The Great Gatsby (1949) on Netflix
NR19491h 31mDramaMysteryRomance
The bootlegger Jay Gatsby buys a Long Island estate and throws lavish parties. He hopes to win back Daisy Buchanan, who is married to the wealthier Tom Buchanan.
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- Netflix2.4/5
- IMDb6.5/101,087 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes30%
Trailer
Plot summary
Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan loved each other during World War I, when she begged him to marry her and he wanted to wait until he had made his fortune. During Prohibition, Gatsby is a bootlegger who buys an estate on Long Island Sound and gives wild parties there. Daisy has married the far wealthier Tom Buchanan and is unhappy, aware that her husband is involved with Myrtle Wilson, whose husband George Wilson owns a gas station. Gatsby asks Jordan Baker to set up a private meeting with Daisy. Nick Carraway, Daisy's second cousin, is drawn into the circle around Gatsby and becomes a witness to it.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Great Gatsby (1949)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The day before filming began, director Elliott Nugent wrote a suicide note, drove to the Roosevelt Hotel, went to the tenth floor and considered jumping off, then changed his mind.
- Director John Farrow wanted Gene Tierney as Daisy Buchanan, but producer Richard Maibaum pushed for Betty Field; when studio head Henry Ginsberg gave Maibaum the final say and Field was cast, Farrow quit the production.
- Censor Joseph Breen denounced Richard Maibaum and Cyril Hume's screenplay for adultery, excessive drinking, unpunished manslaughter and bootlegging, then made Maibaum add a moralizing preamble condemning Gatsby's behavior as immoral; Maibaum capitulated and later regretted it.
- Producer Richard Maibaum said Paramount used the Gatsby script as a carrot to make Alan Ladd do several lesser films, each time promising Gatsby would be next; after two years Ladd rebelled and threatened to go on suspension.
- Because Alan Ladd was shorter than co-stars Macdonald Carey, Barry Sullivan and Howard da Silva, the studio built him a raised, carpeted platform on the sound stage; humiliated, Ladd vowed to approve his future male co-stars' heights.
- Alan Ladd refused to take off his wedding ring or kiss Betty Field, arguing that many of his fans were children, until producer Richard Maibaum overcame his protests and filmed one scene of Gatsby kissing Daisy.
- In the early 1930s actor Clark Gable talked with F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood about remaking The Great Gatsby as a star vehicle for himself, and he and writer John O'Hara pressed Paramount for a sound version, but their efforts failed.
- After its 1949 release Paramount made no new prints of The Great Gatsby and surviving ones deteriorated or vanished; in 2012 Alan K. Rode of the Film Noir Foundation urged Universal Pictures to strike a new print, which debuted at the Noir City Festival in San Francisco.
