The Great Gatsby is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Herbert Brenon. It was the first film adaptation of the 1925 novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Warner Baxter portrayed Jay Gatsby and Lois Wilson portrayed Daisy Buchanan. The film was produced by Famous Players–Lasky, and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The Great Gatsby is now considered lost. A vintage movie trailer displaying short clips of the film still exists.
Plot
The film is an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel where Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his Long Island neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon, however, Carraway sees through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession, madness, and tragedy await.
The film's plot diverges from Fitzgerald's novel in several key respects: Daisy renounces Gatsby when she learns he is a bootlegger as opposed to when he demands she declare that she never loved Tom. Daisy also attempts to confess publicly to killing Myrtle Wilson but fails to do so. She later departs New York City with her husband Tom prior to Gatsby's murder by George Wilson and, consequently, Daisy has no knowledge of Gatsby's death. The final shot of the film shows "Daisy and her husband Tom and their tot draped beautifully on the porch of their happy home."
Cast
Warner Baxter as Jay Gatsby
Lois Wilson as Daisy Buchanan
Neil Hamilton as Nick Carraway
Georgia Hale as Myrtle Wilson
William Powell as George Wilson
Hale Hamilton as Tom Buchanan
Carmelita Geraghty as Jordan Baker
George Nash as Charles Wolf
Eric Blore as Lord Digby
Gunboat Smith as Bert
Claire Whitney as Catherine
Claude Brooke - Uncredited role
Nancy Kelly - Uncredited role
Production
The screenplay was written by Becky Gardiner and Elizabeth Meehan and was based on Owen Davis' stage play treatment of The Great Gatsby. The play, directed by George Cukor, opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre on February 2, 1926. Shortly after the play opened, Famous Players–Lasky and Paramount Pictures purchased the film rights for $45,000.
The film's director Herbert Brenon designed The Great Gatsby as lightweight, popular entertainment, playing up the party scenes at Gatsby's mansion and emphasizing their scandalous elements. The film had a running time of 80 minutes, or 7,296 feet.
Reception
Film critics
Mordaunt Hall—The New York Times''' first regular film critic—wrote in a contemporary review that the film was "good entertainment, but at the same time it is obvious that it would have benefited by more imaginative direction." He lamented that Herbert Brenon's direction lacked subtlety and that none of the actors convincingly developed their characters. He faulted a scene where Daisy gulps absinthe: "She takes enough of this beverage to render the average person unconscious. Yet she appears only mildly intoxicated, and soon recovers." Hall also describes a scene in which Gatsby "tosses twenty-dollar gold pieces into the [swimming pool] water, and you see a number of the girls diving for the coins. A clever bit of comedy is introduced by a girl asking what Gatsby is throwing into the water, and as soon as this creature hears that they are real gold pieces she unhesitatingly plunges into the pool to get a share. Gatsby appears to throw the money into the water with a good deal of interest, whereas it might perhaps have been more effective to have him appear a little bored as he watched the scramble of the men and women."
In contrast to Hall's mixed review, journalist Abel Green's November 1926 review published in Variety was more positive. Green deemed Brenon's production to be "serviceable film material" and "a good, interesting gripping cinema exposition of the type certain to be readily acclaimed by the average fan, with the usual Long Island parties and the rest of those high-hat trimmings thrown in to clinch the argument." Presumably in reaction to Daisy Buchanan rejecting Gatsby when she discovers that he is a bootlegger, the Variety reviewer wryly observed that Gatsby's "Volstead violating" bootlegging was not "a heinous crime despite the existence of a federal statute which declares it so." The reviewer praised Warner Baxter's portrayal of Gatsby and Neil Hamilton's portrayal of Nick Carraway but found Lois Wilson's interpretation of Daisy to be needlessly unsympathetic.