I want you to close your eyes and try to picture Gatsby’s parties. The corps of caterers have come and gone and left behind them a landscape of luxury. You have several hundred feet of canvas marquees and enough twinkling fairy lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enchanted garden. And then there’s the…
Category: Max von Gerlach – The Real Jay Gatsby
“A German Spy During the War” — The Real Jay Gatsby and a New York Spy Hunt
If you’ve read The Great Gatsby—or watched any of the movie adaptations — you’ll remember the scene. Before Nick Carraway ever lays eyes on his host, Jay Gatsby exists as this mysterious, elusive figure whispered over champagne glasses and jazz. We’ve already seen Daisy Buchanan jump out of her skin at the mere mention of…
‘The Protagonist of the Great Gatsby’ — Hallam Keep Williams, Gerlach and Havana
During research carried out for the eight-part Audible podcast, American Dreamer: Who Was Jay Gatsby?, veteran New York journalist, Joe Nocera shared some tantalising new information. A brand new report had come to light. According to a story published in the San Francisco Call in April 1950, ‘Baron Max von Gerlach’ had arrived in Havana,…
Descendants of the Real Jay Gatsby — Alfred A. Stork aka Charles A. Stork I
Pleased to say that after a long search I’ve finally been able to trace the living descendants of Max Stork Gerlach, the man that author F. Scott Fitzgerald used as a partial basis for his most famous character, Jay Gatsby. I have found them through following the family line of Max’s half-brother Alfred Andrew Stork,…
The Usual ‘Unusual’ Suspects. The Lindbergh Kidnapping, Arms Deals and a New York Prohibition Scandal.
“I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans.” The Great Gatsby I’d like to go back to another Max Gerlach conundrum. On Max’s 1942 World War II Draft Registration Card, Gerlach…
I am the Resurrection. The Death of Max Gerlach and the Birth of an American Hero
In the final part of our series on Max Gerlach — ‘The Real Great Gatsby‘ — I want to take a look at how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first biographer, Arthur Mizener was told of his existence by Princeton graduate, Dan Piper, and how Piper had learned him first hand from the author’s wife, Zelda in…
Meyer Wolfsheim — Arnold Rothstein, Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby
In the last article we were introduced to Max Gerlach, the ‘gentleman bootlegger’ who had provided the partial inspiration for Jay Gatsby. Then there’d been that bombshell discovery that Max had been running a speakeasy for Arnold Rothstein, the notorious mobster who had ‘fixed’ the 1919 World Series. The speakeasy, adjacent to the Coronet Apartments…
Max von Gerlach aka Max Stork – The Original Great Gatsby?
“He started as one man I knew and then changed into myself.” That’s how the author described his most famous creation, Jay Gatsby. And on the evidence currently available there’s no reason to doubt him. Discoveries made by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Horst Kruse suggest that the ‘one man’ he knew was Max Gerlach, whose…