PAT HOBBY FITZGERALD
TO: Arnold Gingrich
CC, 1 p. Princeton University
January
15
1940
Dear Arnold:-
I don’t get a word from you except in telegrams. Please do take time to answer this if you possibly can. You have one story of mine “Between Planes”1 which doesn’t belong to the Pat Hobby series. It is a story that I should hate to see held up for a long time. If your plans are to publish it only at the end of the Pat Hobby series would you consider trading it back to me for the next Pat Hobby story? I might be able to dispose of it elsewhere. Otherwise I very strongly wish that you could schedule it at least as early as to follow the first half dozen Pat Hobbys.
The weakest of the Hobby stories seem to me to have been “Two Old-Timers” and “Mightier Than The Sword”.2 If you could hold those out of type for a while I might be able either to improve them later or else send others in their place. You remember I did this in the case of a story sent you a few years ago.
Ever your friend,
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
TO: Leland Hayward
CC, 2 pp. Princeton University
January
16
1940
Dear Leland:-
Another week having gone I make the assumption that the Kitty Foyle deal is cold.3 I am rather disappointed as I know there are three or four dull jobs for every attractive one but thanks for trying. I am sufficiently acclimated to Hollywood to realize how uncertain anything is until a contract is signed.
Looking at it from a long view the essential mystery still remains, and you would be giving me the greatest help of all if you can find out why I am in the doghouse. Having dinner the other day at the Brown Derby I ran into Swanson and he began talking about jobs, mentioning that Kenneth McKenna had wanted me at Metro and why hadn’t I answered his wire about it. I told him again that you were my agent now. That was all—nothing unpleasant. But it reminded me that both Knopf and McKenna who were my scenario heads for nine-tenths of the time that I have been employed in pictures seem to want me, yet when it comes to the question of a job there’s always some barrier.
Once Bud Shulberg told me that, while the story of an official blacklist is a legend, there is a kind of cabal that goes on between producers around a backgammon table, and I have an idea that some such sinister finger is upon me. I know also that if a man stays away from pictures deliberately like I did from March to July he is forgotten, or else people think there’s something the matter with him. And I know when that ball starts rolling badly, as it did in the case of Ted Paramore and a few other pinks, it can roll for a long time. But I have the feeling that there is some unfavorable word going around about me. I don’t know whether a man like Edington would refer to Dave Selznick who thinks I should “write originals”, or perhaps to Mannix who would say that I didn’t come through for Hunt Stromberg, or to Bernie Hyman. I only know that I have a strong intuition that all is not well with my reputation and I’d like to know what is being said or not said. Swanson who is unpopular was unable to find out—but you can.
And if you do, wouldn’t it be well when another offer comes up for you to tell the producer directly that certain people don’t like me? That I didn’t get along with some of the big boys at Metro? And refer them to people who do like me like Knopf, Sidney Franklin and I think, Jeff Lazarus. Isn’t that better than having them start out with enthusiasm like Hempstead and then find out that in certain quarters I am considered a lame duck or hard to get along with. Or even that I drink, though there were only three days while I was on salary in pictures when I ever touched a drop. One of those was in New York and two were on Sundays.
In any case, it seems to me to be a necessity to find out what the underground says of me. I don’t think we’ll get anywhere till we do find out, and until you can steer any interested producers away from whoever doesn’t believe in me and toward the few friends that I’ve made. This vague sense of competence unused and abilities unwanted is rather destructive to the morale. It would be much much better for me to give up pictures forever and leave Hollywood. When you’ve read this letter will you give me a ring and tell me what you think?
Ever your friend,
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
STate 4–0578
TO: Edwin Knopf
CC, 2 pp. Princeton University
February
1
1940
Dear Eddie:-
An hour after I called you a letter came asking if McBride could use my sketch, “The Night before Chancellorsville” in an anthology. Armed with this coincidence I’ll enlarge a little on my idea.
You may remember that the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville were fought respectively late in 1826 and early in 1863 and very nearly upon the same Virginia battlefield. I would begin my story with two girls who come South from Concord seeking the body of their brother who has been killed at Fredericksburg. They are sheltered puritanical girls used to the life of a small New England town. On the train going down they run into some ladies of the type pictured in my story. Moreover they encounter a charming Union cavalry captain with whom the gayer of the two Concord girls falls in love.
As in the story the train rides right into Jackson’s surprise attack at Chancellorsville—the Union retreat and the Confederate advance. The girls are separated and their first task is to find each other. One of them meets a confederate private from Alabama who at first she dreads and dislikes. In a Union counter attack the Confederate private is captured. He is identified as a Mosby guerilla by a man who bears him a grudge and hung up by his thumbs. (This actually happened to a cousin of my father’s in the Civil War and I have embodied the incident in another story called “When This Cruel War”1 which Collier’s bought last spring but has not yet published.) The northern girl cuts down the Confederate soldier and helps him to escape. The girl has begun by being impatient of her sister’s gayety. During their time behind the Confederate lines she has conscientiously continued her search for her brother’s grave. Now, after helping her enemy escape, and at the moment of a love scene between them she finds that they are only a few yards from her brother’s grave. Entwined with the story of the two girls I would like to carry along the semi-comic character of one of those tarts, using her somewhat as Dudley Nichols used the tart in Stagecoach.2
There are two Civil Wars and there are two kinds of Civil War novels. So far, pictures have been made only from one of them—the romantic-chivalric-Sir-Walter-Scott story like “Gone With the Wind”, “The Birth of a Nation”, the books of Thomas Nelson Page and Mary Johnson.3 But there is also the realistic type modelled primarily on Stendahl’s great picture of Waterloo in “Le Chartreuse de Parme”, Stephan Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage” and the stories of Ambrose Bierce. This way of looking at war gives great scope for comedy without bringing in Stepin Fetchitt and Hattie McDaniels1 as faithful negro slaves, because it shows how small the individual is in the face of great events, how comparatively little he sees, and how little he can do even to save himself. The Great War has been successfully treated like this—“Journey’s End” and “All Quiet”—the Civil War never.
We can all see ourselves as waving swords or nursing the sick but it gets monotonous. A picture like this would have its great force from seeing ourselves as human beings who go on eating and loving and displaying our small vanities and follies in the midst of any catastrophe.
I would like to write this story, with any encouragement. What do you think?2
Ever your friend,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
TO: Zelda Fitzgerald
CC, 1 p. Princeton University
February
16
1940
Dearest Zelda:-
I understand your attitude complet
ely and sympathize with it to a great extent.3 But the mood which considers any work beneath their talents doesn’t especially appeal to me in other people, though I acknowledge being sometimes guilty of it myself. At the moment I am hoping for a job at Republic Studios, the lowest of the low, which would among other things help to pay your hospital bill. So the fact that anything you do can be applied on your bill instead of on our jaunt to the Isles of Greece doesn’t seem so tough.
However, I am disappointed, with you, that the future Ruskins and Elie Faures and other anatomists of art will have to look at your windows instead of the mail hall. But something tells me that by the time this letter comes you will have changed your point of view. It is those people that have kept your talent alive when you willed it to sink into the dark abyss. Granted it’s a delicate thing—mine is so scarred and buffeted that I am amazed that at times it still runs clear. (God, what a mess of similes) But the awful thing would have been some material catastrophe that would have made it unable to run at all.
Dearest love,
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
TO: Dr. Clarence Nelson1
CC, 1 p. Princeton University
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 coco-cola’s 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
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
TO: Arnold Gingrich
TLS, 1 p. Princeton University
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?1 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,
John Darcy
(F. Scott Fitzgerald)
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
TO: Scottie Fitzgerald
TLS, 1 p.—with holograph addition
Princeton University
February
19
1940
Dearest Scottie:
Delighted that you’re working on a play. In answer to a query in one of your past letters I do like Thomas Mann—in fact I had put his “Death in Venice” on that list I gave you last summer. Have sent your treasurer his check.
I was very interested to hear about Kilduff. Let me know what becomes of Andrew in the club elections. Things are still very vague here.
With dearest love,
F. S. Fitzg——
Have paid Peck + Peck + Peck + Peck + Peck.2
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
TO: Arnold Gingrich
CC, 1 p. Princeton University
February
23
1940
Dear Arnold:-
As you know Edward J. O’Brien wants “Design in Plaster” for his anthology.1 Also Edward Everett Horton2 has approached me with the idea of making the Pat Hobbys into a theatrical vehicle for him. So my stuff is getting a little attention.
I intended to write you before about my nom de plume, John Darcy.3 My suggestion is that the first story be “Between Planes”; the next, the enclosed “Dearly Beloved”4; third “The Woman from 21”5 and if you happen to like this poem, “Beloved Infidel”,6 and will seriously guard Mr. Darcy’s identity, it might interest your readers. It has a touch of Ella Wheeler Wilcox about it and some shadows of Laurence Hope7 and the early Kipling.
With best wishes always,
P.S. There will be another Pat Hobby on soon. I have written half of one but didn’t like it. The enclosed story, “Dearly Beloeved” is so short you can have it for $200., but I wish you would wire the money.
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
TO: Phil Berg–Bert Allenberg Agency8
CC, 1 p. Princeton University
February
23
1940
Messers Berg, Dozier and Allen
Following is the data I promised—from August 1937 when I arrived here on a six months Metro contract.
1. Two weeks on Yank at Oxford with Jack Conway and Michael Balcan. They used two scenes of mine.
2. Six months with Joe Mankiewicz on Three Comrades. Received the first credit. My contract was renewed with rise from $1000. to $1250.
3. Three months with Hunt Stromberg on “Infidelity” when we struck censorship problem and project was abandoned. Up to this point Hunt seemed highly pleased with my work and about then Joe Mankiewicz asked for me on another picture but I chose to stick with Hunt.
4. Five months with Stromberg on The Women, first working with Sidney Franklin and then with Don Stuart. Hunt was difficult to please on this and toward the end Don and I lost interest.
5. Three months with Sidney Franklin on Madame Curie. We were bucking Bernie Hyman’s preconception of the thing as a love story. Hyman glanced at what we had done and shelved the whole project. Franklin had been very interested up to that time.
6. There had been many offers to borrow me by other studios. When Knopf told me that my contract was not to be renewed I went directly to Dave Selznick for G.W.T.W. Things were in a mess there and I went out after two or three weeks.
7. At this point I wanted to quit for a while—health bad and I was depressed about the Metro business. But Swanson argued me into a job with Wanger on Winter Carnival with a rise to $1500. This was a mistake. I blew up after a trip to Dartmouth and got flu and got drunk and walked out.
8. After a month’s rest I took a job with Jeff Lazarus on Air Raid. We progressed for a month and then the picture was put aside for Honeymoon in Bali and I went to Cuba.
9. I found in the East, that I was sicker than I had thought and I came back here in May to lie around in bed till my health picked up. I had the refusal during these months of In Name Only, Rebecca and half a dozen others, but by July, when I wanted to work again, the offers seemed to stop. The first thing that came along was a week’s job with Stahl on some vaguely projected original (at $1500.).
10. In September Eddie Knopf wanted me for Raffles. They were already shooting and I came in on a violent quarrel between Goldwyn and Wood. I refer you to Eddie Knopf on the matter. Somewhere around this time Harry Joe Brown called me over to Twentie
th Century Fox on a Sonja Heine picture but it was apparently only for a day’s pumping. Anyhow save for a nibble on the part of Hempstead for Kitty Foyle, no one has shown interest since then.
Such is the story of two and one half years.
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
TO: Scottie Fitzgerald
CC, 2 pp. Princeton University
February
26
1940
Dearest Scottie:—
I am sorry you’ve got the February blues. Schoolmasters have told me that in small schools they look forward to February as a time of horror. I understand about the prom. Isn’t it a question of your popularity turning on you—most people assume that a popular girl has surely been asked and are afraid to try. By this time you will either have gone or not gone and are no longer staying awake at night over it.
The Alumni Weekly has repercussions of the Princeton editorials. I have been very interested.1
With my own career at low ebb I have been hesitant to write you—because what at least carried financial pressure before hasn’t that, much less any trace of authority. There are a couple of things though that have preyed in my mind come Maundy Thursday to wit: that the reason you missed the Messelaeni2 is because you were a little Walker School about it. “I didn’t know enough about politics” etc—what it really means is you are in the midst of a communist dominated student movement at Vassar which you do nothing about. The movement will go both up and down in the next few years. You can join it or let it simmer but you have never even considered it outside of classroom work—except to say, perhaps, that your father is rather far to the left. It would be foolish ever to make enemies of those girls. Silly and fanatical as they seem now some of them are going to be forces in the future of that section. You must have some politeness toward ideas. You can neither cut through, nor challenge nor beat the fact that there is an organized movement over the world before which you and I as individuals are less than the dust. Some time when you feel very brave and defiant and haven’t been invited to one particular college function read the terrible chapter in Das Kapital on The Working Day, and see if you are ever quite the same.
A Life in Letters Page 51