The Last Tycoon is an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1941, it was published posthumously under this title, as prepared by his friend Edmund Wilson, a critic and writer. According to Publishers Weekly, the novel is “generally considered a roman à clef”, with its lead character, Monroe Stahr, modeled after film producer Irving Thalberg. The story follows Stahr’s rise to power in Hollywood, and his conflicts with rival Pat Brady, a character based on MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer.

It was adapted as a TV play in 1957 and an eponymous film in 1976, with a screenplay for the motion picture by British dramatist Harold Pinter. Elia Kazan directed the film adaptation; Robert De Niro and Theresa Russell starred.

In 1993, a new version of the novel was published under the title The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew Bruccoli, a Fitzgerald scholar. This version was adapted for a stage production that premiered in Los Angeles, California, in 1998. In 2013, HBO announced plans to produce an adaptation. HBO cancelled the project and gave the rights to Sony Pictures, which produced and released the television series on Amazon Studios in 2016.

Plot summary

Set in the 1930s, The Last Tycoon traces the life of Hollywood studio manager Monroe Stahr, clearly based on Irving Thalberg (in charge of production at MGM), whom Fitzgerald had encountered several times.

The novel begins with young Bennington College student Cecilia Brady (first-person narrator), the daughter of influential Hollywood producer Pat Brady, preparing to fly home from the East Coast to Los Angeles. At the airport, she is surprised to meet an old friend of her father, author Wylie White. White is accompanied by a failed producer introduced as Mr. Schwartz.

Due to complications during the flight, they made a forced landing in Nashville, Tennessee. The threesome decides on a spontaneous trip to the historic estate of former President Andrew Jackson, but on arrival, the attraction is closed. Wylie then proceeds to flirt shamelessly with Cecilia while Mr. Schwartz is fast asleep. When Schwartz awakens, he informs them that he has changed his mind and will not travel to Los Angeles with them. He asks Wylie to deliver a message to a friend, which he gladly accepts. The next day, Wylie and Cecilia learn that Schwartz committed suicide right after they left Nashville.

Cecilia realizes that the message Schwartz gave to Wylie was in fact for Monroe Stahr, her father’s business partner. She has had a crush on Monroe for many years. Cecilia arrives at her father’s film studio to pick him up for a birthday party. Due to a minor earthquake, Cecilia, her father, and his companions all end up in Stahr’s office. A water pipe bursts and floods the set.

Stahr beholds two women desperately clinging to the head of a statue – finding one of them to be the spitting image of his late wife. The day after, Stahr asks his secretary to identify the girls for him. She presents him with a phone number which he immediately uses to arrange a meeting with one of the girls. Unfortunately, it is not the girl he wishes to see; she does not resemble his wife at all. Stahr gives her a ride home, where she insists that he come in and meet her friend (the young Irish-born Kathleen Moore). As soon as Moore opens the front door, Stahr recognizes her to be the woman he had seen the other night.

Kathleen withstands his advances on her and even refuses to tell him her name. It is only when Stahr happens to meet her again at a party that he can convince her to go out and have a cup of coffee with him. He drives her to the building site of his new house in Santa Monica. Kathleen seems reluctant to be with Stahr, but she still ends up having sex with him. A short time afterwards, Stahr receives a letter in which Kathleen confesses to having been engaged to another man for quite some time. She has now decided to marry him despite having fallen in love with Stahr.

Stahr asks Cecilia to arrange for a meeting with a suspected communist who wants to organize a labor union within the film studio. Stahr and Cecilia meet the man over supper where Stahr gets drunk and gets involved in a violent confrontation. Cecilia takes care of him and they grow closer. Cecilia’s father, however, becomes more and more unhappy with Stahr as a business partner and has wanted to get rid of him for a long while. He could not approve less of his daughter’s fancying him.

Brady knows of Stahr’s continued affair with the now-married Kathleen and tries to blackmail him into leaving the company. As he fails to achieve his goal via blackmail, he does not even shy away from hiring a professional killer. Stahr survives, and, in retaliation, also appoints a hitman to have Brady killed. Unlike Brady’s, Stahr’s conscience starts to trouble him. But, just as he contemplates calling the execution off, his plane crashes on its way back to New York City. The contract killer finishes his job unhindered and leaves Cecilia both without a father and without a lover – the two men who meant the world to her.

List of characters

Monroe Stahr – Hollywood film producer. Based on Irving Thalberg, Sheliah Graham believed Stahr to be Fitzgerald’s “most glorified hero”, who made the character “everything he would have liked to be himself”.

Pat Brady – Stahr’s associate, also a film producer. Brady was based on Louis B. Mayer, who had a well-known rivalry with Thalberg. He also possessed certain characteristics of Eddie Mannix.

Cecilia Brady (Celia) – Brady’s daughter. Based on Budd Schulberg and Fitzgerald’s daughter, Scottie Fitzgerald.

Kathleen Moore – Stahr’s love interest (during the time of writing, Fitzgerald was living with journalist Sheilah Graham who co-wrote the film script Beloved Infidel which portrayed their relationship whilst Fitzgerald was pursuing his unfinished novel. Fitzgerald states in this film that Kathleen is based on Sheilah.) Originally named Thalia, Graham suggested that Fitzgerald change the name, owing to a C. B. Cochran chorus girl with the same name who burned to death.Kathleen’s ex-lover was composed of three men: John Graham Gillam, Graham’s first husband; the Marquess of Donegall, Graham’s ex-lover; and writer Fitzgerald.

Minna Davis – Monroe Stahr’s late wife
Edna – Kathleen Moore’s friend. Graham’s friend Margaret Bainard was caricatured into being the character of Edna.

Wylie White, Manny Schwartz, Jane Maloney, George Boxley, Martha

Dodd, the Tarletons – Writers

Marcus – Film producer

Broaca, Red Ridingwood – Film directors

Joe Reinmund – Film supervisor and Stahr’s all-around man

Pete Zavras – Cameraman

Jaques La Borwitz – Assistant producer

Robinson – Stahr’s troubleshooter

Mike Van Dyke – Gagman

Rodriguez, Johnny Swanson, Carole Lombard, Gary Cooper – actors

Lee Kapper – Art director

Mort Fleishacker – Company’s lawyer

Joe Popolos – Theatre owner

Agge – Prince of Denmark

Brimmer – Communist party member

Catherine Doolan and Katy – Stahr’s secretaries

Birdy Peters, Maud, Rosemary Schmiel – Pat Brady’s secretaries

Bernie – Photographer

Doctor Baer – Physician

Malone – Policeman

Ned Sollinger – Stahr’s office boy

Filipino – Stahr’s servant

Mr Smith – Stahr’s assumed name in chapter one

Unnamed – Chapter one: airplane pilots, stewardresses and a taxi driver. Chapter four: Ridingwood’s actress

Background

Fitzgerald first conceived the idea for the novel in 1931, when he met Irving Thalberg in Hollywood. Accordingly, Fitzgerald decided to set the novel in 1935, when Thalberg was still alive, so that more comparisons could be drawn between Stahr and Thalberg’s lives. In preparation for writing the novel, Fitzgerald gathered all the information he could about Thalberg. Fitzgerald was initially calling the novel The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western.

Fitzgerald planned the novel to be “constructed” and “dramatic” like The Great Gatsby, working methodically on it and reading his progress each night to Sheilah Graham. Stahr and Kathleen’s first meeting was inspired by Fitzgerald and Graham’s first meeting; the two had met at a party and danced together. Fitzgerald claimed that he would not see fellow contemporary writer Ernest Hemingway until the novel had been published and was deemed a success. Fitzgerald told Edmund Wilson that he had written the novel “with difficulty”, but was optimistic of its quality, believing it to be his best book that would win back his readers.

The novel was originally planned to be 50,000 words long, but at the time of Fitzgerald’s death, the novel was expected to be 90,000 to 100,000 words long. Graham believed that the love story between Stahr and Kathleen was initially an “afterthought” when writing the novel, but grew in importance as the novel progressed. Fitzgerald planned the novel in nine chapters, numbered A to I.

Fitzgerald wished to finish the novel by January 1941 and begin selling it by the fall of that year; however, he was behind schedule when he died in December 1940. Graham attributed this to two main reasons: firstly, the novel had expanded from what had originally been planned. Secondly, Fitzgerald could only work on the novel “in spurts”, owing to his unstable financial situation, his ill health, and his necessity to take time off to write movie scripts so he would have enough funds to continue work on the novel. Fitzgerald was having trouble with writing the sixth chapter, but had fixed the problems by the end of the night of his death. However, the novel was, according to Graham, “little more than half finished”.

Publication history

The novel was unfinished and in rough form at the time of Fitzgerald’s death at age 44. The literary critic and writer Edmund Wilson, a close friend of Fitzgerald, informed Graham in July 1941 that the unfinished novel would be published, alongside Gatsby, because Perkins had admired it so much.