If you’re wondering how a Kalamazoo-born Jewish woman and sometime-member of the Algonquin Round Table came to write the novel upon which arguably the definitive Texas movie was made, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edna Ferber supplied the answer herself: “I can project myself into any age, environment, condition, situation, character or emotion that interests me deeply. I need never have experienced it, or seen it or, to my knowledge, heard or read about it.” A conversation with Ferber’s biographer and grand-niece Julie Gilbert will cap this screening of the 1956 epic about a cattle ranching family grappling with the oil boom and pernicious racism of early 20th century Texas. – Kimberley Jones
