A Stahr Is Born: A Roundtable on Amazon.com’s The Last Tycoon Television Pilot

Amazon.com has produced for its streaming service a pilot episode for its forthcoming series based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final, unfinished novel, posthumously published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon and known in Fitzgerald studies since 1993 by its alternate title, The Love of the Last Tycoon. Starring Matt Bomer and Kelsey Grammer, the hour-long production borrows key elements from Fitzgerald, but, perhaps controversially, includes many not found in the original text. Most notably, screenwriter and director Billy Ray has woven subplots about Nazis and Joad-like Hooverville dwellers into the story of studio genius Monroe Stahr, whom Fitzgerald based on Irving Thalberg. The Fitzgerald Review invited commentary on the pilot episode from several scholars, including film historian Thomas Doherty, whose Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 is the definitive source on the Nazi influence on American film production. As our roundtable of reviewers were assessing the show, Amazon announced that a full first season of ten episodes will go into production in 2017. The Last Tycoon thus becomes the second Fitzgerald-inspired series Amazon is producing, joining Z: The Beginning of Everything, its “bio-series” on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald.