50th ANNIVERSARY

"Giant" Texas

In 1955, Hollywood films were still mostly made in the studios, with location shooting done on short junkets only for the purpose of gathering footage of natural scenery. For “Giant,” all the outdoor scenes, including dialogue, was recorded on location in the small West Texas town of Marfa, population 8,000. In fact, many of the scenes were shot using the natural light of West Texas.

Director George Stevens opened up the set to thousands of bystanders who came from all over West Texas -- a deliberate strategy to create early buzz about the film. In this photo, Texas journalists, including the late Dallas Morning News art critic John Rosenfield (far right), conduct a press conference with Stevens (far left) on the set. Read Rosenfield’s report from the set in the Autumn 1956 issue of Southwest Review.

Before shooting “Giant,” Stevens asked the late Dallas artist and SMU art professor Ed Bearden to draw the film’s storyboards. According to Rosenfield, Stevens wanted a Texas native to conceive the characters visually in order to capture their authenticity. Bearden’s pen portraits were enlarged and displayed on the set as a guide to makeup and costume crews. Bearden and his wife, Frances, were invited to the set, where a location photographer took these images of the stars between scenes.