Gatsby to the Screen, Then Disappears from It

 

Greatest of All Novels Inspires Best of All Movies?

1974 was the year I just had to have a Gatsby suit. They were white, had a double-breasted vest, and were inspired by the Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Trouble was the outfit not looking on me the way it had on Redford, being off a rack and anything but a tailored fit. Away went this Cinderfella to our fraternity banquet even if ensemble was chilled by a wide tie more 70’s bleak than 20’s roar. Such was fashion compromise for one who wanted really to live in the past, not just make faint gesture toward it. I cared less about the movie than the look, which was everywhere in magazines, even TIME which did a cover feature. The Great Gatsby turning up at our College Park was superfluous. I didn’t even stay to watch it end. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel by 1974 was canon-certified plus the biggest seller of as-old books. That had been case for a long time but did not begin so in April 1925 when published via Scribner’s. Fitzgerald went a different direction here, his first two novels straightforward dissection of vibrant age he and a country were living in, plus there were short stories of flappers and a jazz age told from inside that was the author’s own experience. But Fitzgerald knew Bernice bobbing her hair could not sustain. Trouble was he and wife Zelda by 1925 drunk on success and spirits that enabled, living in hotels, specifically at French Riviera address beyond means of advance money from guiding editor Maxwell Perkins at Scribner’s, who with Fitzgerald expected The Great Gatsby to surpass previous This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned in sales. Fact this didn’t happen was ruinous to Fitzgerald’s morale. 23,870 copies would have suited most authors of the time, not those with Scott’s expectation.

The Great Gatsby was right away adapted to Broadway, veteran of stage melodramas Owen Davis credited for “A New Drama … from the Novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Paramount did a screen version, released 1926, and starring Warner Baxter as Jay Gatsby, with Lois Wilson, Neil Hamilton, Georgia Hale, and William Powell. We can only see a theatrical trailer today. The rest is lost. Glimpse at hand shows a Gatsby party more authentic than ones depicted for later movies based on the story. Maybe that’s because this Great Gatsby was produced during the era when Fitzgerald’s drama took place. Remakes would be speculation as to what life was like in the mid-twenties, effort strained too plain. The silent Gatsby was alone for not having to recreate a story that happened in the film’s then-and-now. What a valuable find this version would be. Fitzgerald pushed for reprints of the novel, hoping a later and more sophisticated readership would appreciate The Great Gatsby better, but efforts during the thirties came to little, possibly because content dated and a Depression public found Gatsby a harder character to identify with. Other books anyway sold better, Anthony Adverse for instance at over a million copies, never mind its being forgotten now. The Great Gatsby was so gone by the late thirties that Fitzgerald could not even locate a copy in Los Angeles when he wanted to buy one for companion Sheilah Graham. Maxwell Perkins still put The Great Gatsby among best novels he ever represented. There were authors who sold better, but for Scribner’s, a prestige name meant much, and Fitzgerald would never be less than such a personage. Even where a Marcia Davenport wrote The Valley of Decision and Scribner’s sold 300,000 copies, Fitzgerald’s standing went undiminished.

A publisher could break even, lose money, on a worthy enough name for whom any effort was justified. This was not unlike Hollywood sponsoring a Sunrise or The Crowd to challenge plebian status, or worse, image as defined by literary lions like John Dos Passos who referred to film studios as “public brothels.” But publishers kept cathouses as well, those least burdened with talent often ones that sold best. Check a 1933 precode called When Ladies Meet, where Myrna Loy is the hack authoress tended by publisher Frank Morgan, who knows her novels for cash cows they are, and is not too proud to sponsor whatever she chooses to write, so long as sales are brisk, which certainly they were for “damn scribblers,” a term Nathaniel Hawthorne tabbed for writers popular with their public, but devoid of literary talent. The Great Gatsby began a comeback several years after Fitzgerald’s 1940 death when the Armed Services selected it for distribution worldwide to US combatants, exposure that undoubtedly widened The Great Gatsby’s home front readership as well. Was positive word-of-mouth in V-mail a spur to stateside reprintings and sales? Paramount by 1949 wanted to remake The Great Gatsby, now stuff of nostalgia for bathtub gin, the Lindy Hop among amusing excess of the twenties. Fitzgerald’s novel was still this side of venerated status. He had said that someday it would become the preserve of “schoolmasters,” but perhaps fortunately, that time was not yet. The Great Gatsby would be a vehicle for Alan Ladd, ideal casting given look and melancholy Ladd brought to all he did, plus here was a part the actor identified with, being of humble origin like Gatsby and having moved comet-like toward stardom that seemed unlikely most of all to him.

Self-doubt had been fruit of Gatsby from a first week in 1925 when tepid reviews plus selling limp at start had Fitzgerald second guessing everything from the book’s title (he was never happy with “The Great Gatsby”) to fact, or so he believed, that the story lacked compelling female figures. Fitzgerald like many authors was better with character and descriptive prose than bedrock narrative that of course movies had to depend upon to keep audiences seated. Story must come first, as playmaking Owen Davis knew, as Paramount realized in 1926 when first they dealt with the property. Great novels were toughest for obliging Hollywood scribes laboring twice as hard for licks they'd take from critics excoriating them for yet more Hollywood rape of art. Blades were sharp from announcing The Great Gatsby for another adapt. Trouble with 1949's was/is disappearance after general release. There was no television packaging thanks to Paramount’s limited license in the literary source. They owned the negative but could not exhibit it. A few, very few, prints floated in 16mm. I had one that was trimmed of kissing scenes, I mean the moment when lips touched, which made watching an odd experience. A Region Two DVD is around, OK for allowance we make for having the movie at all. A lot of writers judge The Great Gatsby on basis that no occasion for Alan Ladd playing this (or any?) part should be taken serious. I plead different, but never mind him for the moment and consider capable others in support: MacDonald Carey, Betty Field, Barry Sullivan, this Gatsby easily a most polished in terms of cast and production. What might Universal have to spend to clear The Great Gatsby for streaming or disc release? More than they’d be willing to, I suspect.

Could any actor be unanimously accepted as Gatsby? The character registers strongly in print, but as with anyone we meet on literary ground, the impression is subjective, oft-time personal to a point where no interpreter will do. For critics steeped enough in literature as film’s forever superior, which most were lest they lose face with other critics, prospect of Alan Ladd for Gatsby was a thing to be derided. What they failed to realize, or refused to acknowledge, was Ladd being more a cultural icon in 1949 than Jay Gatsby could approach, and it was for The Great Gatsby to conform itself to expectation of the star’s audience of the time, not preference book readers might harbor or express. This alone separates the ’49 Gatsby from versions done before or after, as Warner Baxter of the 1926 silent was there in service to Fitzgerald’s conception, at least we assume that was the case but cannot be certain so long as silent Gatsby continues to go missing. Robert Redford’s 1974 screen persona was nowhere near so defined as Alan Ladd’s in 1949. Rather than seeing latter as a weakness, I regard Ladd gravitas an asset to plenty else he brought the Gatsby character and am not alone for declaring his to be a most satisfying screen interpretation to date, though I’ll cop to not seeing Leonardo Di Caprio’s interpretation in a more recent Gatsby (2013), however intrigued that a 3-D version was tendered and is available on Blu-Ray.

There is a book called Forties Film Talk by Doug McClelland, based on his many interviews with surviving talent from a decade left far enough behind for participants to speak plainly of it. Published by McFarland, this is a splendid record of Hollywood and people who toiled there. Several sections address The Great Gatsby, thanks to conversations McClelland had with Barry Sullivan, Ruth Hussey, and writer Richard Maibaum. Latter was who suggested The Great Gatsby for Alan Ladd after being taken by the actor to see his personal wardrobe closet that stretched from one end of a room to the other, just like a scene in Fitzgerald’s novel. Maibaum satisfied Ladd that he was Gatsby and got a fully committed performance from him, Ladd talking hours of the character as he pondered nuance to add. Gatsby’s mystery past was in fact Ladd’s present for fitting neatly with the star’s screen identity. It was faithful then to show Gatsby shooting it out with rival bootleggers or slugging a gangland confederate who has crashed his Long Island party. Barry Sullivan said these scenes were added after principal photography to assure Ladd fans getting what they would expect, but again, it works and lends strength to what may otherwise have been too passive a part. Ruth Hussey quoted Ladd’s philosophy as expressed by him to her: “As far as I’m concerned, all acting is in the expression of the eyes.” Would this not be a best approach for any player who sought to register on film? Sullivan said Ladd noted the beginner’s inexperience ("I was doing things too big for the intimacy of the camera") and arranged to screen rushes with Sullivan in order to point out technique that would register better, “and he’d be right. I was much more comfortable in films after that.” Still, it was for Paramount to “protect” Ladd, so that in final analysis, any character he essayed would be cut to his measure rather than that of any literary antecedent.

I read and hear discussion of The Great Gatsby as the Greatest of Great American Novels and wonder if this derives from joy of reading it, or pride for getting through it. Lots of classical literature represents a climb, “not an easy read” as so often put. Does The Great Gatsby sustain for being short? (208 pages and done in three hours provided one does not linger) Several mention how they took years to develop true fondness for the book. The Great Gatsby must be complex, as in each visit yielding fresh revelation, stamp of any literature most admired, else why the rank? I would ask Gatsby authorities how many fell in love with the novel from a first discovered page. Is this, like most great books, one that must be grown into? Embrace of a favorite film for most comes immediate, though there are ones to cook slower. More books are out there about Fitzgerald than for anyone who ever wrote or directed a movie. A woman lecturing at You Tube startled me for saying that apart from The Great Gatsby, Fitz’s outstanding work really was just some short stories and certain of letters he wrote. This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned, his first and second novels, amounted to beginner efforts, and Tender is the Night, his last to be completed, was flawed (her assessment, not mine). So, all this study, decades of research and teaching, for a writer who was truly great but once? Take away The Great Gatsby and he’d be Elinor Glyn, or maybe the nom de plume who wrote Flaming Youth. If I knew literary scholars better, I would ask one of them about this. Everything of course comes down to comparison with films. What writer or director do we celebrate for having made but one masterpiece? Not that all of academics would agree about Fitzgerald, and I’m no authority to claim one way or the other. Let’s just say it would be tough lauding Ford, Hawks, or Hitchcock if there was so little of permanence between them. Thing is, the literary community would argue that none of what we celebrate is worthy of even weakest work a Fitzgerald did, but is that really because movies still aren’t accepted as art, let alone on a parity with written words? If so, the issue turns again to film as collaborative, which for many means can’t be much good, or ongoing shame that people eat popcorn while watching. Anyway, I’ve decided what my next book should be … the life saga of Edward L. Cahn, who in 1932 directed Law and Order, if nothing else distinguished before or after. But wait, what about It! The Terror from Beyond Space? I think I'm on to something here.