I'd Die For You

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  “Rockefeller Institute”: The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, now Rockefeller University, describes itself as the “first institution in the United States devoted solely to using biomedical research to understand the underlying causes of disease.” Founded in 1901 by John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1839–1937), America’s first billionaire, thanks to Standard Oil of Ohio, the university continues to benefit from the family’s active involvement, particularly that of Rockefeller’s 101-year-old grandson David.

  “manic-depressive psychosis”: Today, manic depression is termed bipolar disorder. Zelda’s brother Anthony Sayre, who committed suicide by jumping from a hospital window to his death in the summer of 1933, was given a diagnosis of manic depression, according to Fitzgerald. On May 4, 1934, Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda’s doctor at Craig House in Beacon, New York: “I have just fully realized that her brother was not a schizophrenic but a manic depressive, that in fact the hospital in which he died simply characterized his condition as ‘depressed,’ though he had touches of suicidal and homocidal [sic] mania. If at any time it comes naturally to disassociate in my wife’s mind her own tendency to schizophrenia from her brother’s case I think it would be invaluable if you could do so. That is to say, there is a new defeatism in her arising from the fact that she believes the whole case to be familial and the whole family doomed.”

  “faded summer lu-uve”: “Faded Summer Love” was a 1931 fox-trot with lyrics and music by Phil Baxter. It was a hit for Ruth Etting, Bing Crosby, and Rudy Vallée in the 1930s.

  “ergotherapy”: Treating a disease through physical functions and efforts; literally, work-treatment. By the 1920s this part of hospitalization and recovery was also called occupational therapy. Psychiatrist Adolph Meyer (1866–1950) of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, was one of ergotherapy’s chief proponents. Meyer applied what he called “ergasiology” in the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Hopkins, where Zelda Fitzgerald was his patient in 1932 and again, briefly, in early 1934.

  helpless shell: “I am sorry too that there should be nothing to greet you but an empty shell.” Letter from Zelda to Scott, June 1935.

  “hydro-therapatical”: Hydrotherapy, using hot or cold water, was commonly used in mental institutions in the early twentieth century. Cold water was used on patients diagnosed as manic depressive or psychotic, and unable to control motor activities. Warm baths were for patients who were overly excited and agitated, or assaultive. These baths were meant to have water flowing continuously over the patient to prevent the water from being fouled as a person was restrained in them, sometimes for days; and hydrotherapy baths were meant to be strictly monitored to prevent drowning.

  hypnosis: In his keynote Textbook of Insanity, translated into English in 1905, Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) noted the success of the treatment of neuroses by hypnosis, and speculated that it could be applied to “mental treatment in cases of insanity.”

  Elixer Shop: In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, barbers often occupied space in apothecary shops or drugstores, offering haircuts along with the shop’s miracle elixirs (many alcohol-based, and curing little or nothing).

  “WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT”

  Philadelphia turnpike: Begun in 1792 and one of the oldest major east–west routes on the East Coast. The turnpike here is running past the pricey Philadelphia suburbs of the “Main Line” (think of the Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant characters in and the setting of The Philadelphia Story, 1940).

  1927 tire-lock: In 1927, the Ford Model T went out of production and was succeeded by the Model A. Other cars were of course widely available in America then, but a young doctor without much money would have been constrained to the most affordable. Whatever the car, it is seven years old and has had hard wear. The tire-lock held the spare tire in place quite firmly, to prevent easy theft.

  Italian painters . . . corner angels: Used in The Love of The Last Tycoon: “Just a girl, with the skin of one of Raphael’s corner angels and a style that made you look back twice to see if it were something she had on.”

  “Chicago Opera . . . Louise”: Grace Moore (1898–1947) was discovered by George M. Cohan and made her Broadway debut in 1920 in Jerome Kern’s Hitchy-Koo. “The Tennessee Nightingale” was a popular musical star, but was performing onstage at the Metropolitan Opera by the end of the 1920s. She had also made a splash in Hollywood, starring as Jenny Lind in the Irving Thalberg production A Lady’s Morals (1930). Her most celebrated performances were in the title role of the poor seamstress who ends up with her beloved Julien and is crowned Queen of Montmartre, in Gustave Charpentier’s Louise (1900). Moore sang the role in the late 1930s with the Chicago Opera Company, in Chicago and on tour, and Charpentier directed her in a film version. She was an acquaintance of the Fitzgeralds’ on the Riviera in the 1920s.

  “EX-WHITE-SLAVER . . . Who Still is one”: One of many lines in his stories and novels taken from Fitzgerald’s so-called notebooks. From his notes, made on everything from notebook pages to shards to paper doilies that went under drinks as coasters, Fitzgerald took phrases, paragraphs, dialogue, and ideas for later writings. See The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald, entry 419.

  Fountains of Tivoli: The hundreds of Renaissance fountains at the Villa d’Este in Tivoli were in major disrepair for centuries, but had been partially restored and reopened during the 1920s.

  The Robin: Fitzgerald uses euphemism upon euphemism here for the boy’s gesture. “The Robin” is a way of saying “the bird,” by then long in use.

  Diamond Dick: Richard Wade was a flashy, Robin Hood–style Western hero, a character written by many hands, who first appeared in Street and Smith’s New York Weekly in 1878. “Dashing Diamond Dick” starred in a weekly series, and was also a dime-novel hero, until 1911.

  “Charlie Chaplin”: Known for his comedies in the 1920s—when Bill Hardy was young—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) was by the time of this story’s setting regarded as something of a Hollywood has-been. Though still a controlling partner of United Artists, he was viewed as a silent-movie man and had taken an extended break from films beginning in 1931.

  “Garbo”: Greta Gustafsson (1905–1990) was a Swedish-born dramatic actress and already more of an icon than a mere movie star by the middle 1930s. Garbo was not known as a comedienne until Ninotchka (1939), one of her last films.

  “Dietrich”: Like Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) was an exotic international star, a femme fatale and dramatic actress, whose career had stalled in the mid-1930s. Destry Rides Again (1939), the Western-comedy with Fitzgerald’s fellow Princeton graduate and Hollywood friend Jimmy Stewart, made Dietrich a star again.

  “Constance Bennett”: Finally, the boy names a comic actress, but no wonder Dr. Hardy raises an eyebrow. Constance Bennett (1904–1965) shone in the Topper movies in the late 1930s, but her best-known comedy at the time of this story was Bed of Roses (1933), in which she played a thieving prostitute reformed by the love of Joel McCrea.

  “you’re not a heel”: A “heel” refers to an untrustworthy person. Used by mobsters as slang since the 1910s, the word’s use goes back before this in the American South and West, as the shorter version of “shitheel.” John Steinbeck deploys the long version in The Grapes of Wrath (1939) for stuck-up snobs and cheapskates. Throughout, the boy uses gangland slang of the 1920s and 1930s that he has learned from the movies.

  “four girls named Meg . . . rabbit hole”: The boy here conflates Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868/9) and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Meg is the eldest of the four March sisters in Little Women, and the most beautiful. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland begin on the first page of the first chapter, “Down the Rabbit-Hole.” These two classics sum up the first, which is to say, the permitted, of the “two kina kinds” of books the boy has.

  “not gravement but chronicquement”: Not gravely ill, but chronically; facing a long-term illness.

  rumble seat: To sit in the r
umble seat in this car would be rather like sitting in an open car trunk. The seat was effectively outside the car, a space that could be flipped open above the rear axle (hence the rumble) and accommodate luggage, or, for a short ride, a passenger.

  “frails”: Slang for women, notable here as it came into popular parlance in 1931 via Cab Calloway’s smash hit “Minnie the Moocher,” with lyrics by Irving Mills and Clarence Gaskill. Minnie is “the roughest, toughest frail.” Fitzgerald surely had this song on his mind as he was writing, as it also prominently features a “Gong.”

  fire-horse harness: A very heavy, elaborate harness designed for pulling a fire truck full of water. Hardy is clearly doing more of the work in this medical practice.

  “in these times . . . it’s good to have anything to do at all”: The Great Depression is on with a vengeance, and millions remain out of work.

  “GRACIE AT SEA”

  George Burns and Grace Allen: George Burns (1896–1996) and Gracie Allen (1895–1964) were a popular vaudeville, radio, and movie husband-and-wife team. George played straight man to Gracie’s dizzy comedienne.

  Augustus Van Grossie: The America’s Cup races of 1934 were dominated by Harold Vanderbilt. After a shaky start, his yacht Rainbow bested the British challenger Endeavour off Newport, Rhode Island, to defend the Cup.

  elder daughter must be married before the younger: Compare William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew. Baptista, who has two daughters, refuses to consider suitors for the younger, Bianca, before someone marries her big sister, Katharina (the shrew).

  villa at Newport: In the 1880s Newport, Rhode Island, began to develop as a summer resort playground for the very rich. Massive mansions, referred to as “cottages,” were built on the ocean cliffs. The most celebrated of these Gilded Age villas, many open as museums to the public today, are Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s seventy-room The Breakers (1893–1895), the Stanford White–designed Rosecliff (1898–1902), and William Vanderbilt’s Marble House (1888–1892).

  laundry basket . . . little boy: The link to Moses in the bulrushes, Exodus 2:3, is explicitly made by Fitzgerald in his revised version of this story, included at the end of these notes. That Fitzgerald names Gracie’s favorite goldfish Noah is also an amusing biblical touch.

  adopt the child: Burns and Allen had tried for years to have children and could not. In late 1934, they adopted Sandra Jean Burns, born that August, and in September 1935, they adopted a little boy, Ronnie, who was then three months old. Their wish for children may have disposed them toward the script Fitzgerald offered them in the summer of 1934, or instead made them feel it was too close to home. Did Fitzgerald know of their plans to adopt, and work this theme into the script he offered them?

  christen her father’s boat: Launching boats with ceremony is a long-standing tradition. In America, when the U.S.S. Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” was launched in Boston in October 1797, she was christened with a spill of Madeira wine. Champagne became the liquid of choice during the 1890s; here, its use by Gracie marks the sparkling end of Prohibition.

  Fitzgerald’s revision

  Sometime after the summer of 1937, when he was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Fitzgerald returned to this scenario and revised it as follows. He retains much from the original, including the most significant moment for a writer: a typewriter, pillowed upon an air cushion, floating out to sea. However, he makes some creative changes, including the introduction of an En-glish upper-class twit, and shifts the setting to Long Island, New York.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Gracie at Sea

  Far at sea off the coast of Long Island, a small passenger steamer has burned to the water’s edge. The only living thing saved is a baby who drifts free of the wreckage in a soap-box where she was evidently placed as the last thought of her parents.

  Here we begin our story. The rich Mr. Van Grossie is determined to marry off Gracie, the eldest of his three daughters, before allowing the banns to be published for the other two. The two other sisters, a Gail Patrick type and a Mary Carlisle type, are miserable over the situation as each has a man very much in mind—and in hand. However, they have hopes of marrying off Gracie, as the yacht races are at hand and Mr. Van Grossie is entertaining the visiting challenger, Sir Reginald, at their Southampton home.

  Sir Reginald, a stupid haw-haw type, has expressed himself as anxious to marry an American girl under three conditions: She must be very talented, a fine sportswoman, and extremely beautiful. Gracie, the eldest sister, is none of these. But the two sisters believe Sir Reginald is so stupid that perhaps with the help of clever exploitation they can convince him that Gracie is what he’s looking for. They get in touch with a New York publicity firm who send their representative, George (George Burns), to Southampton on the promise of a large fee if Gracie is put over.

  We now pick up Gracie for the first time—in the garden of the great Van Grossie estate—feeding a pool of goldfish. She has just thrown in the last batch of food and is saying goodbye to her favorite goldfish, and as she turns away she hears a sound which is apparently the goldfish thanking her for the food. She turns back.

  “What did you say, Noah?” The goldfish doesn’t answer.

  “Oh, you silly thing,” says Gracie and turns away.

  But she hears the strange cry a second time, turns back again and follows the sound to a little inlet located in a patch of woods. It is a curious sound, a sound that has been a long time in Gracie’s heart, even though she doesn’t recognize it. It’s something new and fascinating and she stops in her tracks, looking up at the sky for a moment, upon the chance that it may be a bird she has never heard before. She knows in her heart it is not a bird and a minute later traces it to its source.

  The source is a dark harbor in the corner of the inlet. The source is the sea. The source seems to be a small, utterly un-seaworthy appearing soap-box, in which is a small, 18-months baby. As the box drifts aground, Gracie snatches him out and cuddles him with awe and enthusiasm. Gracie, whose future is apparently being charted by her two sisters, and the publicity agent they have commandeered, has suddenly found a great interest in life all her own.

  What Gracie is going to do with the baby, remains to be seen. For some reason, however, she decides that for the present she shall keep it hidden, like Pharaoh’s daughter, and immediately improvises a nursery in the little cove.

  We return to the Van Grossie household. George arrives and meets the two sisters. The Gail Patrick type is secretly married to the Butterworth type, and their reason for wanting to get Gracie married is so that they can make their own marriage public. The sweet Mary Carlisle type is engaged to a naval officer, whose ship, floating off shore, is to depart for China at the conclusion of the regatta, so it is to her interest that Gracie get married with no loss of time. George is introduced to the heavy father as a friend of the girls, and immediately starts to work to satisfy Sir Reginald’s first requisite for his bride-to-be. He must make Gracie into a sportswoman overnight.

  The next scene is one of cross purpose, with Gracie obediently trying to do the sort of things expected of her by Sir Reginald, but being constantly absorbed by her secret care of the baby, she must have it constantly by her side. For example, in the golf tournament, which is arranged for the next day, she is accompanied by an extra caddy carrying a particularly large bag in which is the baby—but this fact does not emerge until the end of the episode. Throughout the game, she tries to teach the baby to count her score. In any case, George soon finds out the secret. He does not give Gracie away, because Sir Reginald has announced that he does not like children, but he realizes the case is going to be harder than he had imagined. The golfing episode fails to convince Sir Reginald that Gracie is a great sportswoman, but George manages to cover up the truth, which is that she is no sportswoman at all.

  His second idea is to put Gracie over as a musical genius. The gag would go somewhat as follows. Evening at the Van Grossie house. George and Gracie enter the music room, sh
e leaning on his arm and sweeping majestically across the room to a raised dais. George is trying to dramatize her talent for the harp and has arranged a claque to applaud her mediocre playing, as well as an expert harpist concealed behind curtains who will fill in with a few finished numbers. He makes a formal speech of presentation which Gracie sweetly acknowledges. He announces the first selection and himself accompanies her on the piano. Gracie starts with a glissonde on the harp strings. Suddenly the baby pops out from behind the piano where Gracie has concealed it, crashes through the harp and becoming wedged, causes Gracie to strike numerous extraordinary notes. The musicale comes to a disastrous end, but again George manages to extricate Gracie from the situation.

  George’s main coup is the engineering of a beauty contest which Gracie will unquestionably win. It is a fully publicized contest—society reporters from New York are present to make notes and there are photographers in scores. Gracie, with the help of her sisters, has been carefully instructed in her role. The competitors have been chosen from wall flowers in the vicinity, so that they present a stark picture of feminine unattractiveness—there is something wrong with every one of them and apparently Gracie should win with ease. The judges, moreover, are bribed and to make doubly sure there will be no mistake, they are told to give Number 9 the prize. The baby, however, upsets the apple-cart by changing the Number 9 on Gracie’s back into a 6 by turning it upside down, and turning another girl’s Number 6 into a Number 9, so that the ugliest girl of the lot wins the prize.

  While George is working so desperately, the two sisters have been continuing their love affairs—our interest centering upon the affair of Mary Carlisle with the navy officer. We are rather hostile to the Gail Patrick–Butterworth love affair and it is not surprising that this pair discover the baby and decide that its presence is a menace to the whole plan. They kidnap the child with the idea of placing it in an orphanage so that Gracie can concentrate upon the winning of Sir Reginald. But Gracie and George rescue the child in time.