The Great Gatsby (1926)
The first Great Gatsby film reached cinemas one year after the novel, but today only its trailer still moves.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
The first feature-film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, starring Warner Baxter and Lois Wilson.
The Great Gatsby (1926) was completed and distributed to ordinary audiences in 1926. Like most American silent features, it circulated on vulnerable film stock in an era before systematic preservation, and no complete publicly accessible print is now known.
Existence timeline
The Great Gatsby (1926) is completed as a distributable motion picture.
The finished film reaches ordinary cinema audiences.
Known release prints and original elements fail to enter a complete accessible archive.
The Library of Congress documents the severe loss rate of American silent features and the film's survival status.
Archives and researchers still have no complete moving-image copy available.
Why it ended
The released work disappeared as its known distribution copies and original elements failed to survive. No complete moving-image copy is currently known to survive.
Last confirmed trace
A trailer, stills, advertisements and contemporary reviews remain; no complete feature print is known.
What it left behind
Its absence leaves the earliest screen interpretation of Gatsby visible only through publicity and later descriptions.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.