John Steinbeck in 1939 Born

Foray into Hollywood and Tender Is the Night[edit]

Fitzgerald's 1927 affair with Lois Moran further strained his relationship with Zelda.

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. He agreed, moving into a studio-owned bungalow in January 1927. He soon met and began an affair with the 17 year-old starlet Lois Moran. Jealous of the attention Fitzgerald gave Moran, Zelda burned her own clothing in a self destructive act.^[85] 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 further exacerbated the Fitzgeralds' marital difficulties, and they left Hollywood after two months.^[86][87][88]

They then rented "Ellerslie", a mansion near Wilmington, Delaware until 1929. Fitzgerald tried to continue working on his fourth novel, but by this point it had become clear that Zelda had an extreme mental illness as her behavior grew increasingly erratic. In 1930, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.^{[note 2]} The couple travelled to Switzerland, where she was treated at a mental clinic. They returned to America in September 1931.^[35] In February 1932, she was hospitalized at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.^[90]

During this time, Fitzgerald rented the "La Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson, Maryland to work on his latest novel, the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist who becomes smitten 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. Fitzgerald was extremely protective of his "material" (i.e., their life together).

In 1932, Zelda wrote and sent to Scribner's her own fictional version of their lives in Europe, Save Me the Waltz (1932). Infuriated by what he saw as theft of his source material, Fitzgerald labeled Zelda "plagiaristic"^[91] and a "third-rate writer".^[91] He was able to make some changes prior to the novel's publication, and convinced her doctors to keep her from writing any more about their relationship.

Fitzgerald's own novel was finally published in 1934 as Tender Is the Night. The novel received mixed opinions from critics, most were thrown off by its three-part structure, and many felt that Fitzgerald had not lived up to their expectations.^[92] Hemingway and others have argued that such overly harsh criticism stemmed from superficial readings of the material and from Depression-era America's reaction to Fitzgerald's status as a symbol of Jazz Age excess.^[93] The novel did not sell well upon publication, with only 12,000 sold in the first 3 months,^[94] but, like the earlier The Great Gatsby, the book's reputation has since risen significantly.^[95]

Decline[edit]

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

—Ernest Hemingway on Fitzgerald's loss of talent in A Moveable Feast (1964)^[77]

With the arrival of the Great Depression, many of Fitzgerald's works were seen as elitist and materialistic. In 1933, Matthew Josephson scolded Fitzgerald: "There are ever so many Americans, we recall, who can't be drinking champagne from morning to night, can't ever go to Princeton or Montpar-nasse or even Greenwich Village for their finishing process."^[96][97]

However, Fitzgerald began to feel the effects of the Depression himself. By the mid 1930s, his popularity and fame had greatly decreased, and consequently, he had begun to suffer financially. Public demand had decreased so much for Fitzgerald's works that by 1936, his book royalties barely amounted to $80.^[98] The cost of his opulent lifestyle and Zelda's medical bills quickly caught up, placing Fitzgerald in constant financial trouble. He relied on loans from his literary agent, Harold Ober, and his publisher Perkins. When Ober decided not to continue advancing money to Fitzgerald, the author severed ties with his longtime friend and agent.^{[note 3][99]}

Fitzgerald, an alcoholic since college, became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, which would undermine his health by the late 1930s. His alcoholism resulted in cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, angina, dyspnea, and syncopal spells.^[100] 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 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". In the 1930s, Fitzgerald had told Hemingway of his fear of dying from "congestion of the lungs."^[77] Others have suggested that the writer's hemorrhage was caused by bleeding from esophageal varices.^[101]

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."^[90] In 1935, Fitzgerald wrote Perkins, admitting that alcohol was disrupting his writing, limiting his "mental speed." From 1933 to 1937, Fitzgerald was hospitalized for alcoholism 8 times and arrested several times.^[100] Fitzgerald's deteriorating mental state and drinking habits were captured publicly in an article published by Michel Mok titled "The Other Side of Paradise, Scott Fitzgerald, 40, Engulfed in Despair", first published in the New York Post, September 25, 1936.^[102] The article is considered to have caused considerable damage to Fitzgerald's reputation and his mental state, allegedly pushing him to attempt suicide after reading it.^[103]

By that year, Zelda had become extremely violent and emotionally distressed, and Fitzgerald had her placed in the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.^[104] Nearly bankrupt, Fitzgerald spent most of 1936 and 1937 living in various hotels near Asheville.^[105] His attempts to write and sell more short stories faltered.^[35] He later referred to this period of decline in his life as "The Crack-Up" in the short story.^[106] Shortly after the release of this story, Hemingway referred to Fitzgerald as "poor Scott" in his short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro".^[107] Zelda's institutionalization further deteriorated what was left of their marriage. The last time the two saw each other was on a 1939 trip to Cuba.^[98] During this trip, Fitzgerald was assaulted when he tried to stop a cockfight and returned to the United States so intoxicated and exhausted that he was hospitalized.^[108]