Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film

(Hardback)

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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. 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.

Reviews

A brilliant evocation of a remarkable woman and her achievements. One is left with the feelingEdna, thou shouldst be living (and writing) at this hour. We need you!
Barry Day, editor of The Letters of Noel Coward and author of Coward on Film

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. Ferbers earlier works, Show Boat and Cimarron, were just coming attractions for Giant. In Giant Love, Julie Gilbert writes the story of her grand-aunts novel, and especially of George Stevens 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

Author Bio

JULIE GILBERT was born in New York City and was educated at Boston University. She is the author of four books, among them a biography of her great aunt, Edna Ferber, Edna Ferber and Her Circle and Opposite Attraction- The Lives of Erich Maria Remarque and Paulette Goddard, Gilbert is a member of The Dramatists Guild, The Writers Guild of America, East, The Authors Guild, Actors' Equity, and League of Professional Theater Women. She has taught Creative Writing at New York University's School of Continuing Education and currently heads The Writers Academy at The Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida where she lives part time, as well as in New York City.