57 Fun Facts About F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

Saint Paul, Minnesota is where he rewrote his first novel in 1919, in his parents' Summit Avenue row house, which became a National Historic Landmark in 1971.

Fitzgerald was named after which distant cousin?

Francis Scott Key, who wrote 'The Star-Spangled Banner', was his second cousin three times removed; after his father lost his sales job, the family lived on his mother's inheritance.

Which Brad Pitt film was adapted from a Fitzgerald story?

Benjamin Button began as a Fitzgerald story in which the hero, aged 18 but looking about 50, is thrown out of Yale as a lunatic.

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

Princeton is where he spent most of his first year writing a Triangle Club operetta and flunked several subjects; on academic probation, he left to join the Army.

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

Edmund Wilson's edition led reviewers to see what might have been: some critics judged the fragment would have been Fitzgerald's best novel.

Which wealthy Lake Forest socialite, whom Fitzgerald courted as a student, was a model for Daisy Buchanan?

Ginevra King's family discouraged the match, and one of them (accounts differ as to whom) remarked that poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls.

Under whose command was Lieutenant Fitzgerald stationed at Fort Leavenworth during World War I?

Captain Dwight D. Eisenhower commanded him there; convinced he would die in the war, Fitzgerald spent three months of weekends writing a 120,000-word novel.

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

The Romantic Egotist was rejected by Scribner's, but the rejection letter praised its originality and asked him to resubmit it once revised.

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

Montgomery, Alabama was Zelda's hometown; she at first turned down his proposal because of his poor financial prospects.

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

A laundry got the slogan, which earned him a raise at the Barron Collier agency, though his heart was not in writing cards for streetcars.

How much was Fitzgerald paid for the only story he sold during his 1919 spell in New York?

$30 was all it earned him, and he soon quit New York in disgust and went home to rewrite his novel.

In The Great Gatsby, in which Long Island village does Gatsby have his mansion?

West Egg is where Nick, renting next door, first sees Gatsby alone on his lawn, stretching his arms toward a green light across the bay.

What manual job did Fitzgerald take in 1919, shortly before Scribner's accepted his first novel?

Repairing train car roofs was the job he quit the day Scribner's acceptance arrived, running along the streets stopping cars to tell friends.

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

This Side of Paradise made the 24-year-old famous almost overnight, but the playboy image that came with it hindered his standing as a serious writer.

Where did Scott and Zelda marry on 3 April 1920?

St Patrick's Cathedral, New York hosted the simple ceremony; Scribner's acceptance of his first novel had finally persuaded Zelda to marry him.

In front of which New York hotel did Scott and Zelda famously jump into a fountain?

The Plaza's fountain was only one of their stunts; Zelda also once spent half an hour spinning in the Commodore Hotel's revolving door.

Who played Jay Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann's 2013 film of The Great Gatsby?

Leonardo DiCaprio starred for Luhrmann, and Jay-Z executive-produced the film's soundtrack.

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?

Frances Scott 'Scottie' Fitzgerald's birth drew Zelda's hope that the baby would be 'a beautiful little fool', a line Scott is said to have given Daisy Buchanan.

Which Fitzgerald book chronicles a hard-partying New York couple's slide into dissipation?

The Beautiful and Damned lifted some of Zelda's own words, and in a newspaper review she joked that he 'seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home'.

At the disastrous 1923 tryout of Fitzgerald's play The Vegetable, what happened during the second act?

Audience members walked out, and the flop left him so deep in debt that he spent months writing magazine stories to pay it off.

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

Max Gerlach was only part of the mix: Fitzgerald said Gatsby 'started as one man I knew and then changed into myself'.

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?

A French naval aviator romanced her while Scott wrote Gatsby; whether the affair went further is unknown, but she asked Scott for a divorce.

Why did Fitzgerald turn down $10,000 to serialize Gatsby?

Serializing it would delay the book, and though Eliot, Wharton and Cather praised the novel, sales fell far short of his hopes.

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

Celestial Eyes was painted before the manuscript was finished, and Fitzgerald told his editor to hold on to the jacket because he had 'written it into the book'.

Which Hemingway short story slighted Fitzgerald by name?

The Snows of Kilimanjaro used his name slightingly, though years earlier Fitzgerald had championed the young Hemingway.

In which memoir did Hemingway portray Zelda Fitzgerald as an unstable woman who derailed Scott's career?

A Moveable Feast appeared after Hemingway's death, and six years later Nancy Milford's bestselling biography recast Zelda as a symbol of thwarted artistry.

Which 1922 Fitzgerald short story did he call a first draft of 'the Gatsby idea'?

Winter Dreams follows a caddie who grows rich yet cannot hold on to Judy Jones, the careless rich girl he adores, the same poor-boy theme as Gatsby.

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?

Ellerslie is where Zelda took up ballet, hoping to become a professional dancer, a pursuit that led to her first breakdown in 1930.

After her 1930 breakdown, what illness did doctors diagnose in Zelda Fitzgerald?

Schizophrenia was the diagnosis, but mental-health experts later disputed it, and some psychiatrists since have suggested bipolar disorder.

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

Save Me the Waltz earned Zelda only about $120 in royalties, and she turned next to writing a play.

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

Dick Diver is a promising young psychiatrist who marries his patient Nicole and later descends into alcoholism.

Who became surrogate parents to Scottie Fitzgerald once she went to boarding school?

Agent Harold Ober and his wife Anne took on the role, while Scott tried to guide her schooling through a stream of letters.

What caused Zelda Fitzgerald's death?

A hospital fire killed her in 1948 at Asheville's Highland Hospital, where she had voluntarily returned as her depression worsened.

Which three-part 1936 Esquire essay was Fitzgerald's public confession?

'The Crack-Up' stirred controversy with its frank confessions of squandered talent.

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

A cockfight crowd beat him, and after the trip's drinking binge he needed medical treatment on his return.

Which studio hired Fitzgerald in 1937 as a screenwriter at $1,000 a week?

MGM renewed his contract once, then dropped him, and he spent his last years as a script writer for hire.

Which 1938 film gave Fitzgerald his only screenplay credit?

Three Comrades still went through producer Joseph Mankiewicz's rewrites, which Fitzgerald protested in a bitter letter.

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

Sheilah Graham went with him from store to store in 1937 looking for his novels, and none had a copy in stock.

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

Pat Hobby was a successful writer in the silent era, but by 1940 he is an alcoholic hack scraping by on script polish jobs.

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.

What killed F. Scott Fitzgerald in December 1940, when he was 44?

A heart attack was his second in about three weeks, and it left The Last Tycoon still unfinished.

Which Gatsby funeral line is a writer friend said to have murmured at Fitzgerald's visitation?

'The poor son of a bitch' is what Owl-Eyes says at Gatsby's own funeral, which almost none of the hundreds who came to his parties attended.

Which magazine paid Fitzgerald $4,000 a story?

Saturday Evening Post fees helped pay for Zelda's psychiatric treatment, though writing those stories kept interrupting work on Tender Is the Night.

Which 1931 Fitzgerald story follows a recovering alcoholic seeking custody of his daughter in Paris?

Babylon Revisited is often called his most anthologized story, and it became the 1954 film The Last Time I Saw Paris.

Which Willa Cather novel did Fitzgerald write to her about, fearing a Gatsby passage might look plagiarized?

A Lost Lady has a passage on Marian Forrester's charm, so he mailed Cather Gatsby manuscript pages to prove his similar lines on Daisy came first.

Which theater, home of A Prairie Home Companion, was renamed for Fitzgerald in 1994?

The World Theater was bought by Minnesota Public Radio in 1980 and restored in 1986 as the show's live venue.

In which Woody Allen comedy does a writer slip back to the 1920s and meet Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald?

Midnight in Paris turns on a reversal: Gil's 1920s love longs for an earlier era herself, and he sees that chasing nostalgia is fruitless.

Shane Leslie recommended Fitzgerald to Scribner's as an American version of which poet?

Rupert Brooke comparisons aside, Scribner's rejected the novel more than once before accepting his 1919 rewrite.

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

Rome was where the couple spent that winter while he revised The Great Gatsby, which came out the following April.

Which writer joined Fitzgerald on a disastrous 1939 Dartmouth trip to work on Winter Carnival?

Budd Schulberg later retold the drunken trip, which cost Fitzgerald the job, in his 1950 novel The Disenchanted.

When Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre, what office did her father, Anthony Sayre, hold in his home state?

A state supreme court justice's daughter, Zelda would not live on Fitzgerald's small salary and broke off their engagement in 1919.

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

La Paix is where Zelda joined him in 1932 after her discharge from the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

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'?

Billy Wilder saw a talent misspent, yet Fitzgerald's studio years gave him material for the Hollywood novel he never finished.