Putting Gatsby on the Screen

One of the Great American Novels on my list and other lists is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

It has been made into several films. The most recent I recall is the Baz Lurhmann glam version with Leonardo DiCaprio. The earlier one I saw was with Robert Redford as Gatsby. There is an earlier one with Alan Ladd that I have not seen.

Recently I came across something about the 1926 film version. That is just a year and a half after the novel itself.

The first actor to portray Jay Gatsby on the silver screen was Warner Baxter, who would become the highest-paid star in Hollywood a decade later. Daisy Buchanan was Lois Wilson, a beauty queen turned all-American silent-era starlet (who would later turn director). Narrator Nick Carraway was Neil Hamilton, whom television audiences of the 1960s would come to know as Batman‘s Commissioner Gordon. A young, pre-Thin Man William Powell was George Wilson. 

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald saw the film. “We saw The Great Gatsby in the movies,” Zelda wrote to their daughter Scottie. “It’s ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left.” 

I guess I will never see that film. Only its trailer survives today. As with about 75% of the silent films that were made, the prints and negatives have self-destructed.

The novel has entered the public domain, so you are free to make your own version. 

Somehow, at least as of this writing, the Redford Gatsby is available free on YouTube