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F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Frances Scott Key Fitzgerald, named after the song writer, was born on September 4, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Fitzgerald was the namesake and a distant cousin to the writer of the National Anthem. His parents were Edward, a salesman, and Mary or Mollie, the daughter of a wholesale grocer. Edward Fitzgerald failed as a manufacturer of furniture, and became a salesman for Proctor and Gamble. He was let go by the company in 1908 when Francis was 12, and the family lived comfortably on Mollie's inheritance.

  Fitzgerald's writing ability was apperant early on. His first attempt was a detective story in the newspaper for his first school, St. John's Academy, when he was thirteen years old. From 1911-1913 he attended the Newman School, a catholic prep school. He attended Princeton up to 1917, though he spent more time on his literary apprenticeship then on his studies. Afraid he would not graduate, Fitzgerald joined the military and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the second infantry of the army in 1918. He was convinced he would die at war, and wrote a novel entitled The Romantic Egoist and sent it off to Scribner's Sons. They said it needed revision, but praised its originality.

  Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama. There he met Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Judge. He promptly fell in love with her, and passionatly revised his novel, only to have it be rejected by Scribners a second time. He and Zelda were engaged, and after his discharge in 1919 he left for New York to seek his fortune. Zelda however was unwilling to wait for him, and broke the engagment. Fitzergald quit his advertising job and went to work on his novel, renaming it This Side of Paradise. It was accepted by editor Maxwell Perkins of Scribners in September.

  In the winter of 1919 Fitzgerald began to write stories for mass-circulation magazines. The Saturday Evening Post was his best market, running serials of his stories. Though the short stories provided Fitzgerald with an ample salary, his real love lay in novels. This Side of Paradise, published March 26, 1920, made him instantly famous. One week later he married Zelda Sayre. They began a life of extravagence, and their image always preceeded Fitzgeralds work during his life time. The Fitzgeralds first took an apartment in New York where F. Scott wrote The Beautiful and the Damned. They moved to Paris during Zelda's pregnancy, and back to St. Paul for the birth of their only child, Francis, in 1921. Fitzgerald wrote a play in 1922, The Vegetable, but it failed to get on broadway. He wrote his way out of debt with more short stories. This was also the time when he and Zelda began with their marital problems. Though Fitzgerald never wrote drunk, he was considered an alcoholic. His wife also had a drinking problem, and they often fought.

  The couple traveled to France in 1924, looking for a quiet place for F. Scott to work. He wrote The Great Gatsby during this time, but the relationship between him and Zelda was damaged by her affair with a naval officer. They spent the winter in Rome where Fitzgerald revised The Great Gatsby, and were on their way to Paris when it was published in April. The book - considered by many to be the perfect and classic American novel - was critically acclaimed, though sales were low. In Paris Fitzgerald met and was befriended by Ernest Hemingway, who's work he greatly respected. Fitzgerald kept writing, though his ideas and titles frequently changed. Meanwhile Zelda's behavior became increasingly erratic.

  The Fitzgeralds returned to America to escape the distractions in France. F. Scott tried his hand unsuccefully at screenwriting, and rented a mansion in Delaware in order to work on his novel in the spring of 1927. They remained there for two years, and Zelda started ballet dancing, convinced she would become a professional dancer. The family returned to France in 1929, but Zelda's intense ballet work damaged her physically. In 1930 she suffered her first breakdown. She was treated at Prangins clinic in Switzerland until September 1931, while her husband lived in Swiss Hotels and wrote short stories to pay for Zelda's treatments. After she was released, Fitzgerald moved them all back to America and a rented house in Montgomery. He tried his hand again at screen writing, and was once more unsuccesful. In 1932 Zelda suffered a relapse and was admitted to John Hopkins. She spent the rest of her life in and out of sanitariums. While a patient at John Hopkins, Zelda write an autobiographical novel entitled Save Me the Waltz. Fitzgerald was angry, and accused her of using material from his novel-in-progress. Fitzgerald rented a house in Baltimore and finished his novel, calling it Tender is the Night. Published in 1934, it was a commercial failure.

  The next two years were very hard for Fitzgerald. He sent his daughter to boarding school, and became her father by mail. He was sick, broke, and drunk, and couldn't function enough to write even short stories. He lived in hotels in North Carolina, near Highland Hospital where Zelda was cared for. Fitzgerald left for Hollywood alone in the summer of 1937, with a contract from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He wrote Three Comrades in 1938, and his contract was renewed for year at a raised salary. Fitzgerald used the money to pay off his debts, and on disastrous trips back east to visit Zelda. In California Fitzgerald met and fell in love with Sheilah Graham, a movie comlumnist. After his MGM contract ended, Fitzgerald spent his time writing freelance scripts and short stories for Esquire Magazine. He started writing his last novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon in 1939, and had written more then half of his draft when he died of a heart attack in Graham's apartment on December 21, 1940. Zelda died in a fire at Highland in 1948.

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