Meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald. Created and performed by Larry Vanderveer, R and E Arts, 2005.

Meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald is a DVD of a one-man show not unlike Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain Tonight. In this case, we are imagining author F. Scott Fitzgerald on stage in 1940 telling us something of his life and works. There are many revelations and interpretations that may help us get an appreciation of this reformed alcoholic who has become recognized as an author of genius.

From the beginning he confesses three things: He lived the life recorded in his novels, he has not had a drink in two years, and he is trying again to make it as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

First he throws in a little about his Hollywood experiences. His first time there he was involved in the writing of one screenplay, Three Comrades. Joseph Mankewicz told him he could not write dialogue, which is somewhat ironic. But, then, film perhaps is a different medium from the written story. His short story “Crazy Sunday” is based on a tea at Irving Thalberg’s. Long after Zelda was unfaithful to him, he had an affair with a young actress Lois Moran. Needless to say, some of that worked its way into Tender is the Night. His short story “Babylon Revisited” tells us something of his relationship with his only daughter, Scottie, of whom he is very proud.

He speaks a little of his experience at Princeton, which, of course, is the setting for his first novel, This Side of Paradise. He says Harvard men are all brain, Yale men are all brawn, and Princeton men the laziest. Though Anthony Patch in The Beautiful and Damned is also based on Fitzgerald, that Harvard grad is more of a thinker than the shallow and “hulking” Yalie Tom Buchanan of The Great Gatsby. Those stereotypes do come through in his works.

He describes quite a bit of his relationship with Hemingway. The incident described in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” with “Julian” envying the rich, was originally published using Fitzgerald’s name, but he claims Hemingway delivered the reply to someone else. Still, he confesses that, “I have forgiven the rich for being rich.”

Hemingway’s approval was important to him. Four years after he asked him about Tender is the Night, Hemingway wrote him in some detail about how much he liked it. Even four years later, that encouraged him. Edmund Wilson, a college classmate, he says, was his critical conscience. Hemingway was his literary conscience. And his European friend Gerald Murphy was his social conscience. (Murphy appears as Dick Diver in Tender is the Night.)

He claims that Hemingway “stole” the ending of The Sun Also Rises from chapter 5 of The Great Gatsby. When I checked this out, I think he may have meant A Farewell to Arms, though they are hardly identical. The two writers do have a similar style.

He wraps up his talk with a humorous story. He heard that a theater in Los Angeles was putting on a stage version of his short story “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” He and his date, Sheila Graham, were dressed to the nines. When they arrived at the theater, it was closed. They found a black box type theater with about fifteen benches on the second floor. It was a student production. When he introduced himself, one of the interns said, “I though he was dead.”

There are many other clever, humorous, and confessional observations. Vanderveer keeps his Fitzgerald going. It is interesting to hear him talk about Zelda. In spite of his various affairs and even the inspiration that Sheila Graham was to his recovery from alcoholism, Zelda was his one true and “fated” love. His college classmate quoted in Boats Against the Current, said that Zelda is “the role model for all the female characters in his novels.” This Fitzgerald would not disagree.