Exclusive“The Great Gatsby” (1949): Love, Luxury, and Lost Dreams in the Roaring Twenties

So many things are happening What should we do? Search for it And you may see it See it Jordan, do you remember my cousin Nick Carraway? Yes. He's in stocks and bonds, isn't he? Yes. When I think of the years I've spent trying to throw you two together, locking you up in a linen closet and pushing you out to sea in a rowboat. Is he still poor? Yes, terribly. You know, soon it will be the longest day of the year. Do you always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it when it comes? Yes. What should we plan? We could go to one of those parties across the Sound. Oh, over an east egg? That's where Nick lives. That's right. If he lives an east egg, he must know Gatsby. Gatsby? What Gatsby? Why, the great Gatsby. I'm Tiffany Brannan. I'm Rebecca Brannan. Welcome to Real Thoughts on Cinema. If you so much as mention the Roaring Twenties, pretty much anyone will automatically think of the great Gatsby. Even people who know little or nothing about the story use this term to describe an aesthetic, an era, and a look, oftentimes which has really nothing to do with this particular story or the real time period from which it came. There have been several film adaptations of this classic story, but they've mainly failed to really capture the true spirit of it. Sadly, the adaptation which did is the least remembered. This is The Great Gatsby from 1949. The year is 1928, and the Roaring Twenties are in full swing. Out of the shadows of bootlegging rises one man, Jay Gatsby. Leaving his shady past behind, he buys a house on Long Island Sound and begins having his huge parties at which most people don't even know the host and weren't invited. To one of these parties comes his neighbor, Nick Carraway, who is the cousin of Daisy Buchanan, formerly Daisy Fay, who was Gatsby's long lost love from 11 years ago in Louisville before the war. Gatsby asks Nick to arrange a tea where he can meet Daisy again, but Nick is disapproving of this venture since his cousin is now married to Tom Buchanan, a member of the old money class. However, with the help of Daisy's friend Jordan, the meeting is arranged, and Gatsby and Daisy recapture their long lost love. However, with so many things between them, it seems destined for a tragic ending. This movie was made by Paramount Pictures. It was produced by Richard Maybaum, directed by Elliot Nugent, and it starred Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and MacDonald Carey. There's sort of a joke that everyone read The Great Gatsby in school, which I find kind of funny because I have yet to meet a single person who actually did read it in school. It just seems to be something that people always say. And as we were saying, the term Gatsby, it's become sort of a byword for the 20s, for a style, to the point that until learning more about the story, I didn't even realize that was the main character's name. I thought it was actually sort of a noun describing something. His title, exactly. And I think it's amazing how something can become such an important part of culture without really being something that people know the story. I feel like the story itself is not as well known as just kind of the style or the aesthetic. I think a lot of people believe the 1970s movie was the first movie adaptation, but it actually was the third. That's right. There was a lost silent film from 1926, which had William Powell in a small role and several other actors who aren't very well remembered these days. Maybe they'll find it in a barn someday, but at present, the oldest existing version and the first talkie version made is the 1949 film, which stars Alan Ladd in the role of the Great Gatsby. And if you ask me, it's all but forgotten. Yes, that could be partly due to the fact that this film was lost for quite a while. That's right. In the classic old Hollywood style, both the 26 and the 49 were made by Paramount Pictures. And you'd often see this case when the same studio remade a story or a film, they didn't really want people to think about the first version for the sake of not having comparison. Sometimes they would intentionally kind of bury or even destroy the earlier version. So that's, I'm pretty sure, what happened with the 26. But then the same thing ended up happening when the 1974 was released. Then they didn't want people to remember the 49 version, so it was kind of swept under the rug and it wasn't rediscovered until 2012. And then it was remastered and presented at TCM, the film festival. Turner Classic Movies. The Turner Classic Movies Film Festival, exactly. But it has never been released on DVD. Just once on Blu-ray. Once on Blu-ray, right. And I don't think it's played by TCM very often. I'm sure it's been at least a few times. But in spite of that, there is a small following for it. I want to say particularly fans of Alan Ladd. I would say that's what probably leads most people's film. Or just if someone's really crazy about the story, obviously you're going to look up pretty much every version, which was how I discovered it. I think that this story, it never really fell out of favour, or at least it's been pretty popular since the 1940s. Revived periodically by a new movie or something like that. But if it needed any reviving, it's gotten that in the 2020s, firstly because with the 20s coming around again, there's a renewed interest in the 1920s. But the Broadway musical that's been a big hit for like three years now has made people be even more interested in the story than they previously were. That was my introduction to the story. I just knew the term Great Gatsby. Anytime you address vintage, somebody's going to say, oh, it looks like the Great Gatsby. Even if it's totally not that era. But then that was my introduction to the story. And it's one of those stories that once you learn about it, you can see why it's had such a lasting effect on culture. And I think like so many lasting stories, it's because it was very real and very personal to the author. F. Scott Fitzgerald based most of the story on real people, particularly in his own life. When he was a young man, he was in love with this socialite, Geneva King. Her father disapproved of the union, and so they never got together. But to the end of his life, the thought of her would bring tears to his eyes. He was just so in love with her. She had this friend who was a golfer, that Jordan Baker was based on that character. And the character of Gatsby himself was based on this eccentric neighbor he had on Long Island, Max Gerlach, who was a bootlegger. He sort of built this empire for himself and would say that he was related to the German Kaiser. He never wore the same shirt twice. He called everybody old sport. So a lot of those strange kind of quirky things in it, even this amazing tragic love story, is based on real life. That's why it's so real and so popular. It was, of course, I think originally intended as this sort of scathing social commentary on his opinion of the class system sort of in America at the time, of the old money, and you couldn't really become a part of that even by becoming wealthy. It wasn't money. It was position, family, and background. And I would say a lot of the criticism of many adaptations is that they sort of lose maybe that... Biting social commentary? Yeah, that kind of almost satirical... That goes back so far. Absolutely. You see that in Mozart's operas. A little bit of the political commentary was cut out. I think that's a very good comparison. A lot of times stories when adopted into operas, we focus on the love story. It's just better for the drama. And I think that is true of the current Broadway musical and of this film. Yes. Now the production of this movie is interesting. I know that a talkie version was in the works as early as the 1930s. That's right. Clark Gable. He was a friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and he was trying to get it made into a movie, but never quite worked out, which is probably a good thing. I think he would have been terrible as Gatsby. Yes. I don't see him in that part. There are other classic actors from the 30s or so who could have done it better than Gable. Yes, it was first really taken seriously as they were going to produce it in 1946. And to begin with, well, it's hard to say exactly how it began, but I would say probably the very first step was to send it to the PCA, the Production Code Administration. Now wouldn't you say that this book gained more popularity during the war because it was reprinted and given to soldiers? Yes, absolutely. And then because it's about the end of World War I, so as the next world war was ending, it was more relevant. Yes, and there was some concern from the studio. It's like, F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, so he'd been dead for six years at the time. It's like, is this going to be relevant anymore? And of course, a lot of people might not know this, but this book was not the huge phenomenon it is now when it was released. It was very different than his other styles. He wrote it in this very esoteric kind of way, modelling an after style of Henry James and earlier authors, and he was known for writing this very real, down-to-earth kind of thing, so people weren't quite sure what to do with it. But I think, yes, it really did have a resurgence, and I think this movie can actually be given some credit for that. It's amazing how film adaptations that are all but forgotten now were responsible for making many stories very popular at the time. I can't remember who it was, but I know at the time someone told the director, Elliot Nugent, you have personally restarted a new Fitzgerald era. Wow. Like many famous stories or novels or plays that are adapted into movies, this story was changed a good deal for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Hollywood loves changing stories. Absolutely. It's true from the earliest silent film to the latest release, The Odyssey that just came out. It's not, Homer wouldn't even recognise it. No. It's kind of a Hollywood thing. It's oftentimes geared to a performer. That's true. I think this was very much... Made into an outlaw. Made into an outlaw picture. He had a very definite type of film he made. This was noted for being very different than other films that he made at the time, but I think they still gave the character of Gatsby a little bit more bite to it. They made more of a point that he was this gunman before he became... More of a crime because... A little bit more of a crime-related film. This gun for hire with his break-up. There you go. And, you know, got a good punch in there with the gun the first time you see him. Just like that. And then it sort of... The opening, at first, you're like, this is very different. This is not at all what you're expecting. But then once it gets into the meat of the story, some of the lines are exactly the same. The mood. And it's really about the love story. Now, another thing which influences how Hollywood changes stories is the moral code of the day, the trends of the day. Absolutely. What the public wants, or what Hollywood is doing. And during the 1940s, the moral code of the day was the Motion Picture Production Code, commonly and erroneously known as the Hays Code. This was enforced by the Production Code Administration, the PCA, under the leadership of Joseph I. Breen, which was a subsidiary and the West Coast branch of the Motion Picture Association of America, which now is just the Motion Picture Association, the MPA, which they just changed like five years ago. And at the time the film was made, Eric Johnston had somewhat recently been appointed the new head. Or when they began production in 1946. Yeah, he'd been the head since 1945. And he took over for Will Hayes, who is the namesake of the Hays Code, who was the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. But he didn't have anything directly to do with the code himself. He didn't write it, and he wasn't really one of the enforcers. He was from the parent organization. Yeah, the MPPDA, which was then the MPAA, and now is the MPA, is a political organization. It's based in Washington, D.C. And it's about strictly the political, money-making side, very much the leader. It's not about the boots-on-the-ground filmmaking, and it never was. That's why it's erroneous to call it the Hays Code. He didn't write it, although he said he did at one point, and he didn't enforce it. Nor did Eric Johnston. But a few... Occasionally, Johnston, or Hayes, would be considered, or would be consulted, to be asked about certain policies, like actors who were blacklisted, or books that were... But he really didn't do much of the work. He was just going to lunch with the president. That's what he did. But according to the producer, Richard Maybaum, Eric Johnston was, at this time, very concerned, particularly about doing material in the 20s, because in the wake of another war, he didn't want to restart another roaring 20s era. That sounds like Johnston. Wild lawlessness. So he was a bit uncertain about this story. And as was the case, any time there was a very difficult work, be it a novel or a play, as this is, anyone who knows the story, there's a lot of immorality of all types going on in there. When they first submitted just the story idea to the Breen office, Mr. Breen's reaction at first was, please don't do this. He said, please don't, about many of the great works, because he knew it wouldn't stop them. He just wanted to... I just want to let you know, you're going to have to do a lot of work on this if you don't want to. Forget about it. But then, some time passed, and it wasn't just that. There were other concerns. Yeah. There was casting, and behind the scenes, different difficulties. Then they had a new screenplay writer do an adaptation of it and send that in. And then at that point, Mr. Breen said, if you're going to take it in this direction, you can absolutely move forward with it. But then still, you know, A, B, and C, these points just have to be handled carefully, not necessarily taken out. Now, this particular version was somewhat based on a stage play, wasn't it? Yes. It's a very rare work. It was also lost for many years and just recently was rediscovered and a new version of it sort of was made and released. But not very much information is available about the play, but one can only assume that some of the kind of unusual choices made in the film, which don't seem like they're related to the code at all, might have been partly from that, or just very original ideas of the screenplay writers, one of whom, Cyril Hume, was actually a friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald's. I think that it's interesting to see how certain changes were made for the code. And the core element of this story is you've got a woman who is in love with a man who is not her husband. They were in love years before. Comparable to Casablanca. Absolutely. Contrary to popular belief, a love triangle, even to the point of adultery, was not forbidden by the code. That's right. It couldn't be shown as justified, the sanctity of marriage had to be upheld, and very rarely would the guilty lovers get to ride off into the sunset. But that fact alone wouldn't necessarily mean that the story couldn't be made. The main problem with The Great Gatsby isn't just that this one couple is having an affair. It's like everybody's having an affair. There are all these married couples with different people. And it's sort of like they're almost amoral. Yes. So the important points that needed to be adjusted, really, to make it a code film, and I think were handled really nicely, were Gatsby and Daisy's relationship is not an affair. It's very definite he wants her to leave her husband and marry him. Yes. There's one kiss. That's a sticky moral point in and of itself. But it's not just they're having an illicit affair. He wants her on the up and up. He wants to do it the right way. That Tom's affair with Myrtle is not so plainly an affair. It's subtle. Very little screen time is given to that. Or even to her. Which is honestly quite accurate to the novel. Myrtle is not a big character. She's often expanded. So Tom's affair is downplayed. And that Nick and Jordan's relationship is also purified. And Nick really becomes the moral voice of the story. Because the problem with the story is there is no voice of morality. Nick's just kind of a casual observer. And I think his character changed the most as a result. The Nick of the film is very different, particularly from the book, but from most other adaptations. But often times it seems to have become kind of the standard thing for Nick to be a little bit more of the character who's like, I don't know, my cousin's married. You know, at least some doubt. But it's interesting in this that he's actually already in New York. He is already established. He lives on Long Island when Gatsby arrives. As opposed to the story starting with him arriving in New York and he actually rents the cottage from Gatsby. So Nick is just a more solid character. And then Jordan is more involved. She's the one who actually arranges the tea, kind of without Nick's knowing about it. Yeah, she's very flighty, very frivolous. Yes, Jordan really represents this kind of lawless, immoral spirit of the 20s. But then her character has a very strong arc that she comes to realize there's no meaning in her life and that she and Nick actually get together at the end. And honestly it's kind of nice because it's just all so bleak and hopeless at the end of the book. And looking at it from the later perspective, instead of it was written in the mid-20s, this is now looking at it from the 40s. So it's like we need to put that to rest. And to show that many of those people who were the flaming youth went on to become very respectable people in the 30s and 40s. And even the fact it's told so much in flashback format. It begins in the present day. Nick and Jordan are visiting Gatsby's grave. And then throughout the story, Nick gradually learns more about Gatsby and Daisy Baxter from different characters recounting different episodes to him which are shown in flashback. So it's all just much clearer. As opposed to in the book, you have to get almost all the way to the end before you really find out who Gatsby is. It was kind of an interesting thing for me watching this movie the first time. I had never really thought about this truly before. How important colors are in the original book. The green light, the yellow car, the pink suit, the blue car, all these things. The robin's egg blue uniform. The robin's egg blue uniform of the servant, the butler. It's just little things like that. Some of them are very important and some of them are just casually mentioned. But I didn't really think about it until watching this movie which is in black and white. Yeah. And then I was thinking about it and I thought that really kind of sums it up perfectly. It is a more black and white telling of the great Gatsby. That's true. And not in a negative way. Yeah. It's just everything is a bit clearer. Gatsby is more straightforward. Like right off the bat he tells Nick the truth about his back story. Yeah. We right away really see his being a criminal. A criminal. Yeah. And then becoming this sort of sophisticated this millionaire sort of the front man. But before that he had to kind of work his way up. Yes. It's the only adaptation where we clearly see that Gatsby actually has killed someone. There's the rumor and they look like oh I heard he killed a man once. So they've kind of established that sooner. Just the rights and wrongs are more clearly illustrated. Rather than it's like to say what's right and wrong. Sort of it's a little more vague. It starts off like we are saying this is wrong. Exactly. Looking at his grave you see the Bible verse on there. The wages of sin are death. Exactly. It's like before anyone starts getting offended we're starting out by saying this was wrong. Now let's talk about the 20s. Yes. It might seem a little I don't know preachy. A little overly moralistic. I know some of the people actually in the production unit of the film felt that way after the fact. But one can't judge by the callous Hollywood people. The average American citizen in 1949 I think would have appreciated that. And seen that as okay it's good to put some kind of morality in this time that either we didn't approve of it at the time or we did and that was our wild youth and we grew up and we realized that was wrong. So it's good to give it a little bit of a moral perspective. And I think it's kind of interesting to look at some of the people involved in the film behind the scenes. Like Alan Ladd had some qualms about it at one point early on. Well this was just a policy with him in all his films. He would never take off his wedding ring. But I guess it was more of an issue in this film. And initially he said he wouldn't kiss her because he thought a lot of his fans were children and he didn't want to play a character who kissed a married woman. Now the director I suppose eventually talked him into it because there is one scene there's one in the flashback of course when she's not married but there is one scene but she really kisses him. And they're really making a strong I think it's good that that's the only one because that scene they're making a very strong point it's kind of shocking. It is shocking. Even Jordan's kind of shocked where she's just kind of shamelessly kissing this man in her own house with her husband in the next room. But Nick and Jordan are there too so it's not like you know. That's true. It's not in a private moment. It's not like when she's in his house or anything like that. And there's something and I think a lot of the credit goes to the actors for this and particularly to Alan Ladd's portrayal. There's something about just his demeanor in every scene with her. You see how much he worships her has such a respect for her she's just like precious to him you know he would never want to do anything to defile her to lower her at all so he's just it's very much almost a worshipful kind of thing which I think is very much in the spirit of the original intention it's like is he even really in love with her is the idea of her she has become sort of his Dulcinea like in Don Quixote at the center of this dream he has for himself. I really like that they included before he met Daisy in a flashback the character of the wealthy man who owns the boat they barely even mentioned him in a lot of versions but now granted they made a lot of this stuff up but to show that he had this aspiration for wealth before he met Daisy because you read the book you know the musical literally has a song called For Her it's all for her and that's very romantic and I have no problem with that but that wasn't what the story was originally he wanted to be someone and Daisy became part of that whole obsession but Daisy wasn't the catalyst for the obsession and the movie while being romantic keeps that element that he had the obsession before Daisy and the character of Dan Cody is so brilliant he's sort of like a Mephistopheles kind of character in that you see young Jimmy gets this just like oh I want something like this but I'm going to have to work hard he has the right idea and then Dan convinces him he's like oh you can't have anything without money and like the kind of talk is for suckers and then he just like keeps having experiences keeps like losing things he wants until he decides Dan Cody is right and then at the ending he's given this kind of moral awakening he kind of realizes finally what he's been doing is wrong which is very much which is very unusual you won't see a moral reckoning like that for Gatsby in any other version and what I think is so powerful about it is it actually makes the ending more impacting it's more tragic because he's kind of asking for it in some versions you know but you feel a little more sorry for him in this version you just start to feel like maybe it's spoiler alert the book has been around for over a hundred years so I feel okay giving away the ending you feel like I mean maybe he just kind of has to die because he's never going to be happy because he's just so obsessed and by that point everyone except him knows it's just not going to work out with Daisy she doesn't really care about him anymore it's just he's so stuck on this room he's never really going to be happy or content so it's almost kind of merciful for him to die but in the movie it's like he's finally kind of realized he's been on the wrong path he's going to like face the music finally he has to and then he has to die anyway because we actually know he was a murderer and yes just even if you realize you've gone down the wrong path he still had gone down that path but it is sort of comforting to know that he sort of had that realization in his last moments and also the fact that Nick is there with him because he's all alone when he dies in the book I think that changing the time period from when is it originally set it's originally set in 1922 okay and it was instead made 1928 which is actually very common most adaptations set it a little bit later usually it's like they can do the Charleston I don't think that's the reason yeah but I think they wanted to show like the end of an era because we all know the crash happened in 1929 so it's showing more like the last while before yeah the things are starting to get out of control yes so that's absolutely part of why it was made and possibly they wanted a little more like this is 20 years ago not like 26 years ago because when it was made it's probably filmed in 1948 but as a result it's always very important 5 years it's been 5 years since he saw Daisy it's 11 years it's so long there's something very important about that it's only obviously if you do the math that was 1917 before he went to war it's 1928 you realize that but when he actually says then they meet again at the T she says we haven't met for a long time and he says 11 years when you're used to the usual 5 years that's striking going back to what we were saying about how Gatsby's become this byword for the 20s I know a lot of people even at the time critics criticized what critics do best the film for not really capturing that wild lawless era of the 20s but looking at it now from the modern perspective the 20s Gatsby flappers it's become so much of this obnoxious stereotypical historically inaccurate thing the black and gold like really stereotypical art decor the fringe the party city brand flapper dress all of those sort of things and so to see something like this it doesn't have any of that it's not even the era is important but it's about this particular story and these particular people the background the era is the background if we think about it now oh 2006 man that was you know it's not it wasn't that long ago most people were alive then who are alive now it's not that and you have to think about it it was only 20 years ago at this point it didn't mean as much to them as it does to us now so far in the future and there are actually multiple films from around the 40s or 50s which were set in the 20s and it's very interesting seeing that kind of 40s looking at the 20s style yes particularly in the fashion it's an interesting kind of hybrid fashion which could sort of be its very own costume genre yes my outfit is based on the costume which Daisy wears when she goes to tea and sees Gatsby again for the first time in 11 years it's a very 20s inspired dress with a drop waist and a little bow at the neck she wears a large sun hat and lots of jewelry particularly pearls throughout the movie my outfit is inspired by Jordan's costume at the tea it is a black dress with a mesh top black gloves notable pearl jewelry a large black hat with flowers and it has very much the drop waist 20s style but a bit more fitted and flattering as 40s costumes were many people even who are very familiar with the story I would say probably have no clue that this movie even exists yeah it's true and I think that's such a tragedy because I think it really deserves this place in line of firstly as the first surviving and even if we do find the silent film the first talkie version that's right I just love finding golden era adaptations of famous stories especially ones that aren't well known or popular because to see that another historic era or a famous story through the lens of this classic era of Hollywood with a bunch of recognizable actors I mean you've got Alan Ladd you've got Ruth Hussey you've got Barry Sullivan you've got a very early Shelley Winters yeah as well as supporting characters like Howard Da Silva who played Meyer Wolfsheim in the 74 adaptation it's an interesting little tie in there but I think that this movie is more than just a golden era you know feature it's not just interesting because it's from the golden era because it's from the 40s I think it really is a valid entry into the Gatsby genre and that it it offers some interesting takes as well as including some things that are often overlooked in other adaptations and an interesting tie in with Howard Da Silva's being a secondist he was actually asked his opinion at one point of which film version he thought was better and you know it's kind of hard especially when like you've just been on this recent one you're promoting it but he did say that in his personal opinion at least speaking about the character he thought Alan Ladd's Gatsby was superior to Robert Redford's and the 74 is very much very highly respected as being like the best adaptation so if you're familiar with that one or you just know the musical or you've just seen the Leonardo DiCaprio version you've seen a ballet version of it which was touring recently or very few people might know the opera which was debuted at the Met in 1999 or you've just read the book you've just heard the name you know nothing about it except flappers and there's a guy named Gatsby I highly recommend that you watch this sort of hidden gem version of it because if you love the story it's adding another version to the long roster of them and if you don't know it this might be your introduction to it and you could become a real Gatsby fan now this movie is hard to find there are some copies of the movie on blu-ray available you can look on Amazon or Walmart or ebay but the best place to find it online is at the rather obscure Russian website which is comparable to YouTube ok.ru just look there search under video The Great Gatsby you'll find many very clear black and white copies it's you won't get any viruses in your computer it's a reputable source for getting old movies for free and you can if you look around a little you'll find a copy that doesn't have any kind of subtitles especially if you have a smart tv you can easily watch it on the big screen it's well worth a little searching to find this hidden gem nowadays we have a very definite idea of what a movie musical is it usually involves people randomly bursting into song dance numbers on street corners and other very stagey elements which could easily turn some people off however in the golden era of Hollywood movie musicals were often very different from this the music was in context it was often featured in larger than life musical numbers which took place in stage shows within the story join us next time as we talk about just such a great golden era musical all about the behind the scenes drama of a writer and his singer wife when her success comes between them thank you for watching goodbye