I floundered about for the next year or two, turning out a few plays, most of which I would have described in the far-off days when I had worked for the Kentucky Coal Company as “run of the mine.” LAZYBONES had some good points, THE DONOVAN AFFAIR made money, but always I was trying for that real play that wouldn’t come.
The best work I did at this time was a dramatization of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel THE GREAT GATSBY. The character of Gatsby made a strong appeal to me, and here was another chance to do a play with Mr. Brady, who seemed anxious for me to come in with him once more. The play was really good, and moderately successful, but here was another time when the truth was bitter and cruel and hard for the public to take.
Naturally I knew perfectly well when I read this novel that Mr. Fitzgerald’s ending absolutely killed any hope of real success, but I have my own theories about dramatizing a novel, and one of them is that the dramatist is in honor bound not to cheapen or coarsen the original author’s story. Gatsby was a great lover; for the sake of the girl he loved he raised himself from nothing to wealth and power. To do this he became a thief. She was unworthy of so great a love and he died by one of those absurd ironic chances that saved him from ever knowing her complete unworthiness. Mr. Fitzgerald knew that for Gatsby death was a merciful friend, and I felt that I had no right to manufacture a conclusion that would satisfy a sentimental audience.
As a matter of fact, I do not enjoy working on another writer’s story, but when I make up my mind to do it I deliberately put myself into that writer’s place and absorb his mind and style so that I write, as far as I am able, as he would write rather than as I would write a scene myself. In the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald that was difficult, not only because I had never seen him, but because he was so much younger than I that his whole mode of thought and all his reactions to life were absurdly different from my own. But a faithful dramatist of an author’s work should, I think, assume that author’s personality and should force himself into the completely receptive attitude of the believer who, with his fingers on a ouija board, lets the pencil go where the spirits direct. The result of this collaboration was a good play, but not a real success. I have always known that, if I had cared to do it, I could have made from this material a great box-office hit, but as I have said before, I think that when one takes another writer’s work, there is an implied obligation not to alter the mood of it.