "Jack, I really can't take that scene out" and then, Warner came back again and just pleaded with him to take it out. Bob O'Donnell owned over 200 theaters. The financial loss would be staggering. "It's a film about Texas. It's going to ruin us" and Dad refused to take it out. -Stevens and his production company had so many previews. There was a lot of unrest, unease, that you can read in the comment cards. And there were a lot of men who basically said they didn't like the so-called "wetback" angle of this film. They didn't like the lectures, they didn't like women lecturing men about these issues and you could soft-pedal the race issues, but they liked the shots of the cattle and they liked the shots of the cowboys. Running over 3 hours, Giant opened, in October of 1956, to great success. The New York Times called it the best film of the year. Giant had two starstudded gala premieres, one in New York and, the next week, in Hollywood. A number of James Dean fans camped out and thought his death was a publicity stunt. Expecting Dean to make a reappearance at the premiere, they were disappointed when he didn't show. The wrath of Texas was still upon Giant. Newspapers were inundated with comments. One reader wrote that he would... if the movie played in Texas. There was a lot of press, as I recall, about how "He's making us look bad in Texas" and all this other stuff. Yeah, we heard that, but they never did that. Hell, when they saw it, they got so excited, they couldn't stand it. Many people, at the time, wrote about Giant and they said "Oh, thank goodness it isn't like her book. It's a softer portrait of Texas, it's that kind of a heroic look at this great state." There were no shootings at movie screens in Texas. But there were lines, that stretched for blocks in Houston. Moviegoers stood for 2 hours in Dallas and Giant broke attendance records in Austin. I think it was the most successful picture of its time in Texas. Mexican American audiences, even those who were extras on Giant, had to see the movie in segregated theaters. They could go to the other, they weren't forbidden, but there was a balcony and they were limited to the balcony.

SMYTH

You have kids who starred in the picture, who are not allowed to sit with anyone else, but have to sit in the back of the theater. -They walked us down to the Palace Theater, right after lunch, to see the movie. All the kids came, from everywhere. I was a little bit shocked. How they portrayed the Mexicans? It occurred to me "Wow, it does go on like that. It is like that." I think Mexican Americans, in general, watching that movie, it was like "Wow, this is finally a movie about us that tells it like it is." Giant was a hit when released abroad. It broke box office records in Germany and Italy. It was extremely popular in France. Giant was released in Latin America and Mexico.

Speaking Spanish

INTERPRETER

In Mexico, it was an extraordinary success. Everyone remembers that film. In Mexico, audiences were surprised to learn that the movie had been censored. 30 minutes of Giant had been cut out. All references to Mexican American discrimination were deleted. When they realized how much footage had been cut, they were outraged; they wanted to see this. They had already heard about it and so, in a way,

it was a publicity failure for Warner Bros.

they had tried to do damage control before they even needed to, and it backfired on them enormously. George Stevens was in Europe, filming his next picture, The Diary of Anne Frank, and was unaware of the cuts. Appalled, Edna Ferber wrote George Stevens, placing blame for the cuts on pressure from the Texas- Mexican labor situation. Stevens couldn't do anything. I mean, he was outraged, but there was nothing he could do. The damage had already been done. It would be several years before Mexican audiences would see the uncensored version of Giant. The winner is Giant, George Stevens!

Cheering

Triumphant music plays

it was a publicity failure for Warner Bros.

Giant was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. George Stevens won the Oscar for best director. Thank you, sir. As the director chosen to come up here from this fine group of nominees, let me say, for them and for myself, the director's chair is a wonderful place to see a film from. -George. Although not nominated for an Oscar, Elizabeth Taylor's subtle performance as Leslie proved a turning point in her career. Rock Hudson was nominated for Best Actor.

MOSS

Lucky for Rock Hudson, that he met George Stevens, 'cause it really did change him, as an actor. He became a much more serious actor after Giant. Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. James Dean was posthumously nominated for Best Actor. We look at Giant and we think "Oh, yes, that's James Dean's last film." For me, and, I think, for a lot of other people, it's rather unfortunate, even though it is such a brilliant performance. But you forget the real reason that Ferber wanted to write her novel and wanted to see it on the screen as the most popular film

of its year

she wanted to look at a serious social issue. When he died, she was a bit sickened, I think, by the cult that developed around him. She knew him as a person, and then saw the way he was being marketed and transformed in the media and was just very sad. For a film with so many greatly dramatic scenes and big, open spaces, it's really quite interesting that it ends on sort of a small painting of this couple, now grandparents, and, in the little crib across from them is a little blonde girl and a little Hispanic boy and Rock Hudson has to recognize that those are both his grandchildren and the future of the great Benedict name. They are related to him, his descendants. They are the future. They're the future of Texas. And I definitely believe that George Stevens purposefully edited that in as the final image. It's been more than 50 years since Giant descended on Marfa. Unlike the success of the movie, the town stood still. It was evident that the population was down, many stores were boarded up, and, now, it's showing a new revival. It's coming back. Marfa has transformed itself into an artists' haven. It's become a magnet for artists from all over the world.

THOMPSON

There's no resemblance, really, between the Marfa of the '50s and the Marfa today. Since Giant, life for Mexican Americans slowly changed through the years.

RENTERIA

Most of us that grew up in and around Marfa sort of have grown up in the shadow of Giant all these years. As one of the last surviving cast members of Giant, Elsa Cardenas and her producer were invited from Mexico City to Marfa. Jaime. This is so different! She had not been back since the filming of Giant in 1955. iAy, que emocin! iMe encanta!

gasp

RENTERIA

Oh, me encanta. I love it. I love it! -Welcome to the hotel. Thank you.

Speaking Spanish

INTERPRETER

She was delighted and filled with wonder. She thought she would never return to visit Marfa, and it brought back many, many memories. She stayed at the Paisano, her hotel during the filming of Giant. She was just starting in the business. In a way, it's kind of taking her all the way back to the beginning of her career. So what was the...? Do you remember the...? Well, maybe it was all that height, right? -A little bit taller. It made me sad, looking at just posts, nothing on it. And it made me very sad to remember that all those people that I met, they were not more in this world and they had all gone, almost everybody's gone. In Giant, war hero Angel Obregon was buried in a Mexican cemetery created for the movie. Many Mexican American war veterans are buried here, in the segregated and, now, overcrowded, Merced Cemetery of Marfa. They had run out of places to bury their people. Located next to the Brite Ranch, the Brite family donated land for future burials. We donated an acre of land to them, to have more of their burials and, since then, I've noticed that people have been buried there. The fence separating Anglos and Mexican Americans still stands. We don't need your land anymore; you can keep it. Bob and Jane gave us, they donated to the cemetery, that acre over there; now, we can expand. But take it down, so it won't remind us of your wrongful deeds. -I don't see why there has to be that division there, but that fence should probably go. I'm in agreement with that. We can't exist here, unless we're all working together, Anglo and Mexican together. There was a time where I had a lot of anger and sadness, not too many years back, but I've learned to live now and in the future and not the past. 10 years after Giant left Marfa, the Blackwell School was finally shut down. A newly formed alliance kept the building from being demolished.

The school is now registered as a Texas historical site

it can never be torn down. Someday, when our grandkids come through here and they see that this building was here, it happened, you know, but we don't want to forget it. It was a bad time, but it's part of our history and it's something that did happen and why do you want to hide from it?

JOE CABEZUELA

We want to keep the memories of the present and those that have passed, that this is their school and this is their memorial. -I think it's a very important part of history. You cannot deny history. That would be denying who we are and what the United States is. A reunion to celebrate the newly restored Blackwell School building was organized. In 1954, a year before Giant arrived in Marfa, students at Blackwell were forced to bury their Spanish language. Today, they reclaim their heritage.

Whistling

JOE CABEZUELA

-My dad's passion for that probably is the reason why I'm the way that I am today, that I'm proud of who I am, that I speak Spanish, that I'm not ashamed of it, that I encourage it. We need to stand strong and remember those times, what our parents went through. It's history, it's history, and we need to be very proud of it. -And there it is! That's a Spanish dictionary! -

Applause

JOE CABEZUELA

We got Spanish. iYa tenemos espaol! This is from Elsa Cardenas.

I'll read it as written

"This picture has mean to me a lot, first because I had meet wonderful people like you that I'll will remember all my life and I wish to work with you again... but anyway, you have a place in my best thoughts and in my heart. Sincerely, Elsa Cardenas". She was adorable. She was so sweet. What a sweet gal. -There are very few of us left. Can you imagine, Boyd? So long ago -- On her last day in Marfa, the Blackwell School Alliance invited Elsa to visit the newly restored school. While filming Giant, Elsa was unaware that a segregated Mexican American school existed in Marfa. She's, in a way, iconic, right? For Mexican Americans. -"For contribution to Latino arts and culture in Marfa". She was so young, when she played that part, but she played it with such dignity. Elsa is one of these characters that really helps tell this story that is so meaningful to us.

Cheering and applause

Triumphant music swells

LORD

Giant retains extraordinary topicality today. In fact, it's surprising that an issue that was so topical in the middle 1950s has not gone away or been resolved.

RAMIREZ BERG

50, 60 years ago, things were very different, but a film like Giant, it's as relevant today as it's ever been, you know? For the window into the past and into our current situation. For more information on "Voces," please visit pbs.org/voces. "Children of Giant" is available on DVD. To order, visit shopPBS.org or call us at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.