The character of Jay Gatsby has been analyzed by scholars for many decades and has given rise to a number of critical interpretations. Scholars posit that Gatsby functions as a cipher because of his obscure origins, his unclear religio-ethnic identity and his indeterminate class status.[11] Accordingly, Gatsby's socio-economic ascent is deemed a threat by other characters in the novel not only due to his status as nouveau riche, but because he is perceived as a societal outsider.[12] The character's biographical details indicate his family are recent immigrants which precludes Gatsby from the status of an Old Stock American.[13] As the embodiment of "latest America",[14] Gatsby's rise triggers status anxieties typical of the 1920s era, involving xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment.[14]
A century after the novel's publication in April 1925, Gatsby has become a touchstone in American culture and is often evoked in popular media in the context of the American dream—the belief that every individual, regardless of their origins, may seek and achieve their desired goals, "be they political, monetary, or social. It is the literary expression of the concept of America: The land of opportunity".[15] Gatsby has been described by scholars as a false prophet of the American dream as pursuing the dream often results in dissatisfaction for those who chase it, owing to its unattainability.[16]
The character has appeared in various media adaptations of the novel, including stage plays, radio shows, video games, and feature films. Canadian-American actor James Rennie originated the role of Gatsby on the stage when he headlined the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City.[17] He repeated the role for 112 performances.[17] That same year, screen actor Warner Baxter played the role in the lost1926 silent film adaptation.[18] During the subsequent decades, the role has been played by many actors including Alan Ladd, Kirk Douglas, Robert Ryan, Robert Redford, Leonardo DiCaprio, and others.
After the publication and commercial success of his debut novel This Side of Paradise in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre relocated to a wealthy enclave on Long Island near New York City.[19] Despite enjoying the exclusive Long Island milieu, Fitzgerald disapproved of the extravagant parties,[20] and the wealthy persons he encountered often disappointed him.[21] While striving to emulate the rich, he found their privileged lifestyle to be morally disquieting, and he felt repulsed by their careless indifference to less wealthy persons.[22][23] Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald admired the rich, but he nonetheless harbored a deep resentment towards them.[23][24] This recurrent theme is ascribable to Fitzgerald's life experiences in which he was "a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton."[25] He "sensed a corruption in the rich and mistrusted their might."[25] Consequently, he became a vocal critic of America's leisure class and his works satirized their lives.[26][27]
While living in New York, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald's enigmatic neighbor was Max Gerlach.[c][1][31] Gerlach claimed to be born in America to a German immigrant family,[e] and he served as an officer in the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. He later became a gentleman bootlegger who lived like a millionaire in New York.[5] Flaunting his new wealth, Gerlach threw lavish parties,[6] never wore the same shirt twice,[7] used the phrase "old sport",[8] claimed to be educated at Oxford University,[9] and fostered myths about himself, including that he was a relation of the German Kaiser.[10] These details about Gerlach inspired Fitzgerald in his creation of Jay Gatsby.[33] With the end of prohibition and the onset of the Great Depression, Gerlach lost his immense wealth.[34] Living in reduced circumstances, he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head in 1939.[34] Blinded after his suicide attempt, he lived as a helpless invalid for many years before dying on October 18, 1958, at Bellevue Hospital, New York City.[35] He was buried in a pine casket at Long Island National Cemetery.[35]
"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."
I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald,Chapter VIII, The Great Gatsby[36]
Mirroring Gerlach's background, Fitzgerald's fictional creation of James Gatz has a Germanic surname,[13] and the character's father adheres to Lutheranism.[3] These biographical details indicate Gatsby's family are recent German immigrants.[13] Such origins preclude them from the status of Old Stock Americans.[13] Consequently, scholars have posited that Gatsby's socio-economic ascent is deemed a threat not only due to his status as nouveau riche, but because he is perceived as an ethnic and societal outsider.[12] Tom Buchanan's hostility towards Gatsby, who is the embodiment of "latest America",[14] has been interpreted as partly embodying status anxieties typical of the 1920s era, involving anti-immigrant sentiment.[14] Accordingly, Gatsby—whom Tom belittles as "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere"[37]—functions as a cipher because of his obscure origins, his unclear religio-ethnic identity and his indeterminate class status.[11]
Due to Gatsby's nouveau riche background and indeterminate class status, Fitzgerald viewed the character to be a contemporary Trimalchio,[f] the crude upstart in Petronius's Satyricon, and even refers to Gatsby as Trimalchio once in the novel.[39] Unlike Gatsby's spectacular parties, Trimalchio participated in the orgies he hosted, although the characters are otherwise similar.[40] Intent on emphasizing the connection to Trimalchio, Fitzgerald entitled an earlier draft of the novel as Trimalchio in West Egg.[41] Fitzgerald's editor, Maxwell Perkins, convinced the author to abandon his original title of Trimalchio in West Egg in favor of The Great Gatsby.[42]
Following The Great Gatsby's publication in April 1925, Fitzgerald was dismayed that many literary critics misunderstood the novel,[43] and he resented the fact that they failed to perceive the many parallels between the author's own life and his fictional character of Jay Gatsby; in particular, that both created a mythical version of themselves and attempted to live up to this legend.[44]
In 1907, a 17-year-old Gatz traveled to Lake Superior,[46] where he met copper tycoon Dan Cody whose yachtTuolomee[i] was anchored in Little Girl Bay.[50] Introducing himself as Jay Gatsby,[51] the ragged young man saved Cody's yacht from destruction by warning him of weather hazards.[46] In gratitude, Cody invited him to join his yachting trip.[45] Now known as Gatsby, he served as Cody's protégé over the next five years and voyaged around the world.[52] When Cody died in 1912, he left Gatsby $25,000 in his will (equivalent to $789,310in 2023), but Cody's mistress Ella Kaye cheated Gatsby out of the inheritance.[53]
After the Allied Powers signed an armistice with Imperial Germany, Gatsby resided in the United Kingdom in 1919 where he briefly attended Trinity College, Oxford, for five months.[l][68][69] While there, he received a letter from Daisy,[m][72] informing him that she had married Thomas "Tom" Buchanan,[n] a wealthy Chicago businessman.[75] Gatsby departed the United Kingdom and traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to Louisville, but Daisy had already departed the city on her honeymoon.[76] Undaunted by Daisy's marriage to Tom, Gatsby decided to become a man of wealth and influence in order to win Daisy's affections.[77]
Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.... It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams....
—F. Scott Fitzgerald,Chapter I, The Great Gatsby[93]
Soon after, Gatsby accompanied Daisy and her husband to Midtown Manhattan in New York City in the company of Carraway and Daisy's friend Jordan Baker.[s] Tom borrowed Gatsby's yellow Rolls-Royce to drive into the city. He detoured to a filling station in the "valley of ashes",[t] a refuse dump on Long Island.[101] The impoverished proprietor, George Wilson, voiced his concern that his wife Myrtle was having an affair with another man—unaware that Tom was the individual in question.[102]
At a hotel suite in the twenty-story Plaza Hotel, Tom confronted Gatsby over his ongoing affair with his wife in the presence of Daisy, Nick, and Jordan.[103] Gatsby urged Daisy to disavow her love for Tom and to declare that she had only married Tom for his money.[104] Daisy asserted that she loved both Tom and Gatsby.[105] Leaving the hotel, Daisy departed with Gatsby in his yellow Rolls-Royce while Tom departed in his car with Jordan and Nick.[106]
While driving Gatsby's car on the return trip to East Egg, Daisy struck and killed—either intentionally or unintentionally—her husband's mistress Myrtle standing in the highway.[107] At Daisy's house in East Egg, Gatsby assured Daisy he would take the blame if they were caught. The next day, Tom informed George that it was Gatsby's car that killed Myrtle.[108] Visiting Gatsby's mansion, George killed Gatsby with a revolver while he was relaxing in his swimming pool and then committed suicide by shooting himself with the revolver.[109]
Despite the many flappers and sheiks[u] who frequented Gatsby's lavish parties on a weekly basis, only one reveler referred to as "Owl-Eyes" attended Gatsby's funeral.[112] Also present at the funeral were bond salesman Nick Carraway and Gatsby's father Henry C. Gatz, who stated his pride in his son's achievement as a self-made millionaire.[113]
The character of Jay Gatsby has become a cultural touchstone in American culture and is often invoked in popular discourse in the context of rags-to-riches grandeur. Commentator Chris Matthews views the character as personifying the eternal American striver, albeit one is keenly aware that his nouveau riche status is a detriment: "Gatsby needed more than money: he needed to be someone who had always had it.... this blind faith that he can retrofit his very existence to Daisy's specifications is the heart and soul of The Great Gatsby. It's the classic story of the fresh start, the second chance".[114] However, in contrast to Gatsby as "the eternal American striver", folklorist Richard Dorson sees Gatsby as a radically different American archetype who rejects the traditional approach to earning wealth via hard work in favor of quick riches via bootlegging.[115] In Dorson's view, Gatsby "rejected the Protestant ethic in favor of a much more extravagant form of ambition".[115]
The character is often evoked as an indicator of social mobility; in particular, the likelihood of the average American amassing wealth and achieving the American dream.[116] In 1951, Fitzgerald biographer Arthur Mizener first interpreted the final pages of the novel in the context of the American dream.[117] "The last two pages of the book," Mizener wrote in his 1951 biography The Far Side of Paradise, "make overt Gatsby's embodiment of the American dream as a whole by identifying his attitude with the awe of the Dutch sailors" when first glimpsing the New World.[117] Mizener noted the dream's enchantment is qualified by Fitzgerald via his emphasis on the dream's unreality.[117] Mizener argued that Fitzgerald viewed the American dream itself as "ridiculous."[118] Following the publication of his 1951 biography, Mizener popularized his interpretation of the novel as an explicit criticism of the American dream in a series of talks titled "The Great Gatsby and the American Dream."[119]
Expanding upon Mizener's thesis, scholar Roger L. Pearson traced in 1970 the literary origins of this dream to Colonial America.[15] The dream is the belief that every individual, regardless of their origins, may seek and achieve their desired goals, "be they political, monetary, or social. It is the literary expression of the concept of America: The land of opportunity".[15] Echoing Mizener's earlier interpretation,[118] Pearson suggests Gatsby serves as a false prophet of the American dream, and pursuing the dream only results in dissatisfaction for those who chase it, owing to its unattainability.[16] In this context, the green light emanating across the Long Island Sound from Gatsby's house is interpreted as a symbol of Gatsby's unrealizable goal to win Daisy and, consequently, to achieve the American dream.[120][121] Reporting in 2009 on the economic effects of the Great Recession on Long Island—the fictional setting of Gatsby's mansion—The Wall Street Journal quoted a struggling hotelier as saying "Jay Gatsby is dead".[122]
The term "Gatsby" is also often used in the United States to refer to real-life figures who have reinvented themselves; in particular, wealthy individuals whose rise to prominence involved an element of deception or self-mythologizing. In a 1986 exposé on disgraced journalist R. Foster Winans who engaged in insider trading with stockbroker Peter N. Brant, the Seattle Post Intelligencer described Brant as "Winan's Gatsby".[123] Brant had changed his name from Bornstein and said he was "a man who turned his back on his heritage and his family because he felt that being recognized as Jewish would be a detriment to his career".[123]
In more recent years, Gatsby's voracious pursuit of wealth has been referenced by scholars as exemplifying the perils of environmental destruction in pursuit of self-interest.[124] According to Kyle Keeler, Gatsby's quest for greater status manifests as self-centered, anthropocentric resource acquisition.[124] Inspired by the predatory mining practices of his fictional mentor Dan Cody, Gatsby participates in extensive deforestation amid World WarI and then undertakes bootlegging activities reliant upon exploiting South American agriculture.[124] Gatsby conveniently ignores the wasteful devastation of the valley of ashes to pursue a consumerist lifestyle and exacerbates the wealth gap that became increasingly salient in 1920s America.[124] For these reasons, Keeler argues that—while Gatsby's socioeconomic ascent and self-transformation depend upon these very factors—each one is nonetheless partially responsible for the ongoing ecological crisis.[124]
Both the character of Jay Gatsby and Fitzgerald's novel have been linked to composer George Gershwin's 1924 song Rhapsody in Blue.[125] As early as 1927, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald opined that Rhapsody in Blue idealized the youthful zeitgeist of the Jazz Age.[126] In subsequent decades, both the latter era and Fitzgerald's literary works were often linked by critics and scholars with Gershwin's composition.[127] In 1941, historian Peter Quennell opined that Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby embodied "the sadness and the remote jauntiness of a Gershwin tune".[128]
Accordingly, Rhapsody in Blue was used as a dramatic leitmotif for the character of Jay Gatsby in the 2013 film The Great Gatsby, the fourth cinematic adaptation of Fitzgerald's 1925 novel.[129][130] Various writers such as the American playwright and critic Terry Teachout have likened Gershwin himself to the character of Gatsby due to his attempt to transcend his lower-class background, his abrupt meteoric success, and his early death while in his thirties.[127]
Portrayals
Stage
James Rennie as Gatsby in the first stage adaptation.
The first individual to portray the role of Jay Gatsby was 37-year-old James Rennie, a stage actor who headlined the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City.[17] As "a handsome Canadian with a good voice",[17] Rennie's portrayal of Gatsby was met with rave reviews from theater critics.[17] He repeated the role for 112 performances and then paused when he had to voyage to England due to an ailing family member.[17]
After returning from England, Rennie continued to appear as Gatsby when the stage play embarked upon a successful nationwide tour.[17] As Fitzgerald was vacationing in Europe at the time, he never saw the 1926 Broadway play,[17] but his agent Harold Ober sent him telegrams which quoted the many positive reviews of the production.[17]
A number of actors later portrayed Jay Gatsby in cinematic adaptations of Fitzgerald's novel. Warner Baxter played the role in the lost1926 silent film.[18] Although the film received mixed reviews,[137] Warner Baxter's portrayal of Gatsby was praised by several critics,[18][137] although other critics found his acting to be overshadowed by Lois Wilson as Daisy.[137] Purportedly, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre loathed the 1926 film adaptation of his novel and stormed out midway through a viewing of the film at a cinema.[138] "We saw The Great Gatsby at the movies," Zelda wrote to an acquaintance in 1926, "It's ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left."[139]
Nearly a decade after Fitzgerald's death by a heart attack in 1940, Gatsby was portrayed by Oklahoma actor Alan Ladd in the 1949 film adaptation.[140] Ladd's Gatsby was criticized by Bosley Crowther of The New York Times who felt that Ladd was overly solemn in the title role and gave the impression of "a patient and saturnine fellow who is plagued by a desperate love".[141] The film's producer Richard Maibaum claimed that he cast Ladd as Gatsby based on the actor's rags-to-riches similarity to the character:
"I was in his house and he took me up to the second floor, where he had a wardrobe about as long as this room. He opened it up and there must have been hundreds of suits, sport jackets, slacks and suits. He looked at me and said, 'Not bad for an Okie kid, eh?'... I remembered when Gatsby took Daisy to show her his mansion, he also showed her his wardrobe and said, 'I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.' I said to myself, 'My God, he is the Great Gatsby.'"[140]
In 1974, Robert Redford portrayed Gatsby in a film adaptation that year.[142] Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times believed that Redford was "too substantial, too assured, even too handsome" as Gatsby and would have been better suited in the role of antagonist Tom Buchanan.[143] Likewise, film critic Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune criticized Redford's interpretation of Gatsby as merely a "shallow pretty boy".[144] Siskel declared there was little resemblance between Redford's suave portrayal and the ambitious parvenu in the novel.[144]
In more recent decades, Leonardo DiCaprio played the role in director Baz Luhrmann's 2013 film adaptation.[138] In a 2011 interview with Time magazine prior to the film's production, DiCaprio explained he was attracted to the role of Gatsby due to the idea of portraying "a man who came from absolutely nothing, who created himself solely from his own imagination. Gatsby's one of those iconic characters because he can be interpreted in so many ways: a hopeless romantic, a completely obsessed wacko or a dangerous gangster intent on clinging to wealth".[145]
Toby Stephens later portrayed the character in a 2000 television film adaptation.[148] In a 2001 review of the television film, The New York Times criticized Stephens' performance as "so rough around the edges, so patently an up-from-the-street poseur that no one could fall for his stories for a second" and his "blunt performance turns Gatsby's entrancing smile into a suspicious smirk".[149]
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with Jay Gatsby, the mysterious millionaire with an obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
Zelda Fitzgerald was an American novelist, painter, and socialite. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, to a wealthy Southern family, she became locally famous for her beauty and high spirits. In 1920, she married writer F. Scott Fitzgerald after the popular success of his debut novel, This Side of Paradise. The novel catapulted the young couple into the public eye, and she became known in the national press as the first American flapper. Because of their wild antics and incessant partying, she and her husband became regarded in the newspapers as the enfants terribles of the Jazz Age. Alleged infidelity and bitter recriminations soon undermined their marriage. After Zelda traveled abroad to Europe, her mental health deteriorated, and she had suicidal and homicidal tendencies, which required psychiatric care. Her doctors diagnosed her with schizophrenia, although later posthumous diagnoses posit bipolar disorder.
Matthew Joseph Bruccoli was an American professor of English at the University of South Carolina. He was an expert on F. Scott Fitzgerald; his biography of Fitzgerald, published in 1981, was considered the standard biography for decades. He also wrote about other writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and John O'Hara, and was editor of the Dictionary of Literary Biography.
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in March 1920. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of unfulfilling romances with flappers. The novel explores themes of love warped by greed and social ambition. Fitzgerald, who took inspiration for the title from a line in Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti, spent years revising the novel before Scribner's accepted it for publication.
Tender Is the Night is the fourth and final novel completed by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in French Riviera during the twilight of the Jazz Age, the 1934 novel chronicles the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist, and his wife, Nicole, who is one of his patients. The story mirrors events in the lives of the author and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald as Dick starts his descent into alcoholism and Nicole struggles with mental illness.
The Beautiful and Damned is a 1922 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in New York City, the novel's plot follows a young artist Anthony Patch and his flapper wife Gloria Gilbert who become "wrecked on the shoals of dissipation" while excessively partying at the dawn of the hedonistic Jazz Age. As Fitzgerald's second novel, the work focuses upon the swinish behavior and glittering excesses of the American social elite in the heyday of New York's café society.
"Winter Dreams" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald that was first published in Metropolitan magazine in December 1922 and later collected in All the Sad Young Men in 1926. The plot concerns the attempts by a young man to win the affections of an upper-class woman. The story, frequently anthologized, is regarded as one of Fitzgerald's finest works "for poignantly portraying the loss of youthful illusions."
The Great Gatsby is a 1974 American historical romantic drama film based on the 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film was directed by Jack Clayton, produced by David Merrick, and written by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Sam Waterston, Bruce Dern, and Karen Black. The plot concerns the interactions of writer Nick Carraway with enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby (Redford) and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan (Farrow), amid the riotous parties of the Jazz Age on Long Island near New York City.
The Great Gatsby is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Herbert Brenon. It was the first film adaptation of the 1925 novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Warner Baxter portrayed Jay Gatsby and Lois Wilson portrayed Daisy Buchanan. The film was produced by Famous Players–Lasky, and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The Great Gatsby is now considered lost. A vintage movie trailer displaying short clips of the film still exists.
The Great Gatsby is a 1949 American historical romance drama film directed by Elliott Nugent, and produced by Richard Maibaum, from a screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Cyril Hume. The film stars Alan Ladd, Betty Field, Macdonald Carey, Ruth Hussey, and Barry Sullivan, and features Shelley Winters and Howard Da Silva, the latter of whom later returned in the 1974 version. It is based on the 1925 novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set during the raucous Jazz Age on Long Island near New York City, the plot follows the exploits of enigmatic millionaire and bootlegger Jay Gatsby who attempts to win back the affections of his former lover Daisy Buchanan with the aid of her second cousin Nick Carraway.
The Great Gatsby is a 2000 British-American historical romantic drama television film, based on the 1925 novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was directed by Robert Markowitz, written by John J. McLaughlin, and stars Toby Stephens in the title role of Jay Gatsby, Mira Sorvino as Daisy Buchanan, Paul Rudd as Nick Carraway, Martin Donovan as Tom Buchanan, Francie Swift as Jordan Baker, Heather Goldenhersh as Myrtle Wilson, and Matt Malloy as Klipspringer. The film aired on March 29, 2000 in the United Kingdom on BBC, and on January 14, 2001 in the United States on A&E.
Daisy Fay Buchanan is a fictional character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is a wealthy socialite from Louisville, Kentucky who resides in the fashionable town of East Egg on Long Island during the Jazz Age. She is narrator Nick Carraway's second cousin, once removed, and the wife of polo player Tom Buchanan, with whom she has a daughter. Before marrying Tom, Daisy had a romantic relationship with Jay Gatsby. Her choice between Gatsby and Tom is one of the novel's central conflicts. She was described by Fitzgerald as a "golden girl".
Nick Carraway is a fictional character and narrator in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is a Yale University alumnus from the American Midwest, a World War I veteran, and a newly arrived resident of West Egg on Long Island, near New York City. He is a bond salesman and the neighbor of enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby. He facilitates a sexual affair between Gatsby and Nick's second cousin, once removed, Daisy Buchanan which becomes one of the novel's central conflicts. Carraway is easy-going and optimistic, although this latter quality fades as the novel progresses. After witnessing the callous indifference and insouciant hedonism of the idle rich during the riotous Jazz Age, he ultimately chooses to leave the eastern United States forever and returns to the Midwest.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Ginevra King Pirie was an American socialite and heiress. As one of the self-proclaimed "Big Four" debutantes of Chicago during World War I, King inspired many characters in the novels and short stories of Jazz Age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald; in particular, the character of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. A 16-year-old King met an 18-year-old Fitzgerald at a sledding party in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and they shared a passionate romance from 1915 to 1917.
Edith Cummings Munson, popularly known as The Fairway Flapper, was an American socialite and one of the premier amateur golfers during the Jazz Age. She was one of the Big Four debutantes in Chicago during World War I. She attained fame in the United States following her 1923 victory in the U.S. Women's Amateur. On August 25, 1924, she became the first golfer and first female athlete to appear on the cover of Time magazine. She also was the literary model for the character of Jordan Baker in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby.
"The Rich Boy" is a short story by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was included in his 1926 collection All the Sad Young Men. "The Rich Boy" originally appeared in two parts, in the January and February 1926 issues of Redbook. In the January installment, the story is described on the front cover as: "A great story of today's youth by F. Scott Fitzgerald".
Arthur Moore Mizener was an American professor of English, literary critic, and biographer. After graduating from Princeton, Mizener obtained his master's degree from Harvard. From 1951 until his retirement in 1975, he was Mellon Foundation Professor of English at Cornell University. In 1951, Mizener published the first biography of Jazz Age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald titled The Far Side of Paradise.
"The Great Gatsby" is an American television play broadcast live on June 26, 1958, as part of the second season of the CBS television series Playhouse 90. David Shaw wrote the teleplay, adapted from the novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Franklin Schaffner directed. Jeanne Crain, Robert Ryan, and Rod Taylor starred, and Rod Serling was the host.
Max von Gerlach was a German-born American bootlegger and an acquaintance of American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. After serving as an officer in the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, Gerlach became a gentleman bootlegger who operated speakeasies on behalf of gambler Arnold Rothstein in New York City.
↑ In 1920s slang, a "yachtsman" was a popular euphemism for a bootlegger as contraband alcohol was often imported via sailboat.[2]
1 2 Both Zelda Fitzgerald and F. Scott Fitzgerald's friend Edmund Wilson stated that Max Gerlach was a neighbor.[1][28] Scholars have yet to find surviving property records for a Long Island estate with Gerlach's name.[29] However, there are likely "gaps in the record of his addresses",[29] and an accurate reconstruction of Gerlach's life is hindered "by the imperfect state of relevant documentation".[30]
1 2 Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy was inspired by Fitzgerald's life-long obsession with socialiteGinevra King.[59][60] As Maureen Corrigan notes: "Because she's the one who got away, Ginevra—more than Zelda—is the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan".[61]
↑ In a 2009 book, scholar Horst Kruse asserts that Max Gerlach was born in or near Berlin, Germany, and, as a young boy, he immigrated with his German parents to America.[32]
↑ In 2002, over six decades after Fitzgerald's death, his earlier draft of the now-famous novel was published under the title Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby.[38]
↑ Gatsby's birth year is revealed based on his first meeting with Dan Cody. Fitzgerald writes that Dan Cody went to sea in 1902 and, five years later in 1907, Cody first encountered Gatsby in Little Girl Bay at Lake Superior.[45] At the time of this first encounter, Gatsby was 17-years-old.[46] Consequently, Gatsby was born circa 1890 according to the novel's text.
↑ Reflecting Gatsby's Lutheran roots, his university St. Olaf College was founded in 1874 by Lutheran followers in southern Minnesota.
↑ "Tuolomee" is an alternate spelling for the Tuolumne River which emerges from Sierra Nevada mountain range. Ostensibly, copper tycoon Dan Cody, who made his fortune in "the Nevada silver fields",[45] named his yacht after the legendary river which was once rich in silver and copper ore.
↑ Gatsby's love for Daisy mirrors Fitzgerald's love for Ginevra King. Fitzgerald "was so smitten by King that for years he could not think of her without tears coming to his eyes".[58]
↑ In the original 1925 text, Fitzgerald specified the "Sixteenth Infantry" of the "First Division".[54] Fitzgerald corrected the text in subsequent editions to be the "Seventh Infantry" of the "Third Division".[55]
↑ The novel's antagonist Thomas "Tom" Buchanan was primarily based upon William "Bill" Mitchell, the businessman who married Ginevra King, Fitzgerald's first love.[73] Mitchell was a Chicagoan who loved polo.[73] Also, like Ginevra's father Charles Garfield King whom Fitzgerald resented, Buchanan is an imperious Yale man and polo player from Lake Forest, Illinois.[74]
↑ After leaving the U.S. Army, Fitzgerald settled in New York City amid the ongoing societal transformation of the Jazz Age.[78] Fitzgerald described the era as racing "along under its own power, served by great filling stations full of money".[79] In Fitzgerald's eyes, the era was a morally permissive time when Americans became disillusioned with prevailing norms and obsessed with hedonism.[80]
↑ In 1922, Fitzgerald moved to Kings Point on Long Island where his marriage began to disintegrate.[88] The quarrels between Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda grew intense,[88] and they remarked to friends that their marriage would not last much longer.[88] While staring across Long Island Sound, Fitzgerald continued to long for Ginevra King and hoped to be reunited with her.[89] He later confided to his daughter that Ginevra "was the first girl I ever loved" and that he "faithfully avoided seeing her" to "keep the illusion perfect".[90]
↑ The "valley of ashes" was a landfill in Flushing Meadows, Queens. "In those empty spaces and graying heaps, part of which was known as the Corona Dumps, Fitzgerald found his perfect image for the callous and brutal betrayal of the incurably innocent Gatsby".[100] The landfill was drained and became the site of the 1939 World's Fair.[100]
↑ A "sheik" referred to young men in the Jazz Age who imitated the appearance and dress of iconic film star Rudolph Valentino.[110] The female equivalent of a "sheik" was called a "sheba".[111] Both "sheiks" and "shebas" were slightly older in age than the younger "flapper" generation who were children during World War I.[111]
Citations
1 2 3 4 5 Bruccoli 2002, p.178: "Jay Gatsby was inspired in part by a local figure, Max Gerlach. Near the end of her life Zelda Fitzgerald said that Gatsby was based on 'a neighbor named Von Guerlach or something who was said to be General Pershing's nephew and was in trouble over bootlegging'".
1 2 Fitzgerald 1925, pp.117–118: "Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn't easy to say.... His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people".
↑ Mizener 1965, p.140: Although Fitzgerald strove "to become member of the community of the rich, to live from day to day as they did, to share their interests and tastes", he found such a privileged lifestyle to be morally disquieting.
1 2 Mizener 1965, p.141: Fitzgerald "admired deeply the rich" and yet his wealthy friends often disappointed or repulsed him. Consequently, he harbored "the smouldering hatred of a peasant" towards the wealthy and their milieu.
↑ Turnbull 1962, p.150: According to Fitzgerald himself, he was unable "to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works."
↑ Berman 2014, p.36: The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines rejected several of Fitzgerald's stories as they deemed them to be "baffling, blasphemous, or objectionably satiric about wealth".
↑ Kruse 2014, pp.13–14: Biographer Arthur Mizener wrote in a January 1951 letter to Max Gerlach that "Edmund Wilson, the literary critic, told me that Fitzgerald came to his house, apparently from yours [Gerlach's], and told him with great fascination about the life you were leading. Naturally, it fascinated him as all splendor did".
↑ Fitzgerald 1991, p.88, Chapter 7, opening sentence: "It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night—and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.209: "A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby's father".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.119: "An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran College of St. Olaf's".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.119: "He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor's work with which he was to pay his way through".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.120: "The none too savory ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common property of the turgid journalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospital shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz's destiny in Little Girl Bay".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.118: "I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then.... He invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.121: "And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn't get it. He never understood the legal device that was used against him, but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye".
↑ Smith 2003: Fitzgerald later confided to his daughter that Ginevra King "was the first girl I ever loved" and that he "faithfully avoided seeing her" to "keep the illusion perfect".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, pp.177–179: "He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone.... I can't describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her, old sport".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.57: "Your face is familiar," he said, politely. "Weren't you in the First Division during the war?" "Why, yes. I was in the Twenty-eighth Infantry." "I was in the Sixteenth Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before."
↑ Fitzgerald 1991, p.39: "Your face is familiar," he said politely. "Weren't you in the Third Division during the war?" "Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion." "I was in the Seventh Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before."
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.155: "It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That's why I can't really call myself an Oxford man.... It was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers after the armistice".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.180: "After the armistice he tried frantically to get home, but some complication or misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.178: "However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made the most of his time".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.88: "Meyer Wolfsheim? No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: "He's the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, p.95: "He had waited five years [since 1917] and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths".
↑ Fitzgerald 1925, pp.60–61: "When the 'Jazz History of the World' was over, girls were putting their heads on men's shoulders in a puppyish, convivial ways, girls were swooning backward playfully into men's arms, even into groups, knowing that some one would arrest their falls".
↑ Tredell 2007, p.124: An index note refers to Laurence E. MacPhee's "The Great Gatsby's Romance of Motoring: Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker", Modern Fiction Studies, 18 (Summer 1972), pp. 207–12.
↑ Bewley 1954, pp.235, 238: "For Gatsby, Daisy does not exist in herself. She is the green light that signals him into the heart of his ultimate vision... Thus the American dream, whose superstitious valuation of the future began in the past, gives the green light through which alone the American returns to his traditional roots, paradoxically retreating into the pattern of history while endeavoring to exploit the possibilities of the future".
Lask, Thomas (October 3, 1971). "The Queens That Gatsby Knew". The New York Times. New York City. Retrieved September 1, 2021.
Levy, Aidan (2019). "'Rhapsody In Blue' at 90". JazzTimes. Braintree, Massachusetts. Like a train, Gershwin's sprawling composition had more moving parts than Whiteman had musicians, even augmented with strings, but the band was so versatile that three reed players managed to play a total of 17 parts, including the oboe-like heckelphone, switching as the music dictated.
Mellow, James R. (1984). Invented Lives: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company. p.281. ISBN0-395-34412-3– via Internet Archive. Hollywood," [Zelda] wrote Scottie, "is not gay like the magazines say but very quiet. The stars almost never go out in public and every place closes at mid-night." They had been to see a screening of The Great Gatsby, she wrote: "It's ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left.
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