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The Last Tycoon (1976 film)

1976 film by Elia Kazan

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ1199439 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Last Tycoon is a 1976 American period romantic drama film directed by Elia Kazan and produced by Sam Spiegel, based on Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel The Last Tycoon. It stars Robert De Niro and features Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson, Donald Pleasence, Jeanne Moreau, Theresa Russell and Ingrid Boulting.

The film is the second collaboration between Kazan and Spiegel, who worked together to make On the Waterfront (1954). Fitzgerald based the novel's protagonist Monroe Stahr on film producer Irving Thalberg. Spiegel was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

The Last Tycoon did not receive the critical acclaim that much of Kazan's earlier work had received, but it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction (Gene Callahan, Jack T. Collis and Jerry Wunderlich).

The story was Fitzgerald's last, unfinished novel, as well as the last film that Kazan directed.

Plot

Monroe Stahr is the young production chief and the most creative executive at one of the biggest studios during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Stahr's public recognition is coveted by Pat Brady, an older movie producer. From a distance, Stahr supervises the production of a film, and watches Didi, an older actress, have creative differences with director Red Ridingwood.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Last Tycoon (1976 film)” is 1976 film by Elia Kazan. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Last, Tycoon and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1976, 1954—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1976-11-17, 1977-03-11, 1976-11-18, 1976-11-19—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Last, Tycoon and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1976 film by Elia Kazan” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1199439. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1976 and 1954.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Last Tycoon (1976 film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Last Tycoon (1976 film) primary sources, The Last Tycoon (1976 film) archive and Last research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Last Tycoon (1976 film)”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Last Tycoon (1976 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.