Maybe this has nothing to do with why you wrote me. Anyhow thank you more than I can say. Im sorry our meetings have been so brief—the last at Marice Hamilton’s in February, 1931. My God, where have these six years gone—whole months go by and nothing seems to happen. Is that just middle-age? I’d like to do a lot of liesurely things now but there seems to be no time. Yours F. Scott Fitzgerald
TO: Harold Ober
Received April 6, 1937
ALS, 1 p. Lilly Library
Tryon, North Carolina
Dear Harold:
The Hollywood affair was a blow of course.4 It might have meant everything. Of course one cannot do justice to purely imaginative work when in rotten health + extreme worry. But since the health is good + the worry would be alleviated by the pay check it would have been ideal. My biggest loss is confidence.
So I hope that you’ll bend all your efforts for me apon bringing about a chance in Hollywood. Week by week Things get worse financially and of course this can’t go on much longer if I have to go out there + sell myself for a few hundred a week. I am finishing the football story + will start another but it would be twice as possible to work well if I could see any way out of this morass. If Swanson can’t sell me how about Leland Hay ward—he used to be a great friend + admirer.
Perhaps tomorrow I wont feel as low as today but at the moment things look very black. You might send me the cartoon story to look over. I hope to God you sell Thumbs—wire me if you do.
Ever Yours
Scott Fitzg
TO: Harold Ober
Received April 13, 1931
ALS, 2 pp. Lilly Library
Tryon, North Carolina
Dear Harold:
With this you will recieve the story
Athletic Interview1
and a plea for another $100.00. The situation is terrible. One check has just come back to the hotel. Threats of suits come in daily from all over hell—not big sums but enormous now. Some matters as buying razor blades + even cigarettes have grown serious. There ought to be a little left from mother’s estate this month but I dont know when or whether itll be a hundred or a thousand, all the rest being mortgaged away.
I am revamping The Vanished Girl2 for Esquire and can’t get any money for it until it gets there which won’t be before next Monday. The $100 is for the hotel bill—I had to give them another check and if it comes back I’ll be in the street.
At least I have taken my time on this story as I should have started doing two years ago. My rate is never more than one a month—why I kept thinking I could do more with the added burden of illness and anxiety I don’t know.
For God’s sake wire me you have been able to do something.
Scott
TO: Harold Ober
May 2, 1937
Wire. Lilly Library
Tryon, North Carolina
PLEASE TAKE ANY PRICE FOR INTERLUDE OVERDRAWN 150 AND WHOLE SITUATION TENSE NO HELP FROM ESTATE FOR ANOTHER WEEK STORY ALMOST FINISHED BY CONDITIONS OF WORK IMPOSSIBLE
FITZGERALD
TO: Mrs. Richard Taylor
ALS, 1 p. Princeton University
Spring 1937
Dearest Ceci:
Zelda is at
Highland’s Hospital
Ashville, N.C.
She is much much better. So am I. I stopped drinking in January and have been concentrating on other mischief, such as work, which is even duller, or seems so to me at present. But Scottie must be educated + Zelda can’t starve. As for me I’d had enough of the whole wretched mess some years ago + seen thru a sober eye find it more appalling than ever.
With Dearest Love Always
Scott
Oak Hall
Tryon, N.C.
TO: Harold Ober
May 11, 1937
Wire. Lilly Library
Tryon, North Carolina
TO REMAIN HERE AND EAT MUST HAVE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY TODAY PLEASE ASK PERKINS
FITZGERALD
TO: Harold Ober
Received May 13, 1937
ALS, 3 pp. Lilly Library
Tryon, North Carolina
Dear Harold:
Life had me going there for a little while. A check came back from the bank + then another + then the 1st over again. Hadn’t tipped servants for 6 wks, paid typist, druggist, old doctors bills ect—every mail a threat of suite. All in all the short + simple annals of the poor. It has been entirely a charity year—almost a year mind you since I’ve sold a story, tho I’ve only written five + two may yet sell. In fact if these two dont I am immediately on a worse spot than before. I have a balance of six dollars after immediately putting forth what you sent.
All that can save me now is that there may be a few hundred in the estate which will be settled in two weeks. What I need is a substantial sum 1st to pay a percentage on bills, 2nd for a full months security + 3d to take Zelda for a 3 day trip to Myrtle Beach which I’ve been promising for two month + which the sanitarum want her to take. She hasn’t been out of hospital for 31/2 years + they feel that she’s well enough for a trip.
These two stories seem to me in the old line. I feel the stuff coming back as my health improves. I told you that since stopping drinking I’ve gained from just over 140 to over 160. I sleep at last and tho my hair’s grey I feel younger than for four years. I am surprisingly not depressed by all these bad breaks but I am exceedingly hampered—just sheerly finding it difficult to function. I tried to give up smoking from pure econemy + did give up expensive medicines and treatments. Such matters as four abcessed teeth and a growth that ought to be removed honestly dont bother me—two years of fainting + spitting blood cured me physical worry, but the money difficulty if not solved soon will have more and more psycholigal influence on my work, undermining confidence and wrecking what’s left of my market.
Why Littaur?1 I don’t think the Post have been unreasonable. They’ve turned down some good stories from Crazy Sunday and Phillipe to Intimate Strangers but most of what they saw wasn’t good. I didn’t like their cutting my price but I’d like to wait till they turned down a good story for no reason at all before deciding that Stout2 just don’t like me.
Well, I hope you’ll have good news about a story by the time you get this.
Ever Yours Scott Fitz
It was a shame to sell the little story in this months Esq for $200, wasn’t it. That’s a sheer result of debt.
TO: C. O. Kalman
June 1937
ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University
Tryon, North Carolina
Dear Kaly:
Well, you certainly gave me a generous helping hand out of a nightmare and now that it is paid up—as far as such an ‘obligation’ can be paid—I want to tell you that I’ve been constantly thinking of what you did with gratitude and appreciation. What got me into the two years mess that reached its lowest point in the fall of 1936 was the usual combination of circumstances. A predjudiced enemy might say it was all drink, a fond mama might say it was a run of ill-luck, a banker might say it was ‘not providing’ for the future in better days, a psychiatrist might say it was a nervous collapse—it was perhaps partly all these things—the effect was to fantastic prevent me from doing any work at the very age when presumably one is at the height of one’s powers. My life looked like a hopeless mess there for awhile and the point was I didn’t want it to be better. I had completely ceased to give a good Goddamn.
Luckily a few people had faith in me, or perhaps only kindliness—there was a doctor that was interested and some old friends who simply couldn’t believe it was me. I hurt myself professionally no end but did no great damage to private relations—Scottie being away at school, Zelda in a sanitarium + myself in North Carolina where I saw no people at all. And for six months (I went on the complete wagon, not even beer, in January) I have been steadily coming back, first physically + finally financially, tho that’s only just begun and I’m afraid I’ll have to go to Hollywood before accumulating any surplus.
So much for me and I don’t think it will ever happen again. I want to come to St Paul sometime this summer, probably on my way to or from the coast, + I want to be sure you’re there, so write me if + when you + Sandy will be gone to Europe to fight with Gen. Franco for the rights of labor and the 20 hr. day. Scribners, 597 5th Ave is a permanent address for me, though in person I am usually in Carolina near Zelda. I took her out swimming yesterday + we talked of you. Again my deepest gratitude
With Affection Always
Scott Fitzg—
TO: Ernest Hemingway
Postmarked June 5, 1937
ALS, 1 p. John F. Kennedy Library
Pennsylvania Railroad stationery
It was fine to see you so well + full of life, Ernest. I hope you’ll make your book fat—I know some of that Esquire work is too good to leave out.1 All best wishes to your Spanish trip—I wish we could meet more often. I don’t feel I know you at all.
Ever Yours
Scott
Going South always seems to me rather desolate + fatal and uneasy. This is no exception. Going North is a safe dull feeling.
HOLLYWOOD
1937–1940
July 1937
FSF goes to Hollywood for third and last time with six-month MGM contract at $1,000 a week; lives at Garden of Allah, where he meets Sheilah Graham.
September 1937-January 1938
FSF works on Three Comrades script, his only screen credit.
December 1937
MGM contract is renewed for one year at $1,250 a week; works on unproduced scripts for “Infidelity,” Marie Antoinette, The Women, and Madame Curie.
April 1938
FSF rents bungalow at Malibu Beach, California.
September 1938
Scottie enters Vassar.
October 1938
FSF moves to cottage on the Edward Everett Horton estate, “Belly Acres,” at Encino in the San Fernando Valley.
December 1938
MGM contract is not renewed; money problems recur.
February 1939
FSF travels to Dartmouth College with Budd Schulberg to work on Winter Carnival; fired for drunkenness.
March 1939–October 1940
FSF has freelance assignments with Paramount, Universal, Fox, Goldwyn, and Columbia.
October 1939
FSF begins work on The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western.
January 1940
Publication of the first Pat Hobby story, “Pat Hobby’s Christmas Wish,” in Esquire; the seventeen-story series runs in Esquire from January 1940 to May 1941.
April 15, 1940
ZF leaves Highland Hospital to live with her mother at 322 Sayre Street in Montgomery.
May 1940
FSF moves to 1403 North Laurel Avenue, Hollywood.
May-August 1940
FSF works on “Cosmopolitan” (“Babylon Revisited”) script.
December 21, 1940
FSF dies of heart attack at Graham’s apartment, 1443 North Hayworth Avenue, Hollywood.
December 27, 1940
FSF is buried in the Rockville Union Cemetery, Rockville, Maryland. ZF is not able to attend.
October 27, 1941
Publication of The Last Tycoon.
August 12, 1945
Publication of The Crack-Up.
Early 1946
ZF returns to Highland, as she does intermittently, from Montgomery.
March 10, 1948
ZF dies in fire at Highland, Asheville, North Carolina.
March 17, 1948
Zelda is buried with Scott in Rockville Union Cemetery, Rockville, Maryland.
TO: Harold Ober
Received July 6, 1937
ALS, 1 p. Lilly Library
Battery Park Hotel stationery.
Asheville, North Carolina
The item * better not start for two or three weeks as I’ll need a second hand car.
So for that time add it to my expense check.
Dear Harold:
Here’s the way I’d like to divide my pay check for the moment.
Per week
100
to you—commission
150
" "on debt
50
" Scribners on debt, as follows
1st to paid against Perkins loan
2nd to be paid against insurance assignment held by Charles Scribner
3d to be paid against their movie loan on Tender
*
200
4th to be paid against my retail bill there to be banked by you against taxes somewhere where I can get compound interest. Perhaps you make a suggestion where
100
to be banked at 1st National Baltimore for “vacation money” for I will be taking six to 8 weeks off a year.
400
to be put to my account out of which I pay expenses + $100 insurance. For the present we will call this one the expense check + when I find a bank in California will deposit it there.
$1000
(Do you like this arrangement? With those stories it should clear you and me within a year)—all percentages to go up after six months of course Scott
TO: Carl Van Vechten1
Postmarked July 5, 1937
ALS, 3 pp. Yale University
Argonaut/Southern Pacific stationery
Dear Carl: Being on this train “getting away from it all” makes me think of you + your occasional postcards, even if the splended pictures hadn’t done so.
Zelda + Scottie (do you remember her squabbled for them + got the two best to remember me by while I am on this buccaneering expedition—the first since—I am wrong, the second since we were out there together.
But nothing will ever be like that 1st trip and I have formed my Californian cosmology from that.
It was kind and generous of you to send them—do you remember the inadequacy in the Fitzgerald household you repaired with a beautiful shaker.
I miss both your work + our meetings but I hope you are obtaining what measure of happiness is allowed in this world.
Ever Devotedly Yours
Scott
I will remember you not to anyone in particular but to what ghosts of our former selves I may encounter under Pacific Skies.
TO: Scottie Fitzgerald
July 1937
ALS, 3 pp. Princeton University
Argonaut/Southern Pacific stationery
1937 (on the way to Hollywood)
Dearest Pie:
This may be the last letter for a time, though I won’t forget the check when I get at my check book.
I feel a certain excitement. The third Hollywood venture. Two failures behind me though one no fault of mine. The first one was just ten years ago. At that time I had been generally acknowledged for several years as the top American writer both seriously and, as far as prices went, popularly. I had been loafing for six months for the first time in my life and was confidant to the point of conciet. Hollywood made a big fuss over us and the ladies all looked very beautiful to a man of thirty. I honestly believed that with no effort on my part I was a sort of magician with words—an odd delusion on my part when I had worked so desperately hard to develop a hard, colorful prose style.
Total result—a great time + no work. I was to be paid only a small amount unless they made my picture—they didn’t.
The second time I went was five years ago. Life had gotten in some hard socks and while all was serene on top, with your mother apparently recovered in Montgomery, I was jittery underneath and beginning to drink more than I ought to. Far from approaching it too confidently I was far too humble. I ran afoul of a bastard named de Sano, since a suicide, and let myself be gyped out of command. I wrote the picture + he changed as I wrote. I tried to get at Thalberg but was erroneously warned against it as “bad taste.” Result—a bad script. I left with the money, for this was a contract for weekly payments, but disillusioned and disgusted, vowing never to go back, tho they said it wasn’t my fault +
asked me to stay. I wanted to get east when the contract expired to see how your mother was. This was later interpreted as “running out on them” + held against me.
(The train has left El Paso since I began this letter—hence the writing—Rocky Mountain writing.)
I want to profit by these two experiences—I must be very tactful but keep my hand on the wheel from the start—find out the key man among the bosses + the most malleable among the collaborators—then fight the rest tooth + nail until, in fact or in effect, I’m alone on the picture. That’s the only way I can do my best work. Given a break I can make them double this contract in less than two years. You can help us all best by keeping out of trouble—it will make a great difference to your important years. Take care of yourself mentally (study when you’re fresh), physically (don’t pluck your eyebrows) morally (don’t get where you have to lie) + I’ll give you more scope than Peaches
Daddy
TO: Harold Ober
Received July 8, 1937
ALS, 3 pp. Lilly Library
Argonaut/Southern Pacific stationery
Dear Harold: This is written on a rocky train—I hope its decipherable.
1st When you figure what I owe you you better figure interest too for the past four years at some percentage you think proper. When I made from 25–35 thousand a year with so little negotiation I didn’t mind being a story in debt to you—in fact I was rather upset when the Reynolds office made me pay a double commission on the Gatsby movie—almost 20%, remember? But this big debt is entirely another matter from those days + represents a loss for you in years of smaller profit + more expense on my account. So figure something you consider fair.
2nd When the pay off begins I think that you should send me a witnessed note somewhat as follows—that you will accept from the insurance assignment only such a sum as I may be in debt to you on your books at the time of my demise. This protects my estate as I pay back the money—I will file it with my will.
A Life in Letters Page 38
