Although now reveared as the quintessential Jazz Age novel, The Great Gatsby was fairly overlooked and dismissed (especially in comparison to Fitzgerald's first two novels) upon its initial release, selling less than 20,000 copies from its first two runs. Despite a stage and silent film adaptation, the novel had faded into public obscurity by the time of Fitzgerald's death and he believed it to be a great failure. But with the United States entrance into the theatre of World War II, a council for distributing paperback books to soldiers in combat was instated and The Great Gatsby was one of these selected for publication. It was an enormous success among the homesick troops who were isolated from romance and American society. An almost immediate serge in the books popularity began and by 1960 it was regularly selling 100,000 copies a year and had come to be considered an essential piece of American history. In 1974 another film adaptation was produced with a screenplay by Francis Coppola. The film stared Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby, Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan, and Sam Watterson as Nick Carraway. This Bantam addition is a tie-in publication with that film's release. It includes sixteen pages of color stills from the film.