Q: It’s sixty years this month since the release of the film Giant (40th anniversary poster above). This was a big film in the 1950s, but never ranks among the likes of The Godfather, Casablanca, or Gone With The Wind as a twentieth century classic. But I know you’re going to tell us that it has cultural significance that escapes most of us.
A: It’s only what you’d expect from me, isn’t it? You can see a half-century of popular culture in Giant. Three mortal figures advance towards immortality in this film.
Q: Well, that’s quite a claim. Continue.
A: First, the story. Edna Ferber’s book Giant concerns an oil-and-ranching family modeled on the Kleberg family, who ran (and still run today) the vast King Ranch in South Texas. Giantis the story a simple cowhand who becomes a conniving, bigoted oil tycoon and cattle baron and his strong-willed wife, transplanted from the greenery of her native Maryland, who curbs his Southern vulgarities with her Eastern civility. Serialized in Ladies’ Home Journalbeginning in the spring of 1952, Giant was released that fall to immense sales, quickly leaping onto the New York Times best-seller list. But the film based on the novel secretes another story. Warner Brothers, having secured the rights – amid much competition from other studios – to Ferber’s work, cast Rock Hudson in the central role of Bick Benedict, the Texas rancher, Hudson, then 29, was what was known in the mid-1950s as “beefcake,” meaning an outstandingly handsome and muscular man who radiated heterosexual attractiveness. Montgomery Clift, also possessed of exceptional good looks, was earmarked for the role of Jett Rink, the poor dirt farmer who strikes it rich, thought to be based on Glenn McCarthy, who was a flamboyant oil millionaire, known as “King of the Wildcatters” (a wildcatter is a prospector who sinks exploratory oil wells). But the producers were suspicious of his drinking and opted for the then relatively untested method actor James Dean, who made East of Eden(1955) and seemed an acceptable risk. Dean was also handsome, but, in his case, haunted-looking, which was fashionably impressive – he looked, to use a term that originated at the time and has persisted since, cool.
Q: And the role of Leslie?
A: Grace Kelly was a natural for the role of Bick’s wife. The humble, blonde Philadelphia beauty who became Hollywood star had not yet fled to become a European princess and looked perfect. She was about as hot as it was possible to be at the time. She’d been in High Noon, Dial M for Murder and To Catch a Thief. The film’s director George Stevens had briefly considered Elizabeth Taylor, but, at 23, she seemed too young (Kelly was nearly two-and-a-half years older). The story goes that Hudson, possibly wary that hugely popular Kelly might steal his thunder, argued Taylor’s case and eventually got his way. Remember: Taylor was not yet the scandalizing hellcat she became, though, she had gone through her first unruly marriage and was now married to English actor Michael Wilding. But she had not yet taken on a role that was truly adult and the role demanded that she age an improbable twenty-five years over the course of Ferber’s saga.
Q: Now, you describe Hudson as beefcake. But he later became the first Hollywood star to die from Aids. He was gay, if memory serves. So?
A: This was the 1950s. America hadn’t even started contemplating repealing its sodomy laws, as they called them. Hudson was shut tight in the closet. In fact he was married to his agent’s assistant. In those days, they were called “lavender marriages,” meaning they were designed to remove suspicions about an actor’s sexual preferences.
Q: So, there were suspicions about Hudson?
A: In the film industry, for sure. But don’t forget, in the 1950s, Hollywood operated a smooth-functioning publicity operation and allowed only the information it wanted released to escape to the outside world. Had it become known that Hudson was gay – and he didn’t come out until only weeks before his death in 1985 – it would have killed off his professional career instantly.
Q: Did Taylor know?
A: Almost certainly. And, if she didn’t when they started filming, she would have known soon enough, if only because he didn’t make a move on her. She was one of the most desirable women in the world at the time and her marriage was apparently on the rocks. If there had been social media back then, we would have all got rolling reports on them.
Q: And Dean?
A: Well his heterosexual credentials were also called into question, though not as conspicuously as Hudson’s of course. Then again, there the gossip, rumour and hearsay surrounding Dean has never ceased. When someone dies, especially prematurely, it seems to provide the world with licence to think, say and share whatever they choose. Dean was killed in a road accident before filming had even finished. He’d completed his scenes and was driving his Porsche Spyder in Cholame, California. This was 1955. Dean (who was born in 1931), like Marlon Brando (born 1924) was one of those mid-20th century glamor-rebels challenging a society in the throes of a social, cultural and psychological adjustment to peacetime. Their political aspirations were captured in Brando’s answer to, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” in The Wild One (1953). “What’ve you got?” Elvis was another pin-up rebel without a cause, conviction or purpose. Dean, perhaps more than the others, encoded the mood of his generation. It was a generation that had not yet assimilated changes in the cultural politics of sex: Dean was unequivocally male and that meant his glazed handsomeness was intended to excite young women. It did. But that was just the visible tip of Dean’s ultra cool iceberg. The Dean myth grew bigger, appreciably bigger, than the man. Check this picture of him in crucifiorm mode, with Taylor looking at him almost worshipfully.
Q: Let me pause briefly to reflect: the film featured Hudson, who was, for all the world knew, a straight lady’s man, but who later took on iconic importance when he became the first Aids victim from the Hollywood A-list. There was also Taylor, who, at that time, was still four years away from her scandalous affair with Eddie Fisher, who was best man at her third wedding, and married to one of the world’s most popular girl-next-door types, Debbie Reynolds — and father of her children. And Dean, who died young and handsome and whose image was to adorn millions of posters, tee-shirts, coffee mugs and who was to become the subject of books and movies. He was one of those characters who, as they say, captured the zeitgeist.
A: Correct.
Q: I get it: they were all, in their own ways, icons of the late twentieth century.
A: Yes, though the affair with Fisher was only the start of the Taylor’s notoriety. In the early 1960s, she meet Richard Burton in Italy on the set of Cleopatra (see below). Still married to Fisher, she became involved with the Welsh actor, himself married and with children. The timing of the clandestine affair was perfect in a sense. The Italian photojournalists who later became known to us all as paparazzi were just beginning their exploits and caught Taylor and Burton in flagrante. The image quickly circulated around the world, heralding the arrival of a new type of journalism.
Q: And ultimately, the rise of what we now recognize as celebrity culture.
A: I’d say so. Now do you understand what I mean when I say Hudson, Taylor and Dean were three mortals advancing towards immortality? In a way, all three have left their impressions on our culture.
Q: What made you think of this?
A: I claim no credit. An American journalist Amanda Champagne, who writes for Closer, asked me to comment on the film as we approach its anniversary and, as I was thinking about the production, it occurred to me that the three main actors were far from cultural behemoths in 1956 when the film was released. But, over subsequent decades, each became colossally significant in completely different ways.
Q: What have the Paris Métro and the Oscar nomination list in common?
A: They’re for whites only. At least, it seemed that way this week. Chelsea fans forcibly prevented a black passenger from getting on the underground train as the proudly proclaimed they were racists after last Tuesday’s game in Paris (video above). And in the altogether more civilized environs of Hollywood, the Oscar ceremonies disregarded black artists, directors and production personnel, opting for all-white nominees. This surprised many considering the strong reviews for the movie Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay (pictured below with actors David Oyelowo, right, and Common). The snub wasn’t the result of some conspiracy to exclude African Americans. 12 Years a Slave, a film by a black director about black history, won best picture last year. But the absence of black people from this year’s awards, coming so soon after a series of incidents in the US in which young black people have been hurt or killed, seems to magnify how the so-called “race issue” did not disappear with the election of President Obama and the coming of the “colour blind society.”
Q: I guess, in the same way, we have been lulled into assuming the same “race issue” has gone from football. Some people can remember the late 1970s and 1980s, when black players first appeared in British football. In those days, the players were barracked and racially abused and it was commonplace to see far right political movements recruiting outside football stadiums. The kind of incident we saw in Paris could be seen on the streets of Britain all the time, some of the perpetrators being skinheads. Did it go, then come back, or has it never really been far away?
A: Racism has not been a constant presence in British football. It certainly declined in the early 1990s with the rise of the Premier League and the great black players who became stars of the game. The sport became glamorous and, for a long period, it did look like its racist history was just that — history. But, since 2011, there has been a constant stream of incidents, some on the field, some among the fans, and many in social media, that have reminded us that racism has been lurking not far beneath the surface. Now it appears it has returned to visibility.
Q: It almost defies rational explanation, doesn’t it?
A: Almost. But consider this: football and Hollywood are, in their own, different ways, cultural institutions, started by white men (not women) and intended, largely, for other whites. Even in the early days of Hollywood, there were few opportunities for black actors and audiences were typically white. Today the academy that awards the Oscars has been around 93 percent white, 76 percent male and an average of 63 years old. Football is a little older than Hollywood, emerging in the 1860s in England (at least in the way we understand the sport), while Hollywood’s film industry emerged in the early decades of the 20th century. Again, the people who played the game and those who watched were almost exclusively white.There is still what we might call a white establishment in football: it is governed mainly by white men. So we shouldn’t be misled by the number of black players we see in the modern game. The hierarchy of football is dominated by whites. You only have to remind yourself about the recent debate over the scarcity of black managers and the debate over the Rooney Rule to understand how black people in football are meant to be strictly players and not in positions of authority.
Q: So has there been no progress?
A: Oh yes, plenty. But you have to bear in mind that slavery was around in the 1600s and the kind of beliefs and attitudes we associate with racism have been forming, not just for a few decades, but for centuries. I think it’s foolish to think racism is a single mindset that has been frozen in time: compare the situation now with how it was in the UK in the 1980s, for example. The point is that racist ideas are like fingerprints: even though we sometimes can’t see them with the naked eye, their impressions or marks are still there and, under certain conditions, they become visible. Obviously, they were in evidence in Paris. Less so in Hollywood, but perhaps the absence of black people from the Oscars is just as powerful a reminder that we shouldn’t be complacent about racism: it needs to be opposed in its every manifestation.
