Jay's KINDRED SPIRITS Post - Giant Love - Edna Ferber and James Dean - and Elizabeth Taylor, Too

   Last week, I read a book called Giant Love.   Giant, as in James Dean's last movie.   On the bookcover, Jimmy D is seated in the backseat of a vintage car in the middle of a barren cotton field. In this movie, he plays Jett Rink, a poverty-stricken farmhand, who works for an arrogant Texas cattle baron.   This rich bastard, portrayed by Rock Hudson, lives in the big house situated in the far background. Jimmy/Jett must be stretched out in the big boss’s car!  It’s clear from the beginning of this movie that Jett is killing himelf to get just a little bit ahead, but in this picture he looks pretty cool.  His cowboy hat is tilted forward to shield his eyes from the sun.  He’s removed his gloves and holding them out in his outstreched hand.  His legs are are elevated and resting on the front seat.  He’s cool, because he’s confident.  Although there is nothing in his life to hint that he will ever make it out of there, in this picture, he looks like he’s thinking about it.  He’s a dreamer.  He's a believer.  I mean, he’s James Dean.

Wait, I’m leaving out something important about this bookcover. Embedded inside the letter “O” in the word “Love” in the title of this book, I see a black and white  portrait of a middle-aged women’s face.  That’s Edna Ferber.  She’s the best-selling author of the novel Giant that the film is based upon. Edna is sporting a shallow-crowned hat adorned with huge black ribbons.  A matching black veil comes down to just below her nose – just enough to shade the eyes and add a touch of mystery. At first glance, I thought the book would be about Jimmy D, but that’s not the case.  For the first two hundred pages or so, it’s all about Edna: her dreams, her ambition, her courage, her devotion to her art.

I GET IT.  The book is written by Edna’s grandniece, Julie Gilbert.  The author looks at her aunt with the same AWE I maintain for Jimmy D.   When I think of Edna and Jimmy D, I think KINDRED SPIRITS.  I gradually got into this book, for I was sure it was going somewhere.  In reading about  Edna, I was going to learn more about Jimmy D.  They are both relentless in their pursuit of the truth.  They don’t back down, no matter what anyone tells them. This was going to be a Goodread.  I was sure of it.  I enjoyed reading about Edna’s formative years.  She grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin.  I know that town, for I have read biographies of Harry Houdini.  Wouldn’t you know it?  Edna and Harry attended the same high school at the same time.  Harry’s name was Erich Weiss at the time.  I don’t think they knew each other on a personal level, but as Erich turned into Harry, master showman, Edna developed into a world class writer, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her novel So Big.

Currently, I’m at a point in my semester teaching where my students are beginning to whine about the amount of work I assign.  I’ve never known how to respond to excuses for not completing their work.  Many, if not most, of my students come from immigrant families.  English is there second language.  Believe me, I understand their frustration.  I myself spend a significant portion of the day leaning how to write in Spanish.  But, instead of making things EASIER for them, I unfortunately tend to make things HARDER. To help them raise their game,  I end up giving them MORE WORK. I want to say, “You are not ALONE.”   Nothing is EAZY.  Now, after reading GIANT LOVE,  I just may share a story or two in the classroom about Jimmy D and Edna F.  They both  learned about failure at an early age. I’m going to continue my name-dropping here.  Edna’s start in literature reminds me of another favorite writer, Stephen King.    Like Stephen K, Edna was both a voracious reader and a relentless writer. In the 1920s, She may have been the same age as Stephen K when she attempted her first novel.   Like Stephen K, she became completely submerged in her story.   When she wrote, she projected herself into the setting of her stories; she  lived the lives of her characters.  Writing was her life.

When I read Stephen King, I see the same type of intensity.  You just don’t know where the author stops and the story begins.Stephen King became so frustrated with the writing of his first novel Carrie that he eventually threw the manuscript away in a wastebasket and then went out got hammered. That’s it, he must have thought. It’s over, like “I gave it my best try, but I’m just an alcoholic loser…” Later that night, however, destiny struck when he came home on a bender to find his wife waiting for him. This time, she wasn’t going to kill him – she had found “Carrie” in the wastebasket, and spent the whole night reading it. She thought it was great and encouraged him to finish it. I’m not sure if he quit drinking that night, but he started writing again. Eventually he became one of our nation’s most celebrated literary figures.

Edna F would know how Stephen King felt.  At age 24, she completed her first novel, Dawn O’Hara: The Girl Who Laughed,  but far from feeling a sense of accomplishment, she felt a sense of dread. I don’t think there was any drugs or alcohol involved, but once reading her finished product for the first time, she hurled it into the trash. Unlike Stephen King, Edna was not married.  In fact, she never married. Her great niece, the biographer, believes her life as a spinster may have had to do something with her total commitment to her art.  At the time she threw her novel in the wastebasket, she was still living at home in Appleton Wisconsin.  Luckily for her, her mother found her novel and read it. She promptly sent it off to a leading New York publisher.   A few years later, they were Edna’s writing was appearing in the best literary magazines across the country.  President Theodore Roosevelt became one of her biggest fans.  He once said, “She is the best woman writer of her day in America.”

  I’m not writing a book report here about Edna F, nor am I going to rehash the life of Jimmy D, but I did take the time to watch the film Giant as I was reading this book.  Legendary Hollywood director George Stevens brought the film to the big screen in decade of the fifties.  This couldn’t have been an easy task, given the racial and gender hatred embedded in Edna’s novel.  In Marfa, Texas, the setting and location of the Giant film shoot,  the locals must have been restless.   If they had read the movel, they couldn’t have been to comfortable of the picture Edna painted of Marfa’s people, history, and traditions.  I mean, who was this Edna F to tell their story.  Giant may have been promoted as a beautiful love story between Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, but the screen quickly filled up with ugly racial hatred and gender bias.  The Mexicans in this movie were cruelly treated.  They lived a life of hard work and terrible poverty.  For the most part, they were treated with contempt by the wealthy landowners like Rock Hudson.  Edna weaved this theme into the story, for this is what she saw with her own eyes in her ten years researching the novel.

This is why I want to close this post with Edna's fight with the studios to enhance Elizabeth Taylor's role in this movie. Edna know first-hand what it was like to battle the sexist interpretations and attitudes of her own industry.  She must have projected herself into the Elizabeth's role as the outsider in the story of Giant.  Elizabeth played Leslie, the Virginia woman who was swept off her feet and married to a rich and arrogant Texas landowner. As long as I’m here, I’m going to include Liz as another KINDRED SPIRIT of Edna and Jimmy D.  I’ve never seen any fear or intimidation in the way she conducted her life or played her parts. In the story of Giant, Liz/Leslie seems to be shunned and disrepected by her male counterparts, and she’s having NONE of IT.  In Giant, there is a Sunday Afternoon Scene in the Big House, where Liz’s husband holds his hand out and steers her away from the “men talk” he was discussing with his neighbors and business partners. To the other side of the room, there were women knitting quietly.  I think one of them may be working on her stamp collection.  The message is clear to all viewers:  In Texas, women were there to look pretty and stay quiet.  When Liz looked over from the men to the women, she understood she was being shut out.  But WAIT!  In her mind, she had done nothing wrong. She was as STRONG and INTELLEGENT as any of the men.  But I think that’s Edna’s point.  In this day and age, what other choice did a woman have but TAKE IT.  Liz had nowhere to turn.   I mean, she was married to the BIGGEST PENDEJO in the room.

As soon as the production of Giant had ended, Jimmy D just couldn’t wait to drive his new Porsche Spyder racing car up route 99 from L.A. to Salinas.  His Hollywood contract stated clearly he was forbidden to drive this car during the filming of Giant, but now that the filming was over, and all he had left to do was voice-overs – that’s not considered “filming,” is it? - this mean’t he was FREE.  Free to do what he wanted. He planned to register his new car and win this weekend in a professional race. He didn’t make it past Paso Robles. It was nearing 5:00 p.m., close to dusk, Jimmy D was of course driving the Spyder at wrecklessly high speed across a deserted stretch of road where Routes 46 and 41 intersect.  He was forced to hit the brakes when a young driver in a station wagon  coming from the opposite direction failed to see his approach.  Jimmy flipped the Spyder! He suffered a broken neck in the head-on collision. He was pronounced Dead On Arrival at a hospital in nearby Paso Robles.

Two days later Elizabeth Taylor was called back to the studio to do a voiceover for a scene she had done with Jimmy D.  She was devastated by the death of her close friend. She was nearly at the point of a nervous breakdown when they told her they couldn’t delay the session.  She would be obligated to come into the studio and respond to a recording of Jimmy D’s voice.   Elizabeth Taylor was a Big Star.  Of course, the studio did everything to accommodate her in her time of grief.  When the asked her if she was OK, she screeched “FUCK YOU!” and then she  nailed her lines.

To Edna and Jimmy D, Liz was a KINDRED SPIRIT.