February 11, 2013 • 54 mins
A week after releasing his debut novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald married Southern Belle Zelda Sayre. But Fitzgerald's drinking and Zelda's mental state led to fights, debt and writers' block. Join Sarah and Holly as they trace the lives of F. Scott and Zelda.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, Welcome to the podcast. I'm
Sarah Dowdy and welcome Holly. Thanks. So a few of
you probably remember Holly from her most recent visit to
(00:23):
the podcast where we talked about underwear that was super fun,
all sorts of things, Queen Victoria, your favorite course, it's um.
But Holly also hosts Pop Stuff, so a lot of
y'all probably know her from there already, and she's going
to be stepping up to fill Doblina's spot as podcast
(00:44):
co host. Yes, indeed, so that's very exciting. Um. Also,
I feel like I should get it out of the way,
so I'm not stringing you guys along for a few episodes,
but I'm going to be leading the podcast too in
a few more episodes Sadness and Art, and Holly is
going to be joined by our manager, the site director
(01:06):
of How Stuff Works, and her Pop Stuff co host,
Tracy Wilson. Yes, so that's lots of transitions, big excitement,
but you guys can get ready for it. And Holly
and I are going to have some fun and I'm
excited I get time with Sarah before she vanishes, vanished,
vanishes into the editing world of stuff work. So today's topic,
(01:30):
I wanted to pick something that was fun, something that's
been requested by listeners a lot, but also something that
people have been talking about in the entertainment world a
lot lately thanks to a new movie coming out. Yes,
bos Lurman's Gatsby is going to be out in May
of this year, so just a few months out, and
(01:53):
it will, as many of his movies are, probably be
a little controversial because he takes a very unique approach
to telling historical story. But it looks beautiful. It does
look beautiful. I saw the preview for it. It starts
with a group of people riding in an open car.
It looks all very roaring twenties, very exciting, gorgeous. It
(02:13):
looks super gorgeous. I'm really excited because I am a
big Boss Lerman fan. And there are lots of people
in the cast that I really like, Like I really
like Joel Edgerton cast as Tom Um, and I think
Carrie Mulligan is going to be a really interesting Daisy Um.
We have Leo, Yeah, who I've told you very recently.
I feel bad he's been much maligned as an actor
through the years. I think because Titanic kind of he
(02:34):
got a syrup, a kind of coated in some glory syrup.
People don't always love that, and it caused negative connotation.
But I really think he is quite a good actor
and I'm I'm interested to see where his career goes
in the next I think this might be a good
role for him too. But this movie has been in
the works for so long now at James because it
(02:54):
was originally supposed to come out Holiday and I got
bumped in speculation for Ages, I mean a long time
back who would be cast in it? So I think
partly because of that and partly just because of a
general fascination with the FitzGeralds. Like I mentioned, listeners have
been requesting f Scott his wife Zelda for Ages now
(03:15):
because they have really fascinating, really troubling lives in addition
to uh impressive bio work. Yeah, and the twenties are
just they're kind of in the spotlight right now. I
think the artists helped do that. And then leading into
gats Be, Zelda n f Scott are on everybody's mind
and there's such a stylish, romantic but kind of, you know,
(03:37):
tragic story, we kind of can't help but get attached
to it. We're going to get into some of the
tragic aspects of this, but we're gonna start at the
beginning like normal. F Scott Fitzgerald was born September in St. Paul, Minnesota,
and his father was apparently a failed Wicker furniture salesman,
(03:58):
which I think is a least strange way to define somebody.
That's about the only definition I saw of him too. Yeah,
there's not a lot of And then he went on
to that's pretty much what he got saddled with as
a yeah, and and of course to f Scott Fitzgerald
was named for his distant relative, Francis Scott Key, who
(04:20):
we've done. I think Katie and I did a podcast
on Francis Scott Key years and years ago. He grew
up comfortable. He grew up in a middle class Catholic family,
although he did point out later I think because his
parents pursued such a good education for him, he always
felt like he was the least well off in a
group of rich kids, and I think that plays out
(04:42):
in his work. It does. She's always extremely class conscious.
He had two older sisters who died before he was born.
One little sister, Annabelle, who also didn't see a whole
lot on except for these terrible letters he wrote to
her when she was a teenage girl, offering good brotherly advice,
(05:02):
except they were just like the last things you would
want to hear, probably if you were a teenage girl, Like,
you know, you have a little hair on your face
problem and maybe you should see a doctor about that,
or you know, you should be more socially outgoing. And
a really good opening line is to compliment someone on, oh,
your eyelashes are so incredibly long. So these were the
(05:22):
sorts of things he was writing to little Annabelle. Um.
So we know what she was when she was getting
fourteen or so. So again just the worst age possible.
Um something though, that I think makes her worth mentioning
in our story. So he ended up Um attending New
Jersey's Newman School, and he wrote detective stories there and
(05:45):
then even though he wasn't the greatest student, he got
into Princeton he did. He charmed his way in, and
UM was obviously not going there for Uh to pursue
a great academic career, since that was not his interest.
He wanted to play football, but he did not have
the build for that, and so he decided he would
keep writing. In this case, right musical comedies, right operettas
(06:08):
not the most natural transition. I should all didn't work out,
I'm going to go into a life of theater in
Just a year later, his sophomore year, he played a
chorus girl in one of his own plays. And I
knew I didn't even have to send this picture to you, Holly,
because you would have seen it already. It's pretty well
known Scott Fitzgerald in costume as lady. It's quite pretty.
(06:31):
He is quite pretty, at least at that time. I mean,
if you didn't know it was a man in drag,
and you just saw it as a historical photograph, I
think you'd be like, well, that's a handsome woman. Yeah,
like you maybe wouldn't even question whether it was a
man or a woman in the outfit. I certainly wouldn't
recognize it as him either, unless I saw a direct
side to side comparison. Um. But you know, dressing up
(06:55):
as a chorus girl writing his own plays didn't stop
him from being a really popular student too. He joined
an eating club he took up with an Illinois debutante
who may have been the inspiration at least in part
for Daisy Great Gatsby. And unfortunately he started drinking in college. Yeah,
(07:16):
but who's became a little bit of a problem, a
lifetime problem, and uh certainly didn't help with his grades
at Princeton either. Not really the fast track for achievement
to develop a drinking problem in college now, But I
guess fortunately for of Scott, he had kind of lost
(07:36):
interest in college. By that point, he had gotten to
the age where he could join the army. Of course,
world War One was on, so he signed up, hoping
to see action, hoping to be deployed to Europe for
World War One. But the war ended before he could
be deployed, and so uh, instead he ended up spending
(07:57):
a lot of his free time sitting around and writing.
There is a certain comedy the fact that his fallback saying,
which is like, well, that's not going to work out.
I'll just write that's not working out either, I'm going
to write. And that's really what he's lauded for historically. Yeah,
and and retrospectively, you know, with these detective stories and
at his at his high school and the comedies in college.
(08:18):
It seems like he was working on that all along,
but um, I guess he wasn't really aware of that
trajectory first. So he put together his first novel, which
he called The Romantic Egotist, in only three months. And
he wrote that just on the weekend too, So consecutive
weekends for three months wrote a novel. We're going to
come back to schedule. It is intense, But he was
(08:43):
not so focused on the book as it may seem,
because he was spending a lot of his free time courting.
He met a Montgomery, Alabama debutante while he was serving
in the army, which is probably the most memorable aspect
of his service, right is it. While at Camp Sheridan,
(09:04):
I met a young lady named Zelda. Zelda indeed, she
was kind of miss thing. I mean, as far as
I can tell, she seemed like an it girl before
they were really girls. Just about every southern college boy
seemed to be in love with her. Every army man
(09:25):
stationed in the area seemed to be in love with her.
And she, you know, she fit the profile. She was
very pretty, she was well off, she was a judge's daughter,
but she was fun too. She was flirty, she would drink.
She was not a prim and proper goal no, not
at all. So she kind of had that zest for
life that is often very magnetic, which is probably why
(09:46):
every man that came in contact with her was like,
I really like Zelda. And she would just do these
crazy things too. I mean, the one of my favorite
examples I found came from biography and article by Dorothy Rompolsk.
She apparently once called the fire department to report a
poor child stuck on the roof. When the fireman arrived,
(10:07):
it was Zelda up on the roof. She had climbed
the roof of her own family's home and had this
dramatic rescue, probably playing out in front of admirers. So
she just did sort of off the wall things which
must have really stood out in that time in that place. Yeah,
it does sort of um smack a little bit of
(10:29):
the privileged kid that doesn't know what to do with
their spare time, stirruple trouble and drama for fun. You guys,
this will be a lark, exactly, it does. And and
I mean you'd think that maybe that might be off putting,
but she certainly managed to keep it on the charming side,
so much so that a group of Auburn men were
(10:53):
so devoted to her they started a secret society to
worship her, called it Zeta Sigma. That's a little freaky deeky, right, yeah,
I think a little like if you found out there
was like this secret meetings going on to talk about Sarah,
wouldn't you be a little weird? I gonna hear about
any of that. But it's beyond flattery. And then you're like,
(11:15):
I think Zelda. Zelda would expect it, though I think
it it seems just trying to guess her personality. It
seems like something that she would have encouraged. But when
Fitzgerald popped up on the scene, they took to each
other immediately, and um, he started courting her. And then
after the war ended, he moved to New York City
(11:38):
and they started this passionate correspondence. But it's not You
can find a lot of their a lot of their
letters have been published now. Um, but it's not all
lovey dervy. I mean, you wouldn't expect them to know.
It's not all like the gushy mooney stuff that we
often equate with, Like early twentieth century love letters. It's
(12:00):
there's a sass pants vibe to it, she calls him out.
Sometimes do you want to read the one singer? She
throws out to Um, she gets tired of him comparing
her to a princess in a tower, apparently, and so
at one point she says, Scott, You've been so sweet
about writing, but I'm so damn tired of being told
that you used to wonder why they kept princesses and towers.
(12:23):
You've written that verbatim in your last six letters, so basically, like,
step it up, be a more original writer. It was
a new words champ, and this is like the most
ridiculous detail in their correspondence. Though he proposes, he sends
her an engagement ring. She accepts, and in a letter
she thanks him for sending along the engagement ring and
(12:45):
then informs him that sixty Auburn r OTC cadets just
came to town, so have fun and this iss of
I love my ring. I can't wait to her to
this party with sixty boys exactly. Um and and f
Scott Fitzgerald had a good reason to be a little
concerned about the state of their relationship because Ultimately, Zelda
(13:09):
did break off their engagement, and she refused to marry
him until he was earning enough to be able to
support her in style, although you'll see different accounts of
the reasons behind that, ones that don't make it seem
quite as money focused. Um more fitz Gerald being a
little too obsessive and and telling her that, So I
(13:30):
don't buy that one. By the way, this you know,
from a girl who has a secret club that's about
devoting their devotion to her. You think I don't buy
that she would be put off by someone being too
into her. I mean, apparently he told her he couldn't
succeed if he didn't have her by by his side,
and she insisted, okay, now you got to figure out
your own deal before I'm going to marry you. Either way, though, um,
(13:54):
Zelda set off on this busy schedule after they broke
off the engagement, busy schedule of attend in college football
games all over the South. Um actually complaining that it
was kind of exhausting to do that. Does this do
you when you research? Just because I definitely, in reading
about them, had that moment where I don't think about
so much of that period of their lives. They're associated
(14:16):
so much with what came later that it's like when
you think of them as you know her as a
college girl, it's just very busy with her college and
social activities. It's like, wait, wait, did I turn the
wrong page in mind? And am I onto somebody else's biography?
I know, it does make you think about also the
different lives they could have potentially come down. And I mean,
(14:38):
I think it's clear she saw him as as a
ticket out of that world, but it is strange to
see her in a time when she so clearly relish
as being in it too. Um. But Fitzgerald, meanwhile, he's
up in New York. He knows he's got to win
this lady quickly because she's not going to be on
the market for very long. And so he decides that
(14:59):
he is going to get into advertising. And he does
that because he gets rejected for writing for seven New
York City newspapers, um, and thinks that advertising is going
to be a faster way to make money than writing
a novel. But that doesn't work out for him. Yeah,
(15:20):
the advertising game has never been known for its ease.
I don't think so. Bless your heart of Scott, you
meant well, uh yeah. And then he after he had
been in New York for a while and he nothing
was working out, he decided that he would move back
to St. Paul, to his parents house, and he started
rewriting his novel, The Romantic Elitist, which he had subsequently
(15:43):
retitled This Side of paradise Um. And then he delivered
that manuscript to Scribner. It got rejected again. However, there
was a ray of light Maxwell Perkins. Yeah, there was
an editor that read the manuscript and he had already
incurred dged Scott Fitzgerald when he saw the original draft,
(16:03):
and he threatened to resign if the firm didn't reconsider
taking on that writer. And that worked and the manuscript
was accepted just days before at Scott Fitzgerald turned twenty four.
He apparently, and this is just a charming moment before
things get really good and then really bad. He has
his acceptance letter, he runs out of his parents house
(16:25):
into the street waving it around. It's just like a
nice little prefame moment for him. Yeah, it's like you
can picture it in any like rags to Richest story
in a film. Yeah, like this is the magic moment
where the music swells and it's like it's gonna be okay,
but there's him. It all looks rosy at that point.
(16:46):
This Side of Paradise incinantally is one of my favorite
Fitzgerald books. Um, I feel like it kind of it
starts off perfectly, and I wonder now knowing how many
times he rewrote it and how many times he reworked
the story, Like the first two thirds of the book
are just almost perfect, and then I almost feel like
(17:07):
he loses the story a little bit. So I'm going
to have to do somewhere reading on the different drafts
of that now. But it's an interesting story and it
really did kick off his career too. It's sold out
within days of publication in nineteen twenty, and it defined
the jazz age. It defined the type of man who
(17:29):
had lived through the war and who was ready to
embrace the nineteen twenties. Yeah, I mean, I think a
lot of historians will actually cite that publication and it's immediate,
really unusual level of success as this is the start
of the jazz age, Like that's kind of the book
end that starts it out. Yeah, new people, new generation.
(17:52):
And it also really conveniently for biographers, marks the start
of f Scott and Zelda because Zelda a greased to marry,
tied right up to that publication. Eight days after a publication,
they get married and they kick off this whirlwind honeymoon
phase in New York City which is also really memorable
(18:13):
to to anybody who saw it at the time, party
and drinking, playing in fountains. Uh. Dorothy Parker witnessed them
riding down Fifth Avenue on the top of a cab
and wrote, quote, they did both look as though they
had just stepped out of the sun, their youth with striking.
Everyone wanted to meet them. So just pure bliss at
(18:34):
this point, although not a whole lot of money initially
that was a bit of a surprise to learn about.
It took a while for the money to start rolling in.
They started spending it right away. They were excited. They
just knew there was more coming and they knew they
knew they had arrived, and they started a family quickly
to their first and only child, Francis Scott or Scottie.
(18:58):
A daughter was born in nine and quickly enough it
was apparent that Fitzgerald was going to have to keep
on writing and writing and writing and not stop in
order to maintain this lifestyle that they had set up
and the celebrity they had built for themselves. Yeah. Now
(19:18):
I mean wife and daughter to support and a family too. Yeah,
in grand style. I can't imagine the pressure that must
have been the moment he realized, like, my career is
not really my own anymore. I just have to keep going.
And especially since he had spent several years on his
first book, honing it and and perfecting it. Um. It
(19:40):
worked for a while, though. He was able to turn
things out pretty quickly. Um. He wrote too, short story collections,
he wrote a satirical play, and he wrote the novel
The Beautiful and the Damned in the three years after
the Side of Paradise published. That's a lot to turn study,
that's a whole lot. It's really study. And the short
story collections. Um. He was apparently really good at just
(20:04):
whipping out short stories, and since he had that fame
from the Side of Paradise, he could command a pretty
high fee for their publication. Zelda did her part to
to stir up fitzgerald enthusiasm, even if she was kind
of um. She materialist. Her review of the book the
(20:26):
Beautiful um. She wrote, quote, everyone must buy this book
for the following aesthetic reasons. First because I know where
there is the cutest cloth of gold dress for only
three dollars in a store on street. And also, if
enough people buy it, I know where there is a
platinum ring with a complete circlet. And also if loads
(20:48):
of people buy it, my husband needs a new winter overcoat,
although the one he has has done well enough for
the last three years, so we need the money. Folks
go by the book. I need pretty stuff exactly. It's
so forward and it just it cracks me up. The
rest of the reviews pretty saffy to again going back
(21:09):
to Zelda's sass but um So. That went on for
three but by nineteen twenty four things started to go
a little bit sour. Fitzgerald's drinking habit had gotten to
be able, and Zelda was starting to exhibit signs of
(21:31):
mental illness. We're gonna talk about that more later. But
things were not going that well between them, so they
took off to Europe too, because Fitzgerald was thinking, Okay,
enough with all these short stories, I want to focus
on another novel, and the result of leaving for Europe
which was also cheaper. By the way, was The Great
(21:52):
Gas Fee, which drew on Fitzgerald's experience earlier living on
Long Island and and some of the things he witnessed there.
It's actually the least autobiographical of his books, though, if
you if you think about it, Um, even though he's
often considered to be Gatsby, almost I could see him
(22:15):
in either of the two main roles. And I think,
you know, if you know anything about their biography, it's
very easy to see a bit of Zelda and Daisy.
Although I think I've talked about you with this before,
particularly in film adaptations, that sometimes Daisy comes off as
a little bit dippy to me, um, and I think
probably Zelda was not like that at all. She may
(22:37):
have been loopy, but as a little bit like, almost childlike.
She doesn't really have command of the way the world works,
which I don't think was necessarily the case with Zelda. Um.
But yeah, I think you see shades of impressions of
people and things in his life without it being autobiographical.
(22:57):
So Gatsby, that's a pretty impressive product of this Abroad.
But they also fell in with the famous rivera expat scene, Yeah,
which is just I mean, historically, I can't imagine they
really realized what they were. No, it's one of those
things we're looking back on. It. You it's a central
(23:21):
part of your twenty century American novel class. But but
I can't imagine they realize, Yeah, they probably weren't sitting
around and going like, you know, in another forty years,
everybody's going to be talking about this party and these
people in this room. With this crowd though, I mean
we're talking of course Hemingway, cosso Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter.
You would have to realize you were among an immensely
(23:43):
talented group of people, and they all gravitated around this couple,
Gerald and Sarah Murphy, who were wealthy, artistic Americans, and
they were the ones who sort of brought these people
kind of proasted the whole scene. So they must have
seen what was what was happening, even if they Hemingway didn't. Uh.
(24:04):
And and incidentally too, they are partly the basis for
Dick Nicole, Diver and Tender as the Night Um. But
Europe was not kind to the Fitzgerald marriage. It began
about further collapse. Selda had a fling with a French aviator.
While Fitzgerald was very absorbed in writing The Great Gatsby,
(24:25):
Fitzgerald had drunken rages. According to a PBS article by
Ben Felon, at least one of those may have resulted
in physical abuse too, when Fitzgerald struck Zelda after she
criticized him for smashing a vase. So things were not
things were getting really bad between them and she her
(24:46):
behavior was getting pretty erratic as well. Yeah, it's kind
of funny because they went to Europe kind of to
get away from things. But when you look at it,
perhaps through our modern lens, it's ago. The marriage is
in some trouble. You have some drinking problems. I might
to be going, you know what, let's pack up and
make a really stressful move across the ocean, and then
moved to a country where we don't speak the language.
(25:07):
It's kind of like the perfect storm of bad ideas
and bad stimulus for a marriage at that point. It
seems that way, I mean, and and some of Zelda's
behavior really got scary to Um. She was clearly Um
experiencing some pretty serious emotions. She tried to throw herself
(25:29):
or if she did throw herself over the edge of
a hillside restaurants patio in after she thought Fitzgerald had
been flirting with Isadora Duncan. Uh Fortunately she landed on
a lower terrace. Another time, he was driving in a
cliff filled area and she grabbed the wheel and tried
(25:51):
to drive them off the cliff. So yeah, bad, bad stuff.
And and Zelda was really maybe five years out at
this point from having married him, having left Alabama, and
having been like a celebrated debutante, and just being the
shining star of everyone's world, trying to figure out what
she was going to do. And she knew that she
(26:13):
wasn't going to be a flapper a girl anymore. She
wrote in n uh quote the flapper, she's getting old.
She's come to none of the predicted bad ends, but
has gone at last where all good flappers go into
the young marrieds that into boredom and gathering conventions and
the pleasure of having children, having lent a while a
(26:37):
splendor and courageousness and brightness to life as all good
flappers should. Uh so were almost obituary to her five
years in the limelight and then wondering what she was
going to do. And she really was struggling to define
her own creative or express her own creative impulses. Um
(26:59):
and unfortunately, the two hobbies she's settled on were ones
that I don't want to make too many assumptions about them,
but the freest and breeziest of paths. Yeah, we're talking
writing and ballet. The ballet one freaks me out because
you're a dancer. Well I'm not really now, but I
(27:19):
did study dance growing up, and there was a time
in my life where I thought I wanted to pursue
dance as a career. And it's grueling and it's kind
of like that thing where you don't go. I decided
I'm gonna be a dancer, like at you train when
you're a youth, in the hopes that you get to
be But it's kind of it's kind of both charming
and sad that she just decided she was a dancer
(27:39):
and decided not that it would be a form for
her to express herself, something fun to occupy her time with,
but she was going to be a professional dancer. We're
not talking. Oh yeah. She started taking adult dance lessons,
which sounds fantastic. To stay fit and not at all
like that. She was in her late twenties decide I did.
(28:00):
She wanted to be a professional ballet dancer, and so
started taking really serious ballet lessons in Paris and Philadelphia,
constant all day, every day training, which just exhausted her,
ruined her health, even though she did become talented. Um,
it's just sad because yeah, clearly at that point she
(28:21):
was not going to be able to attain that. She's
not going to become a prima ballerina. No at thirty. Um.
She also, as a mentioned, started writing too, and again
just sort of a difficult career to pursue while you
are married to one of the most famous writers of
(28:42):
the day. And in in part that's because of fitz
year Old's own roadblocks he threw up. Um. She did
publish some stories, she published some essays. Sometimes they were
published under a shared byline. But there's a lot of
debate over who wrote what in this family. And and
Fitzgerald certainly uh gave her credit as a great letter
(29:05):
writer and certainly just drew directly quoted her letters for
some of his work. Um, because she she did turn
quite a phrase in her letters, but was fairly dismissive
of her as a professional writer and claimed, you know,
because he was trying to earn the money, he didn't
(29:27):
want her sort of interfering with his career. But that's
not going to stress your already fragile marriage either. Lots
of lots of debate over those two and how exactly
we didn't one and how their writings played out, um,
but all the same trouble for Zelda Well, and I
think it was a troubled time to to think about. That's,
(29:49):
you know, when the stock market crash is happening and
all of that sort of effervescent joy that we often
associate with pre crash twenties, everybody was kind to at
a point where they were feeling lost and scared, and
I think the people that had had their moorings in
like this wealthy, opulent lifestyle. In addition to whatever mental
(30:09):
issues she already had going on, it was like and
the sea was just moving under her. She couldn't get footing. Yeah,
So in nineteen thirty she had her first major mental
health breakdown. It was called nervous exhaustion at the time,
and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, probably incorrectly, was a
(30:30):
term thrown around a lot at the time and underwent
some treatment and seemed to be better after a few months,
enough so to return to her day to day life.
She and f Scott Fitzgerald came back to the States
for good in September nineteen thirty one, first Alabama, then
(30:50):
to Hollywood. He was trying to dabble in screenwriting, something
that as many writers of the day, we're doing that
was really popular in the Hollywood visit. They would kind
of plumb pick established writers, be like, do you want
to work on a screenplay? And it didn't always translate.
It was really stressful for most of them. Uh, and
Zelda's stresses seemed to continue to especially when she was
(31:13):
back living with Scott. Her second breakdown came in nineteen
thirty two, and that point really marks the beginning of
a life in and out of asylums, in and out
of hospitals. Um and what a terrible time to be
in that system too. She underwent electric shock treatment, insulin
(31:37):
shock treatment, which apparently is an insulin mega dose that
forces you into a coma. She received tranquilizers. So it's
so heartbreaking, upsetting treatment and um uh, there's a lot
of debate consequently too, over what exactly was Zelda experiencing,
(32:00):
you know, did she have a mental illness um? Or
was something you know, was it just brought about from
her life with Fitzgerald. Uh. The common consensus today seems
to be that she did have some sort of mental
She may have had bipolar disorder, and I would even
say was aggravated by living with this controlling, alcoholic husband. Yeah.
(32:26):
I mean, I would even say, looking back now with
the knowledge of modern psychology at hand, if you even
look at kind of her antics as a youth, they're
very charming and fun, but they suggest some extreme personality behavior,
and so it's easy to see how that very quickly
went down a very negative path with all of the
(32:46):
stressors we've been talking when things stopped being fun, when
things stopping charming, and cross the cross a point to
just being disturbing. Um. But she did keep up treatment,
as we mentioned, through until the end of her life,
and she kept on writing too. She wrote her first novel,
(33:06):
called Save Me the Waltz, while she was at Johns
Hopkins Hospital in eighteen thirty two, and that was a
sore point between the couple too. Fitzgerald really did not
want the book to be published and had it majorly edited,
and there's again some debate over whether that was just
(33:28):
kind of ironically being concerned about his own privacy, you know,
you don't write about our lives, or whether it was
I want to use some of these incidents in my
next book. Well, we also don't know how much of
that psychology of like, no, this is my thing, you know,
like his territory was being tread upon. So the book
(33:50):
came out in nineteen thirty two, and it also had
a very strange royalties arrangement with the publisher, um A
Scott Fisherald was in debt to his publisher by this point,
and the deal was half of the royalties for her
book would go towards paying down his debt, which is
(34:12):
pretty unfair. Um. I mean maybe the couple could have
worked that out on themselves. Um it didn't really matter.
The book didn't make money, so it was a non issue,
but still a strange side note there. Zelda's other big
hobby at this point was painting, and she has a
(34:34):
lot of her paintings are still visible today. She's inspired
by Picasso and to lose Litruck and Georgia O'Keefe. They're
very colorful, very modern looking. Um, that seems like maybe
I've ever seen any and I don't want to run
out kill image a few of them. I don't know.
I can't judge what somebody should have pursued, which career
(34:57):
they should have pursued in life, but it seems like
maybe something that brought her more happiness. Well, she clearly
had artistic and I mean she went through one creative
endeavor after another, even if none of them really stuck.
I mean, you know, she was a pretty accomplished answer
even though it was kind of too late in life
(35:18):
to do that. She clearly did some okay writing. And
I haven't seen her paintings, but they sound really interesting there.
And she clearly has this expressive nature. She just never
kind of stuck with one thing. Maybe that's the problem there.
But Fitzgerald, I mean, he certainly was focused on one thing,
but unfortunately he couldn't do it anymore. He felt like
(35:39):
he couldn't write. He had a serious case of writer's block.
And that was bad because he was deeply in debt,
as we just said, um, because of his own lavish lifestyle,
because of Zelda's medical bills, and because of their daughter's
expensive schooling. So he spent this period trying to right.
(36:00):
Finally he came out with his next novel, Tender As
the Night, which was published in nineteen thirty four. And
that's the book I remember my professor in college, really,
I clearly remember his description of that book coming out
just the worst time possible for it, because it's still
this Fitzgerald world, even though it's it's sad the couple,
(36:24):
and it is sad things are deteriorating, but they live
this life of glamour and excess still, and this is
in the middle of the Great Depression. No one could
identify with those people, know, it seemed maybe kind of
repulsive almost to some people. He followed that by another
novel in nineteen thirty five, and at that point he
(36:47):
really considered himself a failure as a writer, somebody who
had not lived up to the promise of his youth,
which is shot. I mean, tenders the Night is a
fantastic book. It's strange that he would have evaluated himself
in that way, but at this point things just seemed
so so bad, and so he wrote this series of
three essays which are called the Crack Up Essays for
(37:10):
Esquire in nineteen thirty six and elaborated on that, elaborated
on feeling like an artistic failure, Um, somebody who just
was nobody at this point, which is so I mean again,
it's so funny because we see it through the lens
of history, but you can imagine being in it, being
(37:31):
someone who is very devoted to and involved in your
writing at that point with the wife that's got a
ton of problems. You kind of can't keep the sobriety
angle together. And who had the success that he did
when he did so. The crack of essays take their
name from this extended passage where he compares himself to
(37:51):
a cracked plate. It's a little melodramatic. Do you want
to read the crash? It's so sad. Sometimes, though, the
cracked plate has to be retained in the pantry, has
to be kept in service as a household necessity. It
can never be warmed on the stove or shuffled with
the other plates in the dishpan. It will not be
brought out for company, but it will do to hold
(38:13):
crackers late at night, or to go into the ice
box with the leftovers. That is the saddest. It is bad,
and I just think to himself as the thing that
should be thrown away, but you can't because you still
need to use it. I looked at I looked at
a crack plate, cracked plate that I keep around, and
I thought, Oh, it's general, it's you. Uh. The publication
(38:35):
of these essays that just created this gossip storm. People
were so fascinated by their confessional nature. Critics did not
like them. Friends were angry about him writing so candidly
about himself. Um, and a lot of the issues people
(38:55):
had with it, or critics and friends was that it
was again kind of like Tender as the Night, just
published in the wrong time. Don't be so obsessed with yourself.
If things in the world are are so scary, when
everyone else is suffering, we kind of don't have time
for your depression cracked play analogy exactly. One of his
friends and critics, John just Passos, wrote quote, We're living
(39:17):
in one of the damnedest tragic moments in history. If
you want to go to pieces, I think it's absolutely okay.
But I think you ought to write a first rate
novel about it, and you probably will instead of spilling
it in little pieces. For Arnold Gingrich, who is the
editor of Esquire Hemingway, who always has a singer like
(39:39):
the He shared an editor with Fitzgerald and wrote to
the editor complaining about Fitzgerald whining in public. So people
were turned off by this confessional style. But according to
Patricia Hampel and American scholar, the essays kind of marked
(40:01):
the start of two important things, and one was personal.
One was for Fitzgerald's career. It sort of signaled the
beginning of him at least becoming a respected great American author.
It's like he had done the whole cycle of like
great fame as a youth, and then kind he had
the stalling off and coming back up to a certain
(40:22):
plateau level and then just kind of being a miss Yeah,
and you know, the classic story, really classic American writer's story.
Part of this comes after the fact, though, I mean,
the essays were pretty popular, even though critics weren't fans.
The essays were popular with the public because he was
so candid in them. But after his death they were
(40:43):
collected into a book and they just created a stir.
People were obsessed with with the crack up essays, and
it did sort of help shift Fitzgerald's reputation, even though
he was immensely successful during his lifetime, he kind of
a reputation of somebody who was just writing what he
saw a voice of his of his generation, like a
(41:06):
chronicler um, instead of becoming a serious author. And they
also sort of helped shift the perception of him as
somebody who was self absorbed into somebody who was just
self aware. He could he could reflect on all that
he saw around him, he could engage in it, but
he could observe it from afar too. They started that
(41:30):
shift in his reputation. The other thing that apparently these
these essays helped start was the great age of autobiographical writing.
These essays don't seem strange today, no, not at all.
Kind of tame actually, I mean, he doesn't go into
all of he doesn't talk about his marriage, drinking money,
(41:54):
none of this kind of his feelings in this sensation
of emptiness that he was experiencing this before that, or
if they did, it was not you know, widely publicized
and widely read, and certainly did not create like big
waves of excitement and discussion amongst readers and critics. So
(42:14):
it's it really is interesting that he ushered in this
whole new sort of genre of writing, confessional writing, autobiographical essays. Um.
I mean some of the stuff that makes up the
great literary magazines of today still. Um. So that's sort
of a sad last few years for Fitzgerald. But the
(42:37):
very last few years didn't seem like things were maybe
looking up a little bit. Um. He went back to
Hollywood and had another go at screenwriting, and he got
over that writer's block. He started churning out short stories again.
He had the first draft of a novel, The Last Tycoon,
(42:57):
which I love. I have not read the Last Take.
I love that book and he talks a lot about
Hollywood in it, and there are some moments of imagery
where he kind of draws back the curtain from the
perfection that we see in film and what's really going
on behind the scenes. And there's one thing where he's
talking about the makeup artist covering the actress's eggs. Amon.
It just stuck with me because the imagery of it
(43:19):
is so strong and so striking. I really want a
really good film adaptation of it at some point. Well,
and I know it is considered I mean most people
think had he lived to see it published, it would
have revitalized his career in a huge way and certainly
would have placed him as a modern man again, not
a sort of relic of the twenties. Um. But he
(43:41):
also started a new romance too, with a gossip columnist,
Sheila Graham. He had gotten his drinking together for long
enough to to charm her. They kept the romance secret
from Valda, who was still in hospitals at this point.
Um and lived together, but in November of nineteen forty
(44:03):
he had a heart attack. In three weeks after that,
he had a second fatal heart attack, dying at only
age forty four. Can you imagine what else we would
have had if he had lived another twenty I mean,
I think that we have Keats at twenty five, all
sorts of writers like that. But yeah, I mean, especially
with such a new, such a different work on the
(44:27):
horizon for him, and what um renewed respect and interest
in his writing would have wrought in his life. Yeah,
it's certainly interesting to think about. UM. Zelda lived on
for a few more years, and apparently it was pretty quiet, yeah,
(44:47):
considering considering the rest of her life, I mean, interspersed
with relapses, but she kept up her her artistic pursuits too.
She wrote an incomplete second novel, choreographed ballets, she kept painting,
and she became devoutly religious too. Um and claimed that
(45:09):
she could not remember most of the twenties thanks to
her electric shock therapy. Um, which may be a blessing
or occurred. I don't know. I guess at least she
would have known her life ends truly tragically though. In
late nineteen she returned to Highland Hospital, which is in Asheville,
(45:32):
North Carolina. And uh, just a few months after that,
a kitchen fire tour through the building. Nine women had
been locked inside and died, including Zelda. She was identified
by a slipper that was under her body. Um. I've
actually seen the historic marker for this hospital in Asheville. Yeah,
(45:57):
it's just driving along the road and then there's the
Highland Hospital marker. Um, so does the marker mentioned Zelda. Yes, yeah,
she's She's the the reason for the marker. But again
a sad, sad end for both members of this relationship.
(46:19):
They were buried together, as it seems fitting St. Patrick's
Day nineteen Zelda was buried next to Scott in Maryland,
and I got a good way to sort of wrap
things up, since that is going on the sad train.
Here at the end um is a quote from their
granddaughter Eleanor Lanahan, and she wrote, quote, they symbolize zestful youth,
(46:44):
and the country has daified youth ever since. And they
made celebrity in our fascination with it stylish. So it's
not a happy, happy quote or something. But I think
it is so true and that is what people take
away from their lives. And I think why so many
listeners have requested them and um, that's that's the lens
(47:08):
through which we remember them. Yeah, I mean, I think
they represent an iconic and important shift in public consciousness
and how we consume the arts. Uh you know, I
mean on the negative angle of that, you could say
without them, we might not be where we're at with
reality TV. Um, But you know, it was one of
(47:28):
the first times where the creators were just as important
as the stories they were telling, because their life stories
seem just as exciting and the stories reflected their lives
so clearly. So, Oh, I've gotten Zelda Zelda interesting to
read about, interesting, so fascinating pictures of them too, And
(47:49):
and since we don't do too many twentieth century topics,
or at least haven't in the past, don't usually have
that opportunity. But there's so many pictures of them and uh,
everything from the f Scott in drag Priston. But I
find of Zelda pictures really interesting, going from these little
(48:09):
like that Ms Zelda say or the sponsor of the
rotc at Auburn or something of nice little oval shaped
portrait with her bob to the later pictures where she's
in her ballet flipping yeah, ready to go. Very it
is a very strange. It tells a very strange story,
(48:31):
and it it feels almost like someone that's in a
costume all the time. Um. And I think it's interesting
because I in the public consciousness, we do think of
them in terms of the Roaring twenties, and you know,
that sort of magical golden time of their lives where
it was parties, parties, parties and fabulousness. We don't really
hear so much about like her start as a Southern
(48:52):
belle debutante and their unfortunate ends. We kind of just
cut out that decade where the success was happening. Really
not even though it's like yeah, and it's it's kind
of fascinating. So I think it's it really sort of
does them as service to give them a fuller picture,
even if it's not all exactly sunshine and rainbows. Hey, Sarah,
(49:14):
do you want to take a moment to talk about
our sponsor? Okay? So Jack Reads has really quickly become
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(49:36):
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and you'll get that whole waiting list and be ushered
right into the club. All right, what do we have
on the plate for listener meal today? So first of all,
(50:22):
we have a beautiful drawing. It's done by listener Gracie.
She's age nine and her dad John send us the
picture from Victoria, Canada. And it's a picture of Amelia Earhart.
It's awesome. It's awesome. Holly is duly impressed. Uh. There
is Amelia Earhart, there's her plane, there's some flowers and
(50:44):
airport sign, the sun and Fred Noonan who is holding
a model of alcohol, the good one. It's quite charming.
Thank you Gracie. It's a lovely portrait. I'll have to
take a picture of it to put on our social
media and thank John for sending it along to um.
We also got a cool picture of Impress Cecy. I
(51:06):
think you love her, don't you, Hollie Holly. As you
guys who listened to the the Underwear episode, people just
think of the underwear lady. You know that she's she's
very interested in historic costume and um costume design and
Empress CC does have a lovely gown. This postcard is
(51:27):
from listener Natalie and Honolulu. She had gone on vacation
with her husband and stopped by the Empress CC museum.
And that's always really cool when we hear from listeners
who have been inspired to go to a museum, check
out a historic site for themselves. Dress is pretty. And
(51:47):
then finally, I wanted to inaugurate Holly and this listener meal,
so listen. While Devilina and I haven't done it for
a really long time, I'm gonna have one to get
you ready. And then how a big list that I've
been storing up so we can do that. We can
do that maybe next week. UM. One of the coolest
listener mail segments is when listeners tell us what they're
(52:11):
doing while they're listening to the podcast, and people have
all sorts of amazing jobs, or they are traveling in
cool places. Listener Amanda wrote in to say that while
she's listening, she's analyzing surface fronts and pressure every three
hours for all of North America because she's a meteorologist.
(52:33):
That's super cool, really cool, so thank you. She especially
liked the five Historical Storms episode Core obvious reasons. Um,
that will be a fun segment to kick off again.
And whenever we do one, people start writing in with
new interesting examples. So thank you everybody for sending mail.
(52:56):
If you want to check us out on Twitter, we're
still at Missed in History. Were also on Facebook and
I guess Polly will be joining me there, yes, indeed
soon and then uh Tracy'll be taken over with posts
in a few more weeks for me, but it will
be fine. I've not wanted to post on the rerun
episodes of things have been a little little quiet quiet
(53:19):
on social medialy, get back up and be sociable. We'll
be back. And if you want to learn more about
one of these famous x fats from the nineteen twenties,
we do have an article on Pablo Cosso fantastic, so
you can check that out reading about Pablo, who, as
you guys know by now, is my seat mate here
(53:40):
in the studio heard from a lot of folks saying,
I guess science podcast listeners who said that Julie had
sometimes mentioned Picasso and I have Tesla. You have Tesla,
so if you want to learn about that or anything else,
You can come and visit our website and type in
almost anything you're braking conjuring you will turn up all
manner of information. And that website is how stuff Works
(54:03):
dot com m. For more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com m
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, Welcome to the podcast. I'm
Sarah Dowdy and welcome Holly. Thanks. So a few of
you probably remember Holly from her most recent visit to
(00:23):
the podcast where we talked about underwear that was super fun,
all sorts of things, Queen Victoria, your favorite course, it's um.
But Holly also hosts Pop Stuff, so a lot of
y'all probably know her from there already, and she's going
to be stepping up to fill Doblina's spot as podcast
(00:44):
co host. Yes, indeed, so that's very exciting. Um. Also,
I feel like I should get it out of the way,
so I'm not stringing you guys along for a few episodes,
but I'm going to be leading the podcast too in
a few more episodes Sadness and Art, and Holly is
going to be joined by our manager, the site director
(01:06):
of How Stuff Works, and her Pop Stuff co host,
Tracy Wilson. Yes, so that's lots of transitions, big excitement,
but you guys can get ready for it. And Holly
and I are going to have some fun and I'm
excited I get time with Sarah before she vanishes, vanished,
vanishes into the editing world of stuff work. So today's topic,
(01:30):
I wanted to pick something that was fun, something that's
been requested by listeners a lot, but also something that
people have been talking about in the entertainment world a
lot lately thanks to a new movie coming out. Yes,
bos Lurman's Gatsby is going to be out in May
of this year, so just a few months out, and
(01:53):
it will, as many of his movies are, probably be
a little controversial because he takes a very unique approach
to telling historical story. But it looks beautiful. It does
look beautiful. I saw the preview for it. It starts
with a group of people riding in an open car.
It looks all very roaring twenties, very exciting, gorgeous. It
(02:13):
looks super gorgeous. I'm really excited because I am a
big Boss Lerman fan. And there are lots of people
in the cast that I really like, Like I really
like Joel Edgerton cast as Tom Um, and I think
Carrie Mulligan is going to be a really interesting Daisy Um.
We have Leo, Yeah, who I've told you very recently.
I feel bad he's been much maligned as an actor
through the years. I think because Titanic kind of he
(02:34):
got a syrup, a kind of coated in some glory syrup.
People don't always love that, and it caused negative connotation.
But I really think he is quite a good actor
and I'm I'm interested to see where his career goes
in the next I think this might be a good
role for him too. But this movie has been in
the works for so long now at James because it
(02:54):
was originally supposed to come out Holiday and I got
bumped in speculation for Ages, I mean a long time
back who would be cast in it? So I think
partly because of that and partly just because of a
general fascination with the FitzGeralds. Like I mentioned, listeners have
been requesting f Scott his wife Zelda for Ages now
(03:15):
because they have really fascinating, really troubling lives in addition
to uh impressive bio work. Yeah, and the twenties are
just they're kind of in the spotlight right now. I
think the artists helped do that. And then leading into
gats Be, Zelda n f Scott are on everybody's mind
and there's such a stylish, romantic but kind of, you know,
(03:37):
tragic story, we kind of can't help but get attached
to it. We're going to get into some of the
tragic aspects of this, but we're gonna start at the
beginning like normal. F Scott Fitzgerald was born September in St. Paul, Minnesota,
and his father was apparently a failed Wicker furniture salesman,
(03:58):
which I think is a least strange way to define somebody.
That's about the only definition I saw of him too. Yeah,
there's not a lot of And then he went on
to that's pretty much what he got saddled with as
a yeah, and and of course to f Scott Fitzgerald
was named for his distant relative, Francis Scott Key, who
(04:20):
we've done. I think Katie and I did a podcast
on Francis Scott Key years and years ago. He grew
up comfortable. He grew up in a middle class Catholic family,
although he did point out later I think because his
parents pursued such a good education for him, he always
felt like he was the least well off in a
group of rich kids, and I think that plays out
(04:42):
in his work. It does. She's always extremely class conscious.
He had two older sisters who died before he was born.
One little sister, Annabelle, who also didn't see a whole
lot on except for these terrible letters he wrote to
her when she was a teenage girl, offering good brotherly advice,
(05:02):
except they were just like the last things you would
want to hear, probably if you were a teenage girl, Like,
you know, you have a little hair on your face
problem and maybe you should see a doctor about that,
or you know, you should be more socially outgoing. And
a really good opening line is to compliment someone on, oh,
your eyelashes are so incredibly long. So these were the
(05:22):
sorts of things he was writing to little Annabelle. Um.
So we know what she was when she was getting
fourteen or so. So again just the worst age possible.
Um something though, that I think makes her worth mentioning
in our story. So he ended up Um attending New
Jersey's Newman School, and he wrote detective stories there and
(05:45):
then even though he wasn't the greatest student, he got
into Princeton he did. He charmed his way in, and
UM was obviously not going there for Uh to pursue
a great academic career, since that was not his interest.
He wanted to play football, but he did not have
the build for that, and so he decided he would
keep writing. In this case, right musical comedies, right operettas
(06:08):
not the most natural transition. I should all didn't work out,
I'm going to go into a life of theater in
Just a year later, his sophomore year, he played a
chorus girl in one of his own plays. And I
knew I didn't even have to send this picture to you, Holly,
because you would have seen it already. It's pretty well
known Scott Fitzgerald in costume as lady. It's quite pretty.
(06:31):
He is quite pretty, at least at that time. I mean,
if you didn't know it was a man in drag,
and you just saw it as a historical photograph, I
think you'd be like, well, that's a handsome woman. Yeah,
like you maybe wouldn't even question whether it was a
man or a woman in the outfit. I certainly wouldn't
recognize it as him either, unless I saw a direct
side to side comparison. Um. But you know, dressing up
(06:55):
as a chorus girl writing his own plays didn't stop
him from being a really popular student too. He joined
an eating club he took up with an Illinois debutante
who may have been the inspiration at least in part
for Daisy Great Gatsby. And unfortunately he started drinking in college. Yeah,
(07:16):
but who's became a little bit of a problem, a
lifetime problem, and uh certainly didn't help with his grades
at Princeton either. Not really the fast track for achievement
to develop a drinking problem in college now, But I
guess fortunately for of Scott, he had kind of lost
(07:36):
interest in college. By that point, he had gotten to
the age where he could join the army. Of course,
world War One was on, so he signed up, hoping
to see action, hoping to be deployed to Europe for
World War One. But the war ended before he could
be deployed, and so uh, instead he ended up spending
(07:57):
a lot of his free time sitting around and writing.
There is a certain comedy the fact that his fallback saying,
which is like, well, that's not going to work out.
I'll just write that's not working out either, I'm going
to write. And that's really what he's lauded for historically. Yeah,
and and retrospectively, you know, with these detective stories and
at his at his high school and the comedies in college.
(08:18):
It seems like he was working on that all along,
but um, I guess he wasn't really aware of that
trajectory first. So he put together his first novel, which
he called The Romantic Egotist, in only three months. And
he wrote that just on the weekend too, So consecutive
weekends for three months wrote a novel. We're going to
come back to schedule. It is intense, But he was
(08:43):
not so focused on the book as it may seem,
because he was spending a lot of his free time courting.
He met a Montgomery, Alabama debutante while he was serving
in the army, which is probably the most memorable aspect
of his service, right is it. While at Camp Sheridan,
(09:04):
I met a young lady named Zelda. Zelda indeed, she
was kind of miss thing. I mean, as far as
I can tell, she seemed like an it girl before
they were really girls. Just about every southern college boy
seemed to be in love with her. Every army man
(09:25):
stationed in the area seemed to be in love with her.
And she, you know, she fit the profile. She was
very pretty, she was well off, she was a judge's daughter,
but she was fun too. She was flirty, she would drink.
She was not a prim and proper goal no, not
at all. So she kind of had that zest for
life that is often very magnetic, which is probably why
(09:46):
every man that came in contact with her was like,
I really like Zelda. And she would just do these
crazy things too. I mean, the one of my favorite
examples I found came from biography and article by Dorothy Rompolsk.
She apparently once called the fire department to report a
poor child stuck on the roof. When the fireman arrived,
(10:07):
it was Zelda up on the roof. She had climbed
the roof of her own family's home and had this
dramatic rescue, probably playing out in front of admirers. So
she just did sort of off the wall things which
must have really stood out in that time in that place. Yeah,
it does sort of um smack a little bit of
(10:29):
the privileged kid that doesn't know what to do with
their spare time, stirruple trouble and drama for fun. You guys,
this will be a lark, exactly, it does. And and
I mean you'd think that maybe that might be off putting,
but she certainly managed to keep it on the charming side,
so much so that a group of Auburn men were
(10:53):
so devoted to her they started a secret society to
worship her, called it Zeta Sigma. That's a little freaky deeky, right, yeah,
I think a little like if you found out there
was like this secret meetings going on to talk about Sarah,
wouldn't you be a little weird? I gonna hear about
any of that. But it's beyond flattery. And then you're like,
(11:15):
I think Zelda. Zelda would expect it, though I think
it it seems just trying to guess her personality. It
seems like something that she would have encouraged. But when
Fitzgerald popped up on the scene, they took to each
other immediately, and um, he started courting her. And then
after the war ended, he moved to New York City
(11:38):
and they started this passionate correspondence. But it's not You
can find a lot of their a lot of their
letters have been published now. Um, but it's not all
lovey dervy. I mean, you wouldn't expect them to know.
It's not all like the gushy mooney stuff that we
often equate with, Like early twentieth century love letters. It's
(12:00):
there's a sass pants vibe to it, she calls him out.
Sometimes do you want to read the one singer? She
throws out to Um, she gets tired of him comparing
her to a princess in a tower, apparently, and so
at one point she says, Scott, You've been so sweet
about writing, but I'm so damn tired of being told
that you used to wonder why they kept princesses and towers.
(12:23):
You've written that verbatim in your last six letters, so basically, like,
step it up, be a more original writer. It was
a new words champ, and this is like the most
ridiculous detail in their correspondence. Though he proposes, he sends
her an engagement ring. She accepts, and in a letter
she thanks him for sending along the engagement ring and
(12:45):
then informs him that sixty Auburn r OTC cadets just
came to town, so have fun and this iss of
I love my ring. I can't wait to her to
this party with sixty boys exactly. Um and and f
Scott Fitzgerald had a good reason to be a little
concerned about the state of their relationship because Ultimately, Zelda
(13:09):
did break off their engagement, and she refused to marry
him until he was earning enough to be able to
support her in style, although you'll see different accounts of
the reasons behind that, ones that don't make it seem
quite as money focused. Um more fitz Gerald being a
little too obsessive and and telling her that, So I
(13:30):
don't buy that one. By the way, this you know,
from a girl who has a secret club that's about
devoting their devotion to her. You think I don't buy
that she would be put off by someone being too
into her. I mean, apparently he told her he couldn't
succeed if he didn't have her by by his side,
and she insisted, okay, now you got to figure out
your own deal before I'm going to marry you. Either way, though, um,
(13:54):
Zelda set off on this busy schedule after they broke
off the engagement, busy schedule of attend in college football
games all over the South. Um actually complaining that it
was kind of exhausting to do that. Does this do
you when you research? Just because I definitely, in reading
about them, had that moment where I don't think about
so much of that period of their lives. They're associated
(14:16):
so much with what came later that it's like when
you think of them as you know her as a
college girl, it's just very busy with her college and
social activities. It's like, wait, wait, did I turn the
wrong page in mind? And am I onto somebody else's biography?
I know, it does make you think about also the
different lives they could have potentially come down. And I mean,
(14:38):
I think it's clear she saw him as as a
ticket out of that world, but it is strange to
see her in a time when she so clearly relish
as being in it too. Um. But Fitzgerald, meanwhile, he's
up in New York. He knows he's got to win
this lady quickly because she's not going to be on
the market for very long. And so he decides that
(14:59):
he is going to get into advertising. And he does
that because he gets rejected for writing for seven New
York City newspapers, um, and thinks that advertising is going
to be a faster way to make money than writing
a novel. But that doesn't work out for him. Yeah,
(15:20):
the advertising game has never been known for its ease.
I don't think so. Bless your heart of Scott, you
meant well, uh yeah. And then he after he had
been in New York for a while and he nothing
was working out, he decided that he would move back
to St. Paul, to his parents house, and he started
rewriting his novel, The Romantic Elitist, which he had subsequently
(15:43):
retitled This Side of paradise Um. And then he delivered
that manuscript to Scribner. It got rejected again. However, there
was a ray of light Maxwell Perkins. Yeah, there was
an editor that read the manuscript and he had already
incurred dged Scott Fitzgerald when he saw the original draft,
(16:03):
and he threatened to resign if the firm didn't reconsider
taking on that writer. And that worked and the manuscript
was accepted just days before at Scott Fitzgerald turned twenty four.
He apparently, and this is just a charming moment before
things get really good and then really bad. He has
his acceptance letter, he runs out of his parents house
(16:25):
into the street waving it around. It's just like a
nice little prefame moment for him. Yeah, it's like you
can picture it in any like rags to Richest story
in a film. Yeah, like this is the magic moment
where the music swells and it's like it's gonna be okay,
but there's him. It all looks rosy at that point.
(16:46):
This Side of Paradise incinantally is one of my favorite
Fitzgerald books. Um, I feel like it kind of it
starts off perfectly, and I wonder now knowing how many
times he rewrote it and how many times he reworked
the story, Like the first two thirds of the book
are just almost perfect, and then I almost feel like
(17:07):
he loses the story a little bit. So I'm going
to have to do somewhere reading on the different drafts
of that now. But it's an interesting story and it
really did kick off his career too. It's sold out
within days of publication in nineteen twenty, and it defined
the jazz age. It defined the type of man who
(17:29):
had lived through the war and who was ready to
embrace the nineteen twenties. Yeah, I mean, I think a
lot of historians will actually cite that publication and it's immediate,
really unusual level of success as this is the start
of the jazz age, Like that's kind of the book
end that starts it out. Yeah, new people, new generation.
(17:52):
And it also really conveniently for biographers, marks the start
of f Scott and Zelda because Zelda a greased to marry,
tied right up to that publication. Eight days after a publication,
they get married and they kick off this whirlwind honeymoon
phase in New York City which is also really memorable
(18:13):
to to anybody who saw it at the time, party
and drinking, playing in fountains. Uh. Dorothy Parker witnessed them
riding down Fifth Avenue on the top of a cab
and wrote, quote, they did both look as though they
had just stepped out of the sun, their youth with striking.
Everyone wanted to meet them. So just pure bliss at
(18:34):
this point, although not a whole lot of money initially
that was a bit of a surprise to learn about.
It took a while for the money to start rolling in.
They started spending it right away. They were excited. They
just knew there was more coming and they knew they
knew they had arrived, and they started a family quickly
to their first and only child, Francis Scott or Scottie.
(18:58):
A daughter was born in nine and quickly enough it
was apparent that Fitzgerald was going to have to keep
on writing and writing and writing and not stop in
order to maintain this lifestyle that they had set up
and the celebrity they had built for themselves. Yeah. Now
(19:18):
I mean wife and daughter to support and a family too. Yeah,
in grand style. I can't imagine the pressure that must
have been the moment he realized, like, my career is
not really my own anymore. I just have to keep going.
And especially since he had spent several years on his
first book, honing it and and perfecting it. Um. It
(19:40):
worked for a while, though. He was able to turn
things out pretty quickly. Um. He wrote too, short story collections,
he wrote a satirical play, and he wrote the novel
The Beautiful and the Damned in the three years after
the Side of Paradise published. That's a lot to turn study,
that's a whole lot. It's really study. And the short
story collections. Um. He was apparently really good at just
(20:04):
whipping out short stories, and since he had that fame
from the Side of Paradise, he could command a pretty
high fee for their publication. Zelda did her part to
to stir up fitzgerald enthusiasm, even if she was kind
of um. She materialist. Her review of the book the
(20:26):
Beautiful um. She wrote, quote, everyone must buy this book
for the following aesthetic reasons. First because I know where
there is the cutest cloth of gold dress for only
three dollars in a store on street. And also, if
enough people buy it, I know where there is a
platinum ring with a complete circlet. And also if loads
(20:48):
of people buy it, my husband needs a new winter overcoat,
although the one he has has done well enough for
the last three years, so we need the money. Folks
go by the book. I need pretty stuff exactly. It's
so forward and it just it cracks me up. The
rest of the reviews pretty saffy to again going back
(21:09):
to Zelda's sass but um So. That went on for
three but by nineteen twenty four things started to go
a little bit sour. Fitzgerald's drinking habit had gotten to
be able, and Zelda was starting to exhibit signs of
(21:31):
mental illness. We're gonna talk about that more later. But
things were not going that well between them, so they
took off to Europe too, because Fitzgerald was thinking, Okay,
enough with all these short stories, I want to focus
on another novel, and the result of leaving for Europe
which was also cheaper. By the way, was The Great
(21:52):
Gas Fee, which drew on Fitzgerald's experience earlier living on
Long Island and and some of the things he witnessed there.
It's actually the least autobiographical of his books, though, if
you if you think about it, Um, even though he's
often considered to be Gatsby, almost I could see him
(22:15):
in either of the two main roles. And I think,
you know, if you know anything about their biography, it's
very easy to see a bit of Zelda and Daisy.
Although I think I've talked about you with this before,
particularly in film adaptations, that sometimes Daisy comes off as
a little bit dippy to me, um, and I think
probably Zelda was not like that at all. She may
(22:37):
have been loopy, but as a little bit like, almost childlike.
She doesn't really have command of the way the world works,
which I don't think was necessarily the case with Zelda. Um.
But yeah, I think you see shades of impressions of
people and things in his life without it being autobiographical.
(22:57):
So Gatsby, that's a pretty impressive product of this Abroad.
But they also fell in with the famous rivera expat scene, Yeah,
which is just I mean, historically, I can't imagine they
really realized what they were. No, it's one of those
things we're looking back on. It. You it's a central
(23:21):
part of your twenty century American novel class. But but
I can't imagine they realize, Yeah, they probably weren't sitting
around and going like, you know, in another forty years,
everybody's going to be talking about this party and these
people in this room. With this crowd though, I mean
we're talking of course Hemingway, cosso Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter.
You would have to realize you were among an immensely
(23:43):
talented group of people, and they all gravitated around this couple,
Gerald and Sarah Murphy, who were wealthy, artistic Americans, and
they were the ones who sort of brought these people
kind of proasted the whole scene. So they must have
seen what was what was happening, even if they Hemingway didn't. Uh.
(24:04):
And and incidentally too, they are partly the basis for
Dick Nicole, Diver and Tender as the Night Um. But
Europe was not kind to the Fitzgerald marriage. It began
about further collapse. Selda had a fling with a French aviator.
While Fitzgerald was very absorbed in writing The Great Gatsby,
(24:25):
Fitzgerald had drunken rages. According to a PBS article by
Ben Felon, at least one of those may have resulted
in physical abuse too, when Fitzgerald struck Zelda after she
criticized him for smashing a vase. So things were not
things were getting really bad between them and she her
(24:46):
behavior was getting pretty erratic as well. Yeah, it's kind
of funny because they went to Europe kind of to
get away from things. But when you look at it,
perhaps through our modern lens, it's ago. The marriage is
in some trouble. You have some drinking problems. I might
to be going, you know what, let's pack up and
make a really stressful move across the ocean, and then
moved to a country where we don't speak the language.
(25:07):
It's kind of like the perfect storm of bad ideas
and bad stimulus for a marriage at that point. It
seems that way, I mean, and and some of Zelda's
behavior really got scary to Um. She was clearly Um
experiencing some pretty serious emotions. She tried to throw herself
(25:29):
or if she did throw herself over the edge of
a hillside restaurants patio in after she thought Fitzgerald had
been flirting with Isadora Duncan. Uh Fortunately she landed on
a lower terrace. Another time, he was driving in a
cliff filled area and she grabbed the wheel and tried
(25:51):
to drive them off the cliff. So yeah, bad, bad stuff.
And and Zelda was really maybe five years out at
this point from having married him, having left Alabama, and
having been like a celebrated debutante, and just being the
shining star of everyone's world, trying to figure out what
she was going to do. And she knew that she
(26:13):
wasn't going to be a flapper a girl anymore. She
wrote in n uh quote the flapper, she's getting old.
She's come to none of the predicted bad ends, but
has gone at last where all good flappers go into
the young marrieds that into boredom and gathering conventions and
the pleasure of having children, having lent a while a
(26:37):
splendor and courageousness and brightness to life as all good
flappers should. Uh so were almost obituary to her five
years in the limelight and then wondering what she was
going to do. And she really was struggling to define
her own creative or express her own creative impulses. Um
(26:59):
and unfortunately, the two hobbies she's settled on were ones
that I don't want to make too many assumptions about them,
but the freest and breeziest of paths. Yeah, we're talking
writing and ballet. The ballet one freaks me out because
you're a dancer. Well I'm not really now, but I
(27:19):
did study dance growing up, and there was a time
in my life where I thought I wanted to pursue
dance as a career. And it's grueling and it's kind
of like that thing where you don't go. I decided
I'm gonna be a dancer, like at you train when
you're a youth, in the hopes that you get to
be But it's kind of it's kind of both charming
and sad that she just decided she was a dancer
(27:39):
and decided not that it would be a form for
her to express herself, something fun to occupy her time with,
but she was going to be a professional dancer. We're
not talking. Oh yeah. She started taking adult dance lessons,
which sounds fantastic. To stay fit and not at all
like that. She was in her late twenties decide I did.
(28:00):
She wanted to be a professional ballet dancer, and so
started taking really serious ballet lessons in Paris and Philadelphia,
constant all day, every day training, which just exhausted her,
ruined her health, even though she did become talented. Um,
it's just sad because yeah, clearly at that point she
(28:21):
was not going to be able to attain that. She's
not going to become a prima ballerina. No at thirty. Um.
She also, as a mentioned, started writing too, and again
just sort of a difficult career to pursue while you
are married to one of the most famous writers of
(28:42):
the day. And in in part that's because of fitz
year Old's own roadblocks he threw up. Um. She did
publish some stories, she published some essays. Sometimes they were
published under a shared byline. But there's a lot of
debate over who wrote what in this family. And and
Fitzgerald certainly uh gave her credit as a great letter
(29:05):
writer and certainly just drew directly quoted her letters for
some of his work. Um, because she she did turn
quite a phrase in her letters, but was fairly dismissive
of her as a professional writer and claimed, you know,
because he was trying to earn the money, he didn't
(29:27):
want her sort of interfering with his career. But that's
not going to stress your already fragile marriage either. Lots
of lots of debate over those two and how exactly
we didn't one and how their writings played out, um,
but all the same trouble for Zelda Well, and I
think it was a troubled time to to think about. That's,
(29:49):
you know, when the stock market crash is happening and
all of that sort of effervescent joy that we often
associate with pre crash twenties, everybody was kind to at
a point where they were feeling lost and scared, and
I think the people that had had their moorings in
like this wealthy, opulent lifestyle. In addition to whatever mental
(30:09):
issues she already had going on, it was like and
the sea was just moving under her. She couldn't get footing. Yeah,
So in nineteen thirty she had her first major mental
health breakdown. It was called nervous exhaustion at the time,
and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, probably incorrectly, was a
(30:30):
term thrown around a lot at the time and underwent
some treatment and seemed to be better after a few months,
enough so to return to her day to day life.
She and f Scott Fitzgerald came back to the States
for good in September nineteen thirty one, first Alabama, then
(30:50):
to Hollywood. He was trying to dabble in screenwriting, something
that as many writers of the day, we're doing that
was really popular in the Hollywood visit. They would kind
of plumb pick established writers, be like, do you want
to work on a screenplay? And it didn't always translate.
It was really stressful for most of them. Uh, and
Zelda's stresses seemed to continue to especially when she was
(31:13):
back living with Scott. Her second breakdown came in nineteen
thirty two, and that point really marks the beginning of
a life in and out of asylums, in and out
of hospitals. Um and what a terrible time to be
in that system too. She underwent electric shock treatment, insulin
(31:37):
shock treatment, which apparently is an insulin mega dose that
forces you into a coma. She received tranquilizers. So it's
so heartbreaking, upsetting treatment and um uh, there's a lot
of debate consequently too, over what exactly was Zelda experiencing,
(32:00):
you know, did she have a mental illness um? Or
was something you know, was it just brought about from
her life with Fitzgerald. Uh. The common consensus today seems
to be that she did have some sort of mental
She may have had bipolar disorder, and I would even
say was aggravated by living with this controlling, alcoholic husband. Yeah.
(32:26):
I mean, I would even say, looking back now with
the knowledge of modern psychology at hand, if you even
look at kind of her antics as a youth, they're
very charming and fun, but they suggest some extreme personality behavior,
and so it's easy to see how that very quickly
went down a very negative path with all of the
(32:46):
stressors we've been talking when things stopped being fun, when
things stopping charming, and cross the cross a point to
just being disturbing. Um. But she did keep up treatment,
as we mentioned, through until the end of her life,
and she kept on writing too. She wrote her first novel,
(33:06):
called Save Me the Waltz, while she was at Johns
Hopkins Hospital in eighteen thirty two, and that was a
sore point between the couple too. Fitzgerald really did not
want the book to be published and had it majorly edited,
and there's again some debate over whether that was just
(33:28):
kind of ironically being concerned about his own privacy, you know,
you don't write about our lives, or whether it was
I want to use some of these incidents in my
next book. Well, we also don't know how much of
that psychology of like, no, this is my thing, you know,
like his territory was being tread upon. So the book
(33:50):
came out in nineteen thirty two, and it also had
a very strange royalties arrangement with the publisher, um A
Scott Fisherald was in debt to his publisher by this point,
and the deal was half of the royalties for her
book would go towards paying down his debt, which is
(34:12):
pretty unfair. Um. I mean maybe the couple could have
worked that out on themselves. Um it didn't really matter.
The book didn't make money, so it was a non issue,
but still a strange side note there. Zelda's other big
hobby at this point was painting, and she has a
(34:34):
lot of her paintings are still visible today. She's inspired
by Picasso and to lose Litruck and Georgia O'Keefe. They're
very colorful, very modern looking. Um, that seems like maybe
I've ever seen any and I don't want to run
out kill image a few of them. I don't know.
I can't judge what somebody should have pursued, which career
(34:57):
they should have pursued in life, but it seems like
maybe something that brought her more happiness. Well, she clearly
had artistic and I mean she went through one creative
endeavor after another, even if none of them really stuck.
I mean, you know, she was a pretty accomplished answer
even though it was kind of too late in life
(35:18):
to do that. She clearly did some okay writing. And
I haven't seen her paintings, but they sound really interesting there.
And she clearly has this expressive nature. She just never
kind of stuck with one thing. Maybe that's the problem there.
But Fitzgerald, I mean, he certainly was focused on one thing,
but unfortunately he couldn't do it anymore. He felt like
(35:39):
he couldn't write. He had a serious case of writer's block.
And that was bad because he was deeply in debt,
as we just said, um, because of his own lavish lifestyle,
because of Zelda's medical bills, and because of their daughter's
expensive schooling. So he spent this period trying to right.
(36:00):
Finally he came out with his next novel, Tender As
the Night, which was published in nineteen thirty four. And
that's the book I remember my professor in college, really,
I clearly remember his description of that book coming out
just the worst time possible for it, because it's still
this Fitzgerald world, even though it's it's sad the couple,
(36:24):
and it is sad things are deteriorating, but they live
this life of glamour and excess still, and this is
in the middle of the Great Depression. No one could
identify with those people, know, it seemed maybe kind of
repulsive almost to some people. He followed that by another
novel in nineteen thirty five, and at that point he
(36:47):
really considered himself a failure as a writer, somebody who
had not lived up to the promise of his youth,
which is shot. I mean, tenders the Night is a
fantastic book. It's strange that he would have evaluated himself
in that way, but at this point things just seemed
so so bad, and so he wrote this series of
three essays which are called the Crack Up Essays for
(37:10):
Esquire in nineteen thirty six and elaborated on that, elaborated
on feeling like an artistic failure, Um, somebody who just
was nobody at this point, which is so I mean again,
it's so funny because we see it through the lens
of history, but you can imagine being in it, being
(37:31):
someone who is very devoted to and involved in your
writing at that point with the wife that's got a
ton of problems. You kind of can't keep the sobriety
angle together. And who had the success that he did
when he did so. The crack of essays take their
name from this extended passage where he compares himself to
(37:51):
a cracked plate. It's a little melodramatic. Do you want
to read the crash? It's so sad. Sometimes, though, the
cracked plate has to be retained in the pantry, has
to be kept in service as a household necessity. It
can never be warmed on the stove or shuffled with
the other plates in the dishpan. It will not be
brought out for company, but it will do to hold
(38:13):
crackers late at night, or to go into the ice
box with the leftovers. That is the saddest. It is bad,
and I just think to himself as the thing that
should be thrown away, but you can't because you still
need to use it. I looked at I looked at
a crack plate, cracked plate that I keep around, and
I thought, Oh, it's general, it's you. Uh. The publication
(38:35):
of these essays that just created this gossip storm. People
were so fascinated by their confessional nature. Critics did not
like them. Friends were angry about him writing so candidly
about himself. Um, and a lot of the issues people
(38:55):
had with it, or critics and friends was that it
was again kind of like Tender as the Night, just
published in the wrong time. Don't be so obsessed with yourself.
If things in the world are are so scary, when
everyone else is suffering, we kind of don't have time
for your depression cracked play analogy exactly. One of his
friends and critics, John just Passos, wrote quote, We're living
(39:17):
in one of the damnedest tragic moments in history. If
you want to go to pieces, I think it's absolutely okay.
But I think you ought to write a first rate
novel about it, and you probably will instead of spilling
it in little pieces. For Arnold Gingrich, who is the
editor of Esquire Hemingway, who always has a singer like
(39:39):
the He shared an editor with Fitzgerald and wrote to
the editor complaining about Fitzgerald whining in public. So people
were turned off by this confessional style. But according to
Patricia Hampel and American scholar, the essays kind of marked
(40:01):
the start of two important things, and one was personal.
One was for Fitzgerald's career. It sort of signaled the
beginning of him at least becoming a respected great American author.
It's like he had done the whole cycle of like
great fame as a youth, and then kind he had
the stalling off and coming back up to a certain
(40:22):
plateau level and then just kind of being a miss Yeah,
and you know, the classic story, really classic American writer's story.
Part of this comes after the fact, though, I mean,
the essays were pretty popular, even though critics weren't fans.
The essays were popular with the public because he was
so candid in them. But after his death they were
(40:43):
collected into a book and they just created a stir.
People were obsessed with with the crack up essays, and
it did sort of help shift Fitzgerald's reputation, even though
he was immensely successful during his lifetime, he kind of
a reputation of somebody who was just writing what he
saw a voice of his of his generation, like a
(41:06):
chronicler um, instead of becoming a serious author. And they
also sort of helped shift the perception of him as
somebody who was self absorbed into somebody who was just
self aware. He could he could reflect on all that
he saw around him, he could engage in it, but
he could observe it from afar too. They started that
(41:30):
shift in his reputation. The other thing that apparently these
these essays helped start was the great age of autobiographical writing.
These essays don't seem strange today, no, not at all.
Kind of tame actually, I mean, he doesn't go into
all of he doesn't talk about his marriage, drinking money,
(41:54):
none of this kind of his feelings in this sensation
of emptiness that he was experiencing this before that, or
if they did, it was not you know, widely publicized
and widely read, and certainly did not create like big
waves of excitement and discussion amongst readers and critics. So
(42:14):
it's it really is interesting that he ushered in this
whole new sort of genre of writing, confessional writing, autobiographical essays. Um.
I mean some of the stuff that makes up the
great literary magazines of today still. Um. So that's sort
of a sad last few years for Fitzgerald. But the
(42:37):
very last few years didn't seem like things were maybe
looking up a little bit. Um. He went back to
Hollywood and had another go at screenwriting, and he got
over that writer's block. He started churning out short stories again.
He had the first draft of a novel, The Last Tycoon,
(42:57):
which I love. I have not read the Last Take.
I love that book and he talks a lot about
Hollywood in it, and there are some moments of imagery
where he kind of draws back the curtain from the
perfection that we see in film and what's really going
on behind the scenes. And there's one thing where he's
talking about the makeup artist covering the actress's eggs. Amon.
It just stuck with me because the imagery of it
(43:19):
is so strong and so striking. I really want a
really good film adaptation of it at some point. Well,
and I know it is considered I mean most people
think had he lived to see it published, it would
have revitalized his career in a huge way and certainly
would have placed him as a modern man again, not
a sort of relic of the twenties. Um. But he
(43:41):
also started a new romance too, with a gossip columnist,
Sheila Graham. He had gotten his drinking together for long
enough to to charm her. They kept the romance secret
from Valda, who was still in hospitals at this point.
Um and lived together, but in November of nineteen forty
(44:03):
he had a heart attack. In three weeks after that,
he had a second fatal heart attack, dying at only
age forty four. Can you imagine what else we would
have had if he had lived another twenty I mean,
I think that we have Keats at twenty five, all
sorts of writers like that. But yeah, I mean, especially
with such a new, such a different work on the
(44:27):
horizon for him, and what um renewed respect and interest
in his writing would have wrought in his life. Yeah,
it's certainly interesting to think about. UM. Zelda lived on
for a few more years, and apparently it was pretty quiet, yeah,
(44:47):
considering considering the rest of her life, I mean, interspersed
with relapses, but she kept up her her artistic pursuits too.
She wrote an incomplete second novel, choreographed ballets, she kept painting,
and she became devoutly religious too. Um and claimed that
(45:09):
she could not remember most of the twenties thanks to
her electric shock therapy. Um, which may be a blessing
or occurred. I don't know. I guess at least she
would have known her life ends truly tragically though. In
late nineteen she returned to Highland Hospital, which is in Asheville,
(45:32):
North Carolina. And uh, just a few months after that,
a kitchen fire tour through the building. Nine women had
been locked inside and died, including Zelda. She was identified
by a slipper that was under her body. Um. I've
actually seen the historic marker for this hospital in Asheville. Yeah,
(45:57):
it's just driving along the road and then there's the
Highland Hospital marker. Um, so does the marker mentioned Zelda. Yes, yeah,
she's She's the the reason for the marker. But again
a sad, sad end for both members of this relationship.
(46:19):
They were buried together, as it seems fitting St. Patrick's
Day nineteen Zelda was buried next to Scott in Maryland,
and I got a good way to sort of wrap
things up, since that is going on the sad train.
Here at the end um is a quote from their
granddaughter Eleanor Lanahan, and she wrote, quote, they symbolize zestful youth,
(46:44):
and the country has daified youth ever since. And they
made celebrity in our fascination with it stylish. So it's
not a happy, happy quote or something. But I think
it is so true and that is what people take
away from their lives. And I think why so many
listeners have requested them and um, that's that's the lens
(47:08):
through which we remember them. Yeah, I mean, I think
they represent an iconic and important shift in public consciousness
and how we consume the arts. Uh you know, I
mean on the negative angle of that, you could say
without them, we might not be where we're at with
reality TV. Um, But you know, it was one of
(47:28):
the first times where the creators were just as important
as the stories they were telling, because their life stories
seem just as exciting and the stories reflected their lives
so clearly. So, Oh, I've gotten Zelda Zelda interesting to
read about, interesting, so fascinating pictures of them too, And
(47:49):
and since we don't do too many twentieth century topics,
or at least haven't in the past, don't usually have
that opportunity. But there's so many pictures of them and uh,
everything from the f Scott in drag Priston. But I
find of Zelda pictures really interesting, going from these little
(48:09):
like that Ms Zelda say or the sponsor of the
rotc at Auburn or something of nice little oval shaped
portrait with her bob to the later pictures where she's
in her ballet flipping yeah, ready to go. Very it
is a very strange. It tells a very strange story,
(48:31):
and it it feels almost like someone that's in a
costume all the time. Um. And I think it's interesting
because I in the public consciousness, we do think of
them in terms of the Roaring twenties, and you know,
that sort of magical golden time of their lives where
it was parties, parties, parties and fabulousness. We don't really
hear so much about like her start as a Southern
(48:52):
belle debutante and their unfortunate ends. We kind of just
cut out that decade where the success was happening. Really
not even though it's like yeah, and it's it's kind
of fascinating. So I think it's it really sort of
does them as service to give them a fuller picture,
even if it's not all exactly sunshine and rainbows. Hey, Sarah,
(49:14):
do you want to take a moment to talk about
our sponsor? Okay? So Jack Reads has really quickly become
the premier online shopping destination for guy's And here's why
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because little price is ridiculous. Don't do it? Uh. They
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You can get stuff like Converse vans, which frankly, I've
(49:36):
been wearing for so long it could be a history
podcast on its own. You brought the Converse too. I
do wear a lot of Converse, Penguin and Busted teas.
And shopping is ridiculously simple. All of the styles are
already curated by a buyer that has style knowledge, so
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at Jack threads dot com. So to get that special deal,
go to www dot jack threads dot com slash history
and you'll get that whole waiting list and be ushered
right into the club. All right, what do we have
on the plate for listener meal today? So first of all,
(50:22):
we have a beautiful drawing. It's done by listener Gracie.
She's age nine and her dad John send us the
picture from Victoria, Canada. And it's a picture of Amelia Earhart.
It's awesome. It's awesome. Holly is duly impressed. Uh. There
is Amelia Earhart, there's her plane, there's some flowers and
(50:44):
airport sign, the sun and Fred Noonan who is holding
a model of alcohol, the good one. It's quite charming.
Thank you Gracie. It's a lovely portrait. I'll have to
take a picture of it to put on our social
media and thank John for sending it along to um.
We also got a cool picture of Impress Cecy. I
(51:06):
think you love her, don't you, Hollie Holly. As you
guys who listened to the the Underwear episode, people just
think of the underwear lady. You know that she's she's
very interested in historic costume and um costume design and
Empress CC does have a lovely gown. This postcard is
(51:27):
from listener Natalie and Honolulu. She had gone on vacation
with her husband and stopped by the Empress CC museum.
And that's always really cool when we hear from listeners
who have been inspired to go to a museum, check
out a historic site for themselves. Dress is pretty. And
(51:47):
then finally, I wanted to inaugurate Holly and this listener meal,
so listen. While Devilina and I haven't done it for
a really long time, I'm gonna have one to get
you ready. And then how a big list that I've
been storing up so we can do that. We can
do that maybe next week. UM. One of the coolest
listener mail segments is when listeners tell us what they're
(52:11):
doing while they're listening to the podcast, and people have
all sorts of amazing jobs, or they are traveling in
cool places. Listener Amanda wrote in to say that while
she's listening, she's analyzing surface fronts and pressure every three
hours for all of North America because she's a meteorologist.
(52:33):
That's super cool, really cool, so thank you. She especially
liked the five Historical Storms episode Core obvious reasons. Um,
that will be a fun segment to kick off again.
And whenever we do one, people start writing in with
new interesting examples. So thank you everybody for sending mail.
(52:56):
If you want to check us out on Twitter, we're
still at Missed in History. Were also on Facebook and
I guess Polly will be joining me there, yes, indeed
soon and then uh Tracy'll be taken over with posts
in a few more weeks for me, but it will
be fine. I've not wanted to post on the rerun
episodes of things have been a little little quiet quiet
(53:19):
on social medialy, get back up and be sociable. We'll
be back. And if you want to learn more about
one of these famous x fats from the nineteen twenties,
we do have an article on Pablo Cosso fantastic, so
you can check that out reading about Pablo, who, as
you guys know by now, is my seat mate here
(53:40):
in the studio heard from a lot of folks saying,
I guess science podcast listeners who said that Julie had
sometimes mentioned Picasso and I have Tesla. You have Tesla,
so if you want to learn about that or anything else,
You can come and visit our website and type in
almost anything you're braking conjuring you will turn up all
manner of information. And that website is how stuff Works
(54:03):
dot com m. For more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com m
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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