Main Cast: Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, Neil Hamilton, Georgia Hale, William Powell, Hale Hamilton
Release Year: 1926
Country: US
Run Time: 8rl minutes
Plot
Accurately described as "a beautiful job" by novelist John O'Hara, this 1926 silent version of F. Scott's Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby stars Warner Baxter in the title role. Self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby lacks only one thing in life: the love of the beautiful, impulsive Daisy Buchanan (Lois Wilson). Gatsby's carefully laid scheme to announce his intentions to take Daisy away from her cloddish husband Tom Buchanan (Hale Hamilton) goes horribly awry, setting the stage for the inexorable tragedies that follow. Georgia Hale, previously seen as Chaplin's vis-a-vis in The Gold Rush, is cast as Buchanan's pathetic low-life mistress Myrtle Wilson, while Neil Hamilton exudes dependability from every pore as Gatsby's loyal friend Nick Carraway. Among Fitzgerald adaptations, the 1926 Gatsby was actually filmed during the historical period it depicts (which wasn't historical at all back then). The property was remade in 1949 with Alan Ladd, then again in 1974 with Robert Redford. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
This was the first filmed version of the novel. Two more films, in 1949 and 1974, and a television adaptation, in 2000, were to follow.
This version was based on the stage play by Owen Davis, adapted from the novel, which was directed by George Cukor and opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre on Feb 2, 1926. F. Scott Fitzgerald received US $45,000 for the film rights. The film was entrusted to a contract Paramount director, Herbert Brenon, and the screenplay to Becky Gardiner and Elizabeth Meehan, who supplied the adaptation.
The film had a running time of 80 minutes, or 7,296 feet and was designed as lightweight, popular entertainment, playing up the party scenes at Gatsby's mansion and emphasizing their scandalous elements.[1]
Professor Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln made extensive but unsuccessful attempts to find a copy. Dixon noted that there were rumors that a copy survived in an unknown archive in Moscow but dismissed these rumors as unfounded. [1]
It appears, however, that the trailer has survived and is one of the 50 films in the 3-disk boxed DVD set called More Treasures from American Film Archives, 1894-1931 (2004), compiled by the National Film Preservation Foundation from 5 American film archives. It is preserved by the Library of Congress (AFI/Jack Tillmany collection) and has a running time of one minute.[1]
