CRAZY SUNDAYS: F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood

by Aaron Latham ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 1971

Crazy Sunday was the story Fitzgerald wrote about Hollywood eight years before he died when he was still imbued with ""its color and scale, its fantasy, the sadness of the occasional fine mind caught in all this falseness and shoddy"" (Mizener). Before he was through of course it was all pretty shoddy but Mr. Latham, a Washington Post reporter, has had access to the studio files and has interpreted Fitzgerald's work on various scripts and combined it with a biographical sketch of these last years. There's a flashback on his earlier work before he went out there to stay at first ""sick sober"" and at the end sick drunk and there are enough of Fitzgerald's own epitaphs (""Once the phial was full -- here is the bottle it came in"") to qualify this as more than marginal reading for the devotee. Certainly one is moved by the final phase when Fitzgerald had just completed his best original (Cosmopolitan), was trying to complete The Last Tycoon, and was running his last race against a heart that had run ""its' entire race."" Anita Loos, Dorothy Parker, even Helen Hayes contribute to the further memorabilia but it's Fitzgerald who really justifies the book: ""I used to have a beautiful talent once, baby. It used to be wonderful feeling it was there."" It still is -- Miss Mayfield (to follow) to the contrary.

Pub Date: March 19, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION