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F. Scott Fitzgerald on Silent Film
Series: - European Perspectives on the United States, Volume: 2
Author:
F. Scott Fitzgerald on Silent Film recalibrates the celebrated author’s early career and brings fresh understanding to the life of one of America’s truly great literary figures. Scholars have previously focused on Fitzgerald’s connection with Hollywood when he worked in Tinseltown as a screenwriter in the 1930s. However, this ground-breaking research reveals the key role that Silent Hollywood played in establishing Fitzgerald’s burgeoning reputation in the early to mid-1920s. Vividly written and drawing on a wealth of new sources, this book documents Martina Mastandrea’s exciting discovery of the first film ever adapted from a work by Fitzgerald.
Martina Mastandrea, Ph.D. (2018), SAS, University of London, is an independent scholar and English teacher in Venice, Italy. She has published articles and reviews on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Louisa May Alcott. She is the winner of the 2020 Blake Emerging Scholar Award and the joint award winner of the 2021 EAAS Rob Kroes Award.
"Mastandrea’s methodology aligns with current scholarship, which looks at Fitzgerald’s work through interdisciplinary perspectives. She ambitiously and ably interweaves textual, visual, multimodal, and multilingual materials, many of which have been previously overlooked [...]. In her investigation, Mastandrea conveys the excitement that can accompany the detective work in the researcher’s process [...]. Gender roles and how the adaptations adjusted them due to conventions, censorship, and intended audiences are recurring subjects in Mastandrea’s study [...]. Her interpretations of the sheer number and variety of sources explored are convincing and, more importantly, create a more nuanced picture of Fitzgerald’s relationship to film and of the way his stories and characters took shape in this medium. Mastandrea’s restoration of the silent cinema adaptations provides scholars with new material to explore her discussion of their impact on the presentation and reception of a newly established author should encourage a reevaluation of these films and of this early period in Fitzgerald’s life and work."
– Lara Rodríguez Sieweke, Umeå University, in: The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 20 (2022)
– Lara Rodríguez Sieweke, Umeå University, in: The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 20 (2022)
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Rediscovering The Chorus Girl’s Romance: “Head and Shoulders” on the Silver Screen
2. Myra Meets the Silver Screen: Howard M. Mitchell’s The Husband Hunter
3. “She Kissed Him Softly in the Adaptation”: “The Offshore Pirate” on the Silent Screen
4. “Thousands Have Read the Book, Millions Will See the Film”: The Beautiful and Damned from the Page to the Silver Screen
5. Adapting Fitzgerald’s Irish Legacy: “The Camel’s Back” from Paper to Celluloid
6. “Dreams of the Old Days”: “Memories” of the Silent Gatsby and its “Music Score”
7. “Savor of Anti-climax”: “The Pusher-in-the-Face” and the End of the “Good Old Silent Days”
Conclusion
Filmography
Works cited
Index
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Rediscovering The Chorus Girl’s Romance: “Head and Shoulders” on the Silver Screen
2. Myra Meets the Silver Screen: Howard M. Mitchell’s The Husband Hunter
3. “She Kissed Him Softly in the Adaptation”: “The Offshore Pirate” on the Silent Screen
4. “Thousands Have Read the Book, Millions Will See the Film”: The Beautiful and Damned from the Page to the Silver Screen
5. Adapting Fitzgerald’s Irish Legacy: “The Camel’s Back” from Paper to Celluloid
6. “Dreams of the Old Days”: “Memories” of the Silent Gatsby and its “Music Score”
7. “Savor of Anti-climax”: “The Pusher-in-the-Face” and the End of the “Good Old Silent Days”
Conclusion
Filmography
Works cited
Index
Adaptations of Fitzgerald’s have become an increasingly popular topic attracting both academic and non-academic audiences. I expect this book to be of interest to film and literature post-graduate students and specialists, film archives, public and academic libraries.