08/29/2026
SO GOOD! Did you know we have a design inspired by Elizabeth Taylor & her performance in "Giant?" Well now you know!
Traces of Texas reader John Hinkle kindly shared this photo of his uncle, Robert "Bob" Hinkle, teaching James Dean how to rope on the set of "Giant" in Marfa, Texas, 1955. Bob's story is pretty amazing.
Bob was born in Brownfield, Texas, in 1930. After serving in the Army, Bob was a cowboy and rodeo rider when he encountered the production of Budd Boetticher's Bronco Buster in 1952. His authentic cowboy appearance and genuine cowboy skills got him work as a cowboy/stunt performer. That led to more stunt work and small acting parts.
By the mid-1950s he had accumulated credits or stunt work on pictures including War Arrow, The Robe, Wings of the Hawk, King of the Khyber Rifles, Riding Shotgun, The Far Horizons and eventually Howard Hughes' notoriously extravagant The Conqueror. He performed stunt work associated with stars including John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum and Rock Hudson.
Then came the job that changed his life: Giant.
Bob auditioned for George Stevens' production of Giant in 1955. He apparently thought he had a shot at playing Jett Rink, a role for which a genuine young West Texas cowboy wasn't an absurd idea. Stevens called him back. Bob thought, "This is it. They're gonna ask me to play Jett Rink."
Instead Stevens asked him: “Do you think you could teach Rock Hudson to talk like you do?”
Bob found this particularly funny because he had been paying a Hollywood dialogue coach to teach him how NOT to sound Texan. Stevens told him to stop. He liked exactly what Hollywood was trying to remove. Bob was paid $500 a week, given an office at Warner Bros., and assigned to Hudson. Eventually his role expanded into dialogue and technical advising for much of the cast.
He worked with Hudson, Mercedes McCambridge, Carroll Baker, Dennis Hopper and others. Elizabeth Taylor's Leslie Benedict deliberately retained her Eastern speech because the character herself was from Maryland. Bob wasn't really just teaching the actors how to talk like Texans, but how to be Texans.
His description of Texas speech is marvelous: Texans don't simply pronounce words differently; they take their time getting through them. Conversation itself has a pace. As he later put it, the journey through a conversation mattered as much as arriving at the point.
It was at this time that James Dean noticed him. Bob essentially became Jett Rink's Texas prototype. Dean approached Bob and said wanted the same help Hudson was getting. Dean went considerably further.
According to Bob's wonderful autobiography, Dean wanted to be a Texan “24 hours a day.” He studied Bob constantly: his speech, mannerisms, rope handling, the way he greeted people and the way he interacted with actual West Texans.
The two became extraordinarily close friends. They practiced roping. They drank beer. They went jackrabbit hunting around Marfa at night. Dean spent time at Bob's house, eating Sandra Hinkle's cooking. Bob later remembered Dean as shy, lonely and homesick for Fairmount, Indiana, rather than the perpetually angry rebel created by his later mythology.
Actor Earl Holliman later told Bob that when he watched Giant, he could see a lot of Bob in Jett Rink.
Dean apparently recognized the debt. After completing his work, he presented Bob with a replica Oscar bearing Bob's name, thanking him for helping create Jett Rink.
There is another detail that sounds almost impossible. On September 30, 1955, the day Dean died, Dean telephoned Hinkle and invited him along on the trip to California in his Porsche, but Bob couldn't go, because he was working at the studio with Rock Hudson, re-recording dialogue for Giant.
Dean left without him and was killed that evening near Cholame, California. Bob was among the first connected with Giant to learn what had happened. Bob subsequently had the awful task of helping break the news among the Giant company, and accounts also describe him personally consoling Elizabeth Taylor. Think of it: that one decision, staying behind to work with Hudson, probably saved Bob Hinkle's life. Or, had Bob gone along with James Dean that night, maybe he wouldn't have been driving so fast. Maybe he wouldn't have died.
Then came Hud. Paul Newman heard about Bob and told Bob he wanted Bob to do the same thing for him and Hud as he did for James Dean and Giant: he wanted Bob to teach him to be a Texan. Bob did. Later on he worked with folks like Marty Robbins, Glen Campbell, Chill Wills and even Evel Knievel. His life story, which I received and devoured pretty much in total yesterday, is called "Call Me Lucky: A Texan in Hollywood." It's filled with all kinds of stories about famous people whom Bob "taught Texan" over the years. You can find it at all the usual places.
Thank you, John. Your uncle sounds like a fascinating man. This is really quite something!
