The Great Gatsby: The 1926 Broadway Script

The first-ever print edition of the script for the 1926 Broadway adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Owen Davis, 1923 Pulitzer Prize winner, and George Cukor, later of Hollywood fame, turned Fitzgerald's novel into a fast-moving drama of bootlegging, jazz and violence, resulting in an evening of first-rate entertainment for theatergoers.

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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.