Kutub

This version of The Great Gatsby was released by Paramount Pictures in 1949.

At the time, Alan Ladd was Paramount's biggest male star. He was ideal casting for Jay Gatsby, as he thought of himself as a poor kid from Oklahoma who became a star. The scene of a closet full of clothes was Ladd, not Gatsby.

Betty Field came from a Mayflower family and brings a patrician quality to Daisy Buchanan. MacDonald Carey, Barry Sullivan, Howard da Silva and Shelley Winters all capture their characters perfectly. Ruth Hussey plays Jordan Baker, the golf pro, with Katherine Hepburn's speech patterns, an outrageous but appropriate choice.

The script is based not on F. Scott Fitzgerald's book, but on the Broadway play made from the book. A number of changes in the story were required, as the censors were against letting the picture being made at all. The film was written and produced by Richard Maibaum, writer of 13 James Bond films, and Maibaum's mentor in Hollywood, Cyril Hume, writer of MGM's Tarzan films with Johnny Weissmuller.

The 1974 version of The Great Gatsby with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow and Sam Waterston has more beauty and star power, but sometimes has trouble remembering what the story is about. This 1949 version is more direct and focused, moving surely and swiftly from introduction to finale.

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