Doan NT: Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 - December 21, 1940), known professionally as F. Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist and short story writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. While he achieved limited success in his lifetime, he is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also authored 4 collections of short stories, as well as 164 short stories in magazines during his lifetime.

Early life

Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to an upper-middle-class family, Fitzgerald was named after his famous second cousin, three times removed on his father's side, Francis Scott Key, but was always known as plain Scott Fitzgerald. He was also named after his deceased sister, Louise Scott Fitzgerald, one of two sisters who died shortly before his birth. "Well, three months before I was born," he wrote as an adult, "my mother lost her other two children ... I think I started then to be a writer."

His father was Edward Fitzgerald, of Irish and English ancestry, who had moved to St. Paul from Maryland after the Civil War, and was described as "a quiet gentlemanly man with beautiful Southern manners." His mother was Mary "Molly" McQuillan Fitzgerald, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who had made his fortune in the wholesale grocery business. Edward Fitzgerald was the first cousin once removed of Mary Surratt, hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

Scott Fitzgerald spent the first decade of his childhood primarily in Buffalo, New York, occasionally in West Virginia (1898=1901 and 1903-1908) where his father worked for Procter & Gamble, with a short interlude in Syracuse, New York, (between January 1901 and September 1903). Edward Fitzgerald had earlier worked as a wicker furniture salesman; he joined Procter & Gamble when the business failed. His parents, both Catholic, sent Fitzgerald to two Catholic schools on the West Side of Buffalo, first Holy Angels Convent (1903-1904, now disused) and then Nardin Academy (1905-1908). His formative years in Buffalo revealed him to be a boy of unusual intelligence with a keen early interest in literature. His doting mother ensured that her son had all the advantages of an upper-middle-class upbringing. Her inheritance and donations from an aunt allowed the family to live a comfortable lifestyle. In a rather unconventional style of parenting, Fitzgerald attended Holy Angels with the peculiar arrangement that he go for only half a day-and was allowed to choose which half.

In 1908, his father was fired from Procter & Gamble, and the family returned to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy in St. Paul from 1908 to 1911. When he was 13, he saw his first piece of writing appear in print-a detective story published in the school newspaper. In 1911, when Fitzgerald was 15 years old, his parents sent him to the Newman School, a prestigious Catholic prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey. Fitzgerald played on the 1912 Newman football team. At Newman, he met Father Sigourney Fay, who noticed his incipient talent with the written word and encouraged him to pursue his literary ambitions.

After graduating from the Newman School in 1913, Fitzgerald decided to stay in New Jersey to continue his artistic development at Princeton University. He tried out for the college football team, but was cut the first day of practice. He firmly dedicated himself at Princeton to honing his craft as a writer, and became friends with future critics and writers Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. He wrote for the Princeton Triangle Club, the Nassau Lit, and the Princeton Tiger. He also was involved in the American Whig-Cliosophic Society, which ran the Nassau Lit. His absorption in the Triangle-a kind of musical-comedy society-led to his submission of a novel to Charles Scribner's Sons where the editor praised the writing but ultimately rejected the book. Four of the University's clubs sent him bids at midyear, and he chose the University Cottage Club (where Fitzgerald's desk and writing materials are still displayed in its library) known as "the 'Big Four' club that was most committed to the ideal of the fashionable gentleman."

Fitzgerald's writing pursuits at Princeton came at the expense of his coursework, however, causing him to be placed on academic probation, and in 1917 he dropped out of university to join the Army. During the winter of 1917, Fitzgerald was stationed at Fort Leavenworth and was a student of future United States President and General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower whom he intensely disliked. Worried that he might die in the War with his literary dreams unfulfilled, Fitzgerald hastily wrote The Romantic Egotist in the weeks before reporting for duty-and, although Scribners rejected it, the reviewer noted his novel's originality and encouraged Fitzgerald to submit more work in the future.

It was while attending Princeton that Fitzgerald met Chicago socialite and debutante Ginevra King on a visit back home in St. Paul. Immediately infatuated with her, according to Mizner, Fitzgerald "remained devoted to Ginevra as long as she would allow him to," and wrote to her "daily the incoherent, expressive letters all young lovers write." She would become his inspiration for the character of Isabelle Borgé, Amory Blaine's first love in This Side of Paradise, for Daisy in The Great Gatsby, and several other characters in his novels and short stories.

Zelda

Zelda Sayre in 1917

Fitzgerald was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry and assigned to Camp Sheridan outside of Montgomery, Alabama. While at a country club, Fitzgerald met and fell in love with Zelda Sayre (1900-1948), the daughter of Alabama Supreme Court justice Anthony D. Sayre and the "golden girl", in Fitzgerald's terms, of Montgomery society. The war ended in 1918, before Fitzgerald was ever deployed. Upon his discharge he moved to New York City hoping to launch a career in advertising that would be lucrative enough to convince Zelda to marry him. He worked for the Barron Collier advertising agency, living in a single room at 200 Claremont Avenue in the Morningside Heights neighborhood on Manhattan's west side.

Zelda accepted his marriage proposal, but after some time and despite working at an advertising firm and writing short stories, he was unable to convince her that he would be able to support her, leading her to break off the engagement. Fitzgerald returned to his parents' house at 599 Summit Avenue, on Cathedral Hill, in St. Paul, to revise The Romantic Egoist, recast as This Side of Paradise, a semi-autobiographical account of Fitzgerald's undergraduate years at Princeton. Fitzgerald was so short of money that he took up a job repairing car roofs. His revised novel was accepted by Scribner's in the fall of 1919 and was published on March 26, 1920 and became an instant success, selling 41,075 copies in the first year. It launched Fitzgerald's career as a writer and provided a steady income suitable to Zelda's needs. They resumed their engagement and were married at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Their daughter and only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921.

"The Jazz Age"

F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1921

Paris in the 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. Fitzgerald made several excursions to Europe, mostly Paris and the French Riviera, and became friends with many members of the American expatriate community in Paris, notably Ernest Hemingway. Fitzgerald's friendship with Hemingway was quite effusive, as many of Fitzgerald's relationships would prove to be. Hemingway did not get on well with Zelda, however, and in addition to describing her as "insane" in his memoir A Moveable Feast, Hemingway claimed that Zelda "encouraged her husband to drink so as to distract Fitzgerald from his work on his novel," so he could work on the short stories he sold to magazines to help support their lifestyle. Like most professional authors at the time, Fitzgerald supplemented his income by writing short stories for such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire, and sold his stories and novels to Hollywood studios. This "whoring," as Fitzgerald and, subsequently, Hemingway called these sales, was a sore point in the two authors' friendship. Fitzgerald claimed that he would first write his stories in an 'authentic' manner, then rewrite them to put in the "twists that made them into salable magazine stories."

Fitzgerald wrote frequently for The Saturday Evening Post.
This issue from May 1, 1920, containing the short story
"Bernice Bobs Her Hair," was the first with Fitzgerald's name on the cover.

Although Fitzgerald's passion lay in writing novels, only his first novel sold well enough to support the opulent lifestyle that he and Zelda adopted as New York celebrities. (The Great Gatsby, now considered to be his masterpiece, did not become popular until after Fitzgerald's death.) Because of this lifestyle, as well as the bills from Zelda's medical care when they came, Fitzgerald was constantly in financial trouble and often required loans from his literary agent, Harold Ober, and his editor at Scribner's, Maxwell Perkins. When Ober decided not to continue advancing money to Fitzgerald, the author severed ties with his longtime friend and agent. (Fitzgerald offered a good-hearted and apologetic tribute to this support in the late short story "Financing Finnegan.")

Fitzgerald began working on his fourth novel during the late 1920s but was sidetracked by financial difficulties that necessitated his writing commercial short stories, and by the schizophrenia that struck Zelda in 1930. Her emotional health remained fragile for the rest of her life. In February 1932, she was hospitalized at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland. During this time, Fitzgerald rented the "La Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson, Maryland to work on his latest book, the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist who falls in love with and marries Nicole Warren, one of his patients. The book went through many versions, the first of which was to be a story of matricide. Some critics have seen the book as a thinly veiled autobiographical novel recounting Fitzgerald's problems with his wife, the corrosive effects of wealth and a decadent lifestyle, his own egoism and self-confidence, and his continuing alcoholism. Indeed, Fitzgerald was extremely protective of his "material" (i.e., their life together). When Zelda wrote and sent to Scribner's her own fictional version of their lives in Europe, Save Me the Waltz, Fitzgerald was angry and was able to make some changes prior to the novel's publication, and convince her doctors to keep her from writing any more about what he called his "material," which included their relationship. His book was finally published in 1934 as Tender Is the Night. Critics who had waited nine years for the followup to The Great Gatsby had mixed opinions about the novel. Most were thrown off by its three-part structure and many felt that Fitzgerald had not lived up to their expectations. The novel did not sell well upon publication but, like the earlier Gatsby, the book's reputation has since risen significantly. Fitzgerald's alcoholism and financial difficulties, in addition to Zelda's mental illness, made for difficult years in Baltimore. He was hospitalized nine times at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and his friend H. L. Mencken noted in a 1934 letter that "The case of F. Scott Fitzgerald has become distressing. He is boozing in a wild manner and has become a nuisance."

Hollywood years

In 1926, Fitzgerald was invited by producer John W. Considine, Jr., to temporarily relocate to Hollywood in order to write a flapper comedy for United Artists. Scott and Zelda moved into a studio-owned bungalow in January of the following year and Fitzgerald soon met and began an affair with Lois Moran. The starlet became a temporary muse for the author and he rewrote Rosemary Hoyt, one of the central characters in Tender is the Night, (who had been a male in earlier drafts) to closely mirror her. The trip exacerbated the couple's marital difficulties, and they left Hollywood after two months. In the ensuing years, Zelda became increasingly violent and emotionally distressed, and in 1936, Fitzgerald had her placed in the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.

Although he reportedly found movie work degrading, Fitzgerald continued to struggle financially and entered into a lucrative exclusive deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1937, that necessitated him moving to Hollywood, where he earned his highest annual income up to that point: $29,757.87. He also began a high-profile live-in affair with movie columnist Sheilah Graham. The projects Fitzgerald worked on for the studio included a never filmed draft for Gone with the Wind, and revisions on Madame Curie, for which he received no credits. He also spent time during this period working on his fifth and final novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, published posthumously as The Last Tycoon, based on film executive Irving Thalberg. In 1939, MGM terminated the contract, and Fitzgerald became a freelance screenwriter. During his work on Winter Carnival, Fitzgerald went on an alcoholic binge and was treated by New York psychiatrist Richard H. Hoffmann.

From 1939 until his death in 1940, Fitzgerald mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through the character of Pat Hobby in a sequence of 17 short stories, later collected as "The Pat Hobby Stories," which garnered many positive reviews. The Pat Hobby Stories were originally published in Esquire between January 1940 and July 1941, even after Fitzgerald's death. US Census records show his official address at this time to be the estate of Edward Everett Horton in Encino, California in the San Fernando Valley.

Illness and death

Fitzgerald, an alcoholic since college, became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, undermining his health by the late 1930s. According to Zelda's biographer, Nancy Milford, Fitzgerald claimed that he had contracted tuberculosis, but Milford dismisses it as a pretext to cover his drinking problems. However, Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli contends that Fitzgerald did in fact have recurring tuberculosis, and according to Nancy Milford, Fitzgerald biographer Arthur Mizener said that Fitzgerald suffered a mild attack of tuberculosis in 1919, and in 1929 he had "what proved to be a tubercular hemorrhage." Some have said that the writer's hemorrhage was caused by bleeding from esophageal varices.

Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks in the late 1930s. After the first, in Schwab's Drug Store, he was ordered by his doctor to avoid strenuous exertion. He moved in with Sheilah Graham, who lived in Hollywood on North Hayworth Avenue, one block east of Fitzgerald's apartment on North Laurel Avenue. Fitzgerald had two flights of stairs to climb to his apartment; Graham's was on the ground floor. On the night of December 20, 1940, Fitzgerald and Graham attended the premiere of This Thing Called Love starring Rosalind Russell and Melvyn Douglas. As the two were leaving the Pantages Theater, Fitzgerald experienced a dizzy spell and had trouble leaving the theater; upset, he said to Graham, "They think I am drunk, don't they?"

The following day, as Fitzgerald ate a candy bar and made notes in his newly arrived Princeton Alumni Weekly, Graham saw him jump from his armchair, grab the mantelpiece, gasp, and fall to the floor. She ran to the manager of the building, Harry Culver, founder of Culver City. Upon entering the apartment to assist Fitzgerald, he stated, "I'm afraid he's dead." Fitzgerald had died of a heart attack at age 44. Dr. Clarence H. Nelson, Fitzgerald's physician, signed the death certificate. Fitzgerald's body was moved to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary.

Zelda and Fitzgerald's grave in Rockville, Maryland,
inscribed with the final sentence of The Great Gatsby

Among the attendees at a visitation held at a funeral home was Dorothy Parker, who reportedly cried and murmured "the poor son-of-a-bitch," a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. His body was transported to Maryland, where his funeral was attended by twenty or thirty people in Bethesda; among the attendees were his only child, Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith (then age 19), and his editor, Maxwell Perkins.

At the time of his death, the Roman Catholic Church declined the family's request that Fitzgerald, a non-practicing Catholic celebrated for his risqué and provocative Jazz Age writings, be buried in the family plot in the Catholic Saint Mary's Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland. Fitzgerald was originally buried in Rockville Union Cemetery. Zelda Fitzgerald died in 1948, in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. In 1975, Scottie successfully petitioned to have the earlier decision revisited and her parents' remains were moved to the family plot in Saint Mary's.

Fitzgerald died before he could complete The Last Tycoon. His manuscript, which included extensive notes for the unwritten part of the novel's story, was edited by his friend, the literary critic Edmund Wilson, and published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. In 1994 the book was reissued under the original title The Love of The Last Tycoon, which is now agreed to have been Fitzgerald's preferred title.

In 2015, an editor of The Strand Magazine discovered and published for the first time an 8,000-word manuscript, dated July 1939, of a Fitzgerald short-story titled "Temperature." Long thought lost, Fitzgerald's manuscript for the story was found in the rare books and manuscript archives at Princeton University, Fitzgerald's alma mater. As described by Strand, "Temperature," set in Los Angeles, tells the story of the failure, illness and decline of a once successful writer and his life among Hollywood idols, while suffering lingering fevers and indulging in light-hearted romance. The protagonist is a 31-year-old self-destructive, alcoholic named Emmet Monsen, whom Fitzgerald describes in his story as "notably photogenic, slender and darkly handsome." It tells of his personal relationships as his health declines with various doctors, personal assistants, and a Hollywood actress who is his lover. "As for that current dodge 'No reference to any living character is intended' - no use even trying that," Fitzgerald writes at the beginning of the story. Fitzgerald bibliographies have previously listed the story, sometimes referred to as "The Women in the House," as "unpublished," or as "Lost - mentioned in correspondence, but no surviving transcript or manuscript."

Legacy

Fitzgerald's work has inspired writers ever since he was first published. The publication of The Great Gatsby prompted T. S. Eliot to write, in a letter to Fitzgerald, "It seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James ..." Don Birnam, the protagonist of Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend, says to himself, referring to The Great Gatsby, "There's no such thing ... as a flawless novel. But if there is, this is it." In letters written in the 1940s, J. D. Salinger expressed admiration of Fitzgerald's work, and his biographer Ian Hamilton wrote that Salinger even saw himself for some time as "Fitzgerald's successor." Richard Yates, a writer often compared to Fitzgerald, called The Great Gatsby "the most nourishing novel [he] read ... a miracle of talent ... a triumph of technique." It was written in a New York Times editorial after his death that Fitzgerald "was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a generation ... He might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle years they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction."

Into the 21st century, millions of copies of The Great Gatsby and his other works have been sold, and Gatsby, a constant best-seller, is required reading in many high school and college classes.

Fitzgerald is a 2009 inductee of the New Jersey Hall of Fame. He is also the namesake of the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, home of the radio broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (24 tháng 9 năm 1896 - 21 tháng 12 năm 1940) là một nhà văn Mỹ, nổi tiếng với các tác phẩm về "thời đại nhạc Jazz". Ông sinh ra trong một gia đình gốc Ireland Công giáo. Năm 1913 Fitzgerald vào Đại học Princeton nhưng sắp tốt nghiệp thì bỏ học vào lính. Thời gian phục vụ trong quân đội Fitzgerald bắt đầu viết cuốn tiểu thuyết đầu tiên This Side of Paradise (Phía bên kia địa đàng, 1920). Sau khi xuất bản cuốn tiểu thuyết này Fitzgerald cưới vợ và bắt đầu nổi tiếng. Cũng trong thời gian này ông in tập truyện ngắn đầu tay Flappers and Philosophers (Những cô nàng và những triết gia, 1920). Tiểu thuyết thứ hai The Beautiful and Damned (Đẹp và đáng nguyền rủa, 1922) kể về cuộc hôn nhân khổ sở của hai con người tài năng và quyến rũ. Năm 1923 ông viết và dựng vở kịch Vegatable (Rau cỏ, 1923) bị thua lỗ nhưng sau đó viết tiểu thuyết The Great Gatsby (Đại gia Gatsby, 1925) được giới phê bình đánh giá là kiệt tác, là một trong những tiểu thuyết hay nhất nước Mỹ.

Tuân thủ nguyên tắc của "thế hệ mất mát" (The Lost Generation), Fitzgerald sang sống ở châu Âu (Ý) nhưng hôn nhân tan vỡ, đời sống riêng suy sụp, vợ mắc bệnh tâm thần còn ông là người nghiện rượu. Tiểu thuyết Tender is the Night (Đêm dịu dàng, 1934) là sự thể hiện lối thoát về châu Âu. Tập truyện Top at Reveille (Tín hiệu thức tỉnh, 1935) là những thổ lộ tâm can của nhà văn về sự đổ vỡ. Cũng giống như nhân vật chính của truyện Crazy Sunday (Ngày chủ nhật cuồng điên) trong tập trên, Fitzgerald quay trở về Hollywood trong tâm trạng thất vọng và bệnh hoạn. Ông mất ngày 21 tháng 12 năm 1940, để lại một cuốn tiểu thuyết đang viết dở The Last Tycoon (Trùm tư bản cuối cùng, 1941).

Sau Chiến tranh thế giới thứ hai người ta đua nhau tìm đọc tác phẩm của Fitzgerald. Năm 1945 nhà văn và nhà phê bình Edmund Wilson tập hợp những bài viết lẻ, những hồi ức, thư từ của Fitzgerald thành một tập sách có tựa đề The Crack-Up (Sụp đổ). Rất nhiều nhà văn nổi tiếng viết về Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway có một liên hệ phức tạp với Fitzgerald qua nhiều năm và đã viết về Fitzgerald trong nhiều tác phẩm.

Tiểu sử

Cha ông, Edward, là chủ một doanh nghiệp nhỏ. Mẹ ông, bà Mollie McQuillan, là con gái trong một gia đình nhập cư người Ireland làm giàu bằng nghề buôn thực phẩm. Nhờ gia đình McQuillan mà gia đình Fitzgerald sống khá sung túc ở vùng Summit Avenue, vốn được xem là nơi hội tụ của các hộ giàu kếch sù khác. Tuy nhà ông sống chỉ cách khu nhà giàu có vài căn nhưng gia đình ông chưa bao giờ được xếp vào cùng đẳng cấp với họ.

Thời trẻ, Scott Fitzgerald kết giao nhiều với con cái giới thượng lưu. Năm 1908, ông vào học trường St. Paul Academy và đạt kết quả xuất sắc trong lĩnh vực tranh luận và thể thao. Năm 1909, tác phẩm The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage (Bí ẩn nhà Raymond) được đăng trên tạp chí Now & Then của St. Paul Academy. Ngoài ra, ông còn sáng tác một số vở kịch và truyện ngắn trong các hoạt động ở trường.

Năm 1911, để nâng cao kết quả học tập, ông được cha mẹ gửi vào trường Newman ở Hackensack, New Jersay. Tại đây ông đã gặp Sigourney Fay, người đã tạo cảm hứng và động viên ông theo đuổi nghề viết. Từ đó ông đã có ba truyện được xuất bản trong tạp chí văn học Newman.

Năm 1913, Fitzgerald vào Đại học Princeton. Giai đoạn này ông cũng không được liệt vào hàng sinh viên ưu tú nhưng sự nghiệp viết văn có tiến triển nhiều hơn, đóng góp khá nhiều cho các ấn bản của Princeton. Năm 1917, ông tham gia quân đội, được thăng đến chức trung uý bộ binh. Ông vẫn tiếp tục viết, nhưng tác phẩm The Romantic Egotist (Tên tự tôn mơ mộng) của ông bị nhà xuất bản Charles Scribner's Sons từ chối và yêu cầu viết lại.

Cuộc đời ông rẽ sang bước ngoặt lớn vào tuổi 22, khi ông đem lòng yêu Zelda Sayre, con út của thẩm phán tòa án tối cao Alabama. Ông này phản đối hôn nhân giữa hai người, buộc Scott phải làm thế nào để đủ tài chánh chu toàn cho con gái ông thì lúc đó ông mới chịu gả. Năm 1919, Fitzgerald chuyển đến New York và làm việc cho một công ty quảng cáo, nuôi hy vọng kiếm được tiền để có được Zelda. Thế nhưng đến tháng 6/1919 Zelda đã chán cảnh đợi chờ và hủy hôn ước. Thời gian này Fitzgerald viết lại The Romantic Egotist và đã được tổng biên tập Maxwell Perkins của Scribner chấp thuận cho xuất bản. Một tuần ngay sau đó, Scott và Zelda tổ chức hôn lễ tại New York, cặp đôi nhanh chóng trở thành tâm điểm chú ý của công chúng và được xem như biểu tượng cho phong cách sống thập kỷ 1920.

Cả hai cùng nhau du lịch châu Âu khá nhiều, đặc biệt là nước Pháp. Tuy nhiên về sau cuộc sống gia đình giữa hai người không thực sự hạnh phúc. Cả hai đều lún sâu vào bia rượu, còn tài chính không còn dồi dào và ổn định để chu cấp cho mức sống xa hoa của hai người. Mặc dù This Side of Paradise (Phía bên kia địa đàng) đem lại lợi tức khá lớn nhưng các tác phẩm sau đó lại không mấy thành công. Vì thế Scott đã phải dồn tâm sức viết truyện ngắn gửi đăng cho nhiều loại tạp chí.

Một tai hoạ khác cho hôn nhân của hai người là Zelda mắc bệnh tâm thần và đột quỵ 3 lần trong khoảng từ năm 1930 đến 1934, phải chữa trị đặc biệt tại Pháp và Thụy Sĩ, rồi nhập viện ở Mỹ, đến1948 thì cô mất tại bệnh viện. Căn bệnh của Zelda đòi hỏi Scott phải ra sức chăm sóc về tinh thần lẫn tài chính trong khi ông không thể đáp ứng đủ, và cặp vợ chồng rơi vào cảnh nợ nần. Đến gần cuối đời, Scott phải lòng một nhà bình luận phim, Sheilah Graham, và có những năm tháng hoạt động sáng tạo trở lại cho đến khi ông mất ở tuổi 44.

Tác phẩm