Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography (66 page)

22.
Graham,
State of Heat,
p. 144; Graham,
Beloved Infidel,
p. 227; Quoted in Latham,
Crazy Sundays,
p. 131; Graham,
The Real Scott Fitzgerald,
pp. 104, 19.

23.
Letter from Frances Kroll to Sheilah Graham, December 10, 1939, Princeton; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 564;
This Side of Paradise,
inscribed by Fitzgerald to Sheilah Graham, Princeton.

24.
Powell, “Hollywood Canteen,” p. 77; Judith Thurman,
Isak Dinesen
(New York, 1982), pp. 156–157; Wilson,
Letters on Literature and Politics,
pp. 313–314.

25.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 368; Budd Schulberg, “Old Scott: The Myth, the Masque, the Man,”
Four Seasons of Success
(Garden City, New York, 1972), p. 126; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 249.

26.
Letter from Frances Kroll Ring to Mizener, June 14, 1948, Princeton; Letter from Fitzgerald to Edgar Allan Poe, Jr., December 26, 1939, Princeton;
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
p. 315.

Chapter Thirteen: Hollywood Hack and
The Last Tycoon

1.
David Thomson,
Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick
(New York, 1992), p. 288; Schulberg,
Four Seasons of Success,
p. 102; Interview with Budd Schulberg.

2.
Graham,
The Rest of the Story,
p. 211; Quoted in Mizener,
Far Side of Paradise,
p. 315; Budd Schulberg, “In Hollywood,”
New Republic,
104 (March 3, 1941), 311–312.

3.
Mizener’s notes on his conversation with Schulberg, Princeton; Meyers, Interview with Schulberg.

Wanger had a notoriously fierce temper. In 1951 he served three months in jail for shooting the agent of his actress-wife Joan Bennett.

4.
Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 324; Letter from Scottie Fitzgerald Lanahan to Mizener, October 22, 1950, Princeton.

5.
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
p. 403; David Niven,
Bring on the Empty Horses
(New York, 1975), pp. 100–101; Quoted in Latham,
Crazy Sundays,
p. 253;
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
p. 261.

6.
Fitzgerald,
In His Own Time,
p. 155; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 385; Fitzgerald,
In His Own Time,
p. 160.

7.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 126;
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
p. 415; Frances Scott Fitzgerald, “A Short Retort,”
Mademoiselle,
July 1939, p. 41.

8.
Letter from Scottie Fitzgerald to Mizener, February 2, 1948, Princeton; Quoted in Marie Jemison’s unpublished memoir of Scottie, “Everybody Wants My Parents, Nobody Wants Me,” pp. 34, 48–49, courtesy of Marie Jemison; Frances Kroll Ring,
Against the Current: As I Remember Scott Fitzgerald
(Berkeley, 1985), p. 81.

9.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 523; Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 401; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 128; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 554.

10.
Letter from Scottie Fitzgerald Lanahan to Mizener, March 10, 1950, Princeton; Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald,
Romantic Egoists,
p. 225.

11.
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
pp. 346, 394, 400.

12.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 607;
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
p. 408;
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
pp. 258, 261.

13.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 332; Fitzgerald,
Notebooks,
p. 335; Ernest Hemingway,
For Whom the Bell Tolls
(New York, 1940), p. 160; Fitzgerald,
The Last Tycoon,
p. 81; Graham,
College of One,
p. 159; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
pp. 146–147. For an evaluation of Hemingway’s achievement, see Jeffrey Meyers, “
For Whom the Bell Tolls
as Contemporary History,”
The Spanish Civil War in History,
ed. Janet Pérez and Wendell Aycock (Lubbock, Texas, 1990), pp. 85–107.

14.
Hemingway,
Selected Letters,
p. 657; Quoted in Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin,
Ernest Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast”: The Making of a Myth
(Boston, 1991), p. 12; Gregory Hemingway,
Papa
(Boston, 1976), p. 103.

In 1941, when Hemingway was competing with the recently dead Fitzgerald, he judged
The Last Tycoon
more severely and disliked Kathleen as much as Fitzgerald had disliked Maria. As Hemingway told Perkins: “Most of it has a deadness that is unbelievable for Scott. . . . The women were pretty preposterous. Scott had gotten so far away from any knowledge of people that they are very strange. He still had the technique and the romance of doing anything, but all the dust was off the butterfly’s wing” (
Selected Letters,
p. 527).

15.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 557; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
pp. 187, 619; Quoted in Mizener,
Far Side of Paradise,
p. 324.

16.
Fitzgerald,
The Last Tycoon,
p. 125; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
pp. 451–452. For Thalberg’s life, see Bob Thomas,
Thalberg: Life and Legend
(Garden City, New York, 1970) and Samuel Marx,
Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints
(New York, 1975).

17.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 549; Fitzgerald,
The Last Tycoon,
pp. 118, 91, 42.

His friendships with Jews, who were invariably kind to Fitzgerald, altered his preconceived hostility and enabled him to see them as individuals. George Jean Nathan published his first stories in the
Smart Set,
Carmel Myers introduced him to the Hollywood elite, Gilbert Seldes wrote the most perceptive review of
The Great Gatsby,
Gertrude Stein generously praised his work, Dorothy Parker was another consistent supporter, Bert Barr (Bertha Weinberg Goldstein) befriended him on the voyage home to his father’s funeral, S. J. Perelman was a witty and stimulating friend in Hollywood, Nathanael West was also an admiring colleague, Budd Schulberg tried to take care of him after his binge in Hanover and Frances Kroll was his devoted secretary.

18.
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
p. 351; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 561; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 112.

19.
J. F. Powers, “Dealer in Diamonds and Rhinestones,”
Commonweal,
42 (August 10, 1945), 408.

20.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 594;
The Time is Ripe: The 1940 Journal of Clifford Odets,
Introduction by William Gibson (New York, 1988), p. 293; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 614.

21.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 144. Sheilah characteristically gives two quite different versions of Scott’s death. In
Beloved Infidel
(1958), p. 251, which I have followed, she said he was still breathing after he fell down. In
The Real Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 15, she said he died instantly. Both Edmund Wilson (
Letters,
p. 328) and Mizener (
Far Side of Paradise,
p. 335) follow the later, less reliable version.

22.
Frank Scully, “F. Scott Fitzgerald,”
Rogue’s Gallery
(Hollywood, 1943), pp. 268–269. Fitzgerald may have been echoing the teenage Tennyson, who in 1824 “had run weeping into the woods at Somersby and despairingly carved ‘Byron is dead’ into the sandstone” (Robert Bernard Martin,
Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart,
Oxford, 1980, p. 231).

23.
Interview with Fanny Myers Brennan;
Letters from the Lost Generation,
p. 259; Lee Reese,
The Horse on Rodney Square
(Wilmington, Delaware, 1977), p. 177; Letter from John Biggs III to Jeffrey Meyers, November 27, 1991.

24.
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
p. 424;
Letters from the Lost Generation,
p. 261.

25.
Fitzgerald,
In His Own Time,
p. 472; Wilson,
Letters on Literature and Politics,
pp. 327, 337; Wilson, Foreword to Fitzgerald’s
The Last Tycoon,
n.p.; Edmund Wilson, Foreword to Fitzgerald’s
The Last Tycoon, The Great Gatsby and Selected Stories
(New York, 1945), p. xi; Wilson,
Letters on Literature and Politics,
p. 343.

26.
Wilson,
Letters on Literature and Politics,
p. 337; Wilson, “Dedication” to
The Crack-Up,
pp. 8–9; Wilson,
Letters on Literature and Politics,
p. 335. See Jeffrey Meyers, “Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson: A Troubled Friendship,”
American Scholar,
61 (Summer 1992), 375–388.

27.
Stephen Vincent Benét, “Fitzgerald’s Unfinished Symphony,”
Saturday Review of Literature,
24 (December 6, 1941), 10; Wilson,
Letters on Literature and Politics,
p. 475; John Updike,
Hugging the Shore
(New York, 1983), p. 380.

28.
See Wilson’s
The Crime in the Whistler Room
(1924), Lardner’s
What Of It?
(1925), Hemingway’s
The Torrents of Spring
(1926), Van Vechten’s
Parties
(1930), Zelda’s
Save Me the Waltz
(1932), Wolfe’s
You Can’t Go Home Again
(1941), Schulberg’s
The Disenchanted
(1950), George Zuckerman’s
The Last Flapper
(1969), James Aldridge’s
One Last Glimpse
(1977), Ron Carlson’s
Betrayed by Scott Fitzgerald
(1977), Kaye McDonough’s
Zelda
(1978), Tennessee Williams’
Clothes for a Summer Hotel
(1980), Donald Davie’s poem “The Garden Party” and Theodore Roethke’s “Song for the Squeeze-Box.”

29.
Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 327; Hartnett,
Zelda Fitzgerald,
p. 185; “Fire in Carolina Mental Hospital Kills 9 Women,”
New York Herald Tribune,
March 12, 1948.

The catastrophic fire almost ruined Highland. The medical director resigned and was replaced by Dr. Carroll’s adopted daughter Charmian, a nurse who had become a psychiatrist and who served as director until 1963.

30.
Brendan Gill,
A New York Life
(New York, 1990), p. 315; Interview with Meryle Secrest, November 22, 1992; Interview with Eleanor Lanahan, Hempstead, New York, September 26, 1992.

31.
Chandler,
Selected Letters,
p. 239; Toklas,
Staying on Alone,
p. 171.

Books by Jeffrey Meyers

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A Fever at the Core: The Idealist in Politics

Married to Genius

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The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis

Hemingway

Manic Power: Robert Lowell and His Circle

D. H. Lawrence

Joseph Conrad

Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy