Johnny Showtime: THE GREAT GATSBY (1949)

 by JB

Found my Gatsby!

My antipathy towards the 2013 Leonardo DiCaprio The Great Gatsby is not a secret. I wrote a lengthy column about it back then, and I continue to harbor the blackest feelings about that celluloid turd to this day. I’m also not a fan of the languorous, “this is literature” adaptation, filmed in 1974 and featuring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, though that film at least has a script by Francis Ford Coppola. If I hold F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel close to my heart, I do so honesty. It was my favorite of all the books I was forced to read in high school, and later (in my former life as a high-school English teacher) I taught the book to young, impressionable minds for DECADES.

I confess I had seen this so-called “gangster version” of 1949 before, but only on a smeary, dupey VHS tape that left much to be desired. I am so glad that Kino Lorber has finally seen fit to release a proper Blu-ray disc of this entertaining title. The picture here is pristine and the soundtrack is mono but punchy.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Jay Gatsby (Alan Ladd) a rough-hewn gangster who has made a fortune in the bootlegging trade, moves to West Egg, a suburb of Long Island, renovates a mansion there, and begins to throw lavish parties. He means to throw out the tenant currently renting the guest house, Nick Carraway (Macdonald Carey) but they meet and quickly become friends. Gatsby lets Nick stay. Gatsby discovers that Nick is related to one of the Buchanans, a super-rich couple who live in the tonier East Egg. He encourages Nick to invite them to tea. When Nick proffers the invitation, Daisy (Betty Field) instantly says yes. Her husband Tom (Barry Sullivan) isn’t sure he wants to go and get involved with “new money gangsters.” Eventually, the Buchanans accept the invite. Say, haven’t Gatsby and Daisy met BEFORE? Why DID he buy that lavish mansion? And just WHO are that couple who live above the gas station, George and Myrtle Wilson?

I love this version of the tale so much. Alan Ladd is perfectly cast as the title character, Barry Sullivan is quite good as Tom, and Betty Field strikes just the right tone as Daisy. (If any of the novel’s FIVE other film adaptations teach us anything, it is that Daisy is the most difficult part to cast and play.) Macdonald Carey is serviceable as Nick, and Howard DaSilva is terrific as Wilson. DaSilva is one of my all-time favorite character actors. He was all over Broadway, the movies, and television in the 1950s, but then was blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. What a shame. Fortunately, he came back in a big way; he was the original Benjamin Franklin on Broadway in 1776. He actually appears in the 1974 remake of Gatsby as Meyer Wolfshein, a character from the novel who does not appear in the 1949 version.

I think one of the keys to this Great Gatsby's success is that, in 1949, the book had not yet achieved GOLDEN AMERICAN CLASSIC status, and so the filmmakers treat it as a potboiler—a standard, romantic yarn—and are not intimidated by it. Later filmmakers treat Gatsby as if it’s the Bible, inflating it or expanding it until the narrative cannot handle the strain. It’s roughly the same phenomenon that renders Robert Mulligan’s 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird so excellent and timeless: he treats it as a story, not a CLASSIC.

Elliott Nugent’s direction is crisp but not flashy. The script adaptation is very faithful to the book, but with one curious exception. At one point in the film, Gatsby recounts his past to Nick through a lengthy flashback. It seems that Gatsby was working in a shipyard when a very rich man, Dan Cody (Henry Hull) invited him to crew his yacht around the world. Cody teaches Gatsby many life lessons, even though he knows Gatsby and the young Mrs. Cody are making eyes at each other. Then Cody dies and Gatsby rejects the wife. What this detour adds to the narrative is anybody’s guess—I only know that it is not in the novel. It was made up out of whole cloth for the film. Did Henry Hull owe Paramount Pictures one more film? Was Paramount trying to satisfy imaginary moviegoers asking, “How did Gatsby become so... GREAT?” Did adapting screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Cyril Hume think they could do better than F. Scott Fitzgerald? The mind reels. This sequence is as risible as the “Alcoholics Anonymous” prologue in the 2013 version.

One concession to the Production Code that I could easily live without is THIS film’s prologue, wherein Nick and Jordan visit Gatsby’s grave and Nick reminds audiences that bootlegging and coveting thy neighbor’s wife are WRONG. Don’t think the movie you are about to see is glorifying this behavior—Look! There is his grave. He might be GREAT, but he’s still DEAD.

I would have preferred Nick in voice-over, intoning the book’s first paragraph:

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some
advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever
you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'Just remember that all
the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'

"He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative
in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more
than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit
that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores."

The 1949 The Great Gatsby was very difficult to see for many decades. When Paramount Pictures released the remake in 1974, they stopped striking new prints of the 1949 version, prints of which were already quite rare. Over time, existing prints deteriorated and disappeared. Alan K. Rode of the Film Noir Foundation finally asked the studio to strike a new distribution print, and it debuted at the Noir City Festival in San Francisco and the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood in the Spring of 2012.