Giant has been given an Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray upgrade by Warner Bros.

The 1956 film was the fourteenth film made from the works of author-playwright Edna Ferber.

Ferber’s 1924 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel So Big was made into a film three times. The 1924 silent version with Colleen Moore is a lost film. The 1932 version with Barbara Stanwyck is hard to find, but the superior 1953 version with Jane Wyman is a little easier to get your hands on.

The Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical version of Ferber’s 1926 novel was first filmed as a partial talkie in 1929, and more famously as a full-scale musical in 1936 with Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Helen Morgan, Charles Winninger, and Paul Robeson; and again in 1951 with Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Ava Gardner, Joe E. Brown, and William Warfield.

The film version of Ferber’s 1930 novel Cimarron was filmed in 1931 with Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, winning the Oscar for Best Picture of 1930/31, and in 1960 with Glenn Ford and Maria Schell.

Ferber’s 1935 novel Come and Get It was made into a film in 1936 with Edward Arnold, Joel McCrea, and Frances Farmer, winning an Oscar for Walter Brennan as Best Supporting Actor. 1941’s Saratoga Trunk was made into a film in 1945 with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, earning an Oscar nomination for Flora Robson for Best Supporting Actress. It was later made into a Broadway musical called simply Saratoga in 1956.

Three of Ferber’s Broadway plays, 1927’s The Royal Family, 1932’s Dinner at Eight, and 1932’s Stage Door, were also made into highly successful films.

Fredric March received his first Oscar nomination for emulating John Barrymore in the renamed The Royal Family of Broadway. The real John Barrymore, Marie Dressler, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, John’s brother Lionel Barrymore, and Billie Burke led the all-star cast of the 1933 film version of Dinner at Eight. Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, and Oscar nominee Andrea Leeds headlined the 1937 film version of Stage Door.

Giant is from Ferber’s 1952 novel of the same name. Directed by George Stevens (Woman of the Year), the highly anticipated film attracted every major actor and actress in Hollywood.

Frontrunners for the film’s central character, Texas rancher Bick Benedict, were Clark Gable (Gone with the Wind), Gary Cooper (High Noon), and William Holden (Picnic), but everyone from John Wayne (The Searchers) to Henry Fonda (Mister Roberts) were mentioned. Stevens rejected them all as too old, insisting on Rock Hudson (All That Heaven Allows), who was eventually given the role.

Frontrunners for the role of his wife, Leslie, included Audrey Hepburn (War and Peace), Ava Gardner (Bhowani Junction), Grace Kelly (The Swan), and Elizabeth Taylor (Stevens’ A Place in the Sun). It came down to a choice between Kelly and Taylor, with Stevens asking Hudson who he would prefer. He, of course, chose Taylor.

Stevens wanted his Shane star Alan Ladd for the third key role of Hudson and Taylor’s rebellious neighbor, Jett Rink, but this time it was the studio that rejected the first choice as being too old. Once again, everyone from Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront) to Montgomery Clift (Stevens’ A Place in the Sun) was mentioned for the role, but it went to James Dean fresh from his breakout role in East of Eden. Delays on the film took so long that Dean was able to make Rebel Without a Cause while he was waiting, joined by Giant co-stars Sal Mineo and Dennis Hopper.

Oscar winner Mercedes McCambridge (All the King’s Men) had the film’s fourth major role, that of Hudson’s sister and Dean’s mentor. The film would become Warner Bros. highest grossing film, a record it would keep until the 1973 release of The Exorcist in which McCambridge also had a role.

Carroll Baker made a sensational film debut as Hudson and Taylor’s daughter but would have an even more sensational role in her next film, the same year’s Baby Doll, for which she would receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

In addition to the previously mentioned Sal Mineo and Dennis Hopper, Jane Withers, Chill Wills, and Earl Holliman also had major supporting roles.

Filmed in Warner Color, the film had faded by the early 1960s and had to be restored several times. The latest 4K restoration will likely be the last.

Nominated for ten Academy Awards, the film won just one for Stevens’ direction. Also, in the running were both Hudson and Dean for Best Actor, McCambridge for Best Supporting Actress, Dimitri Tiomkin for Best Score, along with Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Picture.

This was Dean’s second posthumous nomination. He had been nominated for Best Actor for 1955’s East of Eden for which Jo Van Fleet won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Dean died in a car crash on September 30, 1955, a week after finishing work on Giant while the film was still in production. His interim film, Rebel Without a Cause, opened on October 29, 1955, earning Oscar nominations for Sal Mineo for Best Supporting Actor, and Natalie Wood for Best Supporting Actress.

Giant had its world premiere on October 10, 1956. Ferber’s 1958 novel, Ice Palace, became her last novel to be filmed in 1960.

This week’s new releases include the The Worst Person in the World and the Blu-ray debut of First Wives Club.