Before there was Baz Luhrman and his comically large bottles of champagne, there was another questionable adaptation of The Great Gatsby brought to the big screen. Before the 1974 film (adapted by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow), and before the 1949 version, there was the 1926 version, which came out one year after the book.
According to Open Culture "the 1926 silent film hasn’t been seen in decades. It’s simply lost. All that remains of the original 80 minute film is the one minute trailer above. And the ghost of F. Scott Fitzgerald isn’t complaining." When F. Scott and Zelda saw the film in Hollywood, they were not fans and walked out before credits rolled, according to HuffPo. Zelda even wrote in a letter: ”We saw [it] in the movies. It’s ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left."
The New York Times also reviewed it that year, noting that none of "the players have succeeded in fully developing the characters," and Daisy "takes enough of this beverage [absinthe] to render the average person unconscious."
