1949 - THE GREAT GATSBY, interesting 40's adaptation of the famous novel

The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic American novel of the Jazz age that a person can actually read and enjoy for a change.  The films based on the novel have been a compete mess.  The 1974 film was faithful to the novel but really boring.  The current adaptation that is being prepared by ADD director Baz Luhrmann was scheduled for release in 2012 but has been pushed out to 2013, not a good sign.  Let's take a look at the 1949 version.

Faced with translating Fitzgerald's prose about the lives of the rich and wanna be rich, Paramount proceeded to spell out just about every plot point that Fitzgerald had cleverly and subtly written into the story.  At the same time this adaptation kept just enough of the essence of the book to make it kind of an interesting film.

Everything about this production is a little strange.  One of the screenwriters was Richard Maibaum (also the producer)  who was associated with the James Bond series.  The director Elliott Nugent was more of a comedy director who had been worked with James Thurber and Bob Hope.

Odd casting choices run throughout the film.  Alan Ladd was a Paramount star who was known for playing tough guy gangsters and private eyes.  Paramount proceeded to play up this aspect of the Gatsby character by really emphasizing Gatsby's past as a bootlegger complete with Ladd wearing a trench coat.  Ladd even punches a guy out at one point, something Fitzgerald could not have been to happy about.   Actually Alan Ladd is pretty good as Jay Gatsby.  As Gatsby's lover and object of desire, Betty Field was cast.  Field was a fine intelligent actor but hardly the ethereal, beautiful and  shallow Daisy Buchanan of the book the woman was just not that kind of glamour gal.

You can see the heavy hand of the censors running throughout this film.  They want everything spelled out and nice tidy conclusions at the climax.  They even ordered up a happy ending for Nick Carraway and his girlfriend Jordan Baker, showing them married at the end of the film which completely contradicts the melancholic ending of the book.

91 minutes, written by Richard Maibaum and Cyril Hume

1939 - THE CAT AND THE CANARY, Bob Hope becomes a star

The third remake of the "murderer is on the prow in the scary house after the reading of the will" story. Paramount teamed Bob Hope with Paulette Goddard and added lots of humor to cover up the creakiness and melodrama of the original play. The film mixed comedy and scares in a professional approach that a major studio could bring to make an entertaining film out of dated material.

The director Elliot Nugent, was a Broadway playwright/actor/director who knew how to modulate and pace the performances of the actors to serve this material. By this film, Hope had perfected his cowardly smart ass personality, and his comments on the action throughout the film added to the fun. Paulette Goddard was very likable as the heroine being chased by a mysterious killer, and she did a good job of playing the "straight man" for Hope's comedy shtick. 

 

Bob Hope isn't much remembered anymore, except as some weird golf playing Republican who appeared in some lame comedy specials on television in the 1960's. The TV specials usually involved him delivering a tired standup routine and then performing in some skits with an actress usually 20 years younger than him, it was all pretty embarrassing stuff. But in the 1940's, Hope was a very funny guy with killer comedic timing and the grace of a professional entertainer who had spent years acquiring the ability to deliver jokes through endless performances on stage, in movies and on the radio. Hope had an amazing physical and verbal dexterity with a joke or routine that is not really seen today. 

One of Hope's most famous accomplishments were his USO tours during World War II. He performed for servicemen over 150 times from 1942 to 1944 throughout the Pacific Theater of Operation. At times his USO show got very close to the actual fighting. He died at the age of 100 after a career which ranged from vaudeville to television. 

 

Paulette Goddard was discovered by Charlie Chaplin and apparently had a long relationship with him, she starred in two of his films, Modern Times and The Great Dictator. She signed a contract with Paramount in the 1930's and went on to appear in some goofy films for Cecil B. DeMille. She did another horror/comedy with Hope, called The Ghost Breakers which was another big hit for the two of them. Her career petered out in the 1950's and incredibly enough she married Erich Maria Remarque, the author of "All Quiet on the Western Front". She died a very rich woman leaving 20 million dollars to New York University to fund an institute for European studies.

Written by Walter de Leon and Lynn Starling, the running time is 72 minutes.