The Great Gatsby Turns 100: A Retrospective
One of the Great American Novels of the 20th century, The Great Gatsby continues to have a massive influence on how we imagine the “Jazz Age.” We refer to 1920s-themed parties as “Gatsby parties,” often call 1920s-inspired costumes and aesthetics “Gatsby style”–it’s basically become shorthand for that whole game-changing era.
Since 2025 is the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal work, let’s take a look at its history: at “Scott’s” background, at how he got his inspiration, and at the cultural impact his novel has had ever since.
Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, to an Irish Catholic middle-class family. His parents named him after a distant relative who was none other than Francis Scott Key, writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Fitzgerald loved literature and writing from a young age, getting his first piece published in a school newspaper when he was 13. He attended Princeton University and worked on his dream of becoming a distinguished author, getting heavily involved with the university’s literary societies and frequently writing stories and poems for student newspapers.
The first inklings of The Great Gatsby began on a visit home to St. Paul during the winter of 1915. The 18-year-old Fitzgerald went to a sleighing party on Summit Avenue where he met 16-year-old Ginevra King, who was from one of the wealthiest families in Chicago. The two fell head over heels for each other, but ultimately, Ginevra’s uppercrust family didn’t approve of the lower-class Fitzgerald. The romantic young man’s disappointment was so great that in 1917 he dropped out of Princeton to join the army.
While awaiting deployment in Alabama, Fitzgerald met the intelligent and fun-loving Zelda Sayre, who came from a prominent Southern family. They started a relationship and in time Fitzgerald proposed. The next couple years had major ups and downs: Fitzgerald headed to New York to “make good” as a writer; he spent months struggling financially which caused Zelda to break off their engagement; he slunk back home to St. Paul in despair and decided to pin his entire future on his first novel This Side of Paradise; he worked night and day to finish it and managed to get it published; the novel became a hit, bringing him the fame and fortune he desired; and finally, he and Zelda were able to get married.
Fitzgerald published a second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, and then started working on his third, telling his publisher: “I want to write something new–something extraordinary and beautiful and simple & intricately patterned.” He certainly believed in “writing what you know.” His previous short story “Winter Dreams” had planted the first seeds of Gatsby, being the story of a young Midwestern man who attempts to romance a girl from a rich family–a fictionalized version of his ill-fated romance with Ginevra. His new novel was originally set in the Midwest in 1885 and he talked about wanting to give it a more Catholic gloss. Most of this early draft was discarded, although a prologue about Jay Gatsby’s childhood was preserved as the short story “Absolution.”
Much of The Great Gatsby would be based on Scott and Zelda’s time living on Long Island, where they were invited to glittering uppercrust parties at fabulous mansions–the neighborhoods that would be reimagined as “East Egg” and “West Egg” in the novel. The castle-like Beacon Towers once owned by Randolph Hearst and the enormous Oheka Castle were probable inspirations for Jay Gatsby’s mansion, described as a “factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy.” The character of Gatsby himself was likely based on a party-loving neighbor named Herbert Bayard Slope, and on Max Gerlach, a German-born bootlegger known for calling people “old sport.”
Work on the novel was completed as the Fitzgerald family hopped around Paris, the French Riviera and Rome with their little daughter Frances (nicknamed “Scottie”). One of Fitzgerald’s biggest challenges was deciding on a title. On the Road to West Egg, Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires, The High-Bouncing Lover, The Gold-Hatted Gatsby, and Gatsby were all considered. He finally hit upon Trimalchio in West Egg, referencing the 1st century Roman fiction Satyricon. His publisher Scribner’s talked him out of it and ultimately The Great Gatsby was chosen–in spite of Fitzgerald’s last-minute suggestion of Under the Red, White, and Blue. The cover would feature the iconic commissioned painting “Celestial Eyes” by obscure artist Francis Cugat, inspired by the novel’s description of the Corona ash dump. Interestingly, this was the only book cover Cugat ever did–he was paid $100.
Fitzgerald was so focused on The Great Gatsby becoming a hit that he turned down a $10,000 offer for the book to be published serially (as some novels were at the time), wanting it to be released sooner as a whole. The day after it was published in 1925 he was already requesting updates from his publisher on sales. However, his high hopes were somewhat dashed: the book sold only 20,000 copies, a letdown compared to the success of his previous novels.
But there were bright spots. The rights for a stage version of The Great Gatsby was bought by Broadway producer William A. Brady, who had Pulitzer-winning playwright Owen Davis tweak the story for theaters. In 1926 Famous Players-Lasky bought the film rights, and the first movie version of Gatsby was released with Warner Baxter and Lois Wilson playing the leads. It would only grow brighter in the coming years, although Fitzgerald wouldn’t live to see it. His career would dwindle in the 1930s, exacerbated by his alcoholism, and his debts mounted after Zelda had to be confined to a mental hospital. He passed away from a heart attack in 1941. Just a few years later The Great Gatsby was re-printed as one of the paperbacks distributed to soldiers during World War II. This sparked a revival of interest in the novel and it was finally on its way to being considered a full-fledged classic.
Today, of course, The Great Gatsby has become required reading in many schools and has been translated into dozens of languages. There have been movies, plays, operas, musicals, artworks, ballets, and even Gatsby video games. It’s even entered Internet meme culture, thanks to a popular image of Leonardo DiCaprio raising a glass from Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film. Thanks to its memorable characters, vivid capturing of the 1920s spirit, and thoughtful musing on the American Dream, the novel has endured, arguably achieving a legacy beyond Scott’s wildest dreams.
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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub
You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
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