Do you recognize this voice?:
"My well came in, Bick. Everybody thought I had a duster? Y'all thought ole Spindletop and ole Burk Burnett was all the oil there was, didn't you?" (My well came in, Bick. Everybody thought I had a dry hole? You all thought old Spindletop and old Burk Burnett were all the oil there was, didn't you?)
That's James Dean in the film Giant, based on a sensational novel by Edna Ferber. Dean tells the Benedict cattle-baron family, headed by Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor as Bick and Leslie Benedict, that he has struck oil. And that's not all: the time has come for payback.
"I'm rich, Bick. I'm a rich'un... I'm a rich boy. Me, I'm gonna have more money'n you ever THOUGHT you could have - you and all the rest of you stinkin' sons of Benedicts." (I'm rich, Bick. I'm a rich man... I'm a rich boy. Me, I'm going to have more money than you ever THOUGHT you could have—you and all the rest of you stinking sons of Benedicts.)
James Dean played Jett Rink, a hard-drinking, hard-fighting, sharp-talking, uneducated Texas oilman who struck it rich on a small parcel of land left to him by Bick's older sister, Luz. But everyone in Texas knew that he was really playing Glenn McCarthy, a Houston oilman born in Beaumont who had similarly struck it rich—so rich that he made the cover of Time magazine. In the film, the fictional Jett Rink spent millions of dollars building the Emperador, the largest hotel in Texas. The real McCarthy did the same. But he called his hotel the Shamrock.
Nicknamed the Houston Riviera, the Shamrock was the most magnificent hotel in Texas when it was built. It was billed as the largest hotel constructed in the United States in the postwar era up to that time, and, when completed in 1949, the largest hotel, old or new, outside New York or Los Angeles. It had 20 stories, including a two-story emerald SHAMROCK HOTEL sign at the top. It cost more than $22 million, equivalent to $250 million today. It had an outdoor swimming pool that McCarthy claimed was the largest on the planet—so large that people could water-ski in it, which they did as part of staged publicity stunts. It had 1,100 rooms, all air-conditioned, with a television and radio in every room.
In 1949, McCarthy wanted to hold a grand opening for his monolithic hotel. He wanted Hollywood stars. He was told that the only way to get Hollywood to come was to host a film premiere. But no major studio wanted to premiere a film in Texas. So he decided to finance his own Hollywood movie, allowing him to hold the film premiere and the hotel's grand opening at the same time. And that is what he did: The Green Promise, starring Walter Brennan and Natalie Wood. And Hollywood came. McCarthy's new friend Howard Hughes flew with McCarthy from Los Angeles to Houston. McCarthy chartered a train to bring hundreds of stars to the St. Patrick's Day opening.
The evening was regarded as one of the most prestigious events in Houston's social history. And it probably remains so to this day. Ginger Rogers was there. So was Errol Flynn. It was broadcast live nationwide on NBC radio and hosted by World War II pin-up star Dorothy Lamour.
Prominent architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, were not charmed by the Shamrock hotel's 63 shades of Irish green and directed various colorfully caustic remarks at it. But many loved the Shamrock for its sheer size, over-the-top Art Deco style, the Emerald Nightclub, where Sinatra sang, the Cork Club at the top overlooking Houston, and its overall magnificent devotion to the Irish theme.
In 1955, it was sold to Conrad Hilton and was known as the Shamrock Hilton until it was demolished in 1987. Today, the Texas A&M Health Sciences Center stands on the site. I think McCarthy would have liked that. After all, he was a graduate of the university.
