Giant Comes to Marfa: Hollywood in the High Desert
Near Marfa, Texas
In nineteen fifty-five, a large cast and crew descended on Marfa to film one of the largest Hollywood productions of the decade. The film was Giant, directed by George Stevens, based on the Edna Ferber novel about a Texas ranching dynasty. The stars were Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean.
Director Stevens chose Marfa for its open, authentic west Texas landscape. The crew established headquarters at the El Paisano Hotel in downtown Marfa, and for weeks the stars of Giant lived out of that handsome Spanish Colonial building. Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson formed a close friendship during the shoot.
James Dean was difficult, brilliant, and already in the final chapter of his short life. He died in a California car crash in September of nineteen fifty-five, before Giant was even finished. The film was released the following year, and Dean received a posthumous Academy Award nomination.
The exterior ranch scenes were shot at a property called the Ryan Ranch, west of Marfa along the highway toward El Paso. The enormous wooden ranch house set that Stevens built there stood in the desert until it eventually collapsed. Giant made Marfa famous once, long before the art world arrived.
