Development
Producer Robert Evans planned on making The Great Gatsby with his wife Ali MacGraw as Daisy as it was her favorite book.[3] Evans hired Truman Capote to write a script that turned out to be unusable despite Capote's $300,000 fee.[4] Evans made a deal with Broadway producer David Merrick as producer of the movie, and it was Merrick who bought the rights for between $350,000 and $500,000 from F. Scott Fitzgerald's daughter, Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald.[5][6]
Casting
Evans originally sought Warren Beatty for the role of Jay Gatsby, but Beatty turned him down, reluctant to act opposite MacGraw.[7] With Beatty out, Evans offered the role to Jack Nicholson, but Nicholson also reportedly was wary of acting with MacGraw and was unable to make a financial deal.[8][9][7]
Evans then sought 49-year-old Marlon Brando for the role coveted by 38-year-old Robert Redford, who broke through to superstardom in 1973, the year The Great Gatsby remake was lensed.[10][6] Although Brando was too old for the part, he had reestablished himself as a box office star with the twin successes of The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris. Incensed at his loss of income when he surrendered his profit participation points for $100,000 to Paramount before the release of The Godfather, Brando personally negotiated his deal, demanding an unprecedented salary reportedly as high as $4 million salary, frankly revealing that the high salary would recoup his losses from the sale of his points. Gulf + Western CEO Charles Bludhorn, whose conglomerate owned Paramount, vetoed any such deal on the grounds that the two movies were separate entities. Brando refused to be in Godfather II when his salary demands were not met.
Robert Redford campaigned for the role of Jay Gatsby, but Evans rebuffed him on the incorrect belief that Fitzgerald's text specified Gatsby had dark hair.[8] Director Jack Clayton upbraided Evans for his lack of knowledge about the book and convinced him to cast Redford.[8] "I began to think Evans never read the book," Clayton recalled. "Sure, he liked the idea of doing a Fitzgerald [movie], but he didn't know the text. Nowhere in it does Fitzgerald say Gatsby's hair is dark."[8] During this time, Ali MacGraw subsequently lost the part of Daisy after she left Evans for Steve McQueen.[8] MacGraw and McQueen approached producer Merrick through their agents and offered themselves as a package,[11] but McQueen was turned down on the grounds that Redford already was cast.[11] Without McQueen as her co-star, she dropped the project, although Evans claimed it was he himself who terminated her participation in the movie.
After Ali MacGraw's departure from the project, Candice Bergen and Katharine Ross reportedly were offered the role of Daisy Buchanan. Mia Farrow sent a cable to Evans asking him to consider her for the role, and director Jack Clayton liked the idea of casting her. Faye Dunaway wanted the role so badly she offered to do a screen test, but Clayton was not interested in her.
Screenplay
Truman Capote was the original screenwriter but he was replaced by Francis Ford Coppola.[12] Coppola had just finished directing The Godfather, but was unsure of its commercial reception and he needed the money.[13][12][6] He got the job on the recommendation of Robert Redford, who had liked a rewrite Coppola did on The Way We Were.[13] Coppola "had read Gatsby but wasn't familiar with it."[13] He checked himself into a hotel room in Paris (Oscar Wilde's old room) and started.[13] He later recalled:
I was shocked to find that there was almost no dialogue between Daisy and Gatsby in the book, and was terrified that I'd have to make it all up. So I did a quick review of Fitzgerald's short stories and, as many of them were similar in that they were about a poor boy and a rich girl, I helped myself to much of the authentic Fitzgerald dialogue from them. I decided that perhaps an interesting idea would be to do one of those scenes that lovers typically have, where they finally get to be together after much longing, and have a "talk all night" scene, which I'd never seen in a film. So I did that – I think a six-page scene in which Daisy and Gatsby stay up all night and talk. And I remember my wife telling me that she and the kids were in New York when The Godfather opened, and it was a big hit and there were lines around the block at five theaters in the city, which was unheard of at the time. I said, "Yeah, yeah, but I've got to finish the Gatsby script." And I sent the script in, just in time. It had taken me two or three weeks to complete.[13]
On his commentary track for the DVD release of The Godfather, Coppola refers to writing the Gatsby script, adding "Not that the director paid any attention to it. The script that I wrote did not get made."
William Goldman, who loved the novel, said in 2000 that he actively campaigned for the job of adapting the script, but he was astonished by the quality of Coppola's work:[14]
I still believe it to be one of the great adaptations... I called him [Coppola] and told him what a wonderful thing he had done. If you see the movie, you will find all this hard to believe... The director who was hired, Jack Clayton, is a Brit... he had one thing all of them have in their blood: a murderous sense of class... Well, Clayton decided this: that Gatsby's parties were shabby and tacky, given by a man of no elevation and taste. There went the ball game. As shot, they were foul and stupid and the people who attended them were foul and silly, and Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, who would have been so perfect as Gatsby and Daisy, were left hung out to dry. Because Gatsby was a tasteless fool and why should we care about their love? It was not as if Coppola's glory had been jettisoned entirely, though it was tampered with plenty; it was more that the reality and passions it depicted were gone.[14]
Filming
The Rosecliff and Marble House mansions in Newport, Rhode Island and an exterior of Linden Place mansion in Bristol, Rhode Island, were used for Gatsby's house while scenes at the Buchanans' home were filmed at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England. One driving scene was shot in Windsor Great Park, UK. Other scenes were filmed in New York City and Uxbridge, Massachusetts.
