Fitzgerald, F Scott

Fitzgerald, F(rancis) Scott (Key)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

(born Sept. 24, 1896, St. Paul, Minn., U.S.—died Dec. 21, 1940, Hollywood, Calif.) U.S. novelist and short-story writer. Fitzgerald attended Princeton University but dropped out with bad grades. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre (1900–48), daughter of a respected Alabama judge. His works, including the early novels This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922) and the story collections Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) and All the Sad Young Men (1926), capture the Jazz Age's vulgarity and dazzling promise. His brilliant The Great Gatsby (1925; film, 1926, 1949, 1974; TV movie 2001), a story of American wealth and corruption, was eventually acclaimed one of the century's greatest novels. In 1924 Scott and Zelda became part of the expatriate community on the French Riviera, the setting of Tender Is the Night (1934; film, 1962). His fame and prosperity proved disorienting to them both, and he became seriously alcoholic. Zelda never fully recovered from a mental breakdown in 1932 and spent most of her remaining years in a sanitarium. In 1937 Scott moved to Hollywood to write film scripts; the experience inspired the unfinished The Last Tycoon (1941; film, 1976). He died of a heart attack at age 44.