The Last Tycoon (film)
Encyclopedia
The Last Tycoon is a 1976 American dramatic film directed by Elia Kazan
and produced by Sam Spiegel
, based upon Harold Pinter
's screenplay adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald
's The Last Tycoon, sometimes known as The Love of the Last Tycoon
. It stars Robert De Niro
, Tony Curtis
, Robert Mitchum
, Jack Nicholson
, Donald Pleasence
, Jeanne Moreau
and Theresa Russell
. The film was the second collaboration between Kazan and Spiegel, who worked closely together to make On the Waterfront
. Fitzgerald based the novel's protagonist, Monroe Stahr, on film producer Irving Thalberg
. Spiegel was once awarded the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award.
The film did not receive the critical acclaim that much of Kazan's earlier work received, but it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction
(Gene Callahan
, Jack T. Collis
, Jerry Wunderlich
).
Coincidentally, it was Fitzgerald's last, unfinished novel, as well as the last film Kazan directed. An important symbolic aspect of the story (related to the first fact) is the unfinished beach house
of the protagonist, which he visits to impress the woman with whom he has fallen in love.
and the most important executive of one of the biggest studios of the Golden Age of Hollywood. An unstoppable worker in a time of turmoil in the industry due to the creation of the Writers Guild of America
, his life flows between shootings, industry bosses' machinations, discussions with scriptwriters and actors, a battle with the union organizer
and an infatuation for a young woman with a troubled past, who is engaged to be married with another man, and for whom he develops true love. As his difficulties grow bigger and his health decreases, his life runs to an uncertain but inevitable twilight that echoes a long gone era.
with Fitzgerald's notes, is technically a fragment. Nevertheless, it's a very complete satisfying fragment; a quality that the film preserves through an abrupt kind of editing style and a narrative that flows without conventional shape.
In one of his final notes for The Last Tycoon, Fitzgerald wrote in capital letters: "Action Is Character". The same objective Kazan, Pinter and De Niro reached out for, to be able to transfer much of Monroe Stahr to the film. Jeanne Moreau and Tony Curtis make brief appearances as idols of the old times
silver screen
.
, the production chief at M-G-M in the period between the late 20's and 30's. The background is Hollywood in the Golden Thirties, when studios made 30 to 40 productions a year and every backlot could simultaneously contain pictures set in places such as New York
, Africa
, the South Pole
and Montmartre
. The background of the film has a close bond to stories of Hollywood at that time, as well as to Fitzgerald's own life and career. Thalberg, a "boy genius" until his death at the age of 37 in 1936, was held in high regard inside and outside Hollywood, as he appeared to be able to divine successful films continuously; knowing in his head how much a certain kind of picture would gross, which, in turn, told him how much could be profitably to spent on its production. Monroe Stahr, who is played with reticent passion by Robert De Niro (whose lean, dark good looks seem an idealization of Thalberg's), has the same uncanny ability, but eventually becomes a casualty of the "new" Hollywood of Wall Street
investors, bankers and union organizers that Fitzgerald could see in the future. Thalberg died before being overtaken by defeat, while in the film, Stahr does not.
The theme of unfinished ambitions and the unattained love of the young and beautiful in Hollywood, embodied by the beach house, have great significance for both the Novelist and Director at the end of their luminary careers.
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
and produced by Sam Spiegel
Sam Spiegel
Sam Spiegel was an Austrian-born American independent film producer.-Life and career:Spiegel was born in Jarosław, Galicia, Austria-Hungary as Samuel P. Spiegel to a German-Jewish father and Polish mother and educated at the University of Vienna. His brother was Shalom Spiegel, a professor of...
, based upon Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
's screenplay adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
's The Last Tycoon, sometimes known as The Love of the Last Tycoon
The Love of the Last Tycoon
The Love of The Last Tycoon: A Western is an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, compiled and published posthumously.-Publication history:The novel was unfinished and in rough form at the time of Fitzgerald's death at age 44...
. It stars Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
, Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...
, Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
, Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
, Donald Pleasence
Donald Pleasence
Sir Donald Henry Pleasence, OBE, was a British actor who gained more than 200 screen credits during a career which spanned over four decades...
, Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau is a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director.She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française...
and Theresa Russell
Theresa Russell
Theresa Russell is an American actress.-Biography:Russell was born Theresa Paup in San Diego, California, the daughter of Carole Platt and Jerry Russell Paup. She attended Burbank High School, but did not graduate. She married English film director Nicolas Roeg , in 1982...
. The film was the second collaboration between Kazan and Spiegel, who worked closely together to make On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Lee J. Cobb and Karl Malden. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard...
. Fitzgerald based the novel's protagonist, Monroe Stahr, on film producer Irving Thalberg
Irving Thalberg
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make very profitable films.-Life and...
. Spiegel was once awarded the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award.
The film did not receive the critical acclaim that much of Kazan's earlier work received, but it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction
Academy Award for Best Art Direction
The Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999...
(Gene Callahan
Gene Callahan (production designer)
Gene Callahan was an American art director as well as set and production designer who contributed to over fifty films and more than a thousand TV episodes. He received nominations for the British Academy Film Award and four Oscars, including two wins .A native of Louisiana, Eugene F...
, Jack T. Collis
Jack T. Collis
Jack T. Collis was an American art director. He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Art Direction for the film The Last Tycoon.-External links:...
, Jerry Wunderlich
Jerry Wunderlich
Jerry Wunderlich was an American set decorator. He was nominated for two Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction.-Selected filmography:Wunderlich was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction:...
).
Coincidentally, it was Fitzgerald's last, unfinished novel, as well as the last film Kazan directed. An important symbolic aspect of the story (related to the first fact) is the unfinished beach house
Beach house
A beach house is a house on or near a beach, generally used as a vacation or second home for people who commute to the house on weekends or during vacation periods....
of the protagonist, which he visits to impress the woman with whom he has fallen in love.
Synopsis
Monroe Stahr (De Niro) is the young production chiefChief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
and the most important executive of one of the biggest studios of the Golden Age of Hollywood. An unstoppable worker in a time of turmoil in the industry due to the creation of the Writers Guild of America
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
, his life flows between shootings, industry bosses' machinations, discussions with scriptwriters and actors, a battle with the union organizer
Union organizer
A union organizer is a specific type of trade union member or an appointed union official. A majority of unions appoint rather than elect their organizers....
and an infatuation for a young woman with a troubled past, who is engaged to be married with another man, and for whom he develops true love. As his difficulties grow bigger and his health decreases, his life runs to an uncertain but inevitable twilight that echoes a long gone era.
Cast
- Robert De NiroRobert De NiroRobert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
- Monroe Stahr - Tony CurtisTony CurtisTony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...
- Rodriguez - Robert MitchumRobert MitchumRobert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
- Pat Brady - Jeanne MoreauJeanne MoreauJeanne Moreau is a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director.She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française...
- Didi - Jack NicholsonJack NicholsonJohn Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
- Brimmer - Donald PleasenceDonald PleasenceSir Donald Henry Pleasence, OBE, was a British actor who gained more than 200 screen credits during a career which spanned over four decades...
- Boxley - Ray MillandRay MillandRay Milland was a Welsh actor and director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best remembered for his Academy Award–winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend , a sophisticated leading man opposite a corrupt John Wayne in Reap the Wild Wind , the murder-plotting...
- Fleishacker - Dana AndrewsDana AndrewsDana Andrews was an American film actor. He was one of Hollywood's major stars of the 1940s, and continued acting, though generally in less prestigious roles, into the 1980s.-Early life:...
- Red Ridingwood - Ingrid BoultingIngrid BoultingIngrid Boulting was born in Transvaal in 1947 - daughter of English film-maker Roy Boulting and niece of John Boulting and Sydney Boulting a.k.a. Peter Cotes...
- Kathleen Moore - Peter StraussPeter StraussPeter Strauss is an American television and movie actor, known for his roles in several television miniseries in the 1970s and 1980s.-Personal life:...
- Wylie - Theresa RussellTheresa RussellTheresa Russell is an American actress.-Biography:Russell was born Theresa Paup in San Diego, California, the daughter of Carole Platt and Jerry Russell Paup. She attended Burbank High School, but did not graduate. She married English film director Nicolas Roeg , in 1982...
- Cecilia Brady - Tige AndrewsTige AndrewsTige Andrews was an American character actor. His work includes the role of Captain Adam Greer on the late 1960s-to-early 1970s television series The Mod Squad and Detective Lt...
- Popolos - Morgan FarleyMorgan FarleyFrancis Morgan Farley was an American actor whose career began in 1918 in the play "Seventeen". Farley played a large number of mostly small parts in movies, television and broadway...
- Marcus - John CarradineJohn CarradineJohn Carradine was an American actor, best known for his roles in horror films and Westerns as well as Shakespearean theater. A member of Cecil B DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, he was one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood history...
- Tour guide - Jeff CoreyJeff CoreyJeff Corey was an American stage and screen actor and director who became a well-respected acting teacher after being blacklisted in the 1950s.-Biography:...
- Doctor
Adaptation
Author Francis Scott Fitzgerald did not live to finish The Last Tycoon, so that the version published in 1941, edited by Edmund WilsonEdmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
with Fitzgerald's notes, is technically a fragment. Nevertheless, it's a very complete satisfying fragment; a quality that the film preserves through an abrupt kind of editing style and a narrative that flows without conventional shape.
In one of his final notes for The Last Tycoon, Fitzgerald wrote in capital letters: "Action Is Character". The same objective Kazan, Pinter and De Niro reached out for, to be able to transfer much of Monroe Stahr to the film. Jeanne Moreau and Tony Curtis make brief appearances as idols of the old times
Classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
silver screen
Silver screen
A silver screen, also known as a silver lenticular screen, is a type of projection screen that was popular in the early years of the motion picture industry and passed into popular usage as a metonym for the cinema industry...
.
Themes
The Last Tycoons protagonist, Monroe Stahr, is a character full of associations to Irving ThalbergIrving Thalberg
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make very profitable films.-Life and...
, the production chief at M-G-M in the period between the late 20's and 30's. The background is Hollywood in the Golden Thirties, when studios made 30 to 40 productions a year and every backlot could simultaneously contain pictures set in places such as New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, the South Pole
South Pole
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole...
and Montmartre
Montmartre
Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
. The background of the film has a close bond to stories of Hollywood at that time, as well as to Fitzgerald's own life and career. Thalberg, a "boy genius" until his death at the age of 37 in 1936, was held in high regard inside and outside Hollywood, as he appeared to be able to divine successful films continuously; knowing in his head how much a certain kind of picture would gross, which, in turn, told him how much could be profitably to spent on its production. Monroe Stahr, who is played with reticent passion by Robert De Niro (whose lean, dark good looks seem an idealization of Thalberg's), has the same uncanny ability, but eventually becomes a casualty of the "new" Hollywood of Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
investors, bankers and union organizers that Fitzgerald could see in the future. Thalberg died before being overtaken by defeat, while in the film, Stahr does not.
The theme of unfinished ambitions and the unattained love of the young and beautiful in Hollywood, embodied by the beach house, have great significance for both the Novelist and Director at the end of their luminary careers.