“Head and Shoulders” on the 1920s Silver Screen: A Rediscovery of The Chorus Girl's Romance

Abstract

This article deals with the rediscovery of the first and only extant silent film entirely based on a work by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which has been held in the Museum of Modern Art archives in New York City for twenty-four years. Released in August 1920 as a film adaptation of Fitzgerald's 1920 short story “Head and Shoulders,” The Chorus Girl's Romance has been listed as lost by F. Scott Fitzgerald and film scholars. While This Side of Paradise and the short stories collected in Flappers and Philosophers have been studied in relation to Fitzgerald's early success, William C. Dowlan's 1920 adaptation remains unexplored territory even though the sale of its film rights pre-dates the two books and was publicized by Scribner's to promote the young writer's debut novel. A surviving trace of 1920s celebrity culture, The Chorus Girl's Romance deserves scholarly attention if only for the fact that it is the sole existing film record of how Hollywood interpreted Fitzgerald's fiction during the silent era.