How screenplays were developed throughout the Golden Age of Hollywood.

It seems no novel has been adapted to the motion picture screen more times than The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald's work has been filmed five times, and is again, in release. Notable versions include a 1926 silent film starring Warner Baxter and a very young William Powell; a 1949 Golden Age motion picture with Alan Ladd and Shelly Winters; and arguably the most popular adaptation in 1974, featuring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, and Sam Waterston, and a script by Francis Ford Coppola. The latest epic stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire. Fitzgerald joins Ernest Hemingway as American authors of novels and short stories, whose works are the reflection of times known as the Jazz Age. Before their appearance, literature of notable living scribes was not considered as viable material for the stage and screen. Of course, the great works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Victor Hugo, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jack London were often adapted by early screenwriters of the Silent Era. And often, science fiction translated well from the writings of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Influenced by the social commentary of Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway used actual history as a backdrop to their fictional stories. Gertrude Stein dubbed these survivors of World War I (The Great War) as the Lost Generation, which also included composer Cole Porter, singer Josephine Baker, dancer Isadora Duncan, and painter Pablo Picasso, among others. John Steinbeck also comes to mind as an American author who developed fiction based on the normal, if dreary, lives of real people. It was T.S. Eliot who first popularized the notion of turning modern fiction into dramatic theatre. Recently, Woody Allen paid homage to these artists of the Lost Generation in his 2012 film, Midnight in Paris. Once Eugene O'Neill introduced into American drama, stylistic realism associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg, American theatre was forever changed. Billed as an alternative to the light musical comedy revues from folks such as Florenz Ziegfeld, O'Neill's plays captured the plight of a nation by including dialogue in American vernacular, and involving characters on the fringes of society, where their struggle to maintain hopes and aspirations was undermined by a slide into everyday disillusionment and despair; plots that resonated well with Depression-era audiences. This style of writing led to the development of Broadway actors, who would soon be discovered by movie moguls, searching for new stars for their talkies of the 1930s. Actors such as Spencer Tracy, James Cagney, Paul Muni, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart emerged in realistic cinematic dramas based on the writings of Hemingway, Steinbeck, and O'Neill. Early entries that were popular among film-goers include A Farewell to Arms, Strange Interludes, and Of Mice and Men. In the thirties, a European style of filmmaking became popular as Axis aggression swept two continents. Dubbed film noir... writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler were quickly hired by the movie studios to update how gangster-films were put together. Hammett was particularly adept at this gritty nuanced style, since elements of the technique were introduced in the Thin Man series of motion pictures of the 1930s. It all came together in 1941 with the production of The Maltese Falcon. A hero with duplicitous motives, menacing dark evening streets, and a femme-fatale, made stars of Alan Ladd, John Garfield, Veronica Lake, Robert Mitchum, William Bendix, etc. Iconic movies, including The Glass Key, Out of the Fog, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and The Asphalt Jungle, still play remarkably well in rich black-and-white cinematography, and presented in a fascinating film noir script. Meanwhile, new productions were developed from the works of Hemingway, Steinbeck, and O'Neill. For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flat, and Mourning Becomes Electra were among the many works receiving accolades from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences each year. And, these fine motion picture and stage productions were inspiring a new generation of authors. The works of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller started to influence how actors studied their craft. The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute trained actors in a technique known as The Method. This teaching style owed much to the Russian director, Stanislavsky, whose book, An Actor Prepares, dealt with the psychology of interpretation in acting. Actors such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe; and early directors as Elia Kazan and Sidney Lumet embraced this theatrical collective-approach. This style of performance was extraordinarily popular in live television of the 1950s, particularly in anthology dramas of the day. Teleplay writers emerged... Rod Serling and Paddy Chayevsky come to mind. Rod Steiger, Robert Redford, Lee Remick, Joanne Woodward, George C. Scott, Jack Klugman, Cloris Leachman, among others, were plucked from the small screen to become cinematic stars. And, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Patterns, and Twelve Angry Men, etc. were adapted into successful film productions. Later, Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and Harvey Keitel ushered in a new-realism that still exists in movies today. The cinematic ethical police known as the Hays Code, established in the 1930s, was the first casualty of this modern-day cinematic revolution. The Motion Picture Ratings were created in 1967 to help families decide which films might be appropriate for their children. It remains to be seen if F. Scott Fitzgerald's work still excites movie-goers. My guess is... if the material is strong and well-adapted... and if the actors hit their marks... ticket sales would be brisk. The Great Gatsby was released on May 10, 2013.