A readable, delightful work of film/cultural history for movie fans.
A noted authority on all things Texas, Graham (English/Univ. of Texas, Austin; State of Minds: Texas Culture and Its Discontents, 2011, etc.) turns his attention to film with this authoritative tale of “Big Texas Oil” and the epic movie Giant (1956).
At the “top of his game” after A Place in the Sun (1951) and Shane (1953), George Stevens, the film’s “often inscrutable” director, was anxious to film Edna Ferber’s latest novel, Giant, about a Texas ranching empire and the clash between old ranch aristocracy and the new breed of oilmen. Hollywood was abuzz as the cast took shape. For the main part of Bick Benedict, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitchum, Charlton Heston, and Errol Flynn, among others, were passed over for Rock Hudson, who was popular with teenagers. For the role of Bick’s wife, Leslie, Stevens “had his heart set on Audrey Hepburn” and then Grace Kelly, but Elizabeth Taylor got the role: “Stevens didn’t choose Taylor so much as she chose him.” Alan Ladd, Marlon Brando, and Richard Burton were passed over for a young actor with “little-boy wounds…brash bad-boy behavior and exposed nerve endings,” the “rebel,” James Dean, as the “surly, resentful ranch hand Jett Rink.” Dean died during production. Graham recounts in detail filming in the small, still-segregated-by-“custom” town of Marfa, whose citizens would soon learn that the film was a “powerful indictment of racial intolerance in Texas, and in the United States.” Peppered throughout are lively profiles of the crew and actors, which also included Dennis Hopper and Carroll Baker. Cultural critic Rebecca Solnit called Giant “a freak: a wildly successful mid-1950s Technicolor film about race, class, and gender from a radical perspective, with a charismatic, unsubjugated woman at the center.” As Graham notes, the film “keeps finding new ways to speak to Americans across the decades.” Stevens won an Academy Award; Hudson and Dean got best actor nominations.
A readable, delightful work of film/cultural history for movie fans.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-06190-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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