Giant Love

Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film

By: Julie Gilbert

Narrated by: Maggi-Meg Reed

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • 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.

©2024 Julie Gilbert (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

A Most Anticipated Book from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Alta

“A tender and patient homage to a titan of American letters. . . . With [Gilbert’s] efforts, Ferber’s fire burns on.”—The New York Times

“A vivid portrait of the woman who produced a landmark novel that inspired a film that has become essential to modern cinema. . . . [A] beautifully rendered account of [Gilbert’s] great aunt and her famous novel [Giant].”—The Washington Post

“Scrupulously researched, profusely illustrated, and deftly written.”—Dallas Morning News

A remarkable telling of an epic novel and how it made it to the big screen... beautifully told...

Julie Gilbert gives intimate stories and her research is exquisite .. a story worth the telling.. and reading

Interesting content, shockingly poor writer

As Edna Ferber's great niece, Julie Gilbert recycles much content from her 1978 biography of Ferber and adds Ferber-less anecdotes about and/or from George Stevens, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Mercedes McCambridge, Carroll Baker, and many others connected with the making of the 1956 film "Giant." As a writer, Gilbert is a mediocre stylist who loves to use "ironically" incorrectly and constantly resorts to other tired and lazy cliches. Surprising for an allegedly professionally written and edited work, the book frequently strings together unrelated anecdotes without transitions or coherence. If you can tolerate all this, the content is interesting for Gilbert's knowledge of and personal relationship with Ferber and for the results of her research on the making of the film, although Don Graham's 2018 "Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber, and the Making of a Legendary American Film" is a much more professional, detailed, and satisfying take on the latter.