Elia Kazan – The Last Tycoon (1976)

adminJanuary 20, 2020

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The Last Tycoon (1976) is a feature dramatic film based upon Harold Pinter’s screenplay adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, sometimes known as The Love of the Last Tycoon.

Directed by Elia Kazan and produced by Sam Spiegel, the film starred Robert De Niro as “Monroe Stahr,” Tony Curtis as “Rodriguez,” Robert Mitchum as “Pat Brady,” Jack Nicholson as “Brimmer,” Donald Pleasence as “Boxley”, Jeanne Moreau as “Didi” and Theresa Russell as “Cecilia Brady”.

The film was the second collaboration between Kazan and Spiegel who worked closely together to make On the Waterfront. Spiegel was once awarded the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award and Fitzgerald based the novel’s protagonist, Monroe Stahr, on producer Irving Thalberg. It was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last, unfinished novel as well as the last film Kazan directed.

The film did not receive the critical acclaim that much of Elia Kazan’s earlier films received, but it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction (Gene Callahan, Jack T. Collis, Jerry Wunderlich). [1]