60 Fun Facts About F. Scott Fitzgerald

In which city was F. Scott Fitzgerald born in 1896?

His childhood home on Summit Terrace became a National Historic Landmark in 1971, though he thought it an architectural monstrosity.

Fitzgerald was named after which distant cousin?

Another cousin, Mary Surratt, was hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Lincoln, a connection he preferred not to mention.

Which company employed Fitzgerald's father as a salesman in Buffalo before firing him in 1908?

His father's wicker-furniture business had already failed; his mother's inheritance kept the family middle-class.

Which university did Fitzgerald attend, and drop out of in 1917?

He was one of the few Catholics in the student body and wrote for the Triangle Club, the Tiger and the Nassau Lit.

Which future literary critic befriended Fitzgerald at university and edited his unfinished last novel?

Wilson published The Last Tycoon within a year of Fitzgerald's death and bundled it with Gatsby, restarting critical interest.

Which Chicago debutante, Fitzgerald's first love, was the model for Daisy Buchanan?

He met her when he was 18 and she 16; her father purportedly told him 'poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls'.

Under whose command was Lieutenant Fitzgerald stationed at Fort Leavenworth, an officer he reportedly disliked?

He hoped to die in combat in Europe and dashed off a 120,000-word novel in three months before he could be shipped out.

What was the title of the manuscript Fitzgerald wrote in the army, later reworked into his first novel?

Scribner's rejected it, but reader Max Perkins praised the writing and urged him to revise and resubmit.

Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre while stationed at Camp Sheridan near which city?

She was a 17-year-old belle whose grandfather had been a Confederate senator.

For which Iowa business did Fitzgerald write the 1919 slogan 'We keep you clean in Muscatine'?

It earned him a small raise at the Barron Collier agency, but he still lived in near-poverty in a single Manhattan room.

How much did Fitzgerald get for 'Babes in the Woods', his only story sold during his 1919 New York struggle?

He had been rejected more than 120 times and took to carrying a revolver while contemplating suicide.

From the window ledge of which New York institution did Fitzgerald publicly threaten to jump in 1919?

Two women had rejected him in succession, his stories would not sell and he could not afford new clothes.

What manual job did Fitzgerald take in St Paul while revising his first novel in 1919?

When Scribner's acceptance telegram arrived he ran down the street flagging down cars to tell strangers.

What was Fitzgerald's debut novel, published in March 1920?

It sold about 40,000 copies in its first year and Mencken called it the best American novel of the year.

Where did Scott and Zelda marry on 3 April 1920?

He later claimed neither still loved the other at the time; the early years were 'more akin to a friendship'.

Which New York hotel asked the newlywed Fitzgeralds to leave after Scott's lobby handstands and Zelda's banister slides?

They moved two blocks to the Commodore and spent half an hour spinning in its revolving door.

Which writer first encountered the Fitzgeralds riding on the roof of a taxi?

'They did both look as though they had just stepped out of the sun', she recalled.

Which term for the 1920s did Fitzgerald popularise, using it in the title of a 1922 story collection?

He described the era as racing along 'served by great filling stations full of money'.

What was the name of the Fitzgeralds' only child, born in October 1921?

Zelda's rambling as she came round from the anaesthetic gave Daisy Buchanan her 'beautiful little fool' line.

What is Fitzgerald's second novel, about a young artist and his wife going bankrupt while partying?

He based Anthony Patch on himself and Gloria Patch on what he called Zelda's 'chill-mindedness and selfishness'.

Fitzgerald's 1923 play The Vegetable flopped so badly that what happened during the second act?

Fitzgerald asked the star whether he intended to finish the show, then fled to the nearest bar.

Which bootlegging Long Island neighbour who said 'old sport' helped inspire Jay Gatsby?

Gerlach fostered myths about himself, including a claimed relation to the German Kaiser.

What was the working title of The Great Gatsby, an allusion to the Satyricon?

Trimalchio is the vulgar, feast-throwing freedman of Petronius's Latin novel.

On the Riviera in 1924, Zelda became infatuated with Édouard Jozan, who was what?

After six weeks she asked for a divorce; Jozan later insisted the whole affair was invented by two people 'in need of drama'.

Roughly how many copies did The Great Gatsby sell in its first year, a commercial disappointment?

By 1960 it was selling 100,000 copies a year, helped by 123,000 free Armed Services Editions handed to troops in the war.

How much did Fitzgerald turn down for the serial rights to The Great Gatsby, so as not to delay the book?

Willa Cather, T. S. Eliot and Edith Wharton praised the novel on its release in April 1925.

What is the famous dust-jacket painting on The Great Gatsby called?

Francis Cugat's floating eyes over a carnival skyline are among the most recognised covers in American publishing.

In which month and year did Fitzgerald first meet Ernest Hemingway in Paris?

Hemingway later recalled that Fitzgerald became his most loyal friend in that early period.

In which memoir did Hemingway describe Zelda Fitzgerald as 'insane'?

He also called Fitzgerald's rewriting of stories for magazine sales 'whoring', a sore point between them.

At a 1927 Hollywood party, the Fitzgeralds boiled guests' watches in what?

They had asked for the expensive timepieces, retreated to the kitchen and cooked them.

Which 17-year-old starlet, met in 1927, was Fitzgerald's model for Rosemary Hoyt in Tender Is the Night?

A jealous Zelda burned her own clothes in a bathtub and called the girl 'a breakfast food'.

What was the name of the mansion near Wilmington, Delaware that the Fitzgeralds rented from 1927 to 1929?

His college roommate John Biggs Jr. helped him find the house.

With what was Zelda diagnosed in June 1930 after trying to drive the family off a cliff?

She was treated in Switzerland and later at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins.

What was the title of Zelda Fitzgerald's 1932 novel, which Scott felt stole his plot?

He called her a plagiarist and a third-rate writer, then persuaded Perkins to publish it anyway; it flopped.

What is the name of the young American who marries a mentally ill woman in Tender Is the Night?

The novel sold about 12,000 copies in its first three months and confused critics with its structure.

To what sum had Fitzgerald's annual book royalties fallen by 1936?

He lived on loans from his agent Harold Ober and editor Perkins until Ober stopped advancing money.

How many times was Fitzgerald hospitalised for alcoholism between 1933 and 1937?

A 1936 New York Post article exposing his drinking and decline drove him to attempt suicide.

What is Fitzgerald's essay-length account of his own decline, written in cheap hotels near Asheville, titled?

Zelda was confined at Asheville's Highland Hospital, where she would die in a fire in 1948.

On a 1939 Cuba trip, Fitzgerald was beaten by spectators after trying to intervene at what?

He returned to New York and was hospitalised again, his health wrecked by drink.

Which studio's 1937 screenwriting contract gave Fitzgerald his highest-ever annual income?

He earned $29,757.87 that year and spent most of it on Zelda's treatment and Scottie's school fees.

What did Fitzgerald drink in large quantities in Hollywood in an effort to stay off alcohol?

He also ate a great many sweets, and rented a cheap room at the Garden of Allah on Sunset Boulevard.

Which 1938 film gave Fitzgerald his only screenplay credit?

He also did uncredited polishes on Gone with the Wind, a book he dismissed as an 'old wives' tale'.

Which gossip columnist was Fitzgerald's companion for the last years of his life?

She had read none of his books, and when he tried to buy her a set he found the shops had stopped stocking them.

Fitzgerald mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through which recurring character in 17 Esquire stories?

Billy Wilder compared Fitzgerald in Hollywood to 'a great sculptor who is hired to do a plumbing job'.

On which real film executive did Fitzgerald base the hero of his unfinished novel The Last Tycoon?

A 1993 edition edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli restored the title The Love of the Last Tycoon.

How old was Fitzgerald when he died of a heart attack in December 1940?

He had been sober for over a year and collapsed while annotating an alumni magazine.

What Gatsby funeral line did a writer friend murmur at Fitzgerald's sparsely attended visitation?

Only thirty people attended the funeral in Bethesda; his editor Max Perkins and agent Harold Ober were among them.

Why was Fitzgerald initially refused burial in the family plot at Saint Mary's Cemetery?

His daughter Scottie won a reversal in 1975 and both parents were moved to Saint Mary's.

How many short stories did Fitzgerald publish in his lifetime?

At his peak the Saturday Evening Post paid him $4,000 a story, and in 1931 he earned nearly $40,000 from seventeen of them.

Which two novels did Fitzgerald use as templates for his debut novel?

H. G. Wells's and Compton Mackenzie's books gave him the plot; the fragments-and-poetry style was his own.

Which Willa Cather novel about a wealthy socialite particularly influenced The Great Gatsby?

Fitzgerald consciously emulated Cather and Joseph Conrad in trying to make Gatsby a work of sustained imagination.

Which St Paul venue, home of A Prairie Home Companion, was renamed for Fitzgerald in 1994?

Hofstra University had founded the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society four years earlier.

In which two films do Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald appear as characters?

Beloved Infidel and Last Call instead dramatise his relationships with his last companion and his secretary Frances Kroll Ring.

Roughly how many copies did This Side of Paradise sell in its first year?

Mencken called it the best American novel of the year, and the Saturday Evening Post soon ran 'Bernice Bobs Her Hair' under Fitzgerald's name.

In December 1924, in which city did a drunken brawl end with Fitzgerald punching a police officer?

He was severely beaten by other officers, then spent the winter there revising Gatsby before submitting the final manuscript in February 1925.

Which producer invited Fitzgerald to Hollywood in 1926 to write a flapper comedy for United Artists?

The Fitzgeralds lasted just two months in a studio bungalow before decamping to Delaware in March 1927.

How did Zelda react in Hollywood to Scott's infatuation with the teenage starlet Lois Moran?

She dismissed Moran as 'a breakfast food that many men identified with whatever they missed from life'.

What was the name of the estate in Towson, Maryland, where Fitzgerald worked on Tender Is the Night?

While he wrote there, Zelda sent Scribner's her own version of the same events, Save Me the Waltz.

Which classic 1939 film received an unused dialogue polish from Fitzgerald, who called the book an 'old wives' tale'?

He also did uncredited work on A Yank at Oxford and Madame Curie; only Three Comrades earned him a screen credit.

Which director likened Fitzgerald's Hollywood career to 'a great sculptor hired to do a plumbing job'?

The failure drove him back to drink, reportedly nearly 40 beers a day in 1939, and to the self-mocking Pat Hobby stories.