The Great Gatsby: The 1926 Broadway Script

The first-ever print edition of Owen Davis's adaptation of The Great Gatsby for Broadway, with photographs of the original production.

James L. W. West III (Edited by), Anne Margaret Daniel (Edited by)

9781009385220, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 April 2024

142 pages
22.3 x 14.9 x 1.4 cm, 0.31 kg

'Meticulously edited by James L.W. West III and Anne Margaret Daniel, this authoritative edition of the 1926 stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby does more than fill a surprising gap in the scholarly canon. The play will also be entertaining and enlightening for students of the novel and the period – some may well judge it superior to many of the adaptations that have followed it. An essential contribution to Fitzgerald studies.' Sarah Churchwell, Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities, School of Advanced Study, University of London

The cultural ubiquity of The Great Gatsby is such that it is tempting to think we know almost all there is to say about it. But F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous work still has the capacity to surprise us. Perhaps few admirers of the novel know that it was also adapted for the stage by Owen Davis. In 1926 a successful production ran at the Ambassador Theater in New York City. This edition presents, for the first time in print, the original Broadway script: a fascinating social and literary document, now all but forgotten. The play re-forged Fitzgerald's novel into a fast-moving dramatization of parties and bootlegging, dancing and drinking, hot jazz, adultery and violence. It afforded an evening of first-rate entertainment for Manhattan theatergoers. Incorporating photographs of the original sets and actors, reviews, and publicity pasted into Fitzgerald's scrapbooks, this volume lifts the curtain anew on a singular drama.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on the Text
Introduction
The Great Gatsby: The 1926 Broadway Script
Annotations.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]