Author Julie Gilbert
Join us in welcoming Julie Gilbert author of Giant Love for a book signing. Copies are available for purchase and signing.
The stupendous publication of Edna Ferber’s Giant in 1952 set off a storm of protest over the novel’s portrayal of Texas manners, money, and mores with oil-rich Texans threatening to shoot, lynch or ban Ferber from ever entering the state again.
In Giant Love, Julie Gilbert writes of the internationally best-selling Ferber, one of the most widely read writers in the first half of the 20th Century – her evolution from mid-west maverick girl-reporter to Pulitzer Prize-winning, beloved American novelist, from her want-to-be actress days to becoming Broadway’s acclaimed prize-winning playwright whose collaborators – George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, among them, were, along with Ferber, herself, the most successful playwrights of their time.
Here is the making of an American classic novel and the film that followed in its wake. We see how George Stevens, Academy-Award winning director, wooed the prickly, stubborn Ferber, ultimately getting her to agree to everything including writing, for the first time ever, a draft of a screenplay, to her okaying James Dean for the part of the ranch hand, Jett Rink, something she was dead set against.
Here is the casting of Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean and their backstory triangle of sex and seduction – each becoming a huge star because of the film; the frustrated Stevens trying to direct the instinctive but undisciplined Dean, and the months-long landmark filming in the sleepy town of Marfa, Texas, suddenly invaded by a battalion of a film crew and some of the biggest stars in the rising celebrity culture.
About the author:
Julie Gilbert was born in New York City and was educated at Boston University. She is the author of four books, among them a biography of her great aunt, Edna Ferber, Edna Ferber and Her Circle and Opposite Attraction: The Lives of Erich Maria Remarque and Paulette Goddard, Gilbert is a member of The Dramatists Guild, The Writers Guild of America, East, The Authors Guild, Actors’ Equity, and League of Professional Theater Women. She has taught Creative Writing at New York University’s School of Continuing Education and currently heads The Writers Academy at The Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida where she lives part time, as well as in New York City.
Author Julie Gilbert will be signing books purchased at the Palm Beach Book Store.
RSVPs are encouraged but not required.