Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated)
Page 485
I would like to write this story, with any encouragement. What do you think?
Ever your friend,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
TO DR CLARENCE NELSON
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino,
California
February 7,1940
Dear Dr Nelson:
Just to tell you I have not forgotten you nor what I owe you. Physically the situation is really miraculously improved. Financially it is still as bad as ever but I just don’t see how it can go on being this bad. I have had no fever now for well over six weeks, feel no fatigue beyond what is normal, cough only a very little bit in the mornings and usually that is all for the whole day. In other words, as far as I can determine the disease is absolutely quiescent and, if anything, I have been more active than at any time since I took to bed last March.
I suppose that my absolutely dry regime has something to do with it but not everything. Oddly enough the little aches around the elbows and shoulders return from time to time whenever I have had a great orgy of Coca-Colas and coffee.
With very best wishes and hopes that soon I may be able to do something substantial about your bill.
Sincerely and gratefully,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
TO ARNOLD GINGRICH
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino,
California
February 7, 1940
Dear Arnold:
What would you think of this? You remember that about a week ago I wrote asking you about the publication of ‘Between Planes.’ You said that you hadn’t intended to publish it until after the Pat Hobby stories. Why don’t you publish it under a pseudonym - say, John Darcy? I’m awfully tired of being Scott Fitzgerald anyhow, as there doesn’t seem to be so much money in it, and I’d like to find out if people read me just because I am Scott Fitzgerald or, what is more likely, don’t read me for the same reason. In other words it would fascinate me to have one of my stories stand on its own merits completely and see if there is a response. I think it would be a shame to let that story stand over for such a long time now.
What do you think of this? While the story is not unlike me it is not particularly earmarked by my style as far as I know. At least I don’t think so. If the idea interests you I might invent a fictitious personality for Mr Darcy. My ambition would be to get a fan letter from my own daughter.
Ever your friend,
Scott
TO MR AND MRS S. J. PERELMAN
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino,
Californiaphone: STate 4-0578
May 13, 1940
Dear Sid and Laura:
This is a love missive so do not be alarmed. I am not giving a tea for either the Princess Razzarascal or Two-ticker Forsite. But I am leaving this Elysian haunt in two weeks (the 29th to be exact) and sometime before that nonce I wish you two would dine or lunch. I know Sunday isn’t a good day for you because of the dwarfs and Saturday next I’m going to Maurice Evans’ and Sunday I’m engaged (now you know, girls, isn’t it wonderful?)
- but any other day between now and the 28th would be fine. I want to see you and very specifically you, and for the most general and non-specific reasons. The days being at their longest it is no chore to find this place up to 7:30, and perhaps the best idea is dinner. We could either dine à quatre or add the Wests and some other couple - say the Mannerheims or Browders - and afterwards play with my model parachute troops. At any event, side arms will not be de rigueur. Sheilah will be with me, just as merry as can be, to greet you on the porch with a julep. I have just reread Crime and Punishment and the chapters on gang labor in Capitalist Production and am meek as a liberal bourgeois lamb.
Call me up on the party line or drop me a note. The only acceptable excuse is that you’re going on vacation or have impetigo because I want to see you.
With spontaneous affection,
Scott
TO MRS HART FESSENDEN
c/o Phil Berg Agency Beverly Hills, California
May 29, 1940
DearK:
Seeing that Hester’s first born was the last man tapped for Bones reminded me of you both. Doesn’t that make about the fourth tie in a line and, as you two formed my first ideas of ‘Vas- sar Gals,’ I wonder if you knew that my daughter has been one now for some two years, so I must have been suitably impressed. She wanted to go to Bryn Mawr (to be near Baltimore where she came out last year) but I put my foot down - it was Vassar or nothing.
In these times speaking of oneself seems old-fashioned, but in the last three years I’ve known every extreme of sickness and health, riches and poorness, success and failure, and only in the last few months has life begun to level out again in any sensible way. The movies went to my head and I tried to lick the set up single-handed and came out a sadder and wiser man. For a long time they will remain nothing more nor less than an industry to manufacture children’s wet goods.
Tell me some news about you and yours if you ever get time.
Scott
TO LESTER COWAN
1403 North Laurel Avenue
Hollywood,California
June 26, 1940
Dear Lester:
Thinking over what we discussed yesterday I’ve listed many flaws in construction. The introduction of the little girl’s voice at the beginning of Sequence B is confusing, and I agree about the insufficiency of the last sequence, which leaves the little girl out of the picture for so long. From the middle of the Ritz Hotel stock-market scene, the script must be not only revised but invigorated with a new note - in which Honoria will participate dramatically.
I agree with you also that we must build a scene on the dock around the parting of Honoria and her father - a scene which will clearly show the spark already established between them. I like the new scene we outlined which shows Honoria at the beach at Brittany learning to dive and writing to her father’s trained nurse about it.
The changes in the story of Charles Wales’ business dealing, etc., can wait - I want to make clear his real reasons for going to Europe, to make stronger his reasons for signing away the guardianship of the child, his affection for the nurse, his motivation for going back into the market and whether he wins or loses there - and finally what he learns from the whole experience - but this all goes with the big revision.
Now about the other matter. Originally the child was to have been eight or nine years old. If she is to be slightly older, say at the very end and apex of childhood, the period of ‘Goodbye to dolls,’ she would of course be more aware and articulate about what is going on. Not at every moment, because a little girl of eleven lives halfway between a child’s world and that of an adult. But if she’s been well brought up she is beginning to realize her social responsibilities (in that regard I was very impressed with the Temple kid - no trace of coyness or cuteness, yet a real dignity and gentleness).
On the other hand this is a real child and I don’t think that I would want to put into Honoria’s mouth anything approaching the dying speech of Little Eva or the less credible children of Dickens. They ring false upon the modern ear, and, though they make certain sections of the audience weep, they revolt and alienate the intelligent section of the audience, including especially young people between eighteen and twenty-five, and create an atmosphere of disbelief in what happens thereafter.
Therefore, though no one is more responsive than I am to true sentiment and emotion, I still hold out against any sentimentality.
This is not the old story about ‘Daddy’s little helper’ - it is a mature dramatic piece and whatever child you find for it must have an emotional range larger than the First Reader. I want what happens in this picture to be felt in the stomach first, felt out of great conviction about the tragedy of father and child - and not felt in the throat to make a fat woman’s holiday between chocolate creams.
Going back to young Shirley Temple: if the personality that she has in private life could be carried almost without height
ening over into the picture, I believe she would be perfect. She has reached a point pictorially and by reason of natural charm where any attempt to strain and stress her prophetic conduct would seem a vulgarization. She is a perfect thing now in her way, and I would like to see that exquisite glow and tranquility carried intact through a sustained dramatic action. Whoever you get for the part would have to forget such old dodges as talking with tears in her voice, something that a well brought-up child wouldn’t.
Scott
TO ALICE RICHARDSON
Santa Barbara,California
July 29,1940
Dear Alicia:
Your letter and Scottie’s reached me here the same day - here where with a producer I am working on a story for little Miss Temple. Santa Barbara is supposed to have some escape magic like Palm Springs, but no matter how hard you look it’s still California.
Daughter speaks of you with great admiration, says you have grown a full cubit since Baltimore, put your hair up, and stand like a modern Pallas Athene in mid-career. How well I remember Philippe’s castle drawn by a friend of yours and Gertrude Stein’s passage through Baltimore. It was a solemn winter but there were worse to come and in retrospect those months have an air of early April.
I am sincerely sorry not to have seen you - not only from curi-
osity but because you were always so determined things would be right that I’m glad they’ve turned out right. And turned out as you hoped and intended.
Your old friend,
Scott
P.S. Isn’t Hollywood a dump - in the human sense of the word? A hideous town, pointed up by the insulting gardens of its rich, full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement
TO MRS NEUVILLE
1403 North Laurel AvenueHollywood, California
July 29, 1940
Dear Mrs Neuville:
I thought the other day that a large rat had managed to insert itself into the plaster above my bedroom and workroom. I was, however, surprised that it apparently slept at night and worked in the day, causing its greatest din around high noon.
However yesterday, much to my surprise, I deduced from the sounds it emitted that it was a dog, or rather several dogs, and evidently training for a race, for they ran round and round the tin roof. Now I don’t know how these greyhounds climbed up the wall but I know dog-racing is against the law of California - so I thought you’d like to know. Beneath the arena where these races occur an old and harassed literary man is gradually going mad.
Sincerely,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
TO MRS NEUVILLE
1403 North Laurel AvenueHollywood,California
August 12, 1940
My dear Mrs Neuville:
The woman across the hall takes her dog on that bare and resounding roof every morning. It is impossible to work or sleep while the riot is in progress. Today we had some words about it and she informed me of her intention to continue - though if I took to rapping on her roof she would doubtless consider it an outrage.
I believe that the roof was locked when I took this apartment and I request that it be locked again. As a respecter of the rights of others I know she has no legal or moral right to perpetuate this nuisance.
Sincerely,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
TO BENNETT CERF
1403 North Laurel Avenue
Hollywood, California
December 13, 1940
Dear Bennett Cerf:
I told Budd
Schulberg I was going to write you a word about his novel with permission to quote if you wanted. I read it through in one night. It is a grand book, utterly fearless and with a great deal of beauty side by side with the most bitter satire. Such things are in Hollywood - and Budd reports them with fine detachment. Except for its freshness and the inevitable challenge of a new and strong personality, it doesn’t read like a first novel at all.
It is full of excellent little vignettes - the ‘extra girl’ or whatever she is, and her attitude on love, and the diverse yet identical attitude of the two principal women on Sammy. Especially toward the end it gets the feeling of Hollywood with extraordinary vividness. Altogether I congratulate you on publishing this fine book and I hope it has all the success it deserves.
Sincerely,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
TO RALPH CHURCH
1403 North Laurel AvenueHollywood, California
December 17, 1940
DearMrChurch:
I hope the appearance of this pamphlet about the clubs means what I think it does - that the pictures and membership lists will be eliminated from The Bric-a-Brac proper. I’ve often wondered what the non-club men thought when they brought The Bric-a- Brac home with all that emphasis on Prospect Avenue.
For a dozen years Princeton has sunk steadily behind Yale and Harvard in their attitude toward this monkey business. The Bric-a-Brac could do a magnificent job by leaving out the clubs or else print in addition pictures of all the clubs who eat at tables in Commons.
Sincerely,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Saint Mary’s Church Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland – Fitzgerald’s final resting place
Fitzgerald’s grave
Table of Contents
The Novels
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED
THE GREAT GATSBY
TENDER IS THE NIGHT
THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON
The Short Story Collections
FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS
TALES FROM THE JAZZ AGE
ALL THE SAD YOUNG MEN
TAPS AT REVEILLE
THE PAT HOBBY STORIES
MISCELLANEOUS STORIES
The Short Stories
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF SHORT STORIES
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SHORT STORIES
The Plays and Screenplays
THE GIRL FROM LAZY J
THE CAPTURED SHADOW
COWARD
ASSORTED SPIRITS
SHADOW LAURELS
PORCELAIN AND PINK
MR. ICKY
THE VEGETABLE,
“SEND ME IN, COACH”
THREE COMRADES
INFIDELITY
The Poetry
LIST OF POETRY
The Non-Fiction
LIST OF ESSAYS AND ARTICLES
The Letters
LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS