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Drama

Thrillers, mysteries, love stories and detective fiction.

Thrillers, mysteries, love stories and detective fiction, as well as an occasional special series

Aidan Gillen

Charlotte Emmerson

Jack Shepherd

Hilary Connell

Michael Feast

Karl Johnson

Trevor Ray

John Guerrasio

Angela Douglas

F Scott Fitzgerald

Bill Bryden

Laurence Bowen

Saturday Drama: The Last Tycoon

The Last Tycoon

18/05/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Saturday Drama, The Last Tycoon

1930s Hollywood studio head Munroe Stahr is at the top of his game, until love strikes.

4 Extra Debut. 1930s Hollywood studio head Munroe Stahr is at the top of his game, but is fatefully unhinged by a love affair. Stars Aiden Gillens.

The celebrated theatre director Bill Bryden adapts F Scott Fitzgerald's last and unfinished novel. Starring Aiden Gillen, Jack Shepherd and Charlotte Emmerson.

Haunted by the death of his wife, 1930s Studio Head Monroe Stahr works eighteen hour days, each one a collision of talent meetings, set visits, script brainstorms and preview screenings. He's the "last of the princes", is making the studio millions and seems bullet proof.

At the end of an epic day, an earthquake breaks two water mains, sending a roaring river of water through the studio. And with it, the huge floating head of the goddess Shiva - a film prop.

As Stahr leaves his office to inspect the damage he sees the head floating by and on it two women, one of them the mesmerising Kathleen.

It's the beginning of a love affair that will destroy him.

As their affair plays out, we follow the disintegration of one of the great Hollywood legends, and also witness the darker heart of the Hollywood machine as a paranoid fear of communism comes to the fore.

It's a gorgeous, excruciating, heady tale - based on Fitzgerald's own painful experiences working in Hollywood as a screenwriter.

Produced by Laurence Bowen
Adapted and directed by Bill Bryden
Production Associate - John Tams
Sound Design - Mark Smith

A Feelgood Fiction production for BBC Radio 4.

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