Proving that a good story never goes out of style, one hundred years after the great American novel was published, the musical adaptation of Jay Gatsby’s exploits will be opening in London’s West End. This centennial celebration of F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece is a testament to the enduring influence of a story that has captivated readers and audiences across generations.
Whether you're a fan of the novel, the visually-stunning films, or want the lowdown on the Broadway transfer, the story of extravagant dreams and doomed love has left its mark on everything from literature to the West End stage. So, grab your flapper dress, pour yourself a glass of champagne (or two), and get ready for 10 great facts about The Great Gatsby, old sport.
The first Great Gatsby stage adaptation premiered 98 years ago (Theatre Fact)
Written by Pulitzer prize winner Owen Davis and directed by George Cukor (who later won the Oscar for My Fair Lady), the one act play opened on Broadway in 1926. Produced less than a year after the book was published, the show ran for 112 performances at the Ambassador Theatre. The play was well-received by critics, and helped F. Scott Fitzgerald (the author of the book) recroup some money from his story. The dramatisation of his novel was far better received than the book, and brought Fritzgerald substantial royalties and fame which catapulted his tale to international audiences.
The critics didn’t think the book was that Great (Book Fact)
It’s hard to believe, but the book was a critical and commercial flop when it was first published. Ruth Snyder of New York Evening World claimed that The Great Gatsby was proof that ‘Mr. Fitzgerald is not one of the great American writers of today", other newspapers were equally dismissive, with Ralph Coghlan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch branding the work as an ‘inconsequential performance,’ The World simply called it ‘a dud’ and John McClure of The Times-Picayune declaring that the novel was ‘painfully forced and implausible’
By October 1925, the book had sold fewer than 20,000 copies making Fitzgerald $2,000 (the equivalent of $36,075 today). To put that into context, Richard Osman signed a £1.1 million book deal for his debut book, The Thursday Murder Club! Compared to his previous works, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned, It was his worst received book, and resulted in him signing off a letter to his editor with ‘Yours in great depression".
Like the 2013 Baz Luhrmann film? You have an ipod to thank (Film Fact)
Luhrmann first decided to adapt Fitzgerald's novel after listening to an audiobook version during an extended train trip to Mongolia in 2004. "I had two bottles of red wine and the new iPod with two recorded books. When it [The Great Gatsby] ended, I had inconsolable melancholia. I was like, 'Can we do all that again?'"
And he did. As soon as Luhrmann left the train he was on the phone to the producers at Sony to get the film adaptation greenlit. A mere nine years later the film was out in cinemas, and picked up two Oscars at the Academy awards.
The Great Gatsby’s newest home is the shows oldest venue (Theatre Fact)
The first adaptation of the show opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in 1927, 6 years after the theatre had its grand opening. The London Coliseum, the home of next year's West End transfer, opened in 1904 - 17 years before the original broadway home. The London Coliseum may be old, but it is full of firsts.
It was the first theatre in England to have a triple revolving stage made up of three concentric rings. The revolve cost £70,000 to build at the time, equivalent to roughly £10 million today (Jay Gatsby would be proud)! It was also the first theatre in Europe to have lifts, and it still has the widest proscenium arch in London!
It wasn’t going to be set in the roaring 20s (Book Fact)
The Great Gatsby is synonymous with jazz, flapper dresses, cocktail glasses and excess, but F. Scott Fitzgerald hadn’t originally intended to set The Great Gatsby in the roaring 20s.
The author’s first drafts of the book had the action set between the Midwest and New York in 1885. There was also a strong ‘catholic element’ in the early versions of the book, which made way for more salacious themes.
The 2013 Great Gatsby film almost looked very different (Film Fact)
Luhrmann's leading man, Leonardo DiCaprio, was the only actor approached for the role of Jay Gatsby. However the other characters were a different story.
Bradley Cooper made a very public plea for the role of Tom, but the part was initially given to Ben Affleck. However, Affleck had cold feet and quickly abandoned the project to direct and star in the Oscar winning Argo. After another round of auditions the part eventually went to Spiderman star, Tobey Maguire.
Daisy wasn’t hand picked from the start either. Natalie Portman, Keira Knightley, Michelle Williams, Scarlett Johansson, Amanda Seyfried, Abbie Cornish, and Blake Lively were all in the running for the part, with Luhrmann specifically requesting these actors for the role. However when Carey Mulligan stepped into the audition room - just three days after reading the source material for the first time - the other stars were quickly forgotten.
It wasn’t going to be called The Great Gatsby (Book Fact)
That’s right, we could be looking at the West End transfer of The High-Bouncing Lover if F. Scott Fitzgerald stuck to his original title. The author had numerous names for his great American fiction, including; On the Road to West Egg; The Great Gatsby: Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires; Trimalchio; Trimalchio in West Egg; On the Road to West Egg and Gold-Hatted Gatsby. We think the final title is by far the best, but Fitzgreald wasn’t too sure, in fact he had asked the publishers to change the title to Under the Red, White, and Blue just three weeks before it went to print. Alas it was too late, and the story has been known as The Great Gatsby ever since. However, Fitzgerald, still wasn't won over and blamed the ‘bland’ title on the poor sales of the book in the first year of publication.
Zara Fitzgerald was not silent about her distaste for the 1926 film (Film Fact)
Despite the book's middling reception when it was first published, the novel managed to score a stage AND film adaptation within a year of the novel hitting the shelves (and staying on them).
However, Zara Fitzgerald, a writer and F. Scott’s wife, was not a fan of the 80 minute silent film. In a letter she stated that the movie, directed by Oscar nominee Herbert Brenon, was “ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left.”
The Broadway musical is a winner! (Theatre Fact)
The Broadway musical officially opened on 29 March 2024, and currently stars Tony and Grammy nominee Jeremy Jordan (Bat out of Hell, Bonnie & Clyde) as Jay Gatsby and Grammy winner Eva Noblezada (Hadestown, Miss Saigon) as Daisy Buchanan.
The pulse-pounding production won a Tony award and two Outer Critics awards, and has been hailed a ‘Great, big Broadway extravaganza that explodes with life and energy” by Entertainment Weekly, a 'Grand crowd-pleasing spectacle’ by the Washington Post, and ‘A lush, bewitching and dazzling new musical’ by The New Times.
The Great Gatsby is a great success (Book Fact)
Despite falling into near obscurity when Fitzgerald died in the 1940s. By the mid-2000s, many literary critics considered The Great Gatsby to be one of the greatest novels ever written. Despite not finishing school himself, his work is now part of the assigned curricula in the near majority of U.S. high schools. As of 2020, The Great Gatsby has sold almost 30 million copies worldwide and continues to sell an additional 500,000 copies annually.
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