The Great Gatsby (1926 film)
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| The Great Gatsby | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Herbert Brenon |
| Produced by | Jesse L. Lasky Adolph Zukor |
| Starring | Warner Baxter Lois Wilson Neil Hamilton Georgia Hale William Powell |
| Distributed by | Famous Players-Lasky Corporation Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 1926 |
| Running time | 80 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | Silent film English intertitles |
| IMDb profile | |
The Great Gatsby is a 1926 silent film adaptation of the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was made by the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and Paramount Pictures, directed by Herbert Brenon and produced by Jesse L. Lasky and Adolph Zukor. The film is a famous example of a lost film.[1]
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[edit] Background and production
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 cast featured Warner Baxter as Jay Gatsby, Lois Wilson as Daisy Buchanan, Neil Hamilton as Nick Carraway, Georgia Hale as Myrtle Wilson, and William Powell as George Wilson.[1]
The film had a running time of eighty 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]
No copies of the film are known to have survived.[1]
[edit] Lost film
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 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 1 minute.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e f Winston Dixon, Wheeler (2003). "The Three Film Versions of The Great Gatsby: A Vision Deferred". Literature Film Quarterly.
[edit] External links
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