Nothing more at present. I suppose Scottie will be with you. Let me know if she arrives on that 11.30 train Thursday morning. Best to Anne + all of you. Wire me if stories sell.
Ever Yours
Scott
TO: Thomas Wolfe
Mid-July 1937
ALS, 1 p. Harvard University
Pure Impulse
U.S.A.
1937
Dear Tom: I think I could make out a good case for your nessessity to cultivate an alter ego, a more conscious artist in you. Hasn’t it occurred to you that such qualities as pleasantness or grief, exuberance or cyniscism can become a plague in others? That often people who live at a high pitch often don’t get their way emotionally at the important moment because it doesn’t stand out in relief?
Now the more that the stronger man’s inner tendencies are defined, the more he can be sure they will show, the more nessessity to rarify them, to use them sparingly. The novel of selected incidents has this to be said that the great writer like Flaubert has consciously left out the stuff that Bill or Joe, (in his case Zola) will come along and say presently. He will say only the things that he alone see. So Mme Bovary becomes eternal while Zola already rocks with age. Repression itself has a value, as with a poet who struggles for a nessessary ryme achieves accidently a new word association that would not have come by any mental or even flow-of-consciousness process. The Nightengale is full of that.
To a talent like mine of narrow scope there is not that problem. I must put everything in to have enough + even then I often havn’t got enough.
That in brief is my case against you, if it can be called that when I admire you so much and think your talent is unmatchable in this or any other country
Ever your Friend
Scott Fitzg
TO: Ernest Hemingway
July 13, 1937
Wire.1John F. Kennedy Library
Los Angeles
THE PICTURE WAS BEYOND PRAISE AND SO WAS YOUR ATTITUDE
scott.
TO: Edwin Knopf2
CC, 2 pp. Princeton University
Hollywood, California
July 19, 1937
Dear Eddie:
A sight of me is Zelda’s (my wife’s) life line, as the doctor told me before I left. And I’m afraid the little flying trips would just be for emergencies.
I hate to ask for time off. I’ve always enjoyed being a hard worker, and you’ll find that when I don’t work through a Saturday afternoon, it’s because there’s not a thing to do. So just in case you blew off your head, (as David Belasco so tactfully put it), I’d like to put the six weeks a year, one week every two months, into the contract.
It will include everything such as the work left over from outside, as indicated below.
First here is a memo of things that might come up later.
Stories sold but not yet published
Unsold but in the Possession of my Agent in June, 1937
Financing Finnegan
Dentist’s Appointment5
Offside Play6
(All the above belongs to the past)
In Possession
One play (small part of last act to do.)7
To write sometime during the next two years
2 Sat. Eve Post Stories
(I’ve never missed a year in the Post in seventeen years)8
1 Colliers Story (advance paid)9
3 Short Esquire pieces (advance paid)
So the total time I should ask for over two years would be twelve weeks to write these things while near my wife. It could be allotted as two weeks apiece for the stories, a week apiece for the articles, three weeks for finishing Act III of the play. Though if convenient, I shall in practice, use the weeks singly.1
TO: Anne Ober
July 26, 1937
ALS, 2 pp. Bruccoli
Hollywood, California
Dear Anne:
This letter is long overdue. Suffice to summarize: I have seen Hollywood2—talked with Taylor, dined with March, danced with Ginger Rogers (this will burn Scottie up but its true) been in Rosalind Russel’s dressing room, wise-cracked with Montgomery, drunk (gingerale) with Zukor and Lasky, lunched alone with Maureen OSullivan, watched Crawford act and lost my heart to a beautiful half caste Chinese girl whos name I’ve forgotten. So far I’ve bought my own breakfasts.
And this is to say Im through. From now on I go nowhere and see no one because the work is hard as hell, at least for me and I’ve lost ten pounds. So farewell Miriam Hopkins who leans so close when she talks, so long Claudette Clobert as yet unencountered, mysterious Garbo, glamourous Dietrich, exotic Shirley Temple—you will never know me. Except Miriam who promised to call up but hasn’t. There is nothing left, girls but to believe in reincarnation and carry on.
Tell my daughter she is a vile daughter of Babylon who does not write letters but can charge $25. worth of wash dresses at Franklin Simons but nowhere else. Or if she wants Harold will advance her $25 from a check sent today to go to Saks.
Im glad she is playing tennis. I do want to see the wretched little harpy and don’t let her make a mess of it. Helen1 will be in Nyack after the 29th—and is leaving the 2nd. No Long Island date should prevent Scottie from getting in touch with her and coming with her. All Metro could find for chaperones were the Ritz Brothers2 and I can’t see it. They might vanish her as a practical joke.
Yours with Gratitude + Devotion
Scott
TO: Maxwell Perkins
TLS, 1 p.—with holograph postscript
Princeton University.
MGM stationery. Culver City, California
Sept. 3, 1937.
Dear Max:
Thanks for your long, full letter. I will guard the secrets as my life.
I was thoroughly amused by your descriptions, but what transpires is that Ernest did exactly the same asinine thing that I knew he had it in him to do when he was out here.3 The fact that he lost his temper only for a minute does not minimize the fact that he picked the exact wrong minute to do it. His discretion must have been at low ebb or he would not have again trusted the reporters at the boat.
He is living at the present in a world so entirely his own that it is impossible to help him, even if I felt close to him at the moment, which I don’t. I like him so much, though, that I wince when anything happens to him, and I feel rather personally ashamed that it has been possible for imbeciles to dig at him and hurt him. After all, you would think that a man who has arrived at the position of being practically his country’s most imminent writer, could be spared that yelping.
All goes well—no writing at all except on pictures.
Ever your friend,
Scott
The Schulberg book1 is in all the windows here.
TO: Anne Ober
TLS, 1 p. Lilly Library
MGM stationery. Culver City, California
September 18, 1937.
Dear Ann:
I am enclosing a letter from the Walker School. I hope the note about tutoring reached you.
I don’t know whether Scottie is with you or with her Aunt Rosalyn. She hasn’t bothered to write me. She really behaved herself beautifully out here and made a great hit with everyone, though I am quite sure she will be the school nuisance this term with her tales of the great and the near-great.
My holiday wasn’t much of a holiday as you can imagine, but I think Zelda enjoyed it. Things had gone beautifully out here up to then, but this week it has been very hard to pick up the thread of work, and I see next week a horror trying to make up for five wasted days.
I have your letter and notice that you mentioned something else beside the smoking (I wrote you about that). I still don’t believe that she should go out unchaperoned with a boy at night and have never allowed it. As for going alone somewhere after the theatre—my God! is that anywhere allowed at fifteen, or am I Rip Van Winkle? I once let her go with two boys to a dinner dance place here on condition that they would be home before mid
night, but I think she understands that was an exception.
She was much too precocious in the things she did at fourteen, but after this year at Walkers, she seems much more appropriately her age, capable of amusing herself usefully and rationally without constant stimulation. I really think she’s going to be all right now, though there was a time about a year and a half ago when I thought she was going to become an awful empty head. Thank God for boarding schools.
Something else I wanted to say has eluded me. I am your forever grateful and devoted henchman
Scott F.
TO: Scottie Fitzgerald
TLS, 3 pp. Princeton University
MGM stationery. Culver City, California
October 8, 1937
Darling Pie:
I’m awfully sorry about that telegram. I got a letter from Bill Warren,1 saying that it was all around Baltimore that I was making twenty-five hundred a week out here, and it disturbed and upset me. I suppose it was one of Rita Swann’s2 ideas. I don’t know why I suspected you—I should have known you would be more discrete and would at least name some believable figure. You see what a reputation you’ve made with your romantic tales!
As to the missing three days, I really don’t blame you for that either. The trouble was that Harold Ober didn’t know where you were either. If you had wired him instead of Aunt Rosalind, it would have been all right. However it gave me only one bad hour, as I really don’t fret about you as much as I used to. I did worry about your smoking this Summer, but you gave me your word that you wouldn’t smoke at Peaches’ so that was all right; and I don’t care much who you go out with so long as you are in at a decent hour and don’t get the practice on your mind. From next Summer on, you can find you’ll have more privileges, but I don’t want them to become habits that will turn and devour you. You have got to devote the best and freshest part of your energies to things that will give you a happy and profitable life. There is no other time but now.
No special news—things have been quiet. Had the questionable honor meeting Walter Winchell, a shifty-eyed fellow surrounded by huge bodyguards. Norma Shearer invited me to dinner three times but I couldn’t go, unfortunately as I like her. Maybe she will ask me again. Also have seen something of Buff Cobb, Irving Cobb’s daughter, who is an old friend; and Shielah who, by the way, has broken her engagement to the Marquess of Donnegal. (The poor man was about to get on a boat, but it was a sort of foolish marriage in many ways.) Also have been to much tennis and saw Helen Wills come back in company with Von Cramm to defeat Budge and his partner. Took Beatrice Lily,3 Charley MacArthur and Shielah to the Tennis Club the other night, and Errol Flynn joined us—he seemed very nice though rather silly and fatuous. Don’t see why Peaches is so fascinated. Frank Morgan4 came over and talked to me, telling me that we had a fight in the cloak room at Gloria Swanson’s seventeen years ago, but I had no recollection of the incident except that I had a scuffle with somebody. But in those days there so many scraps that this one doesn’t stand out in my memory.
I hope you thought over my analysis as to how to deal with the neatness habit, and if for one week you put each thing away individually from the moment of touching it to the moment of its final disposal—instead of putting away three things at a time—I think that you would lick it in a month and life would be easier for you in one more way. Please tell me about this when you write.
Looking over your letters and answering them in turn—it was nice of Peaches to give a party for you, and I’m glad Stanley is divine looking; sorry Andrew is repulsive. I’m glad that you went out with that great heartthrob, Bob-theBaker. Was Bob Haas nice? Your next letter comes from Exeter. Sorry you can’t go to Annapolis—you’ll be invited there again. Here I have a postcard and by God, I’m awfully sore at you about that tutoring. I don’t understand how on earth the letter could have been mislaid. I posted it from the airport in Spartansburg that night. So you are still dwelling on the Fisher’s Island party in retrospect!
Another letter tells of visiting Mary Earl on Long Island. It sounds fine, but you are right that romantic things really happen in roachy kitchens and back yards. Moonlight is vastly over-estimated. It was all right what you borrowed from Harold. He will put it on my account. So Merdith called from Baltimore! Aren’t you afraid of stirring up those old embers? Your disloyalty to Princeton breaks my heart. I sent Andrew football tickets. Your dress sounds fine, Scottie my bonnie lass.
Lastly, the letter with the Yale postmark—I bet you bought that stationery. It reminds me of something that happened yesterday. On such paper but with the Princeton seal, I used to write endless letters throughout Sophomore and Junior years to Genevra King of Chicago and Westover, who later figured in THIS SIDE OF PARADISE. Then I didn’t see her for twenty-one years, though I telephoned her in 1933 to entertain your mother at the World’s Fair, which she did. Yesterday I get a wire that she is in Santa Barbara and will I come down there immediately. She was the first girl I ever loved and I have faithfully avoided seeing her up to this moment to keep that illusion perfect, because she ended up by throwing me over with the most supreme boredom and indifference. I don’t know whether I should go or not. It would be very, very strange. These great beauties are often something else at thirty-eight, but Genevra had a great deal beside beauty.
I was hoping that they’d get up a “Higher French” course for you. Was nothing done about that? Miss Walker mentioned it in her letter. Your learning German seems to me rather pointless but don’t construe this into any tendency to loaf on it. Knowing just a little bit would be a foundation—especially if we go abroad for a few weeks next Summer.
I sent the thirteen dollars to Rosalind.
What do you want for your birthday? You might make a suggestion.
I think of you a lot. I was very proud of you all summer and I do think that we had a good time together. Your life seemed gaited with much more moderation and I’m not sorry that you had rather a taste of misfortune during my long sickness, but now we can do more things together—when we can’t find anybody better. There—that will take you down! I do adore you and will see you Christmas.
Your loving
Daddy
TO: Scottie Fitzgerald
RTL, 2 pp. Princeton University
MGM stationery. Culver City, California
Nov. 4, 1937.
Dearest Pie:
I admit I’m a terrible correspondent but I hope it isn’t the pot calling the kettle black—i.e. do you write your mother regularly once a week? As I assured you before, it is of the greatest importance, even if Bob-the-Butcher or Bill-the-Baker doesn’t get the weekly hook in his gills.
News about the picture: The cast is tentatively settled. Joan Crawford had her teeth in the leed for a while but was convinced that it was a man’s picture; and Loretta Young1 not being available, the decision rests at present on Margaret Sullivan. Certainly she will be much better than Joan Crawford in the role. Tracy and Taylor will be reinforced by Franchot Tone at present writing,2 and the cameras will presumably roll sometime in December. An old friend, Ted Paramore,3 has joined me on the picture in fixing up much of the movie construction, at which I am still a semi-amateur, though I won’t be that much longer.
Plans about Christmas depend on whether I will be held here for changes through the shooting. I don’t think that’s probable, and if it weren’t my first picture that I’m anxious to get as perfect as can be, I wouldn’t let it be possible, because I can always have a vacation on three weeks notice—but I want to mention it as a very faint chance. However, let us suppose I come East, as I will nine chances out of ten—I will expect to spend the time with you and your mother, perhaps a little in Baltimore, some in Ashville. Maybe I can take your mother to Montgomery, though that is very faint indeed and should not be mentioned to her. Also I want to spend a couple of days in New York and I have no doubt that you will want to be with me then.
Have you any plans of what you’d like to do? Would you like another party in Ba
ltimore? I mean just an afternoon affair like the last? It might become a sort of an institution, a yearly round up of your Baltimore friends. Write me immediately what you thought you wanted to do—of course you also will go to see your mother sometime during the holidays.
By ill chance the Harvard game tickets for Andrew went astray and were sent me here. I’m sorry. He must have been disappointed—save that he missed the worst drubbing Princeton has had in many years.
My social life is in definite slow motion. I refused a good many parties and am now in the comfortable position of not being invited much any more. I had dinner at Gladys Swarthout’s last week with John McCormick and some of the musical crowd.1 I have taken in some football games with Sheilah Graham, and met the love of my youth, Genevra King (Mitchell), after an interval of twenty-one years. She is still a charming woman and I’m sorry I didn’t see more of her.
How much do the ads cost for your year book? Please let me know.
I have a small apartment now at the Garden of Allah, but have done nothing about the house situation, as there seems no chance of your mother coming out here at the present.
I am anxiously awaiting your first report and will be more inclined to go Christmas if it give rest of the col [letter torn]
Congratulations on Cheerleader ect. Can you turn a cartwheel?
TO: Harold Ober
Received December 14, 1937
ALS, 2 pp. Lilly Library
Garden of Allah stationery.
Hollywood, California
Dear Harold:
Im glad too that they renewed the contract. Well, I’ve worked hard as hell—in a world where it seems to me the majority are loafers + incompetents.
If they’ll let me work alone all the time, which I think they will when they have a little more confidence I think I can turn out four pictures a year by myself with months off included. Then I’ll ask for some big money.
It is nervous work but I like it, save for the damn waiting + the time-killing conferences.
A Life in Letters Page 39