My father said something very interesting about filmmaking.
He was a director.
But he said, if you divide filmmaking into three parts...
the preparation of the script, casting, and all of the things that go before...
the second is directing the actors and the actual shooting of the film...
and the third being...
the editing, all of the postproduction, the publicity and the release of the film.
He said, "If you put a gun to my head and said you have to give up...
"one of those three functions..."
he said, "I'd give up the directing."
He said, "If the script is right, and they shoot some film...
"and I can get in the editing room with it, I can make it work."
In Hollywood, a new high for glamour is reached...
as Warner Brothers premieres George Stevens' production Giant...
based on the novel by Edna Ferber.
An unprecedented turnout of more than 2,000 screen celebrities...
other noted personalities and press representatives arrive...
at the famed Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard...
in a formal, invitational event that dazzles 10,000 spectators...
under a canopy ofsky-reaching searchlights.
Three great star names in Giant...
Elizabeth Taylor...
Rock Hudson, James Dean.
And here in the forecourt of the theater...
are the footprints and handprints ofGiant's stars...
and producer/director, George Stevens.
George had always tried to do stories with great conscience.
A Place in the Sun was a tremendous moral story.
Shane was a wonderful film.
He was a distinctly American director.
He had a sense of the country and a sense of the land.
That's why I think Giant was very important to him.
George Stevens, as a director, was 10-plus!
As a human being...
he was very special, and he was also a 10 or a 10-plus.
George was wonderful with actors.
He was tough on crew.
He could be tough because he was a perfectionist, and he demanded a lot...
but with actors, he just had a wonderful camaraderie.
He had a way of becoming whatever your character was when he talked to you.
And I remember, the main scene I had in the picture was Christmas morning...
when Bick talks to Bob Dace about taking over the ranch eventually.
And I bring out my greetings from President Roosevelt...
and say I can't because I've been drafted.
And I remember George...
doing the entire scene, and we shot it from every conceivable angle.
I mean, literally, from the backs of our heads we even shot it.
But every time we shot that scene, every time I'd bring out the greetings...
I would hear George snickering off-stage and off-camera.
He was so enthusiastic, and it was catching for actors.
He was a joy to work with.
I asked a lot of people who had worked with him:
"What's it like to work with him?"
And they all, to one, said:
"Just make yourself a piece of putty, and put yourself in his hands...
"and he'll do it all."
He also had great skill at working in the editing room...
to help actors...
in terms of performance, as it were, protecting them...
by choosing the right takes...
by maybe not being on their face...
on a scene they're having trouble with at a certain part of it.
He would go to great pains...
to go all the way around, over this way and that way...
to make me think it's my idea, so that I'd come up to him and say, "George...
"I have a good idea for this scene. " He'd say, "What's that, Rock?"
And I'd tell him. And he'd say, "Yes. That's a good idea. "
And it was his all along.
And he caught me every time.
Every time.
But it was really true, what everybody said.
"Make yourself a piece of putty, and put yourself in his hands and rely on him."
I was in a very good position...
when the Giant proposal came up...
because, as I said, I had just starred on Broadway.
I had gotten wonderful reviews.
I was getting starring parts on television shows.
But I was a little bit scared of movies.
I had several other offers, but I decided...
I'd rather take it a little easy.
I'd rather have a part that didn't have to carry the film...
in which I had a great director, a great master to guide me through.
I walked in the door and...
now this is what he said, because I don't use this language.
He said, "Jane, you're going to make a hell of a Vashti Snythe."
I said, "I beg your pardon?"
He said, "You're going to be Vashti Snythe in Giant."
I said, "Oh, my land alive! "
I said, "No, Mr. Stevens.
"When I said I wanted to share thoughts with you...
"I meant about the book and the different characters."
He said, "You'll get a good chance to find out...
"because we're going to be on the picture for quite a while."
I said, "No! I'm a mama now, and I take care of three kids.
"I haven't worked in a long time."
He said, "We'll have to do something about changing that."
It's an interesting story, how he came to this cast.
I don't know all of the details...
because I was apart from it when the casting was going on.
I know that he talked with Audrey Hepburn.
I understand he talked with Grace Kelly.
There was talk of Bill Holden.
Why those didn't work out, or whether they did...
those two parts were very sought-after parts.
But what I think is fascinating about the film, when you think ofit...
is that he chose to go forward with...
Rock Hudson, who was 28, Elizabeth Taylor, who was 23...
and James Dean, who was 23...
to play a story that covers 30 years.
Let's see, 1955?
I was 29, I think.
29, yeah.
And I had to be....
In the movie I had to be in the young 20s, 23 or 24 or 25.
And then middle age, I guess 45 to 50.
And then older age, I guess 65 to 70, about.
Incidentally, I don't know if I had told you this.
A couple of years ago I was in Chicago.
Giant was being run on television at night, and I'd just come back from the theater.
I don't like to watch films on television...
particularly those that I am involved with.
But I was curious.
And so...
I knew when I would be the 45 to 50-year-old age...
about the same time I tuned in to look.
And I looked at myself...
and ran to the mirror and looked, and it was exactly the same...
including where the gray is, where most of the gray is.
To a tee. It was exactly.
So now I know what I'm going to look like when I'm 70.
It used to be, in Hollywood, that they would take mature actors...
and when they had to shoot the young parts...
make them up to look young and give them...
special lighting, special lenses, and so forth.
George had the idea to take young people...
because Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and Jimmy Dean...
were all in their 20s...
and, as the film progressed, to age them.
So that was kind of a revolutionary thing to do.
One of the characteristics that marked my father...
was a tremendous self-confidence in terms of making films.
In getting from Los Angeles to the location of Giant...
in Marfa, Texas, we went on this one splendiferous train.
A big, long train with everybody on it.
It was an incredibly fun...
and interesting event just to get there, because there were so many of us.
We had Elizabeth Taylor playing, and she was 24 years old at the time.
I must say that I was, besides becoming really a friend....
I mean, she was such a sweetheart.
I had such great respect for her...
for what she did in that movie.
Here's a 24-year-old young actress, playing at the end of the movie...
so believably that older Leslie Benedict.
She was wonderful.
I knew Elizabeth when we were children...
but I hadn't seen her in, well, I hadn't seen her for three babies...
and I think she had two sons at the time maybe.
One thing that brought us right away close together were our children.
Because we were both concerned, as parents, of leaving our kids at home.
So that was an immediate sharing of thoughts and feeling together...
togetherness as two mommies who were working parents...
who had their kids at home.
Then we both discovered we loved flowers.
I am a flower freak!
We were on the train, we were peeping out the windows and she said:
"Is that yucca out there?" And I said, "I think it is! "
Both of us were wild about yucca.
Mr. Stevens came over and said, "What's all the giggling about, girls?"
I said, "We just spotted some yucca growing.
"And we can't see it. It's so far away. But it's just wonderful! "
He said, "You want some yucca?"
I said, "How would that be possible?" He said, "I think we can work it out."
He went out, some cord was pulled, and the whole train stopped.
And I have wonderful home movies. I'm so thrilled to have them...
with Elizabeth, who looks so beautiful, holding the yucca up.
So many things happened that were fun, and all happy memories.
It was the very beginning of the film...
and the night before, Elizabeth, very nicely, had asked...
my then future wife and I to come over...
to she and Michael Wilding's house for dinner...
and have an evening of getting acquainted.
"It's going to be a long time together," and so forth.
It was very nice and very polite of her to do so, and we did.
And we had a wonderful time.
And it was a very liquid evening.
And several martinis later...
suddenly we realize it's 3:00 in the morning.
And we have to get up and go to work and shoot this wedding scene.
Elizabeth had to get up, I guess, at 5:30.
Girls don't have it as lucky as guys do.
I had to get up around 6:30 or something.
But we both were so dreadfully hung-over.
We had to shoot this scene, this highly emotional scene.
Not a word to each other, but just look at each other.
Moony-faced.
We shot the scene, and the hairdressers...
and the wardrobe girls and everyone were over there crying and carrying on.
The truth is we were just so hung-over that we couldn't do anything but just look.
My father made A Place in the Sun...
which was the first really mature role...
that Elizabeth had played, and that was a wonderful experience.
And of course, it was a great film and a great role for her.
So when Giant came along...
I think he knew that he'd been to the well with her...
and thought that she would be good for this part.
And she really did a wonderful job.
Like Rock, she had to age 25 or 30 years...
and go into territory that she hadn't been before.
I got some great pictures of Elizabeth.
One favorite is in the movie film, but I have some wonderful black-and-whites.
She was always saying, for me clowning, saying, "Darling! "
I have a lot of "Darling! " of Elizabeth that I just love...
in different outfits, as she grew older through the film.
I think Elizabeth was so wonderful for the part...
because one of the things that she does best...
is this haughty rich girl.
To see this lush, green country that she came from in Virginia...
where she rode horses, and she was the queen...
and then to see this flower from the East...
taken into the stark Texas countryside...
where there was nothing but dust and sagebrush and so forth.
It was a wonderful contrast.
I think she had some marvelous scenes that she did very well.
Although I feel that as an actress...
Elizabeth really came into her own a little bit later.
It was a question of her, too, not quite having the confidence.
People used to say to her, "Use your hands more. Move a little more."
She didn't quite have the confidence to do that.
She had had that MGM training where nothing moves...
where you're just beautiful, but you're very still.
There was Elizabeth and there was Rock. I think Rock felt...
that was the best work he'd ever done by far.
I loved Rock Hudson. I loved him as a person.
He was a delicious human being, kind, thoughtful...
conscientious about his fellow workers.
I used to visit the set occasionally when he was working.
I knew Rock, not well. I always liked him.
But I thought, "Thank you, God."
He's finally getting the opportunity to share the talent he's always had...
but never had the proper words, script or lyrics to share with the public...
to show them what he was really capable of doing.
I thank God that George Stevens saw that in him and gave him that chance...
because I think it's the best film he ever did.
I loved him.
I followed him around like a puppy.
I worshipped that man.
And so I saw...
perhaps a little more than maybe other people did.
He was handsome and sensuous...
and marvelous as the young man.
And then I thought he really excelled...
as the elder man. I thought he did a wonderful job.
He was inspired by the part, inspired by George Stevens.
I thought he did a wonderful job.
Toward the end of the movie, when he had to wear the extra weight and padding...
everything showed in the long underwear!
But he'd do the Charleston and everything, just for my home movies...
which was very different than his character on-screen...
as Bick Benedict, whom he played in Giant.
Rock Hudson was 28 years old and hadn't played very demanding roles.
It was early in his career.
Here he had to age from 28 to 58.
And toward the end of the picture...
they would build him up in here with padding...
and make him heavier, and some gray in the hair.
There's a scene where he has an argument with Dennis Hopper late in the film.
I was on the set the day they did it here at the studio.
Dad had asked Rock to look at some Spencer Tracy pictures...
to get a feeling of how an actor....
Thinking that Tracy had a quality of an older man...
that would be useful to Rock.
He and Dennis took this scene. It's a scene where they have an argument.
They rehearsed it. They walked around.
Dad would always just go on the set and let them do it.
He wouldn't say, "You stand there, you sit here."
They were going around having at it, and they did it for a little while.
Dad used to say that he liked to let actors rehearse and run through things a while...
until they felt the need for a little assistance.
Rather than coming in and saying, "Here's the way you do it."
And he said to Rock, "I'd like you to sit in that chair."
And Rock went over and sat in this straight, small chair...
and then they did the scene.
Rock played the scene, and then he got out of the chair when it got heated.
Dad said, "Cut."
He said, "Rock, I want you to stay in that chair for the entire scene."
It was such a wonderful thing, because when you see that scene...
Rock is sitting in that chair, and he is an old man...
and the young boy has the vitality.
It was just one touch...
that made that scene work for Rock.
That's an example of how a director can help an actor.
I don't know how other actors felt.
I loved working with George. It was terrific.
When we sat down to do the scene with Rock...
he called me into Rock Hudson's dressing room...
and he was giving Rock liquor.
It was about 9:00 in the morning.
He was going to do the scene all day long where Rock was in his cups...
or Bick was in his cups.
He was giving him shots, getting old Bick into the mood.
He begins to talk. He says, "I wonder what this old son of a bitch wants."
This is George talking.
I kept thinking, what is it?
And I realized he was being Bob Dace.
You know, "What does this son of a bitch want?"
This was the way he was giving me direction, he suddenly became Bob Dace.
There was only one scene that I was in with Jimmy...
and Rock and Elizabeth.
When he had discovered oil...
and he came barreling up in his truck and had oil all over him.
They really had to plan it just like a dance routine.
They had to do the choreography of the scene and how it was going to go.
It took a great deal of time in planning that scene.
It was a very important scene in the film, one of the most important.
But it was the only time the whole ensemble of the cast were together.
But Rock and Jimmy, I have pictures that I took of them...
that I'm very proud of.
Rock always had this great sense of humor and fun.
He was always that way.
Jimmy was very stern...
and very concentrating on what he was doing, which was understandable.
I think they could have been real special friends if they'd had the time to be.
The only one who was unhappy about his aging was Jimmy.
It wasn't that he minded aging.
He didn't feel...
that he accomplished what he wanted to accomplish.
He felt that he sort oflet those scenes down in which he was an older man.
As a matter of fact...
in the scene where we see him drunk and destroyed in the ballroom...
he was very unhappy with that scene...
and asked George if he could shoot it over and over and over again.
My uncle, Chill Wills, and I were standing at a partially opened door...
and watching this.
This was a big thing for Luz to see.
It's kind of the demise of her hero.
Jimmy, in the rushes, came up to George Stevens...
and said, "I wish that you would cut me out of that scene as much as possible...
"because everything that there is to say is on Carroll Baker's face."
And that was a lovely thing to say.
He did appreciate other actors, other artists.
In the beginning, I was naturally very interested in Jimmy as an actor...
and as a person. I'd never met him.
He stayed very much to himself...
and was very distant.
I thought, "Okay, I will respect that and his privacy. "
So I stayed very distant.
But he was the only one, because everybody else were like teddy bears.
I love teddy bears.
It took a while for us to finally kind of share thoughts.
But he didn't allow that.
If I would just say even, "Good morning," he'd say, "Hi"...
and sort of roll his eyes and so on...
but nothing in the way of communication.
So finally, I was taking pictures, as I usually do, of everybody...
and having a wonderful time.
Finally he came up to me one day, and he said:
"You don't take any pictures of me."
And I said, "I wouldn't think of it.
"You obviously enjoy being by yourself...
"because you never come around and mingle with us, especially me. "
And I said, "I try very hard...
"to respect people's wishes as best I can."
I said, "I wouldn't dream of bothering you in any way, shape or form."
"That's all right." He said, "If you want to take some pictures of me, I don't mind."
I said, "Honest lnjun? That would be super. I'd love that."
So that was the beginning. That was the first step.
And the steps came more regularly and more often.
I'd say, "Jimmy, tell me a story."
He had a big thing about the end justifying the means.
But he also told me a story about...
how one day when he was driving in the hot desert...
during this hot summer in Texas, and it gets really hot.
It was one of those blacktop highways.
He came upon a wreck. There had been an accident.
A black man who had been injured was lying out on the side of the highway...
in this hot, boiling Texas sun.
And it took an hour...
for them to get an ambulance there to help him, and the man was hurt.
Jimmy stood over him...
and afforded him shade for that hour.
To shade his face so he wouldn't be lying in that boiling sun.
He was very touched by the fact that the church...
the preacher, the minister had spoken about that, about his humanity...
about stopping on the side of the road to help somebody.
He was very touched by the fact that they had talked about it in church.
I couldn't believe all that he went through before he did a scene.
He'd limber up his shoulders and shake his fingers...
and I'd look at him in awe.
Finally one day, I thought, I've got to find out what all of that is about.
I went up and I said, "Jimmy?
"Will you answer a question for me?"
And he said, "Sure. What is it?"
I said, "Why do you do all of this...
"bend over and limber up your shoulders or whatever you're doing?"
He said, "To get in the mood."
I said, "To get in the mood for what?"
He said, "For what I'm supposed to do."
I said, "Oh."
He said, "You never do anything."
I said, "Oh, you've noticed that.
"I've never seen anything like what you've done ever before.
"Is this part of Method acting? I'm sorry.
"I've never had any acting lessons in my life.
"I just do what my heart tells me.
"I don't know any other way to do it.
"I try to think about what character I'm supposed to be...
"and what that person would think of, in the characterization...
"and try my best to do it."
And he said, "That's a good idea."
Jimmy was just finding his own as a star.
I think he had a little bit of a complex.
He kind of made fun of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson...
because they didn't come from the Actor's Studio.
They weren't, in his opinion, the great white hope of Broadway...
or anything that he might have been.
There was some jealousy there.
I think, although he was treated equally in every way...
I think he was always too concerned...
about whether he was being given equal treatment...
to everybody else, and yet...
I found with George that he was just as kind...
to the smallest parts.
Wonderful small parts like Sal Mineo...
who was an adorable, wonderful actor...
and Earl Holliman, who was doing one of his first films.
George was kind and good to everybody.
I think he really treated us all as equals.
The one thing that George did was, he wanted to have...
his actors ready and on set at all times.
I certainly didn't resent it.
I can't imagine that many of the other actors did.
I think Jimmy resented it. He thought, "He doesn't think I'm important enough.
"Therefore, he calls me all the time...
"when I'm not needed." Actually, George did that with everyone.
Dad had his way of working, which was to take his time.
Jimmy was a young man in a hurry...
and I think he got impatient...
with the pace of things, but Dad always cared about the result.
Jimmy brought a great deal to that role...
a kind of imagination, and he was a very hard-working actor.
He figured things out. He worked with his little rope.
He worked at his wardrobe.
I don't think it ever crossed Dad's mind...
that Jimmy Dean wasn't the right person for that part.
I think he gave kind of a great edge and excitement...
to the film in the way he played it.
Carroll Baker is a very unique lady now.
She was a very unique young lady then...
when we made Giant.
When I first showed up on the Warner Brothers lot...
first of all, I came from New York.
It was going to be my first film.
Warner Brothers was going to put me under contract.
They sent me a ticket, they put me up in a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard.
I arrived at the gate, and I gave my name...
and the guard wouldn't let me in. He'd never heard of me.
There I saw, a few minutes later...
Jimmy Dean come up on his motorcycle.
Interesting, because I guess a lot of people...
are on motorcycles these days, but it was kind of...
a big, exciting thing for someone to be on a motorcycle then.
He put me on the back and drove me around the lot.
Showed me the lot.
Mr. Stevens used to say I was sort of the hostess...
and the heart and soul. In his autograph to me in my book...
he said, "You're the heart and soul of Giant."
He never wanted me to leave very much.
He always wanted me to stay around on the set, even when I wasn't working.
So I felt I was very helpful to Earl...
when he first came in on the picture.
I got a call from my agent.
I had done a movie called Broken Lance with Spencer Tracy, playing his son.
George Stevens was looking for...
Iocations where they could shoot Giant.
They were running Broken Lance to look at Nogales, New Mexico.
I understand that George, when he saw me doing one of the scenes I was doing...
with Spencer Tracy...
turned to his assistant and said, "I want to use that boy in Giant."
So he called my agent, and my agent called me...
and told me, and I got the book immediately and read it.
They said they wanted me for the role of Bob Dace.
Bob Dace is mentioned once in the book.
He's four years old. He's out picking mountain oysters...
when they're making steers out of the bulls.
I thought, "That's not a part. That's no part."
They said, eventually, that George wanted to see me.
They had, in the meantime, started shooting the film in Virginia...
and I had to come back to do the interiors of the Virginia stuff...
at the studio, at Warner Brothers.
They said, "George Stevens would like you to come and see him this afternoon...
"at such and such a time."
I said, "I really don't want to do the picture...
"'cause there's no part."
They said, "Go talk to him anyway. You can tell him, but talk to him."
I came out, and they were shooting the interior.
They were shooting the dinner scene, where Elizabeth...
kind of attacks Rock...
or Leslie attacks Bick...
about how we took Texas away from the Mexicans.
While they were re-lighting, George took me around...
and we walked around the block.
I needed to tell him that I appreciated the interest...
but there was no part. I got to tell you...
he started talking about how he saw this as a Booth Tarkington character.
Anybody who has ever met George knows what a charmer he was.
By the time we got through with our walk around the studio...
I would have done anything for him.
So that's how I got into Giant.
I never once told him the part was small.
I didn't have the guts after that. I was thrilled to be working with him.
My history with Giant was that I had graduated from college...
and was supposed to go into the Air Force...
but the Korean War ended, so I had one year with nothing to do.
I spent most of that year working with my father on the screenplay.
He and Fred Guiol and lvan Moffat would meet each day...
out in Dad's apartment on Riverside Drive...
in North Hollywood, and we'd sit and work on the screenplay.
Then my time came to go into the Air Force...
and I had time to serve my two years in the Air Force...
visit the locations in Charlottesville, Virginia...
Marfa, Texas, and here at the studio...
serve my time and get out just in time to work with my father...
on the completion of the editing...
the scoring of the music with Dimitri Tiomkin here on the Warner lot...
and the release of the picture.
I was in Marfa for about six weeks.
I remember when I arrived there.... It's out in the middle of nowhere.
It's a tiny little town. A cattle town.
One of the really strange things about it...
is that Marfa was so small, and we had a very large crew...
and a very large cast.
There weren't really any living accommodations.
A lot of people had to live quite far out of town.
I lived in a house with five of the actresses...
Fran, who played my sister, and Jane Withers...
and Mercedes McCambridge.
I'm trying to think who else. I was one of them, of course.
There was one other. Five of us in this house.
I had just recently been married.
I was only married like four months. My husband couldn't come to visit.
This was a house of all girls, and there was no place to put him up.
I'm not sure he quite believed me when I said this.
He called the company, and actually George spoke to him...
privately, too.
This was the situation. Nobody could bring their husbands or wives.
There just wasn't any space.
We worked very long hours, all day long.
At night, there wasn't anything for anybody to do.
That's why we started what the crew called "Withers USO."
Everybody came to my little house that Mr. Stevens rented for me...
and that's where we had Monopoly marathons...
and bridge tournaments and croquet tournaments...
and crazy things to keep everybody busy at night.
We had a good time there.
Rock would come almost every night.
Jimmy wouldn't come. Dear Gussy, Jimmy wouldn't come...
until everybody left and went home.
Then the first time I found him there, I dang near died.
I was closing up the house, putting all the Coca-Cola bottles...
and stuff in the kitchen...
and I heard something in the back spare bedroom.
I thought, "What is that?"
I went to investigate, and I opened the door, and do you know what I found?
There was Jimmy Dean on one of the twin beds.
The window was up. It was one of those up and down windows...
the old-fashioned kind.
He had put the window up, and come in the window...
was laying on the twin bed with his hands behind his head...
with a hat all slouched down in front of him.
I said, "What in the world are you doing?"
He said, "I wanted to wait until everybody left so I could talk to you."
I said, "Heavens to Betsy, you didn't have to do that.
"From now on, sonny boy, you come in the front door like everybody else."
He said, "No, I think I like it this way."
I said, "Really?"
I went into the other room and got a hammer and nails.
I came and I hammered the two windows in that room shut.
I said, "You come in the front door, or you don't come at all."
My father was a man of the West, raised in San Francisco.
His parents had been actors in the theater at the turn of the century.
As a young man, he went out into Montana and Utah...
at first as a camera loader, and then an assistant cameraman...
and he actually lived with Westerners, cowboys...
who still dated back to that period.
He always had a great feeling for the West.
In his films, he went to tremendous lengths...
for authenticity.
That the clothes looked real. He never liked to call....
They refer to the costume department. He always called them clothes.
If you look at James Dean, Jett Rink...
the clothes he wears, they're clothes he's lived in.
The sweat and the band of the hat...
and the dirt.
Dad would always say that a man like this only has two shirts.
So those shirts would be worn...
and stained, and look lived in.
When you take a Hollywood company...
into a town, a small town...
they can be very put off by that company.
Not Marfa.
The first night, they said, "Do you want to go see the rushes?"
I said, "Sure."
We went to the old theater. It's no longer there. It burned down.
This old theater. They were running hours and hours...
of the barbecue...
and they used all these people from Marfa in the barbecue as extras.
It seemed forever. So much footage of just cattle.
Elizabeth and Rock sitting on their horses watching cattle.
It seemed to me the entire town had turned out...
and was sitting in that theater. It was packed. You couldn't get a seat.
That was so smart of George to do that.
He made the town feel like they were really in on the joke...
that they were a part of this movie.
The entire time we were there, that's the kind of reception we got.
People felt like they were a part of the company.
They never resented us being there at all.
It was a dusty, one-horse town, a one-street town.
I don't know what Marfa is today.
It's probably a metropolitan area. I don't know.
Everybody wore blue jeans and so forth.
Elizabeth would arrive when everybody else had finished eating.
My mouth used to just drop open...
every night, because she would show up in the most glamorous wardrobe...
for this rather dingy dining room.
She'd have on white chiffon with sparkles...
or she'd have on black chiffon with ermine tails.
Every night, as long as we were there...
and we were there a couple of months...
she had a different dress on every night, different jewelry.
Jimmy and I ate dinner together...
and he always made fun of this.
But I could see that he was really impressed...
with her, with what he thought was Old Hollywood...
that he wasn't a part of, that he'd never known.
Elizabeth used to come in with Rock Hudson.
After a while, Jimmy found a way...
not during dinner, because he would have been too embarrassed...
by the fancy clothes, and walking into the dining room...
with Elizabeth and all this hoopla and so forth....
But after dinner, Jimmy found a way...
of getting together with Elizabeth, and telling her...
all his troubles.
This is, of course, a great ploy...
to get a woman to pay attention to you...
especially one as warm-hearted as Elizabeth is.
They used to spend long hours together.
The rest of us were invited to Rock Hudson's house...
for parties, which were always such fun.
Rock had a great sense of humor...
and he was warm and wonderful to be around.
There was a party in his house every night, which was terrific.
We all used to say, "Where's Elizabeth? Where's Jimmy?"
Of course, they were out talking.
I don't think there was a romance of any kind there.
I really don't. But I think it was his way of saying:
"Hey, Rock, I can take Elizabeth away from you.
"I'm the third character in the film, and just like in the film...
"she's yours. Well, off-screen, she's not yours.
"She has my attention."
Sunday afternoons were very special for all of us...
'cause it was our only day off, and we put in long hours on the film...
which we all, I know I was happy to do.
I think everybody else was, too.
But we looked forward to Sundays. I always went to church on Sunday...
with two or three other members of the cast...
and part of the crew.
Afterwards, everybody would come to Withers USO at night...
but we'd first go to the country club, because there was a lovely pool there...
and it was cool.
We'd play water polo.
They had these big, old, what do you call them? lnner tubes!
For old-fashioned tires, you know?
The boys would get them, Rock especially.
He would have a hoot and holler of a time, where he'd get the two big, round things...
and then everyone would have to dive off the board to get through there.
Dennis did it every time, usually two at a time.
He was a very good swimmer.
He had a lot of fun with us there.
We all had a good time at the country club.
It was the only pool anywhere around.
It was greatly appreciated by all of us.
When Dad first talked with Jimmy Dean...
about playing Jett Rink...
Jimmy had been here on the lot at Warner Brothers...
and used to hang around the office...
and would come over wearing costumes that he thought suggested Jett Rink.
It was a part he really wanted to play.
It was a gamble.
He was young. They were talking about Montgomery Clift...
and more experienced actors.
I thought that Jimmy was a terrific actor. I really did.
He believed in bringing as much of himself...
to the part as possible.
There were a lot ofstories about how kooky he was...
because he spent all his time with the cowboys.
He was roping, he was riding.
He was learning how to shoot a rifle for the first time.
Actually, that was all research for the film.
Out of it came a wonderful cowboy walk.
The way he was able to use the rope...
which we have talked about, in the porch scene.
The speech pattern, the way he wore his hat.
I don't think he ever took off the clothes.
He had this pink shirt, this pink cowboy shirt...
that he just loved and adored, and I don't blame him.
It was a neat cowboy shirt. Very simple, very plain.
He wore it, and wore it, and I said, "Jimmy!
"When's the last time you had that shirt cleaned?"
He said, "They lost two of my shirts at the laundry.
"I'm not going to let them get this one."
I said, "Listen, sonny boy, you go in the other room...
"and there's a terrycloth bathrobe of mine. Go put that on.
"I just took it out of the dryer.
"You put that on, and you give me that pink shirt."
He said, "What are you going to do with it?"
I said, "I'm going to wash it, that's what I'm going to do."
I washed his pink shirt by hand...
and then I put it in the dryer.
He said, "It might shrink or something." I said, "It won't shrink."
Anyway, from then on, that was my job...
for Jimmy. He'd bring me his pink shirt.
At least I knew it was clean.
When he decided that Jimmy would play the part...
and they sat down to talk about it...
Dad talked to him about his racecar.
He said, "I know you love driving.
"We've got a lot of people involved in this picture.
"If something happens to you, and you break an arm, or your leg...
"there are going to be 300 people....
"Their work's going to be stopped.
"So I want to ask you...
"while this picture's being made not to drive that car."
And Jimmy looked at him and said, "All right."
Throughout the shooting, Jimmy never drove the car.
I knew Jimmy for several years...
but he was not an easy person to know.
The kids at the Actor's Studio used to get together...
once a week, and we'd sit around and listen to classical music.
We were terribly serious people.
Jimmy used to come into these parties.
He'd come late. He never said hello to anyone.
After a while, you'd look around, and he was gone...
without ever saying goodbye to anybody.
He didn't talk to anybody.
He was, I think, desperately shy.
So he was not easy to know.
He clung a little bit to me...
when we first got into Giant...
just because I was a person that he knew from the past.
Actually, I spent more time with him...
and got to know him better on Giant than I had known him...
several years before, when we were students together.
He needed companionship, but it was...
very hard for him to ask for it...
unless he had a motive...
Iike "I'm going to take Elizabeth Taylor away from Rock Hudson."
Then he was driven...
to talk and be social with her and so forth.
Having finished shooting, Jimmy decided...
that he wanted to take the car up to Saugus and race it.
Dad said the last conversation he had with Jimmy was:
"I know you're going up there. Are you going to put the car on a truck...
"and truck it up, and then drive it to the track?"
Jimmy said, "Yeah, that's what I'm going to do."
George Stevens, Jr. was in the Air Force.
He was flying all around the country.
I remember, we used to be a bit concerned about this.
We weren't really concerned about Jimmy at the moment...
although we were before the film started...
because he was always racing cars, racing motorcycles.
He was banned by Warner Brothers...
from getting in a car or on a motorcycle...
while he was doing this film.
So the minute the film was over....
He finished two, three weeks ahead of everybody else.
He told us he was taking his fast car and going across the country.
So we were all...
in the theater watching the day's rushes...
the dailies...
and suddenly, the lights went up.
George Stevens was on the phone...
and I'll never forget the look on his face.
He turned absolutely white, as if all the blood drained out of him.
There was electricity in the room.
You just knew something dreadful had happened.
Of course, my first thought was that it was George Stevens, Jr...
because of all the airplanes he had to get into.
George took a couple of deep breaths.
There was not a sound in the projection room.
After a while, he said...
in a very level voice:
"Jimmy Dean has just died in an automobile accident. "
That's all he said. We all sat there, stunned.
Nobody cried, nobody shouted.
I don't think we were able to move. Nobody was able to move.
I can't remember how the evening ended.
I know for certain we didn't watch any more rushes.
We all sat there for a long time...
and then we silently filed out of the room.
When Jimmy Dean died, we got word.
We were all in the projection room watching dailies.
Somebody came running in, and said, "Jimmy just got killed. "
And George left.
I followed him.
We walked through the sound stages, through the Warner Brothers lot.
I lost him. I couldn't find him. I don't know where he went.
Why.
Where he was going...
except to guess that he just wanted to be by himself.
It was really weird that morning, because there was a great...
stillness. There was usually much activity when we first got to work.
You know how it is.
There wasn't that morning. There was a strange stillness.
Everybody remarked about it. It wasn't just me.
I said, "What is with us today?"
Everybody seemed like they were preoccupied. It was so quiet on the set.
I said, "They're not even going to have to blow the whistle...
"for us to settle down and be quiet."
Then I saw Mr. Stevens.
I've never seen him look that way before. Never.
I knew something was very wrong.
It was like somebody stuck a knife in my heart.
I thought, "Please, God, I hope it's not....
"I'm afraid it is." Because we all knew he was going in the race.
I prayed so hard, and I saw him the day before the race.
He brought me his pink shirt...
and said, "Keep this for me until I get back. "
I said, "Of course, I will. "
I had the strangest feeling when he left.
I'll never be able to explain it or put it into words.
I just was so afraid I'd never see him again.
Everybody loved Westerns...
but this was such a special kind of Western.
You came into the lives of all these different families.
Three different families, their children and grandchildren growing up.
Everybody can relate to that.
It's been said of my father that he was a very good listener...
and he was always interested in a good idea.
But once he made up his mind, it was like the sun going down.
You can't find films like that today.
You have to go back 40 years ago to get those kind of films.
Giant, it had it all.
He made films, not just for 1956.
He used to say, "If we spend some time on this, and take some care with this...
"this might be a film people will be interested in 25 years from now. "
I was a young man when he said that to me.
To sit here now and realize that it's 40 years later...
and he made a film that has fascinated...
audiences for four decades...
it gives me great respect...
for his attitude, of really taking care with the film...
in the hope that it would be a film that would last.
And Hollywood outdoes itself...
paying tribute to a mighty motion picture...
with a premiere that climaxes all previous gala openings.
A night Hollywood Boulevard will long remember.
The glamorous, record-breaking premiere of a great motion picture:
Giant.