F. Scott Fitzgerald - A Troubled Life Cut Short | Documentary

foreign as one of the most important voices in American literature F Scott Fitzgerald died in obscurity ignored and largely forgotten the glitzy lifestyle of endless parties cocktails and everyone wanting to be his friend a distant memory in the 1920s he and his high-spirited wife Zelda were the living embodiments of the Jazz Age handsome successful and buzzing with energy but like the Jazz Age their lifestyle was unsustainable welcome to insane history I'm Professor Graham Austin and today I'm exploring the brilliant but all too short life of F Scott Fitzgerald a burdened life fatally intertwined with that of his artistic wife Zelda I'll be finding out how the lives of two of America's brightest young things slowly unraveled with Zelda in and out of Mental Hospitals and Scott drowning his sorrows with alcohol this is a sad story of two lives prematurely extinguished but also a story about love about how their love endured through all the Temptations and troubles that fate put in their paths Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul Minnesota into a comfortably middle-class Catholic Family his father ran a short-lived wicker furniture manufacturing business perhaps not the greatest idea in Minnesota his mother was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who had grown rich as a wholesale grocer he had two sisters who died just before he was born and as a youngster he was prone to colds and chest problems which caused his mother to worry whether she would lose him too Scott later described his mother as half insane with pathological nervous worry his father's business failed when Scott was two and the family moved to Buffalo New York where his father took a job as a grocery salesman at Proctor and Gamble the Fitzgerald household moved frequently and had a spell in Syracuse as well his mother read him novels and his father introduced him to the Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe and Byron and at schooled his teachers noticed his Keen interest in literature he wasn't particularly popular with his peers however as he was snooty and self-important from his mother indulging him and encouraging him to think he was better than others and constantly pushing him to rub shoulders with the wealthier families when his classmates put him in his place as children will do he was upset at being treated so rudely and his early school years were unhappy and lonely when he was nine he developed a fantasy that he was not the son of his parents but a foundling of royal descent who had been placed on the Fitzgerald's doorstep when he was 11 his father lost his job he was 55 and drank too much writing many years later when he was feeling a failure himself his son wrote that morning he had gone out a comparatively young man a man full of strength full of confidence he came home that evening an old man a completely broken man he had lost his essential drive his immaculateness of purpose he was a failure the rest of his days [Music] we had to move back to Saint Paul to live off his mother's family wealth they moved frequently but always lived at the humbler end of Summit Avenue close to the bigger grander houses which were a constant reminder that they were just not quite up there with the best 13 he had his first story published in the school magazine this was lost for many years but it was rediscovered and published in 1960 and it is freely available on the internet whilst not exactly vintage Fitzgerald it's not bad for a 13 year old and there are clear hints at what was to come [Music] but he remained unhappy at school he tried too hard to make friends and was considered a bit of a show-off things improved when he was sent to an expensive Catholic boarding school in New Jersey where he managed to get onto the football team despite his short stature his holidays he wrote and performed in plays for a local theater group it was around this time that he began experimenting with medicinal Sherry working up to Stronger Spirits at Newman it was an experiment that went badly wrong developing into a lifelong drinking habit that dulled his creativity and shortened his life in 1913 he started at Princeton University where he mingled with a wealthy privilege set writing stories and poems for the tiger magazine and plays for the triangle musical theater group despite his Irish Catholic background he was elected to the terribly Posh Cottage eating Club life was great he had arrived then he met and fell head over heels in love with a 16 year old genevara King daughter of an impossibly wealthy Chicago stockbroker and one of the most sought after young ladies in America although she reciprocated his affections he never really stood a chance and when he had the presumption to pair visit to her family's estate her father sent him packing with a resounding Poor Boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls he would never forget the pain of this rejection of his unworthiness modeling Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby and many others on the unattainable genevra distraught he abandoned Princeton and enlisted in the Army hoping to die in the mud of the Western Front he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and started training at Fort Leavenworth while awaiting deployment to Europe but like all good Romantics he did not entirely give up his literary aspirations and decided to write a novel to ensure his posterity before becoming another first world war statistic he dashed off 120 000 words in three months and submitted his manuscript for publication and although it was rejected scrivener's liked his style and encouraged him to revise it and resubmit it [Music] fate then intervened he was sent to Camp Sheridan near Montgomery Alabama where he met Zelda Sayre the 17 year old daughter of a wealthy and established family beautiful spoiled and willful she was an entitled southern belle used to having servants at her beck and call it was far from love at first sight however Fitzgerald continued writing to genevara and exchanging photographs hoping her father might relent and he saw other women as well but over the summer of 1918 as the war in Europe gradually ran out of steam he spent more and more time with Zelda at House Parties going for long walks and talking to her for hours about his Ambitions to be a writer in September three days after she never tied the knot with a rich Banker's son Fitzgerald wrote in his journal that he had fallen in love with Zelda in October he was transferred to Camp Mills Long Island to await a troop ship to France but on the 11th Hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the Armistice came into effect and the war was over [Music] sent back to Montgomery Fitzgerald was able to continue his courting of Zelda her parents can't have been too Keen he was poor a Catholic and a wannabe writer with no real prospects perhaps this was why Zelda liked him she loved to shock to challenge convention and they began a recklessly passionate relationship and became unofficially engaged for all her modernity though Zelda declared he would not marry him until he was financially secure discharged in the Army in early 1919 he moved to New York City where he tried to find work to newspaper he made a modest income of 90 a month writing advertising copy in the day and short stories in the evenings he wrote to Zelda frequently but he knew he would need to earn a lot more to walk her down the aisle he persevered with his stories but with little success getting rejected over a hundred times and selling only one story babes in the wood for which he was paid the princely sum of thirty dollars [Music] after Zelda broke off the engagement and fearing he would never make it as a writer he contemplated jumping off a window ledge and carried around a loaded revolver mulling over dark thoughts he loathed his advertising job and after a Monumental drinking binge decided he could stand it no longer so he quit and returned to his parents in Saint Paul a failure foreign and slide into the abyss of alcoholism like his father he resolved to have one last go at becoming a novelist he stopped drinking locked himself away and worked day and night to revise his earlier manuscript as this side of paradise a strongly autobiographical account of his Princeton years and his romances with the genevra Zelda and others the book was an instant success selling 40 000 copies in its first year and magazines that had previously rejected him were now queuing up to publish its short stories and pay good money this meant the engagement to Zelda was back on as he now had a realistic Prospect of being able to keep her in the style to which she was very much accustomed he was happy but still a little ambivalent confiding to a friend I wouldn't care if she died but I couldn't stand to have anybody else marry her so they were married in a simple ceremony in April 1920 just a few weeks after his book appeared on the shelves they lived in luxury at the Biltmore Hotel spending money like water and becoming famous for their riotest behavior and crazy Antics dancing on Taxi roofs doing handstands in the lobby sliding down the banisters after a few weeks of their hijinks the hotel had had enough and asked them to leave so they moved to the equally Grand Commodore Hotel where the party continued they were the ultimate celebrity couple Living For The Moment without a care in the world everyone wanted to meet them everyone wanted to join in the fun but even at the Pinnacle of his success Fitzgerald recalled riding a taxi one afternoon passing between tall buildings and looking up at the sky I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again his misgivings and awareness of the shallowness of their lives is very much reflected in his characters and stories of the Jazz Age an era that was pushing back the boundaries of what was permissible but not really offering anything substantial in its place although prohibition began in 1920 alcohol was never hard to find and the Fitzgerald drank far more than was good for them leading to Blazing gin fueled rails and accusations of infidelity on both sides both confided to friends that their marriage couldn't last much longer at the pace they were living fortunately they were asked to leave their hotel again and they moved out of New York and rented a house 50 miles away in Westport Connecticut where Scott worked on his second novel Zelda had always had servants and had no idea how to run a house simply throwing dirty laundry into a closet until Scott employed some Maids in early 1921 Zelda found out she was expecting she wanted to have the baby on Southern soil but Scott insisted on their child a daughter they called Scotty being born in his hometown of Saint Paul Minnesota was not happy but agreed the beautiful and Damned was serialized and then published in March 1922 selling well and confirming Fitzgerald's position amongst the finest writers of his generation the novel portrays a young artist and his flapper wife who become dissipated and morally bankrupt through endless partying in New York City it is very much based on his and Zelda's own shallow existence at this time and even Incorporated some of Zelda's diary entries and letters a newspaper invited Zelda to write a satirical review which led to magazines commissioning articles and stories from her and Scholars continued to debate how much of their respective outputs were their own work or a collective Enterprise with some suggesting that it was Zelda who was the dominant creative Force everything was going well and the family moved to Great Neck on Long Island later immortalized his West Egg in The Great Gatsby where they continued partying like there was no tomorrow Scott wanted easier access to Broadway for his next venture a play based on one of his short stories [Music] the money was pouring in which is just as well as the preview in Atlantic City was a complete disaster half the audience walked out and Fitzgerald fled to the nearest bar without even waiting for it to finish it folded after its first and only performance and Fitzgerald was forced into writing short stories to pay off the debt a task he regarded as worthless in literary terms but the music played on and he and Zelda continued the round of endless Long Island socializing getting drunk and arguing Fitzgerald's feelings about the people they were mixing with and their Lifestyles were deeply ambivalent he enjoyed the parties and liked to be mingling with the upper echelons but he found their privileged lifestyle morally disquieting aware that his welcome amongst them would last only as long as his Fame and it was always tinged with more than a hint of resentment with the hope of escaping this self-destructive excess the Fitzgerald's moved to Europe to allow Scott to work on his next novel The Great Gatsby for Source material he drew on his Long Island experiences especially his neighbor max gerlick a millionaire Bootlegger who flaunted his wealth and through the lavish parties as well as his obsession with his First Love Jennifer King the whole idea of Gatsby is the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money this theme comes up again and again because I lived it [Music] after a brief stay enjoying Cafe life in Paris the couple relocated to Auntie on the French Riviera Scott worked on his novel but Zelda got bored and became infatuated with a French Aviator Edward joseon spending afternoons at the beach and evenings at the casino with him after a few weeks of this Zelda asked for a divorce but Scott locked her in their Villa and stormed off to challenge joseon to a jewel for breaking up his family but Jose had already left for pastures knew and he later dismissed the entire Affair as a fabrication and claimed no impropriety had occurred [Music] it was real enough however for Zelda to take an overdose of sleeping pills when the dust settled they headed to Rome where they drank and squabbled while he made revisions to the Gatsby manuscript and submitted the final version the novel received generally favorable reviews from contemporary literary sources but it didn't sell nearly as well as his previous books after wintering in Italy the Fitzgerald's returned to France where over the next year they alternated between Paris and the French Riviera during this period he became friends with Ernest Hemingway Gertrude Stein James Joyce Ezra pound and other members of the American expatriate community Hemingway got on well with Fitzgerald but wasn't so keen on Zelda describing her as insane he felt Zelda took him away from writing novels to churn out short stories to fund their lifestyle he also said that Zelda was constantly taunting Scott about his stature his courage and the size of his manhood Jealousy on both sides bitter quarrels and boozy parties were their daily round and Zelda would sometimes perform a striptease finishing by flicking her lacy underwear at guests as a souvenir and her theatricality was not just confined to the privacy of their Villa while having dinner at the column Door restaurant in Saint Paul De Vance the famous if now somewhat aging dancer is Adora Duncan summoned Scott over drunk and demonstrative he fell to his knees in praise and Isadora ran her Bejeweled hands through his hair calling him my Centurion Zelda was incandescent and to the horror of the entire restaurant she threw herself Down The Long staircase on the edge of the Terrace cutting and bruising herself but not saying a word [Music] something had to change and when a United artist's producer invited Fitzgerald to Hollywood to write a flapper comedy they abandoned Europe after two unpleasant years to try their luck in Tinseltown but it wasn't really any different in Hollywood the parties continued just with a new crowd of people and their heavy drinking and childish pranks didn't win them many friends Zelda complained of being bored while Scott found companionship elsewhere at once worry he met 17 year old Lois Moran a pretty young Starlet who spent hours listening to him pontificating about literature and philosophy and they began an affair he wrote her into a short story and reworked one of the central characters in his next novel to reflect their relationship understandably jealous Zelda's reaction was to set fire to her expensive clothes in a bathtub as a protest and after two months the unhappy couple left Hollywood they needed a break from Big City living so rented a Grand Mansion near Wilmington Delaware for the next two years to allow Scott to use the peace and quiet to work on tender as the night but progress was slow as he continued drinking way more than was good for him in her boredom Zelda revived her childhood passion for ballet and began seriously practicing with Catherine Littlefield director of the Philadelphia Opera ballet in Spring 1929 they returned to Europe where Zelda's Behavior grew worryingly erratic in her drive to become a prima Ballerina she practiced day and night her friends noticed she was becoming emotionally frayed bursting into laughter or tears for no reason and her thought processes changed she was increasingly tangential and illogical at the movies she would misinterpret what was happening on screen and she started seeing things actress Tallulah Bankhead described how she went off her head poor darling going into a flower shop and thinking all the flowers had faces in October 1929 while returning to Paris with a nine-year-old daughter driving along the mountainous roads of the grand Cornish Zelda grabbed the steering wheel and tried to drive over a cliff shouting God's will Scott Screech to a halt inches from the drop but Zelda couldn't explain why she did it Scott thought she might benefit from a holiday in Algeria but she hated every minute of it back in Paris she was still obsessed with ballet starving herself to stay thin practicing furiously under the tuition of yegorova of the belairus and becoming acquainted with a more martial lesbian Community much to Scott's disquiet everything came to a head in April 1930 when she collapsed exhausted and was admitted to the malmaison sanatorium a few miles outside Paris she was in a highly agitated State pacing the room flirting with the doctors and declaring her love for jagerova leading French psychiatrist Professor Audrey glaude diagnosed anxiety and advised complete rest but she discharged herself after nine days back in their apartment Zelda tried resuming her punishing dance routine but she was not well her eczema flared up and she was experiencing Vivid and distressing hallucinations and she took an overdose of barbiturates after this Scott drove her to the Valmont sanatorium near Montreal in Switzerland her sexually disinhibited Behavior continued and the nurses reported having to fend off her over-affectionate behavior her records revealed that she had developed a curious horror of people and was hearing voices and imagining people criticizing her the Valmont Clinic which was primarily for physical health problems couldn't manage her behavior and she was transferred to a mental hospital in the shores of Lake Geneva in June but this was no dark Gothic Madhouse prongdown was a beautiful place with well-maintained Gardens Tennis Courts and spacious Villas where the patients were housed only a small number of private patients were admitted and the doctors and their families lived on site enabling them to take part in the life of the community only recently opened it had quickly gained the reputation of being the best Psychiatric Hospital in Europe and was eye-wateringly expensive her doctor Oscar Farrell diagnosed her with schizophrenia but he also asked Oregon bloiler head of the Psychiatry department at the University of Zurich to assess her Loyola invented the term schizophrenia in 1911 so there could not have been anyone better qualified to make a diagnosis and he agreed that Zelda had schizophrenia [Music] I won't go into too much detail into Zelda's illness as I'm planning to do a video focusing on her life story she is a fascinating and creative person in her own right and so much more than just F Scott's wife Scott and Scotty remained in Switzerland for more than a year although they were not allowed to visit they wrote often and Scott did his best to understand his wife's illness by reading works about Psychiatry and psychoanalysis the letters they exchanged were poignant and devoted Zelda suggesting he should free himself by divorcing her but Scott declared I love you with all my heart because you are my own girl and that is all I know [Music] when she was discharged from prongan the fitzgeralds immediately returned to America on the equitania they settled in Montgomery to be close to Zelda's parents and they swam played tennis in golf Scott wrote and Zelda painted under the watchful gaze of his parents-in-law Scott had to moderate his drinking which made him touchy and he was not unhappy to pick up a Hollywood script writing job which would keep him away for two months it was a real opportunity as the film eventually became very successful and made a star of Jean Harlow but it did not go well for Fitzgerald who was fired and the job given to someone who understood the Hollywood formula when he returned to Montgomery he was in Low Spirits and Zelda was trying to come to terms with the recent death of her father hoping for some fresh air and relaxation they traveled to Florida but they began to argue when Zelda announced she was planning to write a novel about her experiences in Europe covering exactly the same ground as Scott's own work in progress the arguing led to her drinking which led to her hearing voices and becoming terrified she was being attacked Dr Pharrell suggested returning to pronga in Switzerland but instead she was admitted to the Phipps Psychiatric clinic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore under the care of Dr Adolf Meyer one of the leading figures of American psychiatry Maya was an expert in schizophrenia but considered Zelda's case unusual a fully adur or joint psychosis she believed the fitzgeralds had a complex interaction of unconscious denial cross-identification and escapism into alcohol and that they were interdependent enmeshed and entwined he believed that although Scott was able to function in the world without Zelda she was unable to function without him and he suggested that Scott would need to accept treatment for his drink problem if Zelda was ever to improve Scott refused convinced that alcohol sharpened his writer's powers of observation [Music] fortunately Zelda's mental state improved anyway and after two months she was allowed to accompany Scott for lunch with friend and critic h l Menken who noted in his diary that she was still plainly off her base and manifested signs of mental distress throughout the luncheon as part of her Rehabilitation she was encouraged to write for two hours a day and she used her time well finishing the manuscript of her novel which she sent off to Scott's editor after a further two months she was discharged improved but still far from well men can describes Zelda's mental illness as immediately evident to any onlooker and regretted that Scott was unable to write novels as he had to churn Out magazine stories to pay for her treatment [Music] but he was working on his next novel Tender Is the Night and as always it draws heavily on his painful Life Experiences it is the story of a promising young psychiatrist who marries one of his patients who slowly exhausts his vitality their marriage disintegrates as he descends into irritable alcoholism progress remains slow partly because of having to do hack work but mainly because he was drunk most of the time this enabled Zelda to get in first with her novel save me the waltz Scott wasn't happy at what he regarded as her plagiarism but he realized it was an opportunity to pay off some of the debt he owed his publisher it was long thought that he had made major revisions to make it ready for press but analysis of the original manuscript and edits showed that the book was all Zelda's own work it appeared in October 1932 in a short print run on cheap paper it was poorly reviewed with the New York Times verdicts being particularly harsh it is not only that her Publishers have not seen fit to curb an almost ludicrous lushness of writing but they have not given the book The Elementary Services of illiterate proofreader it did not sell and made Zelda and measly 120 dollars she was desperate to earn a living from her own creative Endeavors to be financially independent of Scott she had failed a ballet and now at writing too and her spirits were crushed she tried writing a play which was immediately rejected by Broadway producers so she turned next to painting when Zelda became aware that Scott had based the destructive Nicole diver character in his novel on her even including some of her letters to him in the text she was hurt and her illness relapsed and in February 1934 she was readmitted to the Phipps clinic in Baltimore she did not improve so the following month she was transferred to the upmarket and very expensive Craig house Clinic 60 miles north of New York but despite the fine surroundings her condition deteriorated she became catatonic and was diagnosed with dementia precox the old name for schizophrenia that emphasizes its relentlessly Progressive nature and the belief that it would inevitably lead to permanent insanity and dementia Scots Tender Is the Night came out in April 1934 and unlike his earlier work it received mixed reviews and decidedly lukewarm response from the buying public one of the problems is that it harks back to the Carefree excess of the Roaring Twenties an era famously described by Scott as the most expensive orgy in history but all that frothy Hedonism had evaporated with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. and as the misery of the Great Depression bit ever deeper no one wanted to be reminded of it as one critic put it Americans could no longer afford to drink champagne whenever they pleased or go to Paris on vacation thank you Fitzgerald who considered it to be his Masterwork was disillusioned by its reception saying I left my capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda's Sanitarium in May Zelda was transferred to the Shepherd Pratt Hospital in Towson on the outskirts of Baltimore during her two years there Scott rented a large house close by and tried to work but the years of heavy drinking were beginning to affect his health his friend H.L Menken wrote in his diary that he is boozing in a wild Manner and has become a nuisance and he finally split with him after Fitzgerald dropped his trousers at a dinner party alcohol was damaging his mental sharpness and ability to hold the complex structures of a novel in his mind he must have sensed this himself as he signed himself into Johns Hopkins on eight separate occasions to dry out in his attempts to beat his addiction but each time he would fall off the wagon often going on week-long Benders and waking up in different towns with no idea how he got there or what he'd been up to he had multiple run-ins with the law for drunkenness and brawling he was a mess in April 1936 Zelda was transferred to Highland Hospital in Asheville North Carolina and to the care of Dr Robert Carroll who wrote several books illustrating his humanistic approach to psychiatry Scott was massively in debt upwards of a million dollars in today's terms the previous hospital was suing him for unpaid fees but Falling sales had resulted in a drying up of royalties just eighty dollars in 1936 nowhere near enough to fund Zelda's medical care or pay off the debts run up in their more extravagant days he had been relying on loans from his agent Harold Ober and publisher but when they said enough he just drank he was living in a faded hotel with two simple rooms one for sleeping and one for writing in an attempt to wean himself off gin he tried the beer cure [Music] I'm not quite sure who came up with the idea of drinking 50 bottles of beer a day as a cure for alcoholism but surprise surprise it didn't work [Music] he was also taking barbiturates and chloral hydrate to help him sleep which would have had a further dulling effect on his brain he was at an all-time low he continued churning out stories for magazines but few were interested now and those that were weren't paying what they used to he wrote three confessional essays including the crack-up which were published in Esquire he regarded them as honest explorations of his spiritual and emotional emptiness but others viewed them as a degrading exercise in self-pity to make matters worse a journalist tricked him into opening up about his Troubles by telling him a made-up sob story resulting in a nationally syndicated article that revealed more than was wise in an era when alcoholism was still seen largely as a moral weakness and doing further damage to his reputation and flagging career he was so distressed and worried that his daughter might see it he made an attempt on his life in 1937 he was offered an opportunity to dig himself out of his dire Financial Straits with a screenwriter job at MGM even though he would have to move to Los Angeles and be away from Zelda he was in no position to refuse the huge salary for the next two years he rented cheap rooms around Los Angeles and in an effort to abstain from alcohol he drank large amounts of Coca-Cola and ate sweets despite earning the most he ever had it all went on paying off debts Zelda's medical bills and his daughter's school fees lonely and with Zelda still in hospital in Asheville Fitzgerald began a relationship with the english-born former show girl turned gossip columnist Sheila Graham but then completely out of the blue he received a telegram from his first love genevra King asking to meet when the recently separated heiress was visiting Hollywood he didn't know what to do [Music] she was the first girl I ever loved and I have Faithfully avoided seeing her up to this moment to keep the illusion perfect it was like a scene from The Great Gatsby should he meet her or not he even asked his teenage daughter Scotty for advice in the end they did meet they had lunch and Geneva was as attractive as ever and they spoke frequently over the next few days but unable to cope with all the reawakened yearnings and what-ifs he started drinking heavily again after a bar room brawl he ended up in hospital and a disappointed genevra returned East to Chicago and married another Rich Boy his screenwriting wasn't going well either and in 1939 MGM terminated his contract he made minor revisions on Madame Curie and a dialogue polish in Gone With The Wind that was never used his soul screenplay credit was his work on three comrades director Billy Wilder described Fitzgerald's foray into Hollywood as like that of a great sculptor who is hired to do a plumbing job by this time though it's not clear if he would have been able to do either job although he managed periods of sobriety during relapses he would get through 40 beers a day this could lead him to being abusive and physically aggressive towards Graham who was incredibly patient and tolerant with him as he went through bouts of depression and made attempts on his life as Graham had read none of his books he attempted to buy her a set of his novels but after visiting several bookstores he realized he was no longer on the shelves a has been he did not give up however he continued working on his fifth novel The Last Tycoon very much based on his Hollywood experiences and personal knowledge of film executive Irving thalberg he saw Zelda for the last time on a trip to Cuba but his drinking led him getting beaten up by spectators at a cockfight when he tried to intervene to stop the cruelty on his return to the U.S he had another detox at the Doctor's Hospital in Manhattan he managed to maintain sobriety for most of his final year and Graham described this period as one of their happiest times together he was still married to Zelda and wrote to her frequently and often spoke of his sense of guilt over her mental illness and hospitalizations but he was ill years of drinking had given him cardiomyopathy damage to the heart muscle he also had angina from coronary artery disease fainting spells and he was short of breath and occasionally coughed up blood in 1940 he managed to keep writing working on his novel and a series of gently self-mocking short stories about a hapless Hollywood hack called Pat Hobby [Music] after having a severe angina attack he was advised by his doctor to avoid strenuous exertion as his apartment was up two flights of stairs and Sheila Graham lived on the ground floor he moved in with her a few days before Christmas Fitzgerald and Graham attended a movie premiere but as they were leaving the Pantages Theater a sober Fitzgerald experienced a dizzy spell and had difficulty walking to his vehicle watched by onlookers he remarked in a strange voice to Graham I suppose people will think I'm drunk the following day at home he got up Suddenly from his armchair grabbed the mantelpiece and collapsed on the floor without uttering a sound he was dead of a heart attack at the age of 44. only 30 people attended his funeral his wife was not among them although she was not in hospital at the time Zelda outlived him by seven years but died in a fire at Highland Hospital in 1948. [Music] now regarded as one of the finest writers in world literature it is hard to believe that at the time of his death Fitzgerald was convinced his life was a failure and his work forgotten but within a year his friend Edmund Wilson completed his last unfinished novel drawing on his extensive notes and this sparked new interest in him and a critical reevaluation of his work according to one academic if you want to know what America's like you read The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald is the quintessential American writer foreign but how would F Scott Fitzgerald's life have panned out if he hadn't drunk himself into an early grave well it would have been longer for a start but would he have been the writer he was he could he have been as creative this is an age-old question and it has often been claimed that alcohol enhances the creative brain and that without it writers just can't understand and portray the entirety of The Human Condition I think this is a myth there are plenty of great writers who did not drink themselves to death it's a cognitive distortion often claimed by those who are addicted to justify and excuse their addiction and to allow them to carry on drinking would his life have been different if he'd not met Zelda of course but whether it would have been better longer or as artistically productive is impossible to say did she take him away from his writing well yes perhaps at times but she also gave him most of the material for his novels and without her early encouragement he may never have finished his first book and ended up as a Salesman like his father some have even suggested that it was Zelda who was the true creative and Scots simply stole her ideas and squashed her Talent with his oppressive and over controlling manner but I think they were a dyad intertwined emotionally in creativity flawed and infuriating and wasteful of their talents but indivisible and still in love to the end although Zelda's illness kept them apart and Scott found companionship elsewhere he never stopped writing to her he never stopped thinking about her he never stopped hoping that she might be cured he never stopped loving her if you're not convinced have a read of this book Scott and Zelda's love letters his first written in August 1918 and signed off yours desirously and his last two days before he died it's a lovely book that brings you closer to them as a real living breathing couple than any biography can [Music] thank you the lives weren't easy the love wasn't simple but capturing this in his writing is what gives Fitzgerald his enduring appeal [Music] watching as always I'd love to hear any comments that you may have and I'll try to answer as many as I can remember to subscribe if you haven't already done so and click for notifications and then hopefully I'll see you again soon bye for now

Channel: Professor Graeme Yorston

Views: 405,681

Keywords: F Scott Fitzgerald, American literature, Jazz Age, Zelda Fitzgerald, 1920s history, American authors, Fitzgerald biography, Jazz Age lifestyle, literary documentaries, Zelda and Scott, Zelda mental health, Fitzgerald and alcoholism, 1920s America, Great Gatsby author, American history, 20th Century literature, Fitzgerald's life, Zelda's life, Zelda Fitzgerald biography, Fitzgerald's love story, scott and zelda fitzgerald, zelda and scott relationship, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Id: AOfGtqWguk4

Length: 41min 30sec (2490 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023