Sprawling epic covering the life of a Texas cattle rancher and his family and associates.
Texan rancher Jordan "Bick" Benedict, Jr. visits a Maryland farm to buy a prize horse. While there he meets and falls in love with the owner's daughter Leslie, they are married immediately and return to his ranch. The story of their family and its rivalry with cowboy and (later oil tycoon) Jett Rink unfolds across two generations.—Col Needham <[email protected]>
Sprawling, epic tale of a wealthy Texas rancher and his wife, their descendants, and their life together over twenty-five years. Jordan "Bick" Benedict, Jr. met his future wife Leslie while on a trip East to buy breeding stock, returning home with a bride. Living on a half-million acre ranch takes some getting used to for Leslie, as does the rough and tumble lifestyle. They have children who have their own minds and are apt to disappoint their parents over their life choices. Bick's rival is a former ranch hand, Jett Rink, who inherits a tract of land.—garykmcd
Wealthy Texas rancher Jordan "Bick" Benedict, Jr. shakes things up at home when he returns from a trip to the East Coast with a love interest, the refined Leslie. Bick and Leslie get married, but she clashes with his sister, Luz Benedict, and wins the admiration of the ambitious young Jett Rink. Bick and Jett form a tense rivalry that continues to surface as the years pass and fortunes change in this sweeping drama.—Jwelch5742
Spanning over two decades of love and hate, poverty and wealth, discrimination and racial tolerance, pride and prejudice, "Giant" pivots around the Reata: the vast 595,000-acre Texas ranch of the straight-laced landowner and cattle baron, Jordan "Bick" Benedict. As the purchase of a proud black stallion leads to an unexpected whirlwind romance in early 1920s Maryland, Bick returns to his ranch accompanied by his charming and independent bride, Leslie Lynton. And almost immediately, the lady of the house embarks on a lifelong mission to plant the seeds of change. Against the backdrop of Texas' rich and rugged landscapes, a gradual transition begins as the Lone Star State of yesterday transforms into the Texas of today, and once-poor ranch hands, like the sullen Jett Rink, become billionaires overnight. But what's it like to strike it rich? Do children always follow in their parents' footsteps? In the end, what is the price of being a Giant?—Nick Riganas
In the early 1920s, Jordan "Bick" Benedict (Rock Hudson), the head of the rich Benedict ranching family in Texas, goes to Maryland to buy a stud horse, War Winds. There he meets and courts the 18-year-old socialite Leslie Lynnton (Elizabeth Taylor), who becomes his wife after a whirlwind romance.
They return to Texas to start their life together on the family ranch, Reata, which is owned and run by Luz (Mercedes McCambridge), Bick's older and grumpy sister. Leslie doesn't get along with Luz for Luz scorns Leslie's wealthy background while Leslie thinks that Luz is rude. Jett Rink (James Dean) is a local ranch hand who works for Luz and hopes to find his fortune by leaving Texas; he also has a secret love for Leslie despite the fact that she is married to his boss.
One day during a cattle roundup, Luz expresses her hostility for Leslie by cruelly digging in her spurs while riding Leslie's beloved horse, War Winds. Luz dies after War Winds bucks her off, and as part of her will, Jett is given a small plot of land within the 595,000-acre Benedict ranch. Bick tries to buy back the land, but Jett refuses. Jett keeps the fenced off waterhole as his home and names the property Little Reata.
A few years later, Leslie eventually gives birth to twins, Jordan "Jordy" Benedict III and Judy Benedict, and a younger daughter named Luz II (Carroll Baker).One day, Jett discovers oil in a footprint left by Leslie and develops an oil drilling well on his property. Bick is annoyed with Jett's prospecting and tries to deny him access to his land. Finally, Jett hits his first gusher, he drives into the Benedict yard (covered in crude oil) proclaiming in front of the entire family that he will be richer than the Benedicts. After Jett makes a rude sexual remark to Leslie, Bick and Jett have a fist fight.
Shortly after, in the 1930s, Jett starts an oil drilling company, named 'JetTexas' that makes him enormously wealthy. But Bick resists the lure of drilling for oil on his much larger part of the cattle ranch, preferring to remain a rancher to maintain the legacy of his family's original business.During the 1940s, tensions in the Benedict household revolve around how the parents want to bring up their grown-up children. Bick stubbornly insists that Jordy must succeed him and run the ranch, just like his father and grandfather before him, but Jordy wants to be a doctor. Leslie wants Judy to attend finishing school in Switzerland, but Judy loves the ranch and wants to stay in Texas for her education (and to her high school boyfriend).
After World War II breaks out, Jett visits the Benedicts and tries to convince Bick to allow oil production on his land to help the war effort. Bick finally realizes there is no one to take over the ranch after him and concedes. During this visit, Luz II, now a teen-aged girl, starts flirting with Jett. Once oil production starts, the wealthy Benedict family becomes even wealthier, depicted by the addition of a swimming pool next to the house. Jordy gets married to a young Mexican American woman and they have a son. Judy gets married to her long-term high school boyfriend and they too have a son.
The Benedict/Rink rivalry continues however, and it comes to a head when the Benedicts find out that Luz II and the much older Jett Rink have been dating. At a huge gala Jett organizes in his own honor, an irate Jordy tries to fight him, after realizing he and his Mexican American wife, Juana (Elsa Cárdenas), were invited just so Jett's employees could turn Juana away. Jett has his goons hold Jordy and punches him out in front of the crowd. Fed up, Bick then takes Jett to a kitchen room, about to fight him, but realizes that Jett is now just a drunken shell of a man, who has only his money. He tells him, "You're not even worth hitting. You're all through," and leaves, but not before symbolically and quite noisily caving in Rink's wine cellar shelves domino style. The party ends when Jett, completely drunk, slumps down in front of everyone before his big speech. Luz II sees him afterwards, once everyone has left the ballroom, and discovers that he is a lonely, pathetic wreck who can only repeat how much he still loves Leslie.
The Benedicts, all except Jordy, drive down an empty road to a diner. An altercation develops between the racist diner owner Sarge (Mickey Simpson), a Mexican family that just walked in who have no dollars but pesos, and Bick who intervenes on behalf of the Mexican family. A fist fight ensues when Bick stands up for the immigrant family against the racist Sarge, leaving Bick the loser who collapses over a table of pies. Sarge throws them out of the diner saying that it is his free right to refuse service to people he does not like, including paying customers.
In the final scene back at the ranch, Bick watches his two grandchildren playing in a crib with Leslie and reflects on his life and family. Leslie tells Bick that, after watching him lose the fight in the diner, she finally respects him and considers the Benedict family a success.
