Bick Benedict: The Texas Cattle Baron of Giant and the Reata Ranch

Who Is Bick Benedict?

Jordan "Bick" Benedict is the Texas rancher at the center of Giant, the generation-spanning novel Edna Ferber published in 1952 and the 1956 film directed by George Stevens. Rock Hudson played him in a performance that, according to the Turner Classic Movies essay, earned him the only Oscar nomination of his career.

Bick is fictional, but the type is easy to recognize. He is the heir of a large, old, cattle-first ranch family whose assumptions about land, labor and who counts in Texas are tested over three decades.

The Reata Ranch: Size, Cattle and Setting

The Benedict property is the Reata Ranch, described in a film synopsis as 595,000 acres with grazing cattle and seasonal round-ups. That figure comes from the film's own description of the fictional ranch, and it places Reata in the same size class as the largest real Texas spreads, an association the story invites without naming a real ranch.

Most of the movie was shot on location in Marfa, Texas, in the Chihuahuan Desert country of the Trans-Pecos. The flat, dry grassland photographed for the film is part of why audiences remember Reata as a place before they remember it as a set.

Bick, Leslie and the Horse-Buying Trip

The plot begins when Bick travels to Maryland to buy a horse and falls for Leslie Lynnton, played by Elizabeth Taylor. She marries him and moves to Texas, where she challenges local traditions and becomes an outspoken supporter of the Mexican-American workers on and around the ranch.

Over the following decades Leslie's views and Bick's inherited habits collide again and again. The tension between a rancher's loyalty to custom and a family's moral choices is the engine of the story, and it is why Bick is more than a cowboy hero.

Jett Rink and the Oil on Reata

Jett Rink, a ranch hand played by James Dean, inherits a small plot called Little Reata and strikes oil on it. He becomes a tycoon, later declines into alcoholism, and persuades Bick to drill on Reata itself. Dean's nomination for the film was posthumous, and it was his last picture.

The oil subplot is the part of the story that turns a ranch drama into a statement about changing Texas wealth. Bick's cattle empire survives, but its dominance is no longer the only measure of status in the state.

The Film's Reception and Honors

Stevens, who won the Best Director Oscar for Giant, treated the picture as the last of his three major films of the 1950s, grouped by critics with A Place in the Sun and Shane. The film received 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, two Best Actor nominations for Hudson and Dean, and a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Mercedes McCambridge, and it won one.

The film had a $5.4 million budget and grossed $32.8 million, according to the film's reference entry. Those numbers help explain why the Texas of Giant became the Texas many viewers imagined.

Visit or Learn More

Marfa, where the film was shot, is open to visitors, and the area's ranching history is a good companion to the movie. For real ranch life across the state, see the ranching pages on farm.FM, and for a farm.FM story that connects, try a story about Texas ranches and oil.