Walking with Writers
F. S C OT T F I T Z G E R A L D IN HOLLYWOOD: A GUIDE
Sainted Media
TABLE OF CONTENTS Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 14 Sheilah Graham’s Apartment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Fitzgerald’s Final Hollywood Apartment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Fitzgerald’s First Hollywood Apartment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 The Clover Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Trocadero Nightclub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Beverly Hills Hotel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Frederic Marsh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 MGM Studios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Selznick International Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Pantages Theatre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Community Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Belly Acres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Fitzgerald’s Second Apartment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Cast of Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
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CHRONOLOGY 24 September 1896 - Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald born at 481 Laurel Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota. 26 March 1920 - Fitzgerald’s first novel This Side of Paradise published by Scribner’s. 3 April 1920 - Fitzgerald marries Zelda Sayre at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. 26 October 1921 - Birth of Frances ‘Scottie’ Fitzgerald - the Fitzgeralds’ only child. 10 April 1925 - Publication of The Great Gatsby. May 1925 - Fitzgerald meets Ernest Hemingway in Dingo Bar, Paris. January 1927 - The Fitzgeralds go to Hollywood, where Scott works on the unproduced film ‘Lipstick’. April 1930 - Zelda experiences her first psychological breakdown in Paris. November 1931 - Fitzgerald’s second spell in Hollywood, this time to work on Red-Headed Woman for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 12 April 1934 - Publication of Tender Is the Night. July 1937 - Fitzgeralds returns to Hollywood for the third time, working for MGM at $1000 per week. He moves into an apartment at the Garden of Allah hotel on Sunset Boulevard. July 1937 - Fitzgerald meets Sheilah Graham, who becomes his partner. April 1938 - Fitzgerald rents a bungalow at Malibu Beach, California. October 1938 - Fitzgerald relocates to a cottage at ‘Belly Acres’, Encino. May 1940 – Fitzgerald moves to 1403 North Laurel Avenue, Hollywood. 21 December 1940 – Fitzgerald dies of heart attack at Sheilah Graham’s apartment, 1443 North Hayworth Avenue, Hollywood. 27 October 1941 - Publication of The Last Tycoon.
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FITZGERALD’S HOLLYWOOD
Click here to enlarge Map -
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FITZGERALD IN HOLLYWOOD A staple theme in Fitzgerald’s work is the compromised and difficult reality that can exist behind the apparent glamour of certain lives. It is fitting, then, that so much of his career should have revolved around Hollywood. Fitzgerald’s life saw the transition from silent cinema to the Golden Era of Hollywood, and he was a contemporary of Marlene Dietrich, John Gilbert, Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart, and Gary Cooper. Hollywood: the name recalls images of elegant movie stars and classic films, but the behind-the-scenes world of professional filmmaking Fitzgerald knew was highly competitive and commercialised. Like many other professional authors, such as William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Chandler, Fitzgerald supplemented royalties from his fiction by selling the rights of his work to Hollywood studios, or by working as a screenwriter. Throughout his career, Hollywood work and movie sales often provided Fitzgerald with much-needed income with which to support his family and concentrate on his fiction writing. In the 1930s, however, Fitzgerald struggled to compose commercial short stories for popular outlets such as The Saturday Evening Post, which formed the staple of his income. In 1937 financial necessity
forced him to relocate permanently to Hollywood, and screenwriting replaced fiction as his primary source of income. Fitzgerald resented the fact that his Hollywood work undermined his ability to focus on writing literature. To make matters worse, Hollywood was not a world to which Fitzgerald could readily adjust.
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His meticulously crafted dialogue did not necessarily meet the demands of studios seeking material that a popular audience could relate to. Fitzgerald was also used to working independently, and sometimes struggled to adapt to Hollywood’s screenwriting methods, which often involved the input of multiple writers. Although Fitzgerald often found his relationship with Hollywood frustrating, it provided him with material for several key works, including The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, his series of Pat Hobby stories, ‘Crazy Sunday’ and his
unfinished novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, a work which equals that of
his finest writing.
The Beautiful and Damned - First Edition cover. Characters illustrated to resemble F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald By William Ely Hill (1887-1962) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
During the 1920s five of Fitzgerald’s short stories and his novels were turned into films. Hollywood paid him handsomely for the rights, in 1926 he was paid $25,000 - a fortune at them time, for the film and theatre rights of The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald first moved to Hollywood for a two-month stay in 1927. He had been brought out to California by John W. Considine of United Artists, who hired him to write a youth comedy called ‘Lipstick’. Fitzgerald’s role in popularising the image of the socially daring young woman, or flapper, in his debut novel This Side of Paradise and story collection Flappers and Philosophers, made him an ideal choice for the role.
The screenplay that Fitzgerald wrote, about a young girl who possesses a magic lipstick that makes her attractive to men, was never produced. Fitzgerald did however, meet Louis Morgan - a seventeen-year-old starlet being chaperoned by her mother. Fitzgerald became infatuated by Louis which produced tension in his relationship with Zelda. She threw a platinum watch, Fitzgerald had purchased for her, out a train window on their return journey from Hollywood. Louis would serve as the inspiration for Rosemary Hoyt, the young movie star Dick Diver embarks on an affair with in Fitzgerald’s third novel, Tender Is the Night. The Side of Paradise. Illustration by W. E. Hill, published by Scribners.
In November 1931 Fitzgerald was in Hollywood once more, working on another not-to-be-produced script for a movie adaptation, this time of Katharine Brush’s novel The Red-Headed Woman. He was initially reluctant to take up the six-week contract, but was enticed when his fee was raised to $1,250 per week. Although he maintained a professional demeanour on this trip, Fitzgerald did embarrass himself at a Sunday afternoon party hosted by the film producer Irving Thalberg. Fitzgerald felt inspired to sing a song about a dog, with piano accompaniment from the Mexican actor Ramon Navarro. Fitzgerald was booed by screen star John Gilbert and asked to leave. This exhibition pleased Thalberg’s wife, however, who telegrammed to tell Fitzgerald he was ‘one of the most agreeable persons’ at the gathering. Fitzgerald drew on the episode at the Thalbergs’ in his one of his finest short stories, Crazy Sunday. In Crazy Sunday an aspiring Hollywood writer, Joel Coles, performs a poorly-received impromptu skit at a party hosted by the film director Miles Calman but, nevertheless endears himself to Calman’s wife. The script Fitzgerald wrote was never made but The Red-Headed Woman was later made into a film in 1932. The screenplay was written by Anita Loos - Fitzgerald went uncredited. Carl Van Vechten - Van Vechten Collection at Library of Congress
During the 1930s, Fitzgerald’s circumstances became strained. In 1930 Zelda underwent a psychological breakdown and had to be admitted to a sanatorium, first in Switzerland and then at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Fitzgerald, meanwhile, rented a house outside Baltimore, where he completed his third novel Tender Is the Night. This was not a commercial success and received a mixed critical reception. Fitzgerald then entered a period of acute financial difficulty. Unable to compose magazine stories with his former ease, he struggled to pay Zelda’s medical bills and the school fees of his daughter, Scottie. During this time Scottie lived with the family of her father’s literary agent, Harold Ober, while Fitzgerald moved between temporary accommodation in North Carolina, where Zelda was installed at the Highland clinic in Asheville. In 1937 Fitzgerald, struggling to earn a living from magazine writing and $22,000 in debt, was signed on as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. Fitzgerald rented a bungalow at the Garden of Allah hotel on Sunset Boulevard in July 1937 and worked as a screenwriter on A Yank at Oxford (1938), but little of his work made its way into the finished film. The Hollywood working day was intense and Fitzgerald relied on Nembutals to get him to sleep and an over-the-counter amphetamine to rouse himself in the morning. Fitzgerald was then appointed the job of creating a screenplay for a film adaptation of Erich Remarque’s novel Three Comrades. It was felt that Fitzgerald’s script needed refinement and E.E. Paramore was
assigned to assist in the revision. Fitzgerald did not like working in collaboration and was convinced that the film would be a failure. Despite his reservations Three Comrades was one of the most successful films of 1938 and was the only film for which Fitzgerald earned a screen credit.
In July 1937 he met Sheilah Graham, who would become his partner during his final Hollywood years. Born in London, Sheilah had been raised in an orphanage before embarking on a stage career. When she met Fitzgerald, Sheilah had relocated to California and was working as a Hollywood columnist. They met at a party given to celebrate Sheilah’s engagement to the Marquess of Donegal and had further meetings at the Screen Writers’ Guild dinner, the Clover Club and Trocadero nightclub. By October, Sheilah had broken off her engagement, and entered into an off-on relationship with Fitzgerald. Their romance was complicated by Zelda, from whom Sheilah was kept secret to avoid further disturbing her mental wellbeing. At this time, it was common for a script to be written and re-written by multiple writers and amended by producers and directors. As such, writers’ contributions often went unrecognised. Fitzgerald contributed to several films in what amounted to almost four years of work for Hollywood studios. Often his contributions were edited so that little of his work survived in the finished film. The fact that he was only directly credited once reflects the intensely competitive and unforgiving world in which he was making his living. Hollywood work, although it was tough, paid well.
During his first six months Fitzgerald earned $1,000 a week, which was then increased to $1,250 for the remainder of his eighteen-month contract. In 1938, for instance, he earned $58,783 – more than he had ever earned in a single year. Fitzgerald lived modestly and was able to clear most of his debts but his and Zelda’s medical bills as well as Scottie’s school fees meant that he was able to save little. Moreover the long hours demanded by his studio work meant it was difficult for him to develop literary projects. Fitzgerald’s final projects included work on the films Raffles (1940), Everything Happens at Night (1939), and Life Begins at Thirty-Eight (1942). In 1940 he sold the rights to his 1931 story ‘Babylon Revisited’ to independent
movie producer Lester Cowan for $1,000, which he was paid $500 per week to adapt for the silver screen. Fitzgerald’s version of the film was never made. Cowan later sold the ‘Babylon Revisited’ rights to MGM for a reported $40,000 - they produced it as The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954). Before his MGM contract expired at the end of January 1939 Fitzgerald worked on an unproduced feature called ‘Infidelity’ and Marie Antoinette (1938). He and Donald Ogden Stewart collaborated on The Woman (1939) but were replaced with a female scriptwriting team. Fitzgerald also worked on the
script of Madame Curie which was scrapped and released in 1943 with a different screenplay. Fitzgerald’s last role at MGM was a brief spell revising Gone with the Wind (1939). Since MGM declined to renew his contract, Fitzgerald commenced work as a freelance scriptwriter in January 1939, contributing to the unmade films ‘Air Raid’, ‘Bull by the Horn’ and ‘Brooklyn Bridge’. He was also involved in produced feature films, however. Fitzgerald was hired at $1,250 a week to co-author the script of Winter Carnival (1939) with Budd Schulberg, son of Paramount Studios’ former chief producer, B. P. Schulberg. After excessive drinking mired a research trip to Dartmouth College, both writers were sacked from the film.
In April 1939 after quarrelling with Sheilah, Fitzgerald signed Zelda out of her sanitorium for a turbulent trip to Cuba. Back in New York, Scott was hospitalised and it was discovered the tuberculosis he had suffered from since childhood was once more active. This was the last time Zelda and Scott saw each other in person. Fitzgerald’s lukewarm Hollywood career should be balanced against the positive effects his time in California had upon his fiction. As well as the Louis Morgan–inspired character of Rosemary Hoyt in Tender Is the Night, Fitzgerald based the stories; ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, ‘Magnetism’ and ‘Crazy Sunday’, around Hollywood characters. Hollywood also sparked the series of seventeen Pat Hobby stories Fitzgerald published about a down-at-heels has-been scriptwriter in Esquire between 1940-41. The Pat Hobby stories were relatively easy to write and they brought in $300 a time and allowed Fitzgerald to concentrate on his Hollywood novel The Love of the Last Tycoon. The Love of the Last Tycoon concerns the thwarted infatuation of a film director, Monroe Stahr, with a woman named Kathleen Moore. Stahr meets Moore in the lot of a movie studio and the pair embark on a short affair but she goes through with her plan to marry another man. Stahr was based on Irving Thalberg, the filmmaking prodigy who directed Ben Hur (1925) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Kathleen Moore, was inspired by Sheilah Graham. On first meeting Graham, Fitzgerald was struck by her resemblance to Zelda and, not having learned her name, tried to locate her based on his incorrect recollection that she had been wearing a silver belt. These circumstances are echoed in the novel when Stahr mistakenly believes Moore to be wearing a silver belt at the time of their meeting, and is struck by the resemblance she bears to his deceased wife.
Tragically, however, Fitzgerald died without being able to complete his fifth novel. In November 1940, he suffered a heart attack and moved into Graham’s apartment where he died of a second cardiac arrest on December 21st- just weeks before he had planned to complete a first draft of The Love of the Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald finished nearly two-thirds of the novel when he died. His plans suggest that, if the novel were completed, Stahr would have sanctioned the murder of a treacherous colleague who plans to blackmail him for his affair with Kathleen. In the outline, Stahr decides to call off the assassination, but dies in an airplane crash before being able to do so. Fitzgerald died believing himself to be a relative failure as a writer. His last royalty check was for $13.13 and came from the sale of just forty books. In the same year, his friend Ernest Hemingway sold 270,000 copies of his bestselling novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. When Hemingway sold the rights to Hollywood, he sent Fitzgerald a boastful letter to which Fitzgerald replied; ‘I envy you like hell and there's no irony in this.’ Fitzgerald had hoped that The Love of the Last Tycoon would have contributed to the resurrection of his literary reputation. This last intrusion of his personal life into his literary output was by no means unprecedented. Throughout his career, Fitzgerald’s writing had consistently been frustrated by personal troubles, such as Zelda’s illness, his occasionally excessive drinking, and financial difficulties. As well as undermining Fitzgerald’s writing, however, there is also a sense in which his failures, his excesses, and his inability to produce more fiction – - just one novel was published in the last fifteen years of his life – heighten the importance of what he did achieve.
For much of his life Fitzgerald lived on a grand, and occasionally reckless, scale. His weaknesses and struggles contribute to the romance and allure of his remarkable career. Although Fitzgerald’s Hollywood novel did not affect his reputation during his lifetime, the publication of an edited version of The Love of the Last Tycoon in 1941 helped bring about renewed interest in his life, and was the first major event in the Fitzgerald Revival. During the 1940s and 1950s a string of Fitzgerald biographies and republications of his work combined to resurrect Fitzgerald to a position among the most popular and admired authors of his age – a reputation he continues to enjoy today. It is ironic that after a struggling Hollywood career, and his failure to complete his Hollywood novel, Fitzgerald’s revival has been sustained in part through films about his life and work. Movies including Beloved Infidel (1959), Tender Is the Night (1962), Love of the Last Tycoon (1976), Last Call (2002), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Midnight in Paris (2011), and The Great Gatsby (1974, 2013) have constantly brought Fitzgerald to new audiences over the years. The small screen has acted in a similar way. Tender Is the Night was made into a TV mini-series in 1985, while more recently the Amazon Video series Z: The Beginning of Everything (2015-17) brought renewed attention to the period following Zelda and Fitzgerald’s marriage. Appropriately, Amazon also commissioned an adaptation of The Last Tycoon (2016-17), Fitzgerald’s unfinished Hollywood novel. Alongside small screen reinterpretations, the film industry, in which Fitzgerald struggled to find a home during his life, now serves to expand and preserve the legacy of this colossus of American writing.
HOLLYWOOD ROOSEVELT HOTEL 7000 Hollywood Boulevard
The first Academy Awards were hosted here in 1929 by Douglass Fairbanks. The Hotel’s Spanish Revival Style and original tiles have been preserved in the spectacular lobby. The mezzanine walkway celebrates the Hotel’s illustrious clientele in a series of framed photographs. The Hotel’s Cinegrill (formerly Cineclub) was patronised by Fitzgerald and Salvador Dali. Other notable guests include Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplain, Brad Pitt, Jay-Z and Beyonce.
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SHEILAH GRAHAM’S APARTMENT 1443 North Hayworth Avenue
Fitzgerald moved to Sheilah Graham’s apartment here after suffering a heart attack in November 1940. Unlike his own, Graham’s apartment was on the ground floor and therefore was a more sensible place for him to begin recovery. Lying in bed, Fitzgerald wrote for a few hours each day on a specially positioned board. On December 20th, Fitzgerald suffered a further dizzy spell after attending a premier at the Pantages Theatre. The following day, while reading the Princeton alumni magazine, he suddenly stood up, groped for the chimney and fell to the floor. Sheilah tried to find help but Fitzgerald soon stopped breathing. He had died of a heart attack, aged just forty-four.
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FITZGERALD’S FINAL HOLLYWOOD APARTMENT 1403 North Laurel Avenue (May 1940 - November 1940)
Fitzgerald gave up his lodgings in Encino and moved here in 1940, just a block away from Sheilah Graham’s apartment. While living here he worked on the screenplays Life Begins at Thirty-Eight and an adaptation of his story ‘Babylon Revisited’. An independent film
producer named Leister Cowan paid Fitzgerald for the rights to ‘Babylon Revisited’ and hired him to produce a film version of it. While Fitzgerald enjoyed this project, his adaptation was never made. Fitzgerald was living here when he suffered his first heart attack in November 1940 at Schwab’s drug store on Sunset Boulevard. The strain of climbing the stairs to his third-floor apartment and the noise one of his neighbours made walking their dog on the roof above caused Fitzgerald to relocate to Graham’s apartment.
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FITZGERALD’S FIRST HOLLYWOOD APARTMENT 8152 Sunset Boulevard: (formerly) the Garden of Allah
Fitzgerald lived here when he moved to Hollywood for the third and final time in 1937. The Garden of Allah was a hotel composed of a series of two-apartment bungalows, and was home to other literary figures working in Hollywood, such as John O’Hara, Marc Connelly, and Dorothy Parker.
Ronald Regan, Humphrey Bogart and Laurence Olivier also stayed here. Fitzgerald shared a bungalow unit with the screenwriter Edwin Justus Mayer and drove into the MGM studios in Culver City in a Ford coupe. He wrote to a friend from the Garden of Allah noting that he had been working so hard he had lost ten pounds, and joked he would be too busy to date the female movie stars surrounding him. Romance did find Fitzgerald at the Garden of Allah, however. It was at a party here on the 14th of July, 1937 that Fitzgerald and Sheliah Graham first saw one another. Fitzgerald did not speak to the twenty-eight-year old Graham, but they nevertheless made an impression on each other. The Garden of Allah was demolished in the 1950s and turned into a bank. Today it is the site of a shopping mall.
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(FORMERLY) THE CLOVER CLUB 8477 Sunset Boulevard
HOLLYWOOD CALIFORNIA
Fitzgerald met Sheilah Graham here on July 24th, 1937. Fitzgerald persuaded Edwin Justus Mayer, his neighbour at the Garden of Allah, to invite him and Sheilah to have dinner here. Sheilah described Fitzgerald’s mannerisms and outfit as recalling a bygone age, and was impressed with the respectful attitudes Humphrey and Mayo Bogart afforded him while they conversed at the bar. Sheilah and Fitzgerald danced for much of the evening here. The Club was once an underground gambling den owned by Gus McAfee, a former LAPD officer turned crime lord, and other nefarious partners, who were chased out of town during anti-corruption measures taken in 1938.
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(FORMERLY) THE TROCADERO NIGHTCLUB 8610 Sunset Boulevard
Opened in 1934 by Hollywood reporter Billy Wilkinson, the Trocadero was an elite local nightclub. The likes of Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, and Bing Crosby partied here, while Nat ‘King’ Cole also performed at the Trocadero. Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham came here early in their relationship, in 1937. Fitzgerald had been inclined to postpone their date as his daughter, Scottie, was visiting. Graham, however, was keen to meet her and the trio came here. Sheilah was impressed by Fitzgerald’s concern over Scottie’s development and invited him into her home in the Hollywood Hills. The Trocadero was knocked down years ago and today is a storefront. The name lives on, however, at the Sunset Trocadero club at 8280 on Sunset Strip.
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THE BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL 9641 Sunset Boulevard In one of Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby stories, ‘Two Old Timers’, Pat gets into a drunken car accident with aging actor Phil Macedon outside the Beverly Hills Hotel. They are taken to the cells by a local police sergeant and fall into an argument based on Macedon’s insistence that he does not recognise Pat from their film days together.
Pat recalls that when they were filming a World War I movie, The Big Push, the director threw Macedon into a hole and used footage of his tantrum to represent the character’s anguish under fire. A similar thing happened during the making of the real war film The Big Parade (1925), starring John Gilbert, whom Fitzgerald disliked. Two Old Timers is therefore a coded rebuke to Gilbert. Pat Hobby also comes to the artist Princess Dignanni’s bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel to have his portrait painted in Fun in an Artist’s Studio. The hotel has a host of more well-known associations, however. John Wayne, Charlie Chaplain, and Marilyn Monroe all stayed here, while Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack performed at the Hotel’s Polo Lounge. The Hotel’s silhouette also features on the cover of The Eagles’ classic album ‘Hotel California’.
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(FORMERLY) FREDRIC MARCH’S HOME 1065 Ridgedale Drive
This was the home of actor Frederic March, who won an Academy Award for his performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). In 1937 Ernest Hemingway was in town trying to raise funds for the Republican cause in the ongoing Spanish Civil War. Here Fitzgerald attended a screening of The Spanish Earth, a pro-Republican film Hemingway had helped to make, which was shown in March’s house July 12th. This was the last day on which Fitzgerald saw Hemingway. The pair had been friends since their meeting in Paris in 1925, and Fitzgerald had helped negotiate the younger writer’s much-desired move to Scribner’s publishing house, who issued Fitzgerald’s works. By 1937 the tables had turned. Though not without his own problems, Hemingway was a respected and financially successful writer. Fitzgerald, meanwhile was reduced to movie work. The party continued at Dorothy Parker’s house with Hemingway and Fitzgerald present, but Fitzgerald was reluctant to speak to his former protégé.
I loved Scott very much... He had a very steep trajectory and was almost like a guided missile with no one guiding him. Ernest Hemingway
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(FORMERLY) MGM STUDIOS 10202 W. Washington Boulevard
Now the site of Sony Pictures Studios, this was once the location of the great filmmaker Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who turned out classics such as The Wizard of Oz, Ben Hur, and Singin’ in the Rain. Fitzgerald worked here from 1937-1939, alongside literary co-workers
including Dorothy Parker and Aldous Huxley. Fitzgerald had an office in the writers’ building and was expected to work from 9am to 6pm. He got through the day by chain-drinking Coca-Colas and lined the empties around the walls of his office. Here Fitzgerald lunched at the writer’s table, with a crowd that included Dorothy Parker, Ogden Nash, and Groucho Marx. Anita Loos remarked that the formerly vivacious Fitzgerald seemed remote and quiet at these meals, but was ‘accepted because we respected him’.
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(FORMERLY) SELZNICK INTERNATIONAL PICTURES 9336 Washington Boulevard
The offices of David Selznick’s International Pictures were once in this building. It was here that Gone with the Wind, a screen adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel was made. Fitzgerald’s contributions were as a script editor toward the end of his MGM contract. He was frustrated by the studio’s demand that he only use words which appeared in Mitchell’s novel in the editing. Selznick worked his writers hard, with revision sessions often lasting throughout the night. Much of Fitzgerald’s contributions consisted in replacing stylised Hollywood dialogue with passages from Mitchell’s novel. His changes, as Aaron Latham writes, ‘made the drama quieter, more understated’. Fitzgerald’s stint on the film was terminated, apparently, because he was unable to make a minor character, Aunt Pity, appear sufficiently quaint on screen! Fitzgerald’s involvement may have been slight, but he nevertheless made his mark on one of the most successful films ever produced. 23
PANTAGES THEATRE 6233 Hollywood Boulevard
The Pantages Theatre opened in 1930, hosted the Academy Awards for a decade, and was a movie house for much of its history. It also hosted the Oscars here in 1954, when Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra both picked up awards. Today the Pantages is a p e r fo r m a n c e t h e a t r e , a n d considers itself as representing ‘both the glorious past and adventuresome future of the world's entertainment capital’. A further moment of drama occurred here when Fitzgerald visited on the last night of his life. He and Sheilah Graham had dinner at Mike Lyman’s Grill, before attending a screening of This Thing Called Love at the Pantages. On leaving the cinema Fitzgerald experienced a
dizzy spell and was concerned he had given the impression of being drunk. The next day, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in Graham’s apartment.
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COMMUNITY SCHOOLS Formerly the Ambassador Hotel & Cocoanut Grove 3400 Wilshire Boulevard
Fitzgerald stayed here in 1927 with Zelda during his first trip to Hollywood. The film he was here to work on, ‘Lipstick’, was never made, and the trip cost Fitzgerald more than the $3,500 advance he had been paid for the script. During this trip Fitzgerald became infatuated with a young starlet named Louis Morgan. Zelda resented her husband’s interests in another woman and burnt her clothes in a bathtub at the Ambassador in protest. A decade later the Ambassador made a more positive appearance in Fitzgerald’s love life. On July 22nd, 1937 Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham met for the second time at a Writers’ Guild dinner held in the Fiesta Room. Sheilah asked Fitzgerald to dance, but the evening broke up before they got the chance. Errol Flynn, John Wayne, and Katherine Hepburn all stayed here, and Robert F. Kennedy, brother of former President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated here in 1968. Meanwhile, scenes from The Graduate, Pretty Woman, True Romance, and Almost Famous were shot here. The Ambassador
Hotel stood until 2005. Donald Trump attempted to build a mega-hotel on the site, but lost out to the Los Angeles United School District, who built the Community Schools instead. 25
‘BELLY ACRES’: FITZGERALD’S THIRD HOLLYWOOD APARTMENT 5521 Amestoy Avenue (November 1938 – May 1940)
Fitzgerald rented a cottage here for $200 a month on the actor Howard Everett Horton’s estate. Fitzgerald’s MGM contract expired in January 1939, while he was in residence here. Fitzgerald then became a freelance screenwriter and began supplementing his income by publishing the Pat Hobby stories he sold to Esquire while he planned his next novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon. For $130 a month he also hired a secretary, Frances Kroll Ring, who reflected on her time with Fitzgerald in Against the Current: F. Scott Fitzgerald as I Remember Him. Frances recalled Fitzgerald as a flawed individual, who was nevertheless devoted to his writing and to his family. She observed: ‘Scott was the sole breadwinner for the three-way family, a role he maintained with determination. There were no second thoughts. Zelda must have the best medical help available; Scottie must have the best schooling. He would pay for it, somehow’.
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FITZGERALD’S SECOND HOLLYWOOD APARTMENT 114 Malibu Beach
F. Scott Fitzgerald, photographed in 1937 by Carl van Vechten, courtesy wikipedia.org
Fitzgerald rented a bungalow for $300 a month between April and November 1938. Sheilah Graham located the property for Fitzgerald, believing that a removal from the noisy and boisterous life at the Garden of Allah would improve his health. Fitzgerald led a quiet life in Malibu. When Sheilah spent her weekends here the couple read, played ping-pong, and made fudge. Fitzgerald stayed here when his work on the script of ‘Infidelity’, which was to star Joan Crawford, came to an end. The script’s theme of infidelity made it unsuitable to the happy ending that Hollywood convention demanded. After this project was abandoned, Sheilah and Fitzgerald hosted a wild party. Fitzgerald, however, had learned from his past excesses and was trying to function as a serious professional. While staying here he cautioned his daughter to take her studies seriously and advised that the only lasting form of happiness comes from hard work.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise, ed. James L. W. West III (1920; rep. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012)
Flappers and Philosophers (1920; rep. London: Alma Classics, 2014) The Beautiful and Damned (1922; rep. London: Penguin, 1994) Tales of the Jazz Age (1922; rep. London: Penguin Classics, 2011) The Great Gatsby, ed. by Matthew Bruccoli (1925; rep. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1991) All the Sad Young Men (1926; rep. London, Alma Classics, 2013)
Tender Is the Night, ed. James L. W. West III (1934; rep. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) Taps at Reveille, ed. by James L. W. West III (1935; rep. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) The Love of the Last Tycoon, ed. by Matthew Bruccoli (1941; rep. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014) The Crack-Up, ed. by Edmund Wilson (1945; rep. New York, NY: New Directions
Books, 2009) The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. by Andrew Turnbull (London: The Bodley Head,
1963) Works about Fitzgerald in Hollywood Graham, Sheilah & Gerold Frank, Beloved Infidel: The Education of a Woman (New York: Bantam, 1959) College of One (New York: Viking, 1967)
The Real F. Scott Fitzgerald: Thirty-Five Years Later (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1976) Latham, Aaron, Crazy Sundays: F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (London: Secker & Warburg, 1972) Ring, Frances Kroll, Against the Current: F. Scott Fitzgerald as I Remember Him (San Francisco: Donald S. Ellis, 1985)
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THE PEOPLE OF FITZGERALD’S HOLLYWOOD Frances Scott “Scottie” Fitzgerald (1921-1986) - Fitzgerald’s daughter and only child. Scottie had an irregular childhood, moving with her parents as they changed residences, including spells in Paris and Antibes. When she attended the Ethel Walker School in Connecticut, her father’s literary agent Harold Ober and his wife Annie became her surrogate parents. After graduating from Vassar College in 1942 Scottie became a journalist and active member of the Democratic Party. Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-1948) - American novelist, painter, and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda was part of the American expatriate set of Paris in the 1920s. Known as ‘the first American Flapper’. Zelda and Ernest Hemingway famously did not get along well. John Gilbert (1897-1934) - Screen actor and director known as the ‘The Great Lover’ for his stream of leading-man roles. At a party thrown by the Iriving Thalberg, Gilbert booed Fitzgerald after he gave a poorly-received rendition of a comic song. This episode – which he incorporated into his story ‘Crazy Sunday’ – rankled Fitzgerald. Gilbert’s career wavered during the transition from silent to “talkies”. Like Fitzgerald, Gilbert died young (aged 36) from a heart attack. Sheilah Graham (1904-1988) - Born in London, Graham left a stage career and failed marriage behind and relocated to Hollywood where she worked as a columnist. She and Fitzgerald met in 1937. Fitzgerald devised ‘The College of One’ for Shielah, a two-year reading course in the humanities. Their relationship was occasionally rocky, but endured until Fitzgerald’s death in 1940. He died of a heart attack in Graham’s apartment at 1443 North Hollywood Avenue. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - one of the most significant authors of the twentieth-century. When they first met in 1925, Fitzgerald was a successful writer, while Hemingway had yet to publish a major work. A friendship quickly developed between the pair and Fitzgerald negotiated Hemingway’s transition to his publishers, Charles Scribner’s Sons. Hemingway’s career blossomed; personal problems impeded Fitzgerald’s literary output, however. The contrasting success of their careers irrevocably strained the friendship between the two writers. Hemingway and Fitzgerald mat for the last time in Hollywood, at the house of Frederic March.
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Louis Morgan (1909-1990) - Fitzgerald met Morgan during his first writing assignment in Hollywood in 1927. His infatuation with the seventeen-year-old actress led to difficulties in his relationship with Zelda. Morgan served as the inspiration for the young actress Rosemary Hoyt whom Dick Diver embarks on an affair with in Fitzgerald’s third novel, Tender Is the Night. Harold Ober (1881-1959) - Ober served as Fitzgerald’s literary agent from 1919 to 1939. Ober negotiated Fitzgerald’s literary contracts, including the fee of $4,000 per-story which the Saturday Evening Post paid Fitzgerald at the height of his career. During the years of her schooling Ober acted as a surrogate father to Scottie Fitzgerald. Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) - American poet, writer, critic, satirist, and screenwriter, Parker wrote for The New Yorker and was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. She went to Hollywood to pursue
screenwriting, and was nominated for two Academy Awards, but her career there ended when she was placed on the Hollywood blacklist for her involvement in left-wing politics. William Maxwell Evarts Perkins (1884-1947) - American journalist and book editor for Charles Scribner’s Sons. Perkins joined Scribner’s in 1910 and actively sought out promising new writers, working closely with them on the revisions of their manuscripts. Perkins made his first great ‘find’ in 1919 when he signed F. Scott Fitzgerald. Perkins is also known for ‘discovering’ the talents of Thomas Wolfe and, via Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway. Frances Kroll Ring (1918-2015) - Fitzgerald’s secretary between April 1939 and the author’s death in late 1940. She typed drafts of The Last Tycoon and Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby stories. Ring produced a memoir of her time with Fitzgerald, Against the Current: F. Scott Fitzgerald as I Remember Him. This was made into the 2002 film Last Call, which featured Jeremy Irons as Fitzgerald. Irving Grant Thalberg (1899-1936) - Thalberg was a filmmaking virtuoso who had been appointed manager of Universal Studio’s California studio at just twenty years of age. Four years later he was Supervisor of Production at MGM Studios. Thalberg directed Ben Hur (1925) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and served as the inspiration for Munroe Stahr in The Love of the Last Tycoon, Fitzgerald’s Hollywood novel that remained uncompleted following his death in 1940..
IMAGE AND ILLUSTRATION CREDITS Location illustrations: Agata Urbanska. The Romantic Egoists: A Pictorial Autobiography from the Scrapbooks and Albums of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Published by University of South Carolina (2003). Photographs adapted into illustrations by Agata Urbanska.
COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER All rights reserved. By downloading for free and/or by payment of the required fees you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means whether electrical or mechanical now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of Sainted Media. E-Book edition Copyright 2017 Sainted Media Limited. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD™ is a trademark of The Fitzgerald Estate Limited and under exclusive license through Fashion Licensing of America, Inc., New York, NY (212) 370-0770, e-mail: fashionlicensing@aol.com; General Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability Sainted Media controls and operates www.saintedmedia.com from offices in Scotland. We make no representation that site content or content of e-books is appropriate or authorised for use in all countries, states, provinces, counties or any other jurisdictions. If you choose to access the sites or download the e-books, you do so on your own initiative and risk, and you are responsible for compliance with all applicable laws if and to the extent such laws and restrictions are applicable. Sainted Media disclaims any liability concerning any action that any person may take based on any information or guidance provided on the site or in the content of the books.
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MORE LITERARY GUIDES Hemingway Trails and Quizzes App Follow in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, and learn more about his life, love and work. Relive the enjoyment of his novels by answering quiz questions based on the books.
The Hemingway Trails and Quiz App has interactive clue-driven treasure hunt style trails in Key West, Cuba, London, Paris, Juan les Pins, Cap d’Antibes, Arles, Madrid, Pamplona, Ronda, Valencia, and book quizzes for your favourite novels - with more locations and book quizzes being added all the time. Collect rewards at the end of the trails and quizzes.
Available on Google Play and the App Store
Fitzgerald Trails and Quizzes App Follow in the footsteps of F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and learn more about their lives, their love and their work. Relive the enjoyment of his work by answering quiz questions based on Fitzgerald’s novels and short stories. The Fitzgerald Trails and Quiz App has interactive clue-driven treasure hunt style trails in London, Paris, Juan les Pins, Cap d’Antibes, New York, LA, Long Island and book quizzes of your favourite novels and short stories - with more locations and book quizzes being added all the time. Collect rewards at the end of the trails and quizzes.
Available on Google Play and the App Store
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Written by: David Alan Rennie Series Editor : Frances O’Neill Illustrations by: Agata Urbanska Designed by: Eleanor O’Neill
A Sainted Media production. www.walkingwithwriters.com
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