In honor of this week’s release of the lastest movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz age novel, The Great Gatsby, revisit the book and take a look at four earlier versions:
The Great Gatsby (1949) Alan Ladd and Betty Field star in the earliest surviving version of the story, heavy-handed and missing the lyricism of the book. (A 1926 film with Warner Baxter has been lost.)
G.Audacious, ambitious, and provocative but uneven and ultimately unsatisfying, this film adapts and updates the story. Instead of Jay Gatsby, the Prohibition-era gangster who can’t forget the girl he lost, we have Summer G, the gangsta, the head of a successful hip-hop recording label.
You might also want to take a look at the only movie credited to Fitzgerald during his brief, unhappy stint in Hollywood:
Three Comrades A tragic love set story in post-WWI Germany starring Robert Young and Margaret Sullavan.
Or watch one of the movie portrayals of Fitzgerald:
Beloved Infidel Gregory Peck plays Fitzgerald in this movie based on the memoir of gossip columnist Sheilah Graham about their years together.
Midnight in Paris Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill play Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Woody Allen’s romantic comedy about a contemporary writer who goes back in time to meet his literary heroes.
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle Malcolm Gets plays Fitzgerald in this movie about the New York writers who gathered at the Algonquin hotel for cocktails and repartee.
G.
