“Hello Old Sport!”  A show once seemingly missing forever has surfaced on a Blu-ray from Australia. The elusive Alan Ladd version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece is watered-down high art strained through a film noir filter. Ladd embodies the spirit and attitude of Jay Gatsby despite the imposition of  ‘clarifying’ explanations and laughable moral lessons. Betty Field’s Daisy isn’t as compelling, but we have the compensation of noir regulars Macdonald Carey, Barry Sullivan, Howard Da Silva, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Elisha Cook, Jr. and Jack Lambert. It’s fairly well produced — a bit of the decadent ’20s shows through. Excellent extras provide input from experts Alan K. Rode and Jason A. Ney.

The Great Gatsby
Region Free Blu-ray
Viavision Imprint 220
1949 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 91 min. / Street Date May 31, 2023 / Available from / au 34.95
Starring: Alan Ladd, Betty Field, Macdonald Carey, Ruth Hussey, Barry Sullivan, Howard Da Silva, Shelley Winters, Henry Hull, Ed Begley, Elisha Cook Jr., Nicholas Joy, Walter Greaza, Tito Vuolo, Jack Lambert, Dorothy Dayton, Lisa Golm, Carole Mathews, Ray Teal, William Self.
Cinematography: John F. Seitz
Visual Effects: Jan Domela, Farciot Edouart, Gordon Jennings, Irmin Roberts
Art Directors: Hans Dreier, Roland Anderson
Costume Design: Edith Head
Film Editor: Ellsworth Hoagland
Original Music: Robert Emmett Dolan
Screenplay by Cyril Hume, Richard Maibaum based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the 1926 play by Owen Davis
Produced by Richard Maibaum
Directed by Elliott Nugent

When the discussion turns to great books adapted into unsatisfactory movies, The Great Gatsby ought to be first on the list.  F. Scott Fitzgerald created his literary effect almost completely by suggestion. Much of the narrative is inconsequential when compared to what isn’t said about the characters and their pasts. The elusive Jay Gatsby is himself a ‘Citizen Kane’- like mystery: even his close associates can’t be sure that they know him.

Ignoring the 2013 Baz Luhrmann version, some viewers will remember Jack Clayton’s ambitious but unsatisfying 1974 adaptation. It followed Fitzgerald’s plot line fairly faithfully and had the benefit of some good casting — but not Robert Redford, who walked through the part looking glamorous and little more. The ’74 Gatsby was a big production for Paramount, whereas the much earlier B&W version with Alan Ladd is said to have been a film the studio didn’t want to make. Reportedly never reissued and never syndicated to Television, this 1949 version was so difficult to see, it was rumored to have been destroyed. It surfaced finally in 2012, thanks to the intervention of The Film Noir Foundation.

 

Gatsby ’49 looks very good for a relatively budget-conscious effort. Paramount produced it only at the insistence of their top star Alan Ladd. Elliott Nugent seems a thoughtless choice to direct, as he was known mainly for comedies. The novel wasn’t enormously popular at the time, although it had circulated widely in an edition prepared for U.S. servicemen in WW2.  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s overall reputation was at low ebb, and the Production Code objected to the story’s immoral character relationships.

Open adultery is central to the main storyline. Writer Cyril Hume (Bigger than Life,  Forbidden Planet) and writer-producer Richard Maibaum (13 James Bond films beginning with Dr. No) could only adapt the story by muting the decadence of the smart set of 1920s Long Island, and readers of Fitzgerald will likely be offended by their alterations. The film’s main redeeming feature is the casting of Alan Ladd as Jay Gatsby. As an actor Ladd was something of a blank slate, perfect to play a cool killer or suave secret agent. Ladd’s calm, opaque face easily suggests Gatsby’s hidden background, even as the too-literal script gives him dialogue that undercuts Fitzgerald’s intentions.

 

The original novel only alludes to the shady underworld activities through which Jay Gatsby amassed his wealth. The film’s opening montages remove all that ambiguity. Gatsby is introduced with a gun and a trenchcoat, like a stock Alan Ladd film character. As if concerned that nobody would remember ‘Roaring ’20s’ events just 20 years in the past, we’re given a lengthy montage of dancing flappers, partygoers flaunting Prohibition, and gangland action that could have come from Scarface or The Public Enemy. A truck hijack may be an outtake from Paramount’s 1947 I Walk Alone. A couple of shots of nightclub dancing appear to be from a silent film. One shot of teen dancers doing the Charleston is an outtake from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (at exactly 2 minutes, 30 seconds in).

Another clue that producer Maibaum had to scrape to put his picture together is that much of its music is taken from stock cues. A newly-composed music score could have added the ’20s flavor that critics like Bosley Crowther said was lacking.

We first saw this ’49 version at the Chinese Theater during the 2014 TCM Film Fest, with an audience eager to find out if it was any good. The reaction was mixed. The beautiful B&W cinematography by John F. Seitz is a standout, as are the film’s big-scale party scenes. Although not as lavish as the ’74 (forget the overkill 2013), we thought the party scenes captured well the spectacle of an enormous mansion overrun by revelers dancing and swimming. At one point a woman on horseback ambles through Gatsby’s ballroom. We’re also given a nice few seconds of a single flapper (Dorothy Dayton) showing off dance moves that indeed resemble what Joan Crawford does in Our Dancing Daughters. ↓

 

There’s nothing very mysterious about this Jay Gatsby. Incessant expository dialogue and ‘Citizen Kane’- like flashbacks drag the narrative into Reader’s Digest territory, wrapping up the story in 91 minutes. (“B”: One plus for this version is that it doesn’t take much longer to watch than it does to read the book.) The TCM Fest audience reacted positively to the many favorite faces plugged into the classic text. Macdonald Carey, Barry Sullivan, Howard Da Silva, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Elisha Cook Jr. and Jack Lambert give the film the look of hardcore noir.

But the screening also elicited some unintentional laughs. The mysterious ‘green light across the bay’ got a laugh because the special effects make it look simply too darn close — it would have thrown light on Gatsby’s place like a neon sign in an urban noir. The ‘exclusive’ Gatsby and Buchanan estates loom so large that each millionaire would think the other invading his privacy. Another big laugh comes at the impressive first big house party, when Gatsby steps behind some shrubbery to punch out his old gang associate Reba (Jack Lambert).  One assumes that Gatsby’s underworld past is dogging his heels. And a poor animated-matte special effect for Myrtle’s encounter with a speeding car was also too outrageous to be ignored, even if it’s just an unfortunate production detail.

 

Any audience familiar with the book will be dazed by the major ‘moral’ changes mandated by the Production Code Office. The story begins with a narrative addition, a graveyard scene in the present (1949).  Jay Gatsby’s tombstone carries a Bible reference about ‘The Wages of Sin.’  Back in 1928, Gatsby’s new Long Island associates are all made ‘nicer.’ As played rather thickly by Barry Sullivan, Tom Buchanan is no longer a complete racist and hypocrite, just a privileged snob. Jordan Baker (Ruth Hussey) may be a mercenary hanger-on, but she’s not allowed to be entirely selfish. She and Nick Carraway (Macdonald Carey) now genuinely wish to ‘do the right thing’ even as they conspire to help Gatsby break up the Buchanan marriage by reuniting with Daisy.

Macdonald Carey is far too old to play Nick Carraway, and script changes make the character maddeningly inconsistent. Carraway is at times quite passive, deferring to the money and privilege wielded by Tom and Jay. At other times he openly lectures them. We’re spoiled by the memory of Sam Waterston in the ’74 version, who plays Carraway as an un-assertive poor relation granted special privileges. The book’s Jordan Baker might indulge a fling with the amusing Nick, but not too much more, as she wants what Daisy has. In the film’s Sunday school finish, we’re to believe that Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker get married and live respectable middle-class lives, apparently far away from the Buchanans.  Unthinkable!  Well, the Stock Market crash did alter the fortunes of many . . .

 

Wealthy characters fully $ insulated $ against inconvenient ethical issues have been given dialogue that transforms Gatsby into a lightweight moral lesson. In the book Tom Buchanan is a snob SOB, and his Daisy is a gilded lily who never heard the word ‘no’ before marriage. In the movie they are good souls at heart. Adversity reveals them to possess a moral fortitude beyond self-serving considerations, contradicting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s basic premise about the rich. To worshippers of the Gatsby legacy, these changes are literary heresy.

The ‘moral lesson’ capper interrupts Gatsby’s very last scene. He’s survived ten years of shady business dealings by never questioning his mentor Dan Cody’s insultingly pat lesson that “money gets you everything.”  As if in a confessional, Jay suddenly abandons that philosophy, and proposes to instead ‘teach kids how not to live life like I did.’ This wholly unconvincing atonement feels like a direct graft from James Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces — pure Production Code swill.

 

Even as the screenplay undermines Fitzgerald at every turn, Alan Ladd impresses as a rather good choice to play Jay Gatsby. He exudes quiet cool and self-control, yet looks as if he could harbor a hidden obsession for a lost love. It’s often remarked that the excellent actress Betty Field is not right to play Daisy Buchanan, because she’s not the vision of beauty that might send Jay into an obsessive tailspin. Ms. Field plays Daisy as written quite well, making her at all times ‘sweet and nice.’ But the book’s Daisy is a superficial creature frequently oblivious to other people’s problems. Nick is amused by Daisy’s pampered status, her limited capacity for empathy. On that score Mia Farrow’s ’74 Daisy is almost ideal — delicate, capriciously selfish, almost infantile.

The key scene with Gatsby’s shirts is the book’s emotional highlight. It’s a moment of privileged frivolity, with two ‘moral children’ reveling in carefree ecstasy — a ‘you had to be there’ moment when it looks as if all of Jay’s desires will come true.  Jay and Daisy’s happiness is well played, but it has no electric charge: Alan Ladd conveys a hint of Gatsby’s triumph, but Betty Field just seems pleased, as if the rich know no better joy than taking inventories of each others’ closets. The ’74 version can’t make it work either, only it’s Ms. Farrow who seems appropriately giddy, leaving Robert Redford the clueless one.

 

Even with awkward missteps like Henry Hull’s hammy, hectoring Dan Cody, the show still offers some character graces. Shelley Winters nails perfectly her couple of minutes as the dissatisfied, hungry Myrtle Wilson. Howard Da Silva’s George Wilson is another beautiful sketch in miniature, allowed to be faithful to the book. Da Silva returned for the ’74 version, in a different role.

Gatsby ’49 can’t even present the book’s ‘giant eyeglasses’ billboard without imposing a concrete moral reason for its presence. In literary terms the film is an entertaining travesty.  It holds our interest by virtue of the charisma of Alan Ladd, who seems spot-on right for Jay Gatsby even as the censor’s demands make fidelity impossible. The resulting film is yet another object lesson of how the Production Code infantilized American culture. Perhaps the best thing to be said about The Great Gatsby ’49 is that the meddling does not fully destroy the appeal of the book.

 

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Viavision Imprint’s Region Free Blu-ray of the 1949 The Great Gatsby is the first home video release of this long-absent ‘mystery film.’ UCLA’s Paramount collection back in the 1970s didn’t include movies made after the cutoff date to the sale to MCA/Universal, which also explains why we had no print of Billy Wilder’s 1948 A Foreign Affair.

The encoding is excellent, with almost all of the show in pristine condition. The clear picture and sound allow us to examine the Roaring ’20s montage, as well as the optical effects and matte paintings that establish the vast estates on Long Island. Film noir diehards will want to see and admire Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Elisha Cook Jr. and Howard Da Silva. We wonder what the story is behind the minor actress Carole Mathews, who makes a substantial contribution in one of the flashbacks as Ella Cody. Two momentary walk-on ‘twins’ in the party scene receive screen credit, but not Ms. Mathews.

Imprint has secured several excellent extras for their premiere Gatsby disc. This is one of the best commentary tracks by the reliable Jason A. Ney. As a professor of literature he’s able to compare and contrast the film’s text and characterizations with the Fitzgerald original. His up-close reading catches a great many details we didn’t. He points out where raised platforms can be seen, set alterations that made it possible for the 5′ 3″ Alan Ladd to not be dwarfed by the 6′ 2″ Barry Sullivan.

 

Up second for gotta-see-it status is Alan K. Rode’s on-stage conversation with actor-producer David Ladd, taped after a revival screening of Gatsby. Rode has a knack for connecting us with (the dwindling number of) film noir-related personalities, without inserting his ego into the mix. Mr. Ladd of course talks about his father’s legacy. Both Rode and Ney emphasize that Alan Ladd started out as a poor boy from Oklahoma, and identified with the Jay Gatsby character. He spent a decade scraping by before suddenly became one of the most popular stars in Hollywood. He never believed that he was a good actor.

Two newly filmed lectures analyze the movie; both are good but are somewhat redundant to the commentary and each other. An older documentary on Alan Ladd’s career is a good primer on the star’s unique appeal.

From CineSavant Advisor “B”: If you’ve never read Maibaum’s famous L.A. Times article about his experience making the ’49 movie, take a look. Here’s most of it.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

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The Great Gatsby (’49)
Region Free Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good + / –
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: audio commentary by Jason A. Ney
Post screening conversation between Alan K. Rode and David Ladd
Feature analysis by Sarah Churchwell
Feature analysis by Christina Newland
1999 documentary Alan Ladd: The True Quiet Man.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: June 11, 2023
(6943gats)

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