As Ever, Scott Fitz——
(Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Harold Ober)

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1935-1937
Disaster

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462. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1307 Park Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

You will remember that I called you up on the telephone regarding the treatment for TENDER IS THE NIGHT that was made for Miriam Hopkins.* I don't think I ever sent you a copy of this treatment and I am sending one herewith.

Merritt Hulburd, who is now with United Artists, is here in New York now and is going back to Hollywood in a few days. He says by the time he gets back Miriam Hopkins will be [free] through making BECKY SHARPE and they will then decide about the possibility of Miriam Hopkins doing TENDER IS THE NIGHT.

Merritt wants to know if you would consider going out to the coast to work on TENDER IS THE NIGHT along the lines of this treatment. He says he doesn't believe Goldwyn would actually buy the picture but what they would probably like to do would be to get an option on the picture rights of TENDER IS THE NIGHT and then pay you a salary to work on the treatment. Of course you couldn't do it unless the salary was right. If you could get a fairly good salary and could live cheaply in Hollywood it might be a good chance to mend the present state of your finances.

There is nothing definite about this yet—it depends on Samuel Goldwyn and Miriam Hopkins.

Regarding the treatment, Merritt Hulburd realizes it may seem to you rather commonplace. He says, however, that to get the book done as a picture now, it would have to be done in some such way as this. Your task would be to raise this treatment out of the commonplace.

All I want you to do now is to tell me whether in the first place you think you could work with enthusiasm on the basis I have outlined above and whether conditions in Baltimore are such that you could go out to the coast this Spring.

Sincerely yours,
[Harold Ober]

January 8, 1935

Notes:

* Movie actress who specialized in dramatic roles.

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463. To Ober

TLS, 4pp. (AO)

1307 Park Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland,

January 10, 1934. [i.e., 1935]

Mr. Harold Ober, 40 East 49th Street, New York, New York.

Dear Harold:

I read the treatment of “Tender is the Night” by Mac Gown. At first, because of the coincidence of the riding incident I thought he had merely got hold of the script of our treatment (Warren's and mine) but I see I am wrong. On the whole I like the treatment, while I think it leaves out a lot of the color that Bill and I managed to put in ours it is much simpler which is an advantage. It might be possible to blend in some of our ideas into the continuity as I own all rights to our treatment. However, that is less important than the question of going to California. I hate the place like poison with a sincere hatred. It will be inconvenient in every way and I should consider it only as an emergency measure. Your letter does not suggest that I would realize any lump sum on the thing, even though it was a tremendous success and so the weekly payments to recompense me for the trip would have to be pretty big and I cannot really estimate whether it would be worth while financially until you can give me some idea what my salary would be. If, for example, it was six weeks at $1000 a week, it would be by no means worth while because I would have dispensed of a property that seems to have preserved its value for expenses, and about $3000. And I certainly do not feel inclined to dispose of “Tender of the Night” for $3000, That is what it would amount to, isn't it? I mean, if I spent $3000 I would have only $3000 over and while I am in this particular mess of debt my expenses for six weeks will certainly come to $3000.

On the contrary, if the guaranty was $2000 a week for my services, that would leave me $9000 profit and for that I believe I would, though with some regret, let the [thing] rights go, not that I think it isn't worth more than that, but because of the pressure of circumstances.

To revert for a moment to a sentence a little way back, I feel the thing has a natural longevity. If you will think of the matter you will see that the great proportion of the books of last spring are dead, perhaps perished in the films, but in any case, forgotten. “Tender is the Night” on the contrary, seems to live on and to continue to grasp the imagination of people who control the entertainment business in the same way that “Gatsby,” a whole year after publication, caught the imagination of Brady. This seems to me to be a very ponderable [question] item in the whole matter.

There are two more aspects. Do you remember in the “Beautiful and Damned” we had a clause saying if the profits grossed a certain amount I was to get a bonus? In that case it did not happen, but some such clause (if an inside opinion as to what an average profit was in a Goldwyn picture could be obtained) [it] might be something to follow up. By the way, who does he release through? Does he release through whoever he can get or does he release through any one company?

The last point on the subject is the question of a play. Whether Spafford, either alone or in conjunction with a technical expert, could do anything with the play is of course problematical. I got a most touching letter from Spafford this morning in which he expressed his determination to go on with it willy-nilly and begging me to reserve a final decision until he could show us a scenario and first act. I enclose his letter which tells its own story.

Tho I am not going to cut the early part of this letter. I see I made a mistake and all I would be selling would be an option to endure for some specified time. That, of course, changes the face of the situation but doesn't change my distaste for going to Hollywood. If Hulburd is still [there] in N.V. tell him I liked the treatment.

So glad you liked “Travel Together.” Don't forget to send me the carbon so we can get a version together to offer the movies.

Ever yours, Scott

P.S. I hope to God that money to be deposited Monday will be either by cash or certified check.

P.SS. Am writing Max that all future money + negotioations about prices should pass through you

P SS2 There have been plays which have had runs after movie rights are sold. I am writing this to Spafford to encourage him ***

Notes:

*** All insertions and the last two postscripts were added by Fitzgerald in ink.

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464. To Ober

TL, 3 pp. (AO)

1307 Park Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland,

February 1, 1935.

Dear Harold:

Enclosed find the following from Spafford (and I wish you would mail it back to me.) The man evidently has a real enthusiasm for “Tender is the Night” and anything might spring out of it. The very intensity of feeling which he has about it leads me to believe that perhaps he can do something with it. He is not a very profound character—I didn't rank him, for example, with my other protege Warren in sheer talent, but he reminds me, again and again, of Leslie Howard at the same age. Of course Leslie was on Broadway then and Spafford is still in the provinces. I gather from his letter that Constance Smith treated him rather cavalierly,* and indeed he has only a pretty pan and a lot of enthusiasm to offer so far, but I respond, naturally, to his interest in my stuff. Can you try to keep in touch with him in this matter? Something big might break from it.

Ever yours, [Scott]

P.S. Note that he wants some assurance to go on with and, if you find it in your power, please drop him a note so that he won't think that he's just wasting his time. Please do this. Whatever the effort he is making is worth, he is certainly putting plenty into it. P. S. 2. Since writing this letter I have talked to you on the phone. There isn't even a question now of the advisability of my going away. I have honestly tried to stick it out to the end, perhaps by bad means, but even that isn't in point any more, because I am half crazy with illness and worry, and in a state where each aggravation only adds to the accumulation of anxiety, strain, self pity, or what have you.

I am going conscientiously to do what repair can be done in ten days. Perhaps passages from my story which is being written out of my heart will serve to elucidate the unfortunate state of affairs at which I seem to have arrived.**

I've had no kinder friend than you during this rotten time.

Notes:

* Constance Smith was Ober's assistant.

# Possibly Fitzgerald enclosed passages from “The Intimate Strangers,” McCall's, June 1935.

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In the early spring and summer of 1935 Fitzgerald took trips to Tryon, Hendersonville, and Asheville, North Carolina, for his health. Otherwise, he was in Baltimore, staying at the Hotel Stafford or, later, the Cambridge Arms. In November 1935 he returned to Hendersonville and began writing “The Crack Up” series for Esquire.

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465. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Oak Hall Tryon, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I have your note about Robert Spafford. I have talked to him once or twice over the telephone and I'll call him tomorrow and ask him to come in and I'll have another talk with him. Constance Smith tells me she was very nice to him when he came in. I would of course have seen him but I was out.

To tell the truth, I don't at all like to tie up TENDER IS THE NIGHT with an inexperienced boy like Robert Spafford. I don't like giving options on plays anyway. I gave an option a few months ago on the dramatic rights of FEBRUARY HILL, a book which I sold and which is selling very well. I gave this option to a dramatist who has had several plays produced and who has directed plays and who is known and thought well of in the theatrical world. Since then, however, I have had a chance to sell the play to several of the biggest producers, among them Max Gordon, and [Leslie] Sidney Howard would have done the play. I gave the option because the author knew the man and urged me to do so but it certainly was a mistake.

I had a somewhat similar experience with THE FARMER TAKES A WIFE. An option was given to an inexperienced dramatist and it took me nearly two years to get this matter straightened out and get the play into the hands of Marc Connelly and Max Gordon.

It would be a much worse mistake to tie up TENDER IS THE NIGHT with a boy like Spafford who has never had an experience. I'll ask Spafford to drop in and I'll be nice to him and look over what he has done on the play. I am keeping his letter for a few days longer as there are one or two things in it that I may want to refer to.

I hope to have a letter from you tomorrow morning and I hope that we are going to be able to arrange some way that you can stay where you are for a while longer.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

February 14, 1935

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466. To Ober

ALS (pencil), 5 pp n.d.—received 2 July 1935. (AO); Turnbull.

Adress Hotel Stafford not c/o Mrs Owens.*

Dear Harold:

I'm still here—at the last moment it appears that there is a suggestion about Zelda (three days ago was a most discouraged time) and it means finding a very special nurse. So I wont leave till tomorrow. On an impulse I'm sending you a letter from Zelda that came to day—a letter from which you can guage the awful strangling heartrending quality of this tragedy that has gone on now more than six years, with two brief intervals of hope. I know you'll understand the intrusion of sending it to you—please mail it back to me, with things so black I hang on to every scrap that is like things used to be.

***

And with it's precise irony life continues—I went to N. Y. after all Saturday afternoon to meet a girl—stayed 20 hrs. + got back here Sunday night to put Scotty on the train to camp.

Now as to business—or rather finances. I owe you still somewhere around $6500. (?) + should be paying you back at the rate of $1500 per story. But this has been a slow 6 wks—1st illness, then unsuccessful attempt at revise of mediaval IV,** then a false start, then What You Don't Know.*** Considering that story alone for a minute + supposing it sold for $3000. You've given me

• $500 advance
• $500 “
• + $300 Commission

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• 1300
• 1700

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• 3000

Normally that would leave me $1700. And I need $1000 for bills due (that doesn't solve them but is “on account”) + I'll need $700 on the 12th for Life Insurance. Of course I hope to have a new story in your hands by the 15th but I hope you can see your way clear to letting me have the whole sum this time—with the understanding that on the next story I will surely be able to reimburse you $1500. (Wont need the the 700 till the 12th but need the 1000 this week, by Friday, say, if the Post accepts + will put a check through.)

All this raises the ugly head of Mediaval IV. Granted that Post pays 3000.00 + you can complete paying me the whole sum this time—that is $1700. more—

Then shall I do Red Book revise IV first! (it's, alas, paid for!) + make Balmer [1] believe in me again? (He's already published III + it reads well), or shall I do a Post story + begin to square things with you? Only you can decide this. I told you: Red Bk IV can't be revised but must be rewritten, + that and a new Post story will take to the end of July. I can survive till then but will it be too much of a drain on you to wait till then for further payments.

There is no use of me trying to rush things. Even in years like '24, '28, '29, '30 all devoted to short stories I could not turn out more than 8-9 top price stories a year. It simply is impossible—all my stories are concieved like novels, require a special emotion, a special experience—so that my readers, if such there be, know that each time it'll be something new, not in form but in substance (it'd be far better for me if I could do pattern stories but the pencil just goes dead on me. I wish I could think of a line of stories like the Josephine or Basil ones which could go faster + pay $3000. But no luck yet. If I ever get out of debt I want to try a second play. It's just possible I could knock them cold if I let go the vulgar side of my talent.)

****

So that covers [anyt] everything. Will you let me know by straight wire as soon as you've read this if I can count on these advances ($1000 this wk—$700 on the 12th) if the Post buys.

Then I can sign the checks + get off south with a clear conscience.

I want to see you + have a long talk with you under better conditions than we've found of late. You havn't seen me since I've been on my no-liquor regime.

Yrs Ever Scott Fitzg—

Hotel Stafford Baltimore

Mail Zelda's letter to Asheville. Thanks for yr. nice wire about story. It set me up.****

Notes:

* Mrs. Isabel Owens, Fitzgerald's secretary.

** “Gods of Darkness.”

*** Probably published as “Fate in Her Hands,” The American Magazine, April 1936.

**** These sentences are written along left margin.

[1] Edwin Balmer, editor of Redbook.

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466a. From Zelda To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. n.d. From Zelda Fitzgerald (AO)

Dearest and always Dearest Scott:

I am sorry too that there should be nothing to greet you but an empty shell. The thought of the effort you have made over me, the suffering this nothing has cost would be unendurable to any save a completely vacuous mechanism. Had I any feelings they would all be bent in gratitude to you and in sorrow that of all my life there should not even be the smallest relic of the love and beauty that we started with to offer you at the end.

You have been so good to me—and all I can say is that there was always that deeper current running through my heart: my life, you.

You remember the roses in Kenney's yard—you were so gracious and I thought—he is the sweetest person in the world—and you said “darling”. You still are. The wall was damp and mosey when we crossed the street and said we loved the south. I thought of the south and a happy past I'd never had and I thought I was part of the south. You said you loved this lovely land. The wistaria along the fence was green and the shade was cool and life was old.

I wish I had thought something else—but it was a confederate, a romantic and nostalgic thought. My hair was damp when I took off my hat and I was safe and home and you were glad that I felt that way and you were reverent. We were glad and happy all the way home.

Now that there isn't any more happiness and home is gone and there isn't even any past and no emotions but those that were yours where there could be my comfort—it is a shame that we should have met in harshness and coldness where there was once so much tenderness and so many dreams. Your song.

I wish you had a little house with hollyhocks and a sycamore tree and the afternoon sun imbedding itself in a silver tea-pot. Scottie would be running about somewhere in white, in Renoir, and you will be writing books in dozens of volumes. And there will be honey still for tea, though the house should not be in Granchester.

I want you to be happy—if there were justice you would be happy—maybe you will be anyway.

Oh, Do-Do Do Do—

I love you anyway—even if there isn't any me or any love or even any life—

I love you.

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467. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 27 August 1935. (AO)

TELEGRAM  SAYS  SCOTTIE  ARRIVING  HERE FRIDAY  MAY  I TAKE HER TO VERMONT WHERE FAMILY IS Harold Ober

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468. To Ober

Wire to Mrs. Ober 3 September 1935. Asheville, N.C. (AO)

SUPPOSE SCOTTY STAYS THIS WEEK WITH YOU STOP APPRECIATE YOUR HOSPITALITY SO MUCH STOP HER SHOPPING BETTER WAIT TILL BALTIMORE HER PLANS WILL BE DECIDED SCOTT FITZGERALD.

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469. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn

Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

The Columbia Broadcasting Company just called up to say they are mailing me the agreement regarding the peace sketch.* They say they ought to have the article by October 19th. They say this is really the deadline and hope you can get it to them a little earlier.

I got hold of Balmer just as he was leaving town. He said that he would not be able to read the revised story GODS OF THE DARKNESS until some few days after Labor Day.

I think you have done an excellent job on this and it is now a very good story.

I got your night letter about Scotty and Max Perkins called me up in Scarsdale yesterday saying that he had a telegram from you. I told him that Scotty seemed to be having a good time with us and he said as we had children she would probably have a better time than she would with him. Anne is taking Scotty in town tomorrow and as she wired you she will be glad to do any shopping with her that is necessary before she goes off to school. We are very fond of Scotty and would like to have her stay just as long as she can. As she has probably written you, she has talked on the telephone to both her aunts and we were delighted that they couldn't have her.

She did a very nice poem yesterday for a birthday. We are very much in love with her and shall miss her when she goes. We hope that she will be going to boarding school somewhere near us so that we can see her once in a while.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

September 3, 1935

Notes:

* “Let's Go Out and Play” was broadcast on the Squibb “World Peaceways” program over WABC (Columbia Broadcasting Company) in New York on 3 October 1935 at 9:30 p.m.

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470. To Ober

ALS (pencil), 4pp. n.d., n.p.—c. 5 September 1935. Asheville. (AO)

Personal + Confidential

Dear Harold:

This letter is about several things.

1st Story: I had made 3 false starts and only now am I satisfied with what I've got (about 4,200 words).* I dont want to break it off again (broke it off once to do Red Bk + once to do radio sketch, now being typed so I think I'd better count on staying here till 12th instead of 9th as I'd planned. The story should reach you on Thurs 12th.

So if you can count on putting Scotty on the Penn. train for Baltimore on Fri 13th I'll meet her at the station. In Baltimore I'll go to Hotel Stafford as my plan is to move + I dont want to open up the house for only a week.

You have been a life-saver about Scotty—you may have guessed that things have gone less well here—just one day after the lung was pronounced completely well the heart went nutsey again + they sent me back to bed and I was only able to work about one day in three. I am up and around again but I dont like to allow less than five days to finish story, pack ect.

About shopping with Scotty (Mrs Ober's suggestion I mean) since I cant decide about schools, that had better wait because a child's equipment depends on that of course + I cant decide anything until I see how I stand the trip to Baltimore. If I would only die, at least she and Zelda would have the Life Insurance + it would be a general good riddance, but it seems as if life has been playing some long joke with me for the past eight months and cant decide when to leave off.

However for the moment I seem out of danger—they mean it too. I didn't want any kidding about it.

I like the radio skit—its original + quite powerful I think. The little corrections to be done on it wont take a day.

It goes without saying that I'll be begging for money about the 12th or 13th when you have the story in your hands. I think I can get along all right till then.

About Spafford—I promised him some money if + when the play payed anything; he seemed to think that this included the option but I wrote advising him differently—I had meant from the 1st actual royalties. Some clippings told me that the contract was signed but I dont suppose they paid more than a few hundred, did they? Spafford said you were still afraid Kirkland would be slow on the delivery. Anyhow I told Spafford I couldn't help him now—it was a [gratut] gratuitous offer merely between him + me to compensate him for his lost time + effort.**

Glad you liked the Red Bk story. Hated to do all that work for no reward but it was my fault, [but] and it makes the Phillipe series 30,000 words long, almost half enough for a book. The next step I dont know in that line. Certainly I've got to shoot at the bigger money till Im out of debt.

Ever Yours Scott Fitzg—

Notes:

* Probably “Image on the Heart,” McCall's, April 1936.

** James Kirkland and Sam H. Grisman were producers of Jack Kirkland's dramatization of Tobacco Road. Grisman took an option on the dramatization of Tender Is the Night and wanted Jack Kirkland and Austin Parktr approved as dramatists. See Ober's 2 March 1936 letter.

“Let’s Go Out and Play,” an antiwar drama broadcast on the “World Peaceways” program, October 3, 1935.

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471. To Ober

AL, 1 p. n.d.—received 23 September 1935. From Fitzgerald. Hotel Stafford, Baltimore, stationery. (AO)

Dear Harold:

Scotty arrived safe + happy + having had the time of her life— pleasure, variety and kindness innumerable. (She says I owe you $20. Will you charge it to my account) Of course now all she wants is a dog—I was waiting for her to say it + last night walking we saw some dogs in a window + I laughed when she said it. Or else to be a great tennis player.

I am staying in Baltimore this fall—where I don't know. I'll be here at the Stafford until I've finished at least one Post Story.

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In the fall of 1935 Fitzgerald attempted to establish a connection with radio. His script “Let's Go Out and Play” was sold to the “World Peaceways”; program for $700. At the same time be became interested in writing a radio serial about a father and his daughter. On 22 October 1935 he proposed a thirteen-week series for CBS to be called “With All My Heart.” Fitzgerald submitted a sample script dealing with the daughter's staying out late one night and lying about her tardiness. Nothing resulted from this project.

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472. To Ober

TLS, 1 p. (AO)

The Cambridge Arms, Charles & 34th Streets, Baltimore, Maryland,

October 22, 1935.

Dear Graham: *

Here is the dope for Columbia. I think it covers everything. The general title as you know is “WITH ALL MY HEART” but I don't want it to get around any more than possible until something is settled.

Thirteen weeks (three months) is all I'd want to commit myself for, and I have planned the series accordingly. The minimum price, I should think, would be $500 a broadcast, or $1000 a week. More if you think possible.

Also I should want to retain all literary rights in the playlets, the right to publish after some specific time.

Sincerely, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Notes:

* Graham Reid, an assistant in Ober's office at this time, is also Anne Ober's brother.

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473. Memo by Ober

Office memo, n.d.—c. October 1935. (AO)

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD—RADIO

Fitzgerald has the idea of doing a series of 10 minute radio broadcasts concerning the relation of a father with his daughter. The idea is that the father will be talking to his daughter. The mother may either be dead or a mildly villainous club woman. However, the mother will be kept in good taste. In the discussions between the father and daughter the daughter will occasionally tell the father where to get off. In the first place, the father knows nothing about how to deal with this girl child of his and the first sketch will open with the story carrying from the day she is born to the day she is named?

2nd sketch in her childhood

3rd    ”    Adolescence The girl will come home late, try to explain why she is late to her worried father.

He suggests the following possibilities:

1. Birth

2. Honor and duty underlying.

3. Bad report card

4.        

5. Before the school dance. Young boy calls for her, honks his horn and father makes him come into the house to see if he is sober.

6. Girl comes home from dance very late.

8. Her engagement.

9. The episode showing that she had made a mistake earlier in her life. 10. Just before the wedding ceremony.

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474. To Ober

Wire to Ober 6 November 1935. Baltimore, Md. (AO)

BELIEVE SPAFFORD HAS SATISFACTORY APPROACH TO TENDER IS THE NIGHT FINALLY STOP WILL YOU TELL GRISMAN WHO HE IS AND LET ME KNOW IF GRISMAN IS INTERESTED STOP THERE IS NO USE OF SPAFFORD MAKING RENEWED EFFORT WITHOUT ENCOURAGEMENT FROM GRISMAN BUT HE THINKS HE CAN DELIVER IN FIVE WEEKS STOP HAVE WORKED WITH HIM OVER THIS TREATMENT AND BELIEVE WE HAVE A REAL SHOW STOP IF GRISMAN MAKES OTHER DEFINITE DEAL MEANWHILE I SHOULD BE NOTIFIED BY WIRE BUT WE CANT WAIT FOR KIRKLAND FOREVER STOP REGARDS FITZGERALD.

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475. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 3330 St. Paul Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I got back from Hollywood last week. I'll get in touch with Grisman as soon as I can and let you know what he says.

If you see Robert Spafford tell him I didn't answer his letter because it came in while I was in Hollywood.

How are you getting along with the short story that you are revising?

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

November 11, 1935

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476. To Ober

Wire to Ober 12 November 1935. Hendersonville, N.C. (AO)

STORY * LEAVES HERE THURSDAY CAN YOU WIRE FORTY FIRST NATIONAL
FITZGERALD.

Notes:

* Probably “I'd Die for You,” which was originally titled “The Legend of Lake Lure.”

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477. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 3330 St. Paul Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

Grisman's option has expired. He is in trouble now over TOBACCO ROAD. Although I have been trying to get hold of him about another matter I find it impossible to reach him. Will you ask Spafford to send me a copy of the play as soon as he has it finished—that is if he is bound to finish it. It doesn't seem to me wise for you to spend time on this play at the present moment. Any play is a gamble.

I am sending this letter to Baltimore although the telegram I got from you today came from North Carolina. If you are going to be in North Carolina for any length of time please let me know exactly what your address is.

I am glad to know that the story will be here Friday morning.

We are wiring $40.00 to the First National Bank in Baltimore the first thing in the morning. Your telegram didn't reach here in time to do it this afternoon.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

November 12, 1935

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478. To Constance

ALS, 1 p. n.d., n.p.—received 14 November 1935. Hendersonville, N.C. (AO)

Dear Constance:

This represents a long sad tale indeed. What I am enclosing looks scrappy but is a second revision from what you've seen—entirely new in construction + plot at the end. I hope for this one that the Post might like it + am sending it this way with the hope that if it reaches you Thurs. you could get a quick typing + get it to them Fri for a wk. end decision.

The long sad tale I wont go into since everyone has one more or less of their own. Suffice to say I cracked entirely after the strain of doing too many things at once + simply fled down here which I had no economic right to do. But since it was that or break up again + that would be an even more expensive business to dependants [or] + creditors here I am. This is a temp. adress. Best adress me c/o Mrs Owens 5101 Roland Ave Baltimore

Ever Yours F Scott Fitzgerald

When I know more of plans which depend on health will inform you. *

* Written along left margin

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479. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. c/o Mrs. Isobel Owens 5101 Roland Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I'D DIE FOR YOU came in yesterday morning. I read it and had it typed and ready for Graeme Lorimer with whom I had an appointment at three in the afternoon. He took it with him to Philadelphia yesterday afternoon.

As you know, I hadn't read the first version. It seems to me an extremely good story. There is of course a feeling that at any moment almost any one of your characters may commit suicide but you have handled the climax in a very clever way and the story ends happily. I think the Saturday Evening Post will make a mistake if they decline this story and if they do I think we can sell it well and quickly somewhere else.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

November 15, 1935

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480. To Ober

ALS (pencil), 2pp. n.d.—c. 18 November 1935. (AO)

Skylands Hotel Hendersonville. N.C.

Dear Harold:

Things rather crashed again. Since Aug 20th I have written

(1.) Practically new Red Bk Story (pd. already) *

(2.) 1st Version Provence Story

(3) Radio Broadcast (Sold)

(4) 1st version Suicice Story**

(5) 2nd Version Provence Story (Sold) ***

(6) 2nd Version Suicide Story

(7) Emergency Esquire article for $200 (finished today) ****

(8) Most of a radio broadcast. Finish tomorrow.

Certainly a good 3 months work—but total yield has been just short of $2000. so far—of course if I'd Die for You sells, it will change the face of the situation.

I worked one day with Spafford on the play, gave him a new 3d act which was his weakness. He has no great talent but he works hard + has common sense + he can find the talent in the book. Sorry Kirkland didn't kick thru.

I am here till I finish a Post story something young + joyful. I was beginning to cough again in Baltimore with the multiplicity of events, also to drink + get irrasticable with everybody around me. Scotty is there now with Mrs. Owens.

I am living here at a $2.00 a day hotel, utterly alone, thank God! and unless something happens to upset me again should finish the story [but] by the 27th + reach Baltimore by 28th I hope for the winter this time.

Meanwhile you'll get the broadcast.

Typical of my confusion was my telling Constance Smith story should go to Post. It's already been there in it's first form and should have gone to American. Hope you overruled my suggestion.

Ever Yrs. Scott Fitzg

The decision to leave Baltimore came when I found, after being all moved in, that a super salesman had rented me an appartment next to a pianist, + with clapboard walls! *****

Did you see Cormack? *******

Notes:

* “Gods of Darkness.”

** “I'd Die for You.”

*** Probably “Image on the Heart.”

**** Possibly “The Crack-Up,” Esquire, March 1936.

***** Written along left margin of page one.

****** Bartlett Cormack, Hollywood agent, was trying to sell film rights for “Head and Shoulders.” This sentence written along left margin of page two.

---

481. To Ober

Wire to Ober 19 November 1935. Hendersonville, N.C. (AO)

IF SAMPLE BROADCAST SEEMS INSUFFICIENTLY FULL BODIED PERHAPS ID BETTER WORK ON IT BEFORE OFFERING IT STOP BUT IT IS NOT FINAL FORM ANYHOW ONLY A SAMPLE AND THE CHARACTERIZATIONS OF FATHER AND MOTHER* WILL PRESUMABLY HAVE BEEN SET IN EARLIER BROADCASTS STOP STARTED STORY TODAY F S FITZGERALD.

Notes:

* Ober changed “MOTHER” to “daughter”.

---

482. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Skylands Hotel Hendersonville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

Thank you for your note written from Hendersonville. I'D DIE FOR YOU is now at the American. Graeme Lorimer hadn't read the story and wanted to see it but couldn't get their editors to buy it. He let me have it back right away and I hope the American will buy it.

I have your wire about the sample broadcast so I presume it will come in later in the day.

I am sure I can sell I'D DIE FOR YOU fairly quickly and things will look better when I get the money for that.

Grisman's office have called up wanting to renew the option on TENDER IS THE NIGHT. I have told them that when they can get hold of Grisman and assure me he is ready to get to work we will consider whether we can give him another short option. In the meantime there is no use tying ourselves up.

I tried to see Cormack when I was in Hollywood but didn't manage to see him. Swanie,* however, is going to get in touch with him but I don't think there is anything to be done for I find that the companies very rarely are willing to release silent rights for a reasonable sum.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

November 20, 1935

Notes:

* H. N. Swanson, fomerly editor of College Humor, had become a Hollywood agent.

---

483. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Skylands Hotel Hendersonville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I think your radio idea is very well worked out. We are having copies made and getting to work on it at once. We will keep the title to ourselves for the present. I don't think you need to do any more work on it at the present time.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

November 21, 1935

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484. To Ober

Wire to Ober 5 December 1935. Hendersonville, N.C. (AO)

BEEN SICK IN BED POST STORY LEAVES SATURDAY CAN YOU WIRE FIFTY TO BALTIMORE FITZGERALD.

---

485. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 5 December 1935. (AO)

SORRY YOU HAVE BEEN ILL WIRING FIFTY BALTIMORE TODAY Harold Ober

---

486. To Ober

ALS (pencil), 2pp. n.d., n.p.—received 12 December 1935. Hendersonville, N.C. (AO)

Dear Harold:

This story is the fruit of my desire to write about children of Scotty's age.* (it doesn't cross the radio idea, which I gather is a dud. Will you write me about it? Also the history of the I'd Die for You) But to return to this story.

I want it to be a series if the Post likes it. Now if they do please tell them that I'd like them to hold it for another one which should preceed it, like they did once in the Basil series. I am not going to wait for their answer to start a second one about Gwen but I am going to wait for a wire of encouragment or discouragment on the idea from you. I'm getting this off Wed. It should reach you Thurs. noon. I'm going to rest Thurs. anyhow so if I hear from you Thurs night or Fri morning that you like it I'll start the other. Even if the Post didn't like the series the names could be changed + the two sold as seperate stories.

But I do think it should be offered them [seperately] individually before the series idea is broached to them

Money again rears its ugly head. I am getting accustomed to poverty and bankrupcy (In fact for myself I rather enjoy washing my own clothes + eating 20 cent meals twice a day, after so many years in the flesh pots—don't worry, this is only half true though I did do it for the 1st wk here to penalize myself for the expense of the journey) but I do object to the jails and I have almost $300 due on income tax the 15th (what a typically modern joke this is—me, with $11 in the bank at the moment.) Now can you let me have that and $200 to go with on the strength of this story? Read it first. If you can or can't please include the information in yr. telegram of Thurs. or Fri. I need $150 for Zelda + Scotty + $50 for myself— for I intend to finish the 2nd Gwen story + then go north for what Xmas is to be found there. If you can will you wire it to Baltimore to be there by Sat. morning?

If your report is favorable I shall move to Ashville Sat. + have the doctor go over me while I write. I arrived here weak as hell, got the grippe + spat blood again (1st time in 9 months) + took to bed for six days. I didn't dare see the Ashville doctor till I got this story off + wrote a $200 article for Gingrich ** on which I've been living. I'm grateful I came south when I did though—I made a wretched mistake in coming north in Sept + taking that appartment + trying 1000 things at once, + am only grateful that I got out before the blizzard, + got grippe instead of pneumonia How that part (I mean living in Balt.) is going to work out I dont know. [If] I'm going to let Scotty finish her term anyhow. For the rest things depend on health + money + its very difficult. I use up my health making money + then my money in recovering health. I got well last summer—but what was the use when I was broke in the fall. Dont answer—there isn't any answer If there was I'd have thought of it long ago. I am really not discouraged—I enjoyed writing this story which is the second time that's happened to me this year, + that's a good sign ***

Ever Yrs. Scott Fitzg.

P. S. This is story number 7 for the year. ****

Notes:

* “Too Cute for Words,” The Saturday Evening Post, 18 April 1936. The first story about Gwen Bowers, a thirteen-year-old girl.

** Arnold Gingrich, editor of Esquire. The article was “The Crack-Up,” February 1936. Because Fitzgerald dealt directly with Gingrich, Ober received no commission.

*** This sentence written along left margin of page two.

**** P.S. written along left margin of page one.

---

487. To Ober

Wire to Ober 13 December 1935. Hendersonville, N.C. (AO)

CAN YOU WIRE FIFTY BANK AND NIGHTLETTER SUGGESTIONS
FITZGERALD.

---

488. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 13 December 1935. (AO)

GWEN STORY DELIGHTFUL BUT SLIGHT BEGINS SLOWLY AND BELIEVE YOU CAN IMPROVE IT SHALL I SEND SUGGESTIONS IMPORTANT HAVE STORY PERFECT BEFORE OFFERING CAN YOUR MOTHER HELP OVER THIS EMERGENCY ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO HELP DURING DECEMBER ON ACCOUNT HEAVY EXPENSES END YEAR AND UNCOLLECTED AMOUNTS OWING ME.
Harold Ober

---

489. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 2pp. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Skylands Hotel Hendersonville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

Both Constance Smith and I have read the story TOO CUTE FOR WORDS and here are our suggestions:

The first eight pages are attractively done but much longer than they need to be to achieve their purpose of introducing Bryan Bowers and his daughter. They are particularly unnecessary if this is to be the second of a series, not the first.

Mrs. Bowers is such a shadowy figure she might as well come out —situation might be given originality by seeing lone father's method of dealing with preadolescent daughter as compared to that of average mother—unless you have personal reasons for not doing that.

Page 9 should come not later than Page 3 in story sequence.

Couldn't you find a simpler ingress to the prom? It is chance only that gets the girls into the prom. I think it would be better to have them invent some clever way to get there. Perhaps they could catch the older man and girl making love before they leave for the prom and make them take them to watch from upstairs.

The story trails off badly into nothing and could be strengthened, by (A) Gwen's seeing Shorty again, at the football game—perhaps without his recognizing her or (B) having Miss Ray belatedly arrange a party after the football game and Gwen's scorn of prep school boys now that she has tasted the blood of “maturer men” (to quote Samuel Hoffenstein.)

To see Shorty again is probably the best idea as it would precipitate Bryan Bowers into the situation again—he should either know or sense what has happened in order for the reader to have his reaction.

Could the man the girls dance with be a quarterback instead of an unknown freshman? He could still be small.

And finally the announcement about the jewelry theft seems a little unnatural. Perhaps the young man in his eagerness to escape his partner could remember the sheltering darkness and isolation of the balcony and accidently discover the girls.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

December 13, 1935

---

490. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 13 December 1935. (AO)

HAVE SENT SUGGESTIONS SPECIAL DELIVERY WIRING BANK FIFTY TODAY
Harold Ober

---

491. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 2 pp. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Skylands Hotel Hendersonville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I had a very busy day yesterday and didn't have time to write you as much as I wanted to. As I wired you, TOO CUTE FOR WORDS seems to me in many ways a delightful story and I think there may be a series here that will be very profitable to you. On this account it seems to me doubly important to have the first of the series that we offer an extremely good one. The need for money is apt to tempt us into rushing the story to an editor before it is just right, but by doing this we may only defeat our own ends. It is certainly better to wait a week and sell a story than it is to rush it in and not sell it.

If I possibly could I would have sent you yesterday the money you needed. December is always a difficult month—With taxes, insurance, and with Dick in Arizona* and a lot of money owing me, I find that I can't stretch my account any further. I did manage to wire you the fifty dollars you asked for and that with what Max Perkins sent you and what you can get from your mother I hope you will be able to weather this present emergency. If you can do a little work on this first Gwen story I think there is a very good chance that we can sell it.

I liked I'D DIE FOR YOU but I am afraid it is going to be difficult to sell. The Post, American, McCall's, Cosmopolitan and Red Book have declined it. Littauer** of Collier's liked it but Chenery*** didn't. Littauer, who also reads stories for the Woman's Home Companion, has turned it over to the Companion and he thinks they might possibly be able to use it. One difficulty with the story seems to be the threat of suicide all the way through the story. Cosmopolitan thought the man who was hiding from the process servers was altogether too mysterious and didn't really come to life. If the Companion doesn't buy the story I think there is a chance I can sell it to Liberty and there are of course other possibilities for it.

Columbia liked the radio idea but they haven't been able to sell it to any of their clients. We are working on it now from another angle. I think it is an extremely good idea and we are working hard on it.

I have been talking to Merritt Hulburd, who is with Samuel Goldwyn, about the possibility of your doing some work in Hollywood. They have a Somerset Maughm book which Merritt says you might be interested to work on because you know the locale and the kind of people it deals with. Do you think you would be well enough to go out there for a while early in the year? If you could do a really good job out there I think it might be the solution of your difficulties. Please don't make any plans on this as nothing may come of it but let me know if you want to go to Hollywood and if you think you are well enough. I am sure that if you live quietly there and work hard and make a business of saving money that you could do a lot to get yourself out of the hole that you are now in. A job on one story wouldn't be enough to do all this but if you do well on the first job, it would be easy to get another one and there is no reason why you couldn't get enough money ahead to give you freedom to write a novel when you get ready to write one.

I am enclosing a couple of items that I have clipped from newspapers and forgot to send you.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

December 14, 1935

Notes:

* Ober's son, Richard, who was in Arizona because of his bronchitis.

** Kenneth Littauer, editor of Collier's.

*** William Ludlow Chenery, editor and later publisher of Collier's.

---

492. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 3330 St. Paul Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I called up Philadelphia and found out that the Post is going to use the story, not the Journal. The Post like the character of Gwen very much indeed and they would like to have you go ahead and do another story in the series. I think from the way they spoke they would like to have a series the way they had the Basil stories and the Josephine stories.

It is late in the afternoon and the carbon of the story has not yet come in. I hope it will be here in the morning.

Will you need all the money on this story before January 1st? If not, I think it might be well to leave all you can of it here as it will decrease the tax you will have to start to pay in March. There is another thing—I think Maxwell Perkins expects me to give him some money out of this check when it comes in.

I should think it would be a good idea for you to take only what is absolutely necessary of this check and I wouldn't mind having some of it in the bank for a little while. However, I'll do whatever you think wise.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

December 26, 1935

---

493. To Ober

Wire to Ober 27 December 1935. Baltimore, Md. (AO)

PLEASE WIRE ME WESTERN UNION WHEN MONEY IS DEPOSITED SO I CAN RELEASE CHECK SCOTT FITZGERALD.

---

494. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 27 December 1935. (AO)

WILL WIRE WHEN YOU MAY RELEASE CHECK WAIT SPECIAL DELIVERY LETTER MAILED THIS MORNING Harold Ober

---

495. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 3330 St. Paul Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

A check from the Post for $3000. has just come in and I am depositing it in the bank. As tomorrow is Saturday it may not be cleared until Monday morning. My bookkeeper was away yesterday when you called and I didn't have a chance to talk to her until this morning. She tells me she had been counting on some of the money out of your first check and that she will be very much embarrassed if we can't keep at least a part of it through the middle of January and perhaps a little longer.

When you get this letter will you send me a wire and let me know the minimum amount you have to have until after the 1st of January? It isn't necessary for you to call me up—I know that costs money. Will you see if you can leave $1000. out of this check for a little while? Demands on me the last part of this year have been very severe. A number of authors have been in very difficult circumstances, even more difficult than yours and I have had to help them out. The Authors' League Fund is down to zero now and it has been unable to keep up payments to a number of authors who are in desperate circumstances and needed money for food and coal so I hope you will try to get along on as little as you can until after the 1st of the year.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

December 27, 1935

---

496. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 3330 St. Paul Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

Yesterday I received carbon copy of pages 16 and 17 of the new story with a note saying with these I would have the complete story. I presume you mailed me a carbon of the revised version of the story but it has not yet come in.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

December 27, 1935

---

497. To Ober

ALS, 1 p. n.d.—received 28 December 1935. (AO)

Cambridge Arms, Charles St. Baltimore, Md.

Dear Harold:

You wont like what I'm confessing much but I had $5.00 in the bank + could scarcely explain to Scotty why the silver was in pawn on Xmas. So perhaps you'll understand.

I revised the story on your lines + sent it direct to Miss Neale. * Also I asked her if she liked it to wire me two hundred here + send the balance through you. I know this is bad policy + contrary to our agreement, but a fortnight of hemmorages make people a little unscrupulous.

Ever Yrs

F Scott Fitzgerald

I think if this series goes it will solve things.** I'll write you about the Hollywood matter. I'm going to try to stick Baltimore again I didn't mention a series to Miss Neale***

Notes:

* Adelaide Neall of The Saturday Evening Post.

** The Gwen series. “Too Cute for Words” (18 April 1936) and “Inside the House” (13 June 1936) were published by The Saturday Evening Post. “Make Yourself at Home” and “The Pearl and the Fur” were bought by Pictorial Review, but the magazine died before the stories were published. “Make Yourself at Home” was published as “Strange Sanctuary” by Liberty   (9 December 1939).

*** This sentence was written along the left margin in pencil.

---

498. To Ober

Wire to Ober 28 December 1935. Baltimore, Md. (AO)

HAVE TRIED LIFE ON SUBSISTANCE LEVEL AND IT DOESNT WORK STOP I THOUGHT IF I COULD HAVE THIS MONEY I COULD HOLD MY HEAD UP AND GO ON STOP WHAT YOU SUGGEST POSTPONES BY HALF A YEAR THE LIQUIDATION WE BOTH WANT STOP PLEASE CARRY ME OVER THE SECOND GWEN STORY AND GIVE ME TWENTY SEVEN HUNDRED FITZGERALD.

Notes:

On December 26 and 27 Ober proposed that a portion of the $3,000 Saturday Evening Post check for “Too Cute for Words” be used to reduce Fitzgerald’s debts.

---

499. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 28 December 1935. (AO)

WIRING FIVE HUNDRED MAILING CHECK FOR TWENTYTWO BALTIMORE BANK THIS MORNING REGARDS. HAROLD OBER

---

500. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 2pp. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 3330 St. Paul Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I have your telegram and I think you are probably right in feeling that you can't do good work if you are worrying every minute about money, with unpaid debts hanging over you, so I am wiring $500. to your Baltimore bank this morning and I am mailing a check for $2200. The Post check will be cleared by the time the check for $2200. gets to Baltimore and of course you can use the $500. right away.

The carbon of the first Gwen story came in this morning. It was addressed to 40 East 41st Street and because of the jam of Christmas mail it didn't get to me until today. I am going to take the manuscript home this afternoon to read.

I feel quite sure that this Gwen series will be the very best way to solve the present financial difficulty. The Post remembers with a great deal of pleasure the Basil stories and the Josephine stories and Graeme Lorimer told me over the telephone that his father would be very pleased to have you go on with this series.

I am breaking my word with Maxwell Perkins as I told him I would try to get him some money out of the next check I got for you, but I am sure he will understand the situation and agree with me that the best thing for all of us is for you to be free to work on this series.

We had a very nice Christmas card from Scotty. We miss her and hope she will come to see us again whenever she has a chance. I think you said over the telephone that Zelda was with you on Christmas. If she is with you now please give her my love.

I think it is much wiser for you to work on this series than to try Hollywood so lets forget that.

Sincerely yours,
[Harold Ober]

December 28, 1935

---

501. To Ober

Wire to Ober 29 December 1935. Baltimore, Md. (AO)

PLEASE ASK POST TO HOLD THIS GIVEN * STORY FOR ONE TO REACH THEM JANUARY NINTH TO PROCEED THIS IN PUBLICATION** STOP STARTING NOW SCOTT FITZGERALD. .

Notes:

* i.e., GWEN.

** Possibly “Make Yourself at Home,” which The Saturday Evening Post rejected.

---

502. To Ober

TLS, 3 pp. (AO); Turnbull.

Cambridge Arms Apartments, Charles & 34th Streets, Baltimore, Maryland,

December 31, 1935.

Dear Harold:

I'd have gone to Hollywood a year ago last spring. I don't think I could do it now but I might. Especially if there was no choice. Twice I have worked out there on other people's stories—on an “original” with John Considine telling me the plot twice a week and on the Katherine Brush story—it simply fails to use what qualities I have. I don't blame you for lecturing me since I have seriously inconvenienced you, but it would be hard to change my temperament in middle-life. No single man with a serious literary reputation has made good there. If I could form a partnership with some technical expert it might be done. (That's very different from having a supervisor who couldn't fit either the technical or creative role but is simply a weigher of completed values.) I'd need a man who knew the game, knew the people, but would help me tell and sell my story—not his. This man would be hard to find, because a smart technician doesn't want or need a partner, and an uninspired one is inclined to have a dread of ever touching tops. I could work best with a woman, because they haven't any false pride about yielding a point. I could have worked with old Bess Meredith if we hadn't been in constant committees of five. I'm afraid unless some such break occurs I'd be no good in the industry.

The matter will probably solve itself—I'll either pull out of this in the next few months or else go under—in which case I might start again in some entirely new way of my own.

I know what you would do now in my situation and what the Ideal Way would be, but it simply isn't in me to do my duty blindly. I have to follow my fate with my eyes wide open.

Scotty is so well and happy. She has such faith in me and doesn't know what's happening. Tonight she and two of her admirers decorated a tree. I hope Dick is better and has a happy Christmas even out there away from his family.

Yours, F Scott Fitzgerald

P. S. Do you think the New Yorker could use poem attached?*

Notes:

Richard Ober, Harold Ober’s son.

* “Thousand and First Ship,” first published in The Crack Up, 1945.

---

Fitzgerald's total earnings for 1935 were $16,845.16. He sold seven stories ($14,725). Four essays were taken by Esquire. His book royalties plus an advance from Scribners came to $342.03.

---

503. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 3330 St. Paul Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I have been out of the office off and on for the last week or ten days with a slight attack of grippe, otherwise I would have answered before this your note about Hollywood. Now that you are started on the Gwen stories I don't think there is any use of even thinking about Hollywood. I wrote you only because Merritt Hulburd brought up the question and it seemed a possible solution of the difficulty you were in at the time.

I have your telegram saying that the second Gwen story won't be here until the 25th. I am sure you are right in waiting until the story is just as you want it before you send it on.

I sent the poem over to the New Yorker but I haven't yet heard from them.

Max Perkins called me up the other day, said he was going to be in Baltimore and would see you.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

January 14, 1936

---

504. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 3330 St. Paul Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

We have the following note from the New Yorker about your poem THOUSAND AND FIRST SHIP:

“We have pondered for a long while over this Scott Fitzgerald poem only to conclude reluctantly that we should not take it. As a poem, it has certain grave defects, including the non-permissible rhyme in the fourth stanza, and we don't think that as a poem it is up to what he can do.

We are sorry to send anything of his back and hope you will have something else of his for us.”

I wish you would go over this verse again sometime when you have time as I am sure you can improve it.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

January 20, 1936

---

505. To Ober

TLS, 2 pp. (AO)

The Cambridge Arms, Baltimore, Maryland,

January 21, 1936.

Mr. Harold Ober, 40 East 49th Street, New York, New York.

Dear Harold:

The Post story must go off Friday. The delay has been caused by a trip to the hospital. At least they discovered that my lung has improved even since leaving Asheville so that now there is so little infection left that I shan't have to go south again. One of the two or three pieces of good news I've had this year. It took two months to find it out. The reason for this delay being that I couldn't get the plates to compare it with because I owed the doctor in Asheville $40.00 which I couldn't pay him. Things like this have made me inclined to smile when you say that other authors have been in a worse spot than I have.

Remind the Post again please not to schedule “Too Cute for Words” until they get the new one. While I'm writing I want to bring up two matters:

1. If “I'd Die for You” hasn't sold you might as well send it back to me. I'm not going to touch it myself again but I know a boy here who might straighten it out for a share of the profits, if any.

2. It is of no immediate importance but I would like to know if The Redbook intends to publish the fourth medieval story. If it gets buried in their files and if I ever do get on with the series it will mean that it will have to be bought back from them or some such complication. I don't care about the Cosmopolitan holding up my article on New York* because it's an individual piece, but the other is a more serious matter. I gather that the radio is washed up.

Anyhow, with the good news about my lung the year has started auspiciously and I should be able to pay you back $1000 a story beginning with this one.

Scottie sends her very best to you all and we hope Dick is getting along in the west.

If you read my piece in Esquire ** remember it was written last November when things seemed at their very blackest.

Best wishes always, Scott

Notes:

*  “My Lost City,” The Crack Up, 1945.

** “The Crack-Up,” which Ober had not seen before publication.

---

506. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. The Cambridge Arms Charles + 34 Sts Baltimore, Md.

Dear Scott:

I should have answered your note of January 21st before but I stayed in bed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to get rid of my cold that has been hanging on since about the 1st of January. I am glad of the good news from the hospital.

I have told the Post more than once that TOO CUTE FOR WORDS is the second story in the series so I don't think there is any danger of their publishing it before the story you are now writing. By the way, this story has not yet come in but I am expecting it any moment.

I thought of offering I'D DIE FOR YOU next to Pictorial. Let me know if you want me to do this or send it back first for revision.

I'll find out when the Red Book intends to use the fourth mediaeval story and let you know.

I'll have to read that piece that is in Esquire. Several authors have asked me about you within the last day or two and I wondered why.

Dick is having a fine time in Arizona. He hasn't had a single cold, so far this winter and he is getting to be a regular cowboy. We miss Scotty and hope she will visit us again just as soon as she can.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

January 27, 1936

---

507. To Ober

TLS, 1 p. (AO)

The Cambridge Arms, Baltimore, Maryland,

January 29, 1936.

Dear Harold:

I wish you would send “I'd Die for You” right back. Please find out something more definite about the Medieval story. Can't you see how terribly important it is to me?

Ever yours, Scott

Mr. Harold Ober, 40 East 49th Street, New York, New York.

---

508. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F.Scott Fitzgerald Esq., Cambridge Arms, Charles & 34th, Baltimore, Md.

Dear Scott:

I have mailed you a copy of I'D DIE FOR YOU. One editor commented on the fact that the man in the story was too mysterious and this editor thought he ought to be explained. The main difficulty with the story, however, has always been that there is so much about suicide in it.

I will let you know the moment Balmer has a date for the publication of the last mediaeval story. I didn't realize and I don't think Balmer did that there was any rush about using this story. Have you done another one of these stories or are you thinking of doing one?

I read your last piece in Esquire and it seems to me a very fine piece of work. No one who had cracked up and stayed that way could possibly write as well as this.

Graeme Lorimer asked me when he was in this week when you were going to have the first Gwen story ready. He said they had scheduled the story they bought and took it out of the schedule to wait for the first story and they hope you will have it along soon.

Sincerely, [Harold Ober]

February 1, 1936

---

509. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 6 February 1936. (AO)

RECEIVED CARBON OF STORY DID YOU SEND ORIGINAL TO POST. HAROLD OBER

---

510. To Ober

Wire to Ober 6 February 1936. Baltimore. (AO)

TERRIBLY BROKE AND CONSEQUENTLY HAVE SENT STORY DIRECTLY TO POST CARBON TO YOU IF THEY LIKE IT PLEASE SEND AT LEAST TWO THIRD STIPEND HERE TO MY CREDIT AT FIRST NATIONAL I HOPE SO MUCH THAT YOU CAN DO THIS AS GWEN AND I MUST GO ON SCOTT FITZGERALD.

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511. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Md.

Dear Scott:

I wired you because I wasn't sure whether you had sent a copy of MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME to the Post. Graeme Lorimer was in this morning and I told him I thought he would find a copy when he got back to Philadelphia and if he didn't to let me know and I would send him my copy. My carbon copy is evidently an uncorrected one as there are several places in it that are not clear.

I have asked Graeme Lorimer to give me a quick decision on it and if they buy it, as I hope they will, I'll send two-thirds of the price to your bank.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

February 6, 1936

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512. To Ober

Wire to Ober 7 February 1936. Baltimore. (AO)

POST REFUSED STORY CAN YOU WIRE ME TODAY YOUR REACTION TO IT SHALL I REWRITE OR MERELY CHANGE NAMES AND TRY TO SELL IT TO ANOTHER MAGAZINE REWRITING WOULD TAKE FOUR DAYS NAMES CHANGED CAN BE DONE IMMEDIATELY
SCOTT FITZGERALD.

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513. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 7 February 1936. (AO)

THINK STORY NEEDS REWRITING MAILING SPECIAL DELIVERY LETTER
HAROLD OBER

---

514. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

As I have just wired you, I think MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME needs rewriting. The question is, however, whether you feel like rewriting it and whether you have any ideas that might make the story saleable to the Post. If you haven't, I suppose the only thing to do is to change the names and let me try it on some other magazine. I do not, however, feel very confident of placing it. The story seems to me to get too melodramatic. The two crooks in the story seem too violent for this kind of story. I am not going to send you any detailed suggestions, in the first place because I have not studied the story from that point of view, and in the second place I am not sure that you want them.

I am very sorry you sent the story direct to the Post but there is no use talking about that now. Did the editors of the Post send you any suggestions? If they did, I suppose it would be wise to try to rewrite the story according to these suggestions if you can.

I am afraid I am not being very helpful but I do not see how you can make this the first story in the Gwen series without a good deal of rewriting. Is there any reason now why we shouldn't ler the Post publish first the one they have? I am going to take this story home with me tonight and study it carefully and if I have any ideas about it and if you want them I'll be glad to send them on to you.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

February 7, 1936

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515. To Ober

TLS, 7pp. (AO); Turnbull.

The Cambridge Arms, Charles & 34th Streets, Baltimore, Maryland,

February 8, 1936.

Dear Harold: The man Braun* is a plain, simple man with a true instinct toward the arts. He is of complete financial integrity and we were awfully nice to him once during a journey through North Africa and I think he is honestly fond of both Zelda and me.

I start with this because I don't want to mess up this chance with any of the inadvertencies and lack of foresight that lost me the sale of “Tender is the Night” and ruined the Gracie Allen venture.** You are now in touch with Hollywood in a way that you were not several years ago. This is obviously a job that I can do expertly— but it is also obviously a job that a whole lot of other people can do fairly well. Now it seems to me that the point can be sold that I am equipped to do this treatment which is the whole gist of this letter.

He has gone out [there] to Hollywood and they will put some hack on the thing and in two minutes [and] will have a poor imitation of Lily Pons deserting the stage for a poor country boy or a poor country girl named Lily Pons astounding the world in ten minutes. A hack will do exactly that with it, thinking first what previous stories dealing with the ballet and theatre have been about, and he will try to write a reasonable imitation about it. As you know Zelda and I have been through hell about the whole subject and you'll know, too, that I should be able to deliver something entirely authentic in the matter full of invention and feeling.

It seems odd having to sell you such a suggestion when once you would have taken it at my own valuation, but after these three years of reverses it seems necessary to reassure you that I have the stuff to do this job and not let this opportunity slide away with the rumor that “Scott is drinking” or “Scott is through.”

You know that the merest discussion of ideas [three words omitted by the editors] would mean that they were public property. You know also as in the case of radio, (Columbia) that they want a sample. Now how on earth you can both sell the idea that I can do this job, that is, write a 5,000 word story with cash in advance, and yet be sure that the plot won't leak out, I don't know. That seems to be your problem. You remember that I lost the whole month of October on that false radio come-on where they were obviously kidding. Isn't there some way to determine whether these people are kidding or not? This man has, in a sense, come to me and I think the idea ought to be caught and trapped right now because as you may well imagine I have little [enough] energy to dissipate.

A list of suggestions follows:

First I enclose something which I wish you would read last because it has nothing to do with the present offer, but it is something that I wrote gratuitously for a Russian dancer some years ago. Please consider that last and featuring, as it does, a male dancer rather than a female, it would certainly not fit Spessivtzewa's requirements. The other ideas which follow are the basis of a moving picture while that was for an actual ballet.

1. Zleda's awful experience of trying a difficult art too late in life to culminate with the irony that just before she cracked up she had been hoping to get little “bits” in Diaghelief's*** ballet and that people kept coming to the studio who she thought were emissaries of his and who turned out to be from the Folies Bergere and who thought they might make her into an American shimmy dancer. This was about like a person hoping to lead the Philadelphia Symphony being asked to be assistant conductor of Ben Bernie's band.

Please don't have anybody read Zelda's book**** because it is a bad book! But by glancing over it yourself you will see that it contains all the material that a tragedy should have, though she was incapable as a writer of realizing where tragedy lay as she was incapable of facing it as a person. Of course the tragic ending of Zelda's story need not be repeated in the picture. One could concede to the picture people the fact that the girl might become a popular dancer in the Folies Bergere. One could conceive of a pathetic ending a la Hepburn in which because of her idealism she went on being a fifth rate “figurine” in ballets all over Europe—this to be balanced by a compensatory love story which would make up for her the failure of her work. This would seem to me to be much the best treatment of this story.

2. This idea has to do with an episode of some memoirs of Pavlova. It begins with a little girl briefly glimpsed and dancing in the Imperial ballet before the war. A scene later in Paris at the height of the flurry over the ballet and stranded finally with a ballet company in either Australia or Brazil for lack of funds. The climax would hinge on the catastrophe of the death of Diaghelief. The sorrow of it that Zelda felt, as did many others, who seemed to feel also that the ballet was ended; the old Imperial school was dead and now Diaghelief who had personally kept it alive in Paris had gone to his grave. There seemed to them no future and I know how strong that feeling was among the ballet people in '31 and '31,***** a sort of utter despair, a sense that they had once been under patronage of the Czar and later of an entrepreneur and that now nobody was taking care of them. They are like children to a ridiculous extent and have less practical ideas than the wildest musician imaginable. This story would end up in New York or in Hollywood, the ballet having a new renaissance under an American growing delight in that particular art as is practically true with Masine's****** ballet in New York and with Trudy Schoop's******* successful little trek around the country. That's idea number 2.

The third idea is more difficult in its selling aspects. In 1920 I tried to sell to D. W. Griffith the idea that people were so interested in Hollywood that there was money in a picture about that [that] and romance in the studio. He was immediately contemptuous of it, but of course, a year later Merton of the Movies mopped up the country. The movies seem willing always to romanticize anything from a radio broadcasting room to a newspaper office as far as the entertainment world is concerned, but are so shy about themselves that another picture can be got out of Hollywood, which is certainly one of the most romantic cities in the world. A sort of mental paralysis came over them. Do you remember how the Hearst publicity men killed my story “Crazy Sunday” for Cosmopolitan. That was in case someone should get hurt, that it might offend Norma Shearer, Thalberg, John Gilbert or Marion Davies,******** etc. etc. As a matter of fact I had mixed up those characters so thoroughly that there was no character who could have been identified except possibly King Vidor********* and he would have been very amused by the story.

Let me repeat that this is the most difficult idea to sell but in some ways the most interesting of the three. A Russian ballet dancer finds herself in the extra line in Hollywood; they pick her out of the crowd for her good looks, gave her bits of one kind or another but always on some other basis than the fact that she is a ballet dancer. This treatment of the general subject would have to close with a crash, at least I haven't thought any further than that. It would turn entirely on the essential tonal background of the adventures of Europeans who develop their metier in a Yiddish world (only you don't use that word except in Germany [.]) [T]that would be interesting to the people in the same rococo sense that the demand for pictures about places like Shanghai and the Trans-Siberian Railroad have in the American people. Combined with it is the always fascinating Hollywood story.

I've spent the morning writing this letter because I am naturally disappointed about the Post's not liking the Gwen story and must rest and go to work this afternoon to try to raise some money somehow though I don't know where to turn.

Scott

Notes:

* L. G. Braun, manager of ballerina Olga Spessivtzewa, asked Fitzgerald to write a movie for her. Fitzgerald's treatment for the ballet movie was entitled “Ballet Shoes” or “Ballet Slippers.”

** Fitzgerald collaborated with Robert Spafford on a treatment for a George Burns and Gracie Allen movie, “Gracie at Sea,” which was never made.

*** Director of the Ballet Russe.

**** Save Me the Waltz.

***** i.e., '32.

****** Leonide Massine was a ballet dancer and director of the Ballet National Theatre.

******* The Trudi Schoop Comic Ballet was organized in 1931.

******** Norma Shearer, movie actress with MGM, was the wife of Irving Thalberg, executive producer with MGM. John Gilbert was a silent screen star. Marion Davies, an actress with MGM, was William Randolph Hearst's mistress.

********* Director with MGM.

---

516. To Ober

TLS, 1 p. (AO)

The Cambridge Arms, Charles & 34th Streets, Baltimore, Maryland,

February 8, 1936.

Dear Harold:

The enclosed telegram and carbon of the letter I sent Miss Neall are self explanatory.

Ever yours, Scott

[Enclosures (2)]

---

516a. To Fitzgerald

Wire to Fitzgerald 6 February 1936. (AO)

WE ALL FEEL NEW STORY UNSATISFACTORY START FOR SERIES WITH NO PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE CHILD AND HER BACKGROUND IT IS RATHER BLIND AND THE INTRODUCTION OF THE CROOKS IS NOT QUITE CONVINCING AND GIVES AN UNPLEASANT FLAVOR WHEN THE READER SHOULD BE ATTRACTED INTO THE SERIES IMPORTANT THAT EACH STORY STANDS ON ITS OWN FEET AND IS COMPLETE IN ITSELF WE THINK THE OPENING STORY SHOULD DEAL MORE WITH THE CHILD AND HER FATHER IN THE WAY THE STORY WE NOW HAVE IN TYPE DOES DEEPLY SORRY THAT I CANNOT GIVE A DIFFERENT REPORT A W NEALL.

---

516b. From Fitzgerald To Neall

TL (cc), 2pp. (AO)

The Cambridge Arms, Charles & 34th Streets, Baltimore, Maryland,

February 8, 1936.

Miss A. W. Neall, Independence Square, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Dear Miss Neall:

Thank you for your prompt and detailed report. On thinking it over I can quite understand how you feel about the story though I would describe my reaction differently. This does not discourage me from continuing the series. It seems to me that you might as well go on with “Too Cute for Words” at your convenience. I am correcting it today and will return it to you.

My next venture with Gwen will be entirely in key with the first and as I rewrite “Make Yourself at Home” before offering it to another magazine I will eliminate any details that could possibly indicate its connection with your series. If you have any objections to this plan please tell Harold Ober as soon as you can. I still like the story and feel that after rewriting it and changing the names, of course, that no one will associate it with “Too Cute for Words.”

Sincerely, [F. Scott Fitzgerald]

---

517. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

Thanks for the telegram from Miss Neall and for the copy of your letter in reply. I judge by this that you are going to write a new story • in the Gwen series for the Post and that you will rewrite MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME for another magazine and that it is all right for the Post to use TOO CUTE FOR WORDS as the first story in the series.

I am sure you must have a lot of material for Gwen stories.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

February 10, 1936

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518. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I did not receive your letter dated February 8th until yesterday. I wired your bank $100. today and I'll try to send another hundred next week. This will at least give you a little cash to go on while you are working on the new Gwen story.

Now regarding this idea for a ballet picture. I read Mr. Braun's letter over carefully and it doesn't seem to me that he has anything very definite to offer you. He says he has no authority to make any definite arrangements. I am, however, trying to get in touch with him and if he is still in Hollywood I am asking him to see Swanson. I don't believe Mr. Braun can put anybody to work on the idea because he hasn't the authority to do so. He might interest some American company in making a ballet picture using Spessivtzewa and then it might be possible for you to write the story.

At any rate, I don't think you ought to spend any more time on this matter unless someone makes a definite offer for your services. I think you are well equipped to write a story for a ballet picture and I'll make every effort to run this matter to the ground.

In the meantime I hope you are working on a new Gwen story and this time I hope you will not send it direct to the Post. It really doesn't save any time. I don't like to have the Post decline stories of yours. I would like to send them only stories that they will have to buy.

I am enclosing a clipping from O.O. McIntyre's column in this morning's paper.*

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

February 14, 1936

Notes:

* McIntyre, in his column “New York Day by Day,” wrote: “F. Scott Fitzgerald, greying and chunking up, is reputedly one of the most difficult authors from whom editors may wangle stories these days. He is the literary symbol of an era—the era of the new generation—and editors continue to want stories of flask gin and courteous collegiates preceding ladies through windshields on midnight joy rides. The public has acquired this Fitzgerald taste, too. But Fitzgerald has taken an elderly and naturally serious turn. Mellowed is the term. He wants to write mellowy, too. And if they won't let him he won't write at all. So there.”

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519. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I have the manuscript of MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME with the names changed and I am showing it to an editor today. As I am wiring you, I am sending another hundred dollars to your bank in Baltimore. It isn't very much but it is all I can spare just now.

I am doing everything I can to get in touch with Mr. Braun and if he is still in Hollywood I have asked him to get in touch with Swanson and I have explained the situation to Swanson so that he can discuss the matter intelligently with him.

I hope you will be able to do a second Gwen story that will be as delightful as the first one was.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

February 19, 1936

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520. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Md.

Dear Scott:

As you know, I wrote to Swanson about your ideas of a ballerina story. He says he has not seen Mr. Braun yet. He says that David Selznick is very keen to do a ballerina story and he wants to know if it is all right to approach him with one of these ideas and it is possible that you can develop the idea here in the East.

Merritt Hulburd is in New York now and he says that they want a ballerina story for Miriam Hopkins. Do you think you could without taking too much time write a page or two about one of the ideas that you think would suit Miriam Hopkins. Samuel Goldwyn is here in New York now and will be here until March 4th.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

February 25, 1936

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521. To Ober

TLS, 1 p. (AO)

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore, Maryland,

February 26, 1936.

Mr. Harold Ober, 40 East 49th Street, New York, New York.

Dear Harold:

The carbon of those ideas seems to have been lost. Please send back copies of all the stuff that you got on the subject and I will be in a better position to say what I might do with it.

I'm almost finished the Gwen story.*

What is the exact arrangement of selling an idea if the originator of it does not go out to the coast? That is utterly out of the question at the moment for me. I mean to say, what is the down payment? I wouldn't want it to be another false venture like I've made before in pictures and radio. At any rate please send the copies of my suggestions in both my letters.

Ever yours, Scott

Notes:

* Possibly “Inside the House.”

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522. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I am returning Mr. Braun's letter and I am also sending a copy of the parts of your letter of February 8th giving your ideas for the ballerina story. I am also returning the scenario entitled LIVES OF THE DANCERS although I am not sure you need that. All I want you to do now is perhaps elaborate a little on one of these ideas. I don't want you to make a treatment now for that is what you will be paid for if you do it. All you need to do is to write perhaps a page giving a little description of your idea, making it sound attractive and not telling too much abut it.

If Samuel Goldwyn is enthusiastic about this description he might pay $2000. or $2500. down for you to develop a twenty or twenty-five page treatment on the understanding that if he liked the treatment he would pay an additional amount.

I think it is probably much more important to finish the Gwen story than it is to write out this idea but if you can do it easily without taking too much time it might be a good idea to do it now. Goldwyn is sailing for England about March 4th and if you haven't time to do it now you could do it while he is abroad and you can show it to him when he gets back.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

February 28, 1936

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Harold Ober's note on bis 19 February 1936-30 December 1936 file folder reads: “where are Scotts letters to me for above period one letter from Scott Oct 5, 1936”. Our searches have failed to recover the missing Fitzgerald letters.

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523. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms 34th St. & Charles Sts. Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

Mr. Braun came in to see me this afternoon. He is just back from Hollywood and sailing on Wednesday. He says he will be back in about five weeks. You will then know exactly what the situation is regarding the ballet picture and he will come in to see me as soon as he gets to New York. He says he may bring Mlle. Spessivtzewa with him.

As you know, Sam Grisman, producer of TOBACCO ROAD has an option on TENDER IS THE NIGHT. He wants to know if we would approve of Jack Kirkland and Austin Parker as dramatists for your book. I think the combination of these two would be a very good one. I understand they have worked together very successfully. Austin Parker knows the kind of people you are writing about. He was at one time Miriam Hopkins' husband and before that he was married to Phyllis Duganne.* He has written a few plays and been very successful in Hollywood. Jack Kirkland is an experienced dramatist. I am assuming that you will approve this choice but you might drop me a line in confirmation.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

March 2, 1936

Notes:

* Poet and short story writer.

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524. Katherine McGill, Editorial Department, Woman’s Home Companion, to Ober

TLS, 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
March 3, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Expresses regret at having to reject Fitzgerald’s story “Make Yourself at Home.”

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525. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
March 3, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

COULD SAM GOLDWYN COME DOWN HERE BEFORE HE SAILS FOR EUROPE STOP I HAVE THE IDEA FULLY DEVELOPED AND I WOULD MUCH Rather That He cAME To Me Give Me Eight HOURS WARNING IF HE CAN COME = SCOTT FITZGERALD .

Notes

This item and the two from March 11 concern a movie treatment called “Ballet Shoes” that Fitzgerald had written in hopes of stirring interest in a full-length film script at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Fitzgerald had learned that L. G. Braun, the business manager of the Russian ballerina Olga Spessivtzeva, was trying to arrange a movie contract for her with Samuel Goldwyn. Fitzgerald knew a good deal about the dance world from having observed Zelda in ballet training in Paris during the late 1920s. He did not succeed in interesting Goldwyn in the film. “Ballet Shoes” was published in the Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual 1976, 5-7.

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526. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 3 March 1936. (AO)

GOLDWYN SAILING TOMORROW EVERY MOMENT TAKEN IMPOSSIBLE COME BALTIMORE.
Harold Ober

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527. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 4 March 1936. (AO)

ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE AND IMPRACTICAL SEE GOLDWYN NOW WILL ARRANGE ON HIS RETURN WRITING
Harold Ober

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528. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I was sorry that your plan of having Samuel Goldwyn go to Baltimore was not feasible. He couldn't possibly postpone his trip. He and all his retinue had their passage arranged and had engagements in London that had to be kept. As a matter of fact I don't think it would have been of any use for him to go to Baltimore. I know Goldwyn and how he works for I spent a good many mornings with him. He always has a right-hand man who prepares everything for him—at present Merritt Hulburd is the one who does this. Merritt Hulburd used to be with the Saturday Evening Post and I have absolute confidence in him. Merritt had to go back to Hollywood yesterday. If you will let me have a short outline on the ballet picture I'll take it up with Merritt and then we can possibly arrange to see Goldwyn when he comes back from Europe.

I have been looking for the new Gwen story and I hope it will be along soon.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

March 5, 1936

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529. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 9 March 1936.

PERHAPS SLIGHT COMPARED TO FIRST STORY BUT ATTRACTIVE AND I LIKE IT * Harold Ober

Notes:

* “Inside the House.”

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530. To Fitzgerald

Typed post card. (AO)

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

A COURSE IN LANGUAGES appears in the April, 1936 * issue of McCalls Magazine under the title IMAGE ON THE HEART.
Sincerely HAROLD OBER
Per. J S S Sterling

March 9,1936

Notes:

* This card was returned to Ober with the following notes written by Fitzgerald along the bottom and left margins: “By that time I wont even remember the original title” and “Sorry this is torn. Was amused F. S. F”.

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531. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 2 pp. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I have sent you by special delivery this morning a carbon of the typed copy of OUTSIDE THE HOUSE.* The copy you sent me was difficult to read and I have now read over the typed copy and it seems to me that with a few hours work you could improve the story and this extra work might make all the difference between an acceptance and a declination. I think it is especially important that the Post like this story for if they don't, they might decide it is a mistake for you to go on with the series. I feel very sure that you can make a very fine series of the Gwen stories.

I wish you would read the copy over carefully especially Chapter 4. The timing here is rather confused. In the first place there is no mention of Gwen having had dinner. Then you have two accidents to the car which seems almost too much of a coincidence. Then you have the moving picture actress walking up and down for an hour waiting for a taxi. Then later on when the snow is worse you have Gwen and Jason get a taxi very easily to go a short distance.

When Gwen and Jason finally leave the moving picture actress at the Dobies' they go to the moving picture theatre, which is evidently very near, are there only a few minutes and go back to Gwen's house. This doesn't give enough time for the picture actress to be at the party and go back to Gwen's house.

It also seems to me that the part about the picture house is rather confused. I thought at first that the picture was being run twice and that they had come in just at the end of the first run (on page 19 for instance you say that they were caught in a gangway of people waiting for the last of the performance). There didn't seem to be much point in their going to all the trouble of going upstairs if the picture was so nearly over.

If you go over this chapter carefully I am sure you can make it clearer and more effective. Is it really necessary to have Gwen and Jason take the picture actress to the party? If they do I think they should take her there right away and then have the difficulties getting to the picture come afterwards. I think perhaps you could simplify this chapter. As I understand the story, all you need is to have Gwen have a terrible time getting to the picture and then not see it (by the way is there any point in mentioning that she had seen the picture before?).

If you don't feel like making a final revision of the story wire me and I'll send the ribbon copy I have to the Post right away. I feel quite sure, however, that with a little more work you can make this a story that the Post will surely buy. I don't feel quite sure about it in its present shape. If you can get it back to me by Thursday I can give it to Graeme Lorimer when he is in New York and in that way there will really be no time lost.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

March 10, 1936

Notes:

* “Inside the House.”

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532. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
March 11, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

MOVIE SHOULD BEAR ALTERNATE TITLE BALLET SLIPPERS STOP REVISED STORY SENT = SCOTT.

---

533. FSF to Ober

ALS (photocopy), 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
n.d., received March 11, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Dear Harold:

The ballet story went off to you today—a synopsis in about 600 words. I am absolutely in the dark about what is best to do. Of course you are absolutely right that Hulbird ¹ is the best bet, if he is convinced enough to make Goldwynn put something down, by cabling him. To let this be around a Hollywood office, pored over by every script writer who came in would be fatal.

It ought to be rushed through. I think a continuity writer could work directly from this synopsis with few plot changes and have a script but of course I would want to do a treatment for the sake of the dialogue and ballet atmosphere that I know so well.

Ever Yours Scott

Notes

1 Merritt Hulburd, a story editor on Goldwyn’s staff, had worked at the Saturday Evening Post before joining MGM. (Fitzgerald’s misspellings in these letters,such as “Hulbird” and “Goldwynn,” have been reproduced without correction. Likewise, missing punctuation has not been replaced.)

---

534. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I got the revised Gwen story in time to have the pages retyped and to give it to Graeme Lorimer when he came in this morning. I also got the ballet idea and registered it at the Authors' League and sent a copy off by airmail to Merritt Hulburd. I told him I didn't want it shown to anybody but Mr. Goldwyn and Miriam Hopkins. Samuel Goldwyn's organization is quite different from the other picture companies—they do not have any Scenario Department. They make only a few pictures a year and engage writers just for the picture they are making at the time so I do not think there is any danger of the idea being seen by anyone who shouldn't see it.

I thought the idea was a good one. I thought also the changes you made in OUTSIDE THE HOUSE improved it and I hope the Post will buy it.

I received your telegram and I am registering the scenario under both titles BALLET SHOES and BALLET SLIPPERS.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

March 12, 1936

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535. FSF to Ober

ALS (photocopy), 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
n.d., received March 12, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Dear Harold:

Here’s the revision covering all your points + some others.¹ It’s much better. It’ll have to be retyped Scott

Notes

1 Fitzgerald was returning a story called “Outside the House”—one of series of stories about an adolescent girl named Gwen that he was writing for the Post. Gwen was based on his daughter, Scottie. Ober had written him a detailed critique of the story on March 10; Fitzgerald had revised in response. The story was eventually published as “Inside the House,” Saturday Evening Post 208 (June 13, 1936).

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536. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I was in Philadelphia on Friday and saw both George Horace Lorimer and Graeme, and Adelaide Neall. They hadn't then read your second Gwen story and as a matter of fact I haven't had word from them yet about it. I take it from your telegram of last night that they told you they were going to buy it and I am of course very pleased. I am hoping that the check for it will come in tomorrow morning. When I get the check I'll be glad of course to keep to the arrangement we made on the story they didn't buy,and wire you $2000.

This is too obvious to mention but I presume you have considered the possibility of using in this Gwen series some of the ideas you had in the radio scenario you sent me. It seems to me that it would be a very good idea in this series to emphasize the relation between Gwen and her father.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

March 17, 1936

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537. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald Esq., Cambridge Apts., Charles & 34th St., Baltimore, Md.

Dear Scott:

The latter part of January we had some correspondence about your short story I'D DIE FOR YOU, resulting in your decision to revise it before we offered it further. I sent a copy back to you on February 1st.

If after reading it you decided to start on something new and discarded further plans for rewriting, just let me know and I will remove the story from the active list.

Sincerely, [Harold Ober]

March 30,1936

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538. FSF to Ober

TLS (photocopy), 3 pp., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
April 4, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Dear Harold:

I think you will like this story.¹ If you do I hope that the following will be convenient. Let me explain first. Things having reached a stale-mate here with Zelda I am moving her on the advice of several doctors to a new environment, a sanitarium in Asheville, where I will probably again have to pass the summer. ² I plan to make the trip immediately now that I have finished this story and am planning to leave on Tuesday night. If you feel pretty confident of this story can you advance me $200 which will enable me to make the transfer to Asheville? It will have to be done with the aid of a trained nurse as she is still in a most dangerous and violent condition.

When the story sells, and I feel confident it will, I should also like to count on $2000 of the proceeds. Perhaps on the next story, which I will start on reaching Asheville (or rather when I hear from you as to whether they like this one and want me to continue with the Gwen stories or quit them) you could deduct $1500 per story until we are square. If this is accepted it will take a load off my mind indeed. Will you wire me your opinion of this story and let me know about the $200 advance? If your wire is favorable, my address from Wednesday on will be The Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina, for several weeks, and will you wire me there about the Post decision and the deposit of further money?

As to your letter of March 30, I hadn’t wanted to revise “I’d Die for You” because I suppose the suicide theme pretty well damns it, but I gave it to young Bill Warren and told him if he could do anything about it I’d split with him. ³ However, he has a play opening in New York this month and has been too absorbed to do anything with it as yet, if he ever will. So far as I’m concerned it’s dead.

As to the Gwen story for the Post I felt more hopeful and am rather surprised that you had no bidders. Who has seen it? ⁴ Can you get me any opinions on it? I don’t think it is first rate but it has good things in it and somebody ought to like it.

My morale has improved lately and I do hope this new Post story sells to keep it up.

Scottie sends her best.

Ever yours, Scott

Notes

1 “The Pearl and the Fur,” a lost Gwen story that, despite much revision, Ober was unable to sell to the Post. He finally sold it to Pictorial Review, with the names of the characters changed, for $1,000. See the useful article by Jennifer McCabe Atkinson, “Lost and Unpublished Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald,” Fitzgerald/ Hemingway Annual 1971, 46-51.

2 Zelda was moved to Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, on April 8, 1936. She was treated at Highland off and on for the rest of her life and died there in a fire on March 10, 1948.

3 Charles Marquis Warren was a young Baltimorean who became Fitzgerald’s protege for a time during the mid-1930s. He collaborated with Fitzgerald on a movie treatment of Tender Is the Night in the spring of 1934, but the treatment did not sell. Warren later created the television shows Gunsmoke and rawhide. “I’d Die for You,” also titled “The Legend of Lake Lure,” is a lost story set in North Carolina in which the protagonist commits suicide. See Atkinson, “Lost and Unpublished Stories,” 42-44.

4 This was “The Pearl and the Fur.” Notes in the margin of the letter indicate that the story had been rejected by Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, Pictorial Review, the Post, and Woman’s Home Companion.

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539. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 6 April 1936. (AO)

BEGINNING AND END DELIGHTFUL MIDDLE NEEDS REWRITING RETURNING STORY WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR REVISION IMPORTANT THIS STORY BE JUST RIGHT * OBER

Notes:

* “The Pearl and the Fur.”

---

540. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 2pp. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I think the beginning and the ending of the new Gwen story are delightful. The middle part of the story, however, seems to me very complicated and improbable and I think this part of the story should be rewritten before it is sent to the Post. It is most important to have the story just right because it will make a great deal of difference about the Post going on with the series. I understand that there was some division of opinion about the last story and I am sure this story will have to be better than the last to get by.

A good deal of the taxicab material seems to me improbable and two other readers independently reached the same conclusion. It doesn't seem possible that an expensive coat would be left in a taxicab from one evening to noon of the next day. If the taxi driver went back to his company's garage reporting that something had been found, the company would take charge of the lost property.

I have checked up on the subway station at Kingsbridge and 230th Street and it is as closely settled as any part of New York City. The subways leave every four or five minutes. If anyone were in a hurry to get from 230th Street to 59th Street one would never think of taking a taxicab and there are no subway terminals that are in unpopulated districts as you describe.

Wouldn't it be simpler if Gwen found some small article like a pocketbook with the rich woman's card in it and perhaps with the tickets for the trip. She might have driven downtown and taken the cab that the rich woman had left in going to the boat. I think this middle section of the story ought to be simplified and shortened and more of it written in the style of the beginning and the end.

I hate to suggest all this just as you are leaving for Asheville but as I have said before it is much better to have a story right and have it bought than to hurry it and have it declined.

Sincerely yours,

DICTATED BY HAROLD OBER WHO LEFT BEFORE SIGNING

April 6, 1936

ENC. THE PEARL AND THE FUR

---

In April 1936 Zelda left Sheppard-Pratt, and Fitzgerald took her to Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. He returned to Baltimore in May, finally moving to Grove Park Inn in Asheville during the month of July.

---

541. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

As I wired you, we have sold MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME to the Pictorial and they are paying $2500. for it. I think the check will come along fairly soon and that I shall be able to send you some money in a few days.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

April 8, 1936

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542. Memo by Ober

Typed file memo by Ober, 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
April 11, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Ober notes that Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald’s editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons, has suggested to FSF that he “write an autobiography using some of the material in the personal articles he has written.”

---

543. from Courtenay Savage, Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., to Ober

TLS, 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)

April 14, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Refers to a “Father and Daughter Radio Sketch” by Fitzgerald that she has seen. “It is not a good radio program as it stands,” writes Savage, but Fitzgerald “could probably be taught how to write good radio.” A handwritten note on the bottom of the letter by a member of Ober’s staff reads in part, “[T]here isn’t enough money in it for Scott. $200 for 15 min scripts is tops.”

---

544. Gummo Marx to FSF

TLS (photocopy), 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
April 17, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Marx attempts to interest Fitzgerald in movie work in Hollywood. The original of this letter was sold at the December 14, 1983, Sotheby’s auction.

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545. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I have collected the check from the Pictorial for MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME and on the basis of giving you $1500. of this check, I am wiring to your bank today $800. On April 6th I sent you $200., on the 9th $200., and on the 14th $300., which makes $700.—combined with the $800. I am sending you today makes up the $1500. Will this be all right until the next story comes along?

I am enclosing something that came in the mail without any address.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

April 17, 1936

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546. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
April 21, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

DID MANUSCRIPT REACH YOU AND DID YOU LIKE IT= ¹ FITZGERALD.

Notes

1  “The Pearl and the Fur.” On the same day, Ober wired back: “story much improved” (As Ever, Scott Fitz—, 263).

---

547. FSF to Ober

ALS (photocopy), 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
n.d., received April 22, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Dear Harold: You can probably figure this out better than I can. Who on Gods earth is “Gummo”—a nephew?¹ Is there anything in it for me? I might go to Hollywood on a specific set up but not as a gag man. Groucho might like my fantasies (Benjamin Button² ect.) and I might enjoy doing something along those lines. Before you [do] anything about this please deliberate + answer. I am dead tired + would think better on subject after hearing from you.

If you have not already wired about whether you like Pearl + Fur please do so.

Always Yours Scott Fitz

Notes

1 Fitzgerald is referring to the letter from Gummo Marx, April 17, 1936 - see earlier. Milton “Gummo” Marx, the fifth son of Sam and Minnie Marx, stopped performing with the Marx Brothers before they won fame on Broadway and in the movies. Like his younger brother, Herbert “Zeppo” Marx, with whom he was working in 1936, he became a talent agent and managed the business affairs of his siblings. In the letter, Gummo refers to a message from his brother Groucho indicating that Fitzgerald “might not be adverse to going to Hollywood to do a picture.” If true, Gummo offers to arrange “a swell deal” for him.

2 “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” Collier’s 69 (May 27, 1922), collected in Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). In this fantasy, a character named Benjamin Button is born an old man and grows gradually younger.

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548. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
April 22, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

CAN GET ALONG WITH TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY FOR A FEW DAYS = FITZGERALD.

---

549. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 21 April 1936. (AO)

STORY MUCH IMPROVED BEING TYPED FOR POST. HAROLD OBER

---

550. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 22 April 1936. (AO)

IS IT ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY THAT YOU HAVE FOUR HUNDRED NOW. HAROLD OBER

---

551. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 2pp. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I wired you yesterday that the Gwen story THE PEARL AND THE FUR was much improved and that I was having it typed for the Post. It is true that the story is improved but when I gave the new typed copy a careful reading it seemed to me to contain a great many improbabilities. I have since had other readings on the story and every reading seems to disclose further improbabilities. In your letter accompanying the new version you said you didn't feel able to do any more work on the story so we have tried to fix up the most glaring inconsistencies.

After thinking the matter over very carefully I think that it would be a great mistake to offer this story to the Post. Mr. Lorimer made it very clear to me that he could not buy another Gwen story unless it were very much better than the last one he bought. In my opinion this story is far below the first two. The story starts very well indeed but it is terribly full of holes and when you try to patch up one hole, another one appears somewhere else. I feel it is very important for your future relations with the Post that the next story they see of yours shall be an extremely good one. This is what I'd like to do: We would like to work on the story for a few days and see if we can't fix up the inconsistencies in it, then I'd like to have the story retyped changing Gwen's name to the name used in the story I just sold the Pictorial. I feel sure that you do not want to work any more on the story just now and any changes I make in the story will be merely changes of timing and correction of inaccuracies. None of your dialogue will have to be changed. Let me know how you feel about this. In the meantime I hope you will be able to start work on a new story. I think you have excellent material for these Gwen stories.

If on the other hand you want to do further work on this story let me know and I'll send you a list of the improbabilities we have found in the story. The Post is a very difficult magazine to get by with improbabilities. They ferret them out with a fine-tooth comb.

I have your telegram asking if I can deposit $400. I have wired back asking if it is absolutely necessary to have this now. I'll try to get it for you if you have to have it but I had hoped you would be able to get along for a little while on the unexpected Pictorial money.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

April 22, 1936

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552. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
April 24, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

SUBSEQUENT TO CONVERSATION TODAY STILL WANT TO OFFER STORY TO POST AND WILL MEANWHILE DO AN ESQUIRE PIECE TO BRIDGE FINANCIAL GAP STOP WILL WORK ON POST STORY AGAIN SEND ME ALL CHANGES SPECIAL DELIVERY AND HOLD EVERYTHING UNTIL YOU RECEIVE REVISION STOP AM TRYING ALSO TO FIX UP STORY OUTSIDE THE HOUSE BY WORKING ON PROOF = SCOTT FITZGERALD .

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553. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald Esq., Grove Park Inn, Asheville, N.C.

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

Since Mr. Ober was not in this morning when your telegram arrived, I read it to him over the telephone and he asked me to tell you he would write to you early Monday. He also asked me to send you the Gwen story together with a list of the inconsistencies about which he wrote you and a list of the cuts made. The carbon is a copy of the story with the changes and cuts made in accordance with sheet No.l.

Sincerely, [Constance Smith]

April 25, 1936

[Attachment:]

THE PEARL AND THE FUR
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD.

All numberings refer to original copy.

Page 4. —Direction changed because of Pier number change (Pier 97 is at foot of West 57th St. and most boats for West Indies sail from there)

Timing changed to fit further incidents.

Page 5.—Timing changed to make it logical for Mrs. TenBrook to come aboard so early. “Central Park Zoo specified - also for timing. Explains cut on page 7.

“In a new uniform” cut. N.Y. taxi drivers don't wear uniforms.

Deadhead stuff cut because seemed irrelevant and all this part had to be speeded up. (See page 6 for similar cuts)

Part about his looking up zoo cut, because of change to Central Park Zoo whose location should be known to any New Yorker.

Page 6. —Age cut because N.Y. law requires hack drivers to be 21.

Page 8. “in front of the church” cut, because they are in Park.

Page 9. —Directions  changed  for obvious  reasons.  “Chateau” changed to mansion because existence of chateaus in N.Y. doubtful.

Page 10. Cuts and changes made for timing purposes.

Page 14. Insert to explain how other taxi-driver knew about the cape.

Page 18. “windowless” changed to “dark” because doubted any room would be without windows.

Further changes: Eliminate “mention” on Page 18 of chauffeur so as not to raise question in reader's mind why Mrs. TenBrook went in a taxi.

1. No girls school (from out of town) would let girls of 13 wander around New York alone.

2. Why would anyone take a chinchilla coat to West Indies in Spring?

3. The four boys wouldn't let girl go off in taxi with the chinchilla boat. One of them at least would go with her, or they would all go to the boat together.

4. Gwen goes down to boat for the romance of travel(presented earlier) why doesn't she stay as long as possible to see people on board etc. Instead she gets off very early to go to the zoo—why? It isn't time for lunch.

5. Gwen gets on board the boat—no passengers, not even a guard at gangplank—unliekly—why go so early? (page 5)

6. Why does a rich woman board a boat several hours before it sails?

7. Why do all four boys go back to house for coat? Why do any of them go if rich woman telephones and finds it isn't there?

8. Exchange of drivers not plausible. I think a driver would always finish his fare and get his tip.

9. Women do not have their names in their coats.—or addresses?

10. Gwen after protecting coat so carefully wouldn't let driver carry it when he gets to boat.

11. Nobody could be locked in bird house at noon?

12. Why does rich woman go down in taxi—while the boys seems to have come back in a limousine?

13. Taxi drivers have to be 21 in N.Y. City

14. No taxi driver in N.Y. would start out with a passenger the first time he ever drives a cab. (Page 6)

15. Its long after 12—boat sails at 1—boys haven't much time to dance. (Page 10)

16. Tough taxi driver—his arriving comes as a surprise—still seems improbable—also the maids telephoning. Perhaps the rich woman should have telephoned—if she remembered taxi Co. Better say—“Rich woman telephoned to say she had left a coat in the taxi she took to the pier 97—and then word came in coat had been found in taxi? (Page 15)

17. Boat is being cleared—Rich woman says she could arrange by long distance for Gwen to sail—Pretty quick work'. (Page 18).

---

554. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I am delighted that you have decided to do a little more work on THE PEARL AND THE FUR. I am sure you can make it a story that the Post will be delighted to have.

The list of comments I sent you needs a little explanation. These were the combined comments of three readers. Some of them are trivial and some of them apply only to the changes that we made in the version we had typed.

While all of these inconsistencies might not occur to any one reader, some of them would I think be noticed by any reader of the story, so I hope you can get rid of as many of them as possible.

It seems to me that the most necessary thing to do in the story is to arrange Gwen's adventure so that it will take place in a very short space of time. A rich woman used to travelling would not board a boat very long before its time of sailing. It seems to me therefore that the finding of the coat, etc. ought to be arranged in such a way that everything could happen within the space of three-quarters of an hour or an hour.

Couldn't you have the young taxi driver lose his job for not reporting the loss of the coat? This would do away with the second taxi driver who I think is very difficult to introduce in a plausible manner.

I hope you know that no one reads your stories with more pleasure and with more partiality than I do and that I wouldn't suggest your making changes in a story unless it seemed to me important that you should do so. Of course much the easiest thing for me to do would be to have had your copy typed and send it as it was to Philadelphia but I am sure you want me to use my best judgment and so far I think we have agreed very well on the changes that are advisable to make in your stories.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

April 27, 1936

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555. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I have a letter from Miss Neall saying she thinks you have strengthened INSIDE THE HOUSE very much by the changes you have made in it.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

April 30, 1936

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556. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 4 May 1936. (AO)

WIRING TWO HUNDRED STORY READS VERY WELL NOW ON WAY TO POST
Harold Ober

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557. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Cambridge Arms Charles & 34th Streets Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

The story came in this morning and I also have your telegram from Baltimore. How long are you going to be there? I have just finished reading THE PEARL AND THE FUR and although I have gone over it a number of times I really enjoyed it this time and I think you have done a very good job on it. It is already on the way to the Post.

I am a little short at the moment but I have wired you $200. this morning.

Did you get a letter that Paramount wants you to sign regarding the verse on the title page of THE GREAT GATSBY? They have called me up this morning to know whether we ever got the signed letter.

Dick Knight,* whom I met with you several years ago, called me this morning for your address. I gave it to him. He tells me he has had articles accepted by several magazines in the last week or two.

Let me know how Zelda is and tell Scotty we hope she is going to make us a visit sometime this summer.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

May 4, 1936

Notes:

* A New York lawyer friend of the Fitzgeralds.

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558. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I'll try to get a copy of MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME within a few days. We haven't one here but I have just got from Pictorial Review the names of the characters in the first story which may help you temporarily:

You called the child Dolly Haines; her school teacher was named Grace Terhune, the boy in the story Clarke Cresswell; the maid Hazel Dawn; the uncle Charlie Craig. You mention two families, the Appletons, whom Dolly had just visited, and the Martins, whom she was supposed to visit. Major Redfern, Miss Willie and Hep Morrison were the crooks. The society girl was named Angela Duckney.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

May 7, 1936

I hope you won't have to use any of these names on the present story!

Have you that letter Paramount wanted you to sign? *

Notes:

+ The postscripts were added in Ober's hand.

---

559. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
May 7, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

[PLEASE SPEC]IAL DELIVERY YOUR COPY OF PICTORIAL STORY SO [I CAN CHANG]E NAMES IN PEARL AND FUR IF POST REFUSES IT = [FITZGERA]LD .

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560. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I have a note from Miss Neall this morning telling me what she has already told you about the Gwen story THE PEARL AND THE FUR. She tells me you have decided to drop the series for the Post but I think we will be able to sell this story to the Pictorial after you have changed the names.

I am having a copy made of the story the Pictorial bought and will send it to you by special delivery when it is ready.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

May 8, 1936

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561. FSF to Ober

ALS (photocopy), 3 pp., Collection of Douglas Wyman; Life In Letters, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
n.d., received May 9, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Dear Harold:

Here’s for the Pictorial.¹ (3d draft, 3d correction.) Every single story since Phillipe I in the Spring of 1934 two years ago I’ve had to write over. Save the 1st McCalls + The Fortune Telling.²

All three last Phillipe stories, the last case, New Types, the Esquires, the Image on the Heart, 1st Gwen, 2nd Gwen, 3d Gwen and now 4th Gwen.³

Eleven stories! It simply doubles my work + keeps me in my room all the time so save when I was 1st sick last summer there is no break ever—ones finished I plan to rest, its no good so I must revise it so there’s no rest for debts press + I start another. This business of debt is awful. It has made me lose confidence to an appalling extent. I used to write for myself—now I write for editors because I never have time to really think what I do like or find anything to like. Its like a man drawing out water in drops because he’s too thirsty to wait for the well to fill. Oh, for one lucky break.

I sent off those Paramount things some days ago. Maybe they went to Paramount—I cant seem to remember. I can find out I think. Do they want to use The Gold Hat as a title. I thought of calling Gatsby that at first.⁴

Well, now I need two hundred pretty badly. So badly that there are collecting agencies at the door every day—rent unpaid, school unpaid, sanitarium unpaid + not a vestige of credit left [in] Baltimore.

I haven’t had even a glass of beer for a month + shall try it again for a few months as I did last year + see if that’ll help my morale, but I havn’t much faith. There seems to be too much to contend with to get any piece of mind. Where there were once two or three things there are now dozens. It will take a windfall

Ah well, everyone has troubles now. Except the rich, damn them.

Ever Yours Scott

Please tell me about the money. I will start another Post story tomorrow. No more Gwen at present.

P.S. This story is really all smoothed out at last. I wish the Post had seen it this way, but I was sick in bed last wk. + not at my best. However I wouldn’t want to try them again.

Just got word that I am being sued for debt by Zelda’s last sanitarium. Could you make it 300 instead of two hundred. It is impossible to write or even exist under these circumstances. I have even used the loan companies.

P.S. One last thing. I realize that I am at the end of my recsources physically + financially. After getting rid of this house next month + storing furniture I am cutting expenses to the bone, taking Scotty to Carolina instead of camp + going to a boarding house for the summer. I have got to do that and get a sense of proportion and give her one. The doctors tell me at this rate of work I wont last two years. Zelda + I did that twice when I was making more than I am now + had less expenses.

This way I work all day + worry all night.

This copy looks mixed but it really isn’t. Its only my hand sticks to the paper its so hot here. But put someone very careful on it to unravel the bad pages

Notes

^1. “The Pearl and the Fur” again. Ober had written on April 22 suggesting further revisions, which Fitzgerald supplied. (See As Ever, Scott Fitz—, 264.) This was the version that finally sold to Pictorial Review.

^2. The first story in the medieval series about a character called Philippe, Count of Darkness, was “In the Darkest Hour,” Redbook 63 (October 1934). The other Philippe stories, also published in Redbook, are “The Count of Darkness,” 65 (June 1935); “The Kingdom in the Dark,” 65 (August 1935); and “Gods of Darkness,” 78 (November 1941). The McCall’s story was “The Intimate Strangers,” 62 (June 1935); the fortune-telling story was “Fate in Her Hands,” American Magazine 121 (April 1936).

^3. The Phillipe stories are cited in note 2 above. Other stories mentioned in this sentence are “Her Last Case,” Saturday Evening Post 207 (November 3, 1934); “New Types,” Saturday Evening Post 207 (September 22, 1934); and “Image on the Heart,” McCall’s 63 (April 1936). Two Gwen stories were published in the Post: “Too Cute for Words,” 208 (April 18, 1936), and “Inside the House,” 208 (June 13, 1936). The third and fourth Gwen stories were “The Pearl and the Fur,” which is lost, and “Make Yourself at Home.” Both were sold to Pictorial Review after revision but were not published there because the magazine folded. “Make Yourself at Home” was resold to Liberty magazine, where it appeared as “Strange Sanctuary,” 16 (December 9, 1939). The “Esquires” were the essays and stories that Fitzgerald had published in that magazine between May 1934 and May 1936.

^4. Papers relating to the verse epigraph on the title page of The Great Gatsby (1925). See As Ever, Scott Fitz—, 268. The verse, of Fitzgerald’s own composition, mentions a “gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover” and is attributed to Thomas Parke D’Invilliers, a character in This Side of Paradise (1920). Paramount assumed that D’Invilliers was a real poet and wanted Fitzgerald to identify the source of the verse.

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562. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

THE PEARL AND THE FUR is very much better than any other version and I am sorry the Post could not have seen it first in this version. However, I think you are probably right that it would be a mistake to ask them to read the story again. We are having it typed and I'll show it to the Pictorial.

I wish I could have a talk with you and I'll be glad to run down to Baltimore any time that you feel like seeing me.

If Scotty is not going to camp I hope she can have a long visit with us this summer.

Katharine Brush told me today that a year or two ago there was an article in Fortune on Metro Goldwyn. One of her friends brought the article to her and pointed out a line which said that she was one of the first imitators of Scott Fitzgerald. This friend thought she would be very angry but she told me it was the highest compliment she had ever been paid.

I'll write you again in a day or two—I haven't any more time tonight.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

May 11, 1936

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563. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I talked today to one of the editors of the Pictorial. The other editor is away for a day or two and I am afraid I won't have an answer on the story until the middle or latter part of the week.

The moment Swanson gets here I'll see about coming down to see you and I'll let you know when he arrives.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

May 18, 1936

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564. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I have been thinking about the publication of Zelda's letters and while I think it is something that should be done sometime, I do not feel sure that now is the time to do it. At any rate it seems to me a thing that ought to be done very carefully. I should think the letters would have to be edited and you yourself would have to do considerable writing to make the connection between the letters clear. It doesn't seem to me that it is a thing that you ought to put very much time on just now. I feel very sure, however, that Zelda's letters would make a very beautiful book, and sometime I hope they will be published.

R.K.O. want to have an original written for a boy star, Bobby Breen, who is starring in the picture LET'S SING AGAIN. This boy is six years old and has a fine soprano voice. If the picture has been released in Baltimore you might see it. If you think you could write an original for this boy, I think R.K.O. would pay something like $2500. down and when the treatment was finished the price would be determined before you started work. All they would need would be a rounded outline of the story. It need not be put into moving picture scenario form. I am enclosing a review of LET'S SING AGAIN from Variety.

If you think you could write a story for a boy of this age let me know and I'll see what can be done, but don't spend any time writing the story until I know whether we can get a definite order for it, and the $2500. before you begin.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

May 21, 1936

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565. Memo by Ober

Typed file memo by Ober, 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
May 22, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

The memo concerns a tentative offer from RKO Radio Pictures for Fitzgerald to write an original movie treatment for a six-year- old boy soprano named Bobby Breen, who “sings over the radio with Eddie Cantor.” Breen was appearing in a movie called Let’s Sing Again (1936), then in the theaters. Fitzgerald did respond with an idea, but RKO did not bite. See As Ever, Scott Fitz—, 271, 274.

---

566. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
May 25, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

CAN YOU GIVE ME A DAYS NOTICE BEFORE COMING AM TRYING TO KILL STORY ALSO GOING TO DENTIST BUT IF YOU WIRE CAN BREAK ENGAGEMENT WEDNESDAY KEEPING THURSDAY AND FRIDAY OPEN UNTIL I HEAR FROM YOU MOVING SOME FURNITURE OUT NEXT WEEK BUT ANYTIME AFTER TUESDAY WILL BE OK = SCOTT.

---

567. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
May 27, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

FINISHED STORY SUNDAY AND TUMBLED INTO BED WITH ACUTE LUMBAGO HAVE WORKED IT OVER TODAY AND WILL GET IT OFF TOMORROW NIGHT SORRY FOR THE DELAY AM LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU = SCOTT FITZGERALD.

---

568. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)

May 28, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

CAN YOU DEPOSIT FIFTY HERE FIRST NATIONAL = SCOTT.

---

569. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)

May 28, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

INSTEAD OF FIFTY CAN YOU WIRE HUNDRED I WILL BE IN STIR ON BAD CHECK RACKET AND WONT SEE YOU NEXT WEEK=¹ SCOTT.

Notes

¹ Ober did not make the visit to Baltimore. Notations on this telegram and on the one just before it indicate that Ober wired a total of $100 to Fitzgerald on May 28, $50 for each request. This was the $100 that Fitzgerald took to the quick-loan office and turned into $300 (see May 31 letter).

---

570. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I can't be absolutely sure but I think I shall be able to sell the second Gwen story (with the names changed)* to the Pictorial. They have promised a definite decision on this by Monday and I hope to be able to wire you on Monday that it has been sold.

I am sorry you are laid up with lumbago.

I am a little doubtful whether Swanie is going to be able to get down to Baltimore. He comes to New York very rarely and cannot leave his office in California for very long and he is tied up with engagements for every day he is here. I have talked the picture situation over with him at great length and if it isn't possible for him to go down I'll go down to see you as soon as I possibly can.

We wired you fifty dollars this morning and on receipt of your second wire I am sending you another fifty dollars.

Sincerely yours,
[Harold Ober]

May 28, 1936

Notes:

* See 11 May Ober letter.

---

571. FSF to Ober

TLS (photocopy), 3 pp., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)

May 31, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Dear Harold:

When I finished that story¹ I felt absolutely sure it was the best story I had written in a year and several other readers have confirmed the impression. I have worked at it with a doctor so it is technically accurate. If the Post declines it I think that it might specify a change of base. When they keep declining stories on such grounds as purely moral ones as in the case of “Intimate Strangers” and “Crazy Sunday,” ² or because they are overbought with medieval stuff as in the case of the first Philippe story, or because the heroine is married in the first chapter as in the fortune telling story, or because one of a made-to-order series is a little weaker than another as in the Gwen stories (they took the weaker Basil stories with the strong ones and at least three of the Little Orvie Stories of Tarkington’s ³ couldn’t possibly have held up by themselves, but were an intrinsic part of the series.) When I am up against this it seems to indicate that Lorimer ⁴ is no longer sold on me; in fact, it used to be where he often insisted on my stories against the advice of his staff, now he frequently over-rules them by turning them down.

The upshot is that every editor in New York knows that he is getting second pickings if he gets a story of mine and that accounts for such phenomena as McCalls chiselling a story down to $1250 and then publishing it first in the issue as their star story.⁵ The right of first pick is certainly something the magazines want and if the Post doesn’t care to exercise that right often they’re getting something for nothing. Of course I see all the disadvantages with making an arrangement with, say, Colliers after having been a Post writer almost uninterruptedly for sixteen years. I also know the error I made in succumbing to the seducements of Metropolitan and Hearst’s International but I think it’s worth thinking over.⁶ Every story of mine that the Post throws and which goes into the open market adds to the impression that I am slipping. Please consider this very carefully and I will too.

Thanks for the deposit. I am evacuating half of this apartment tomorrow and putting the furniture in storage and evacuating the other half about the 15th of June. With Scottie going to camp and me to a small hotel somewhere there will be one element of my living expenses tremendously cut. It has been a pretty awful winter and if these two stories sell and I can write another good one between now and the 15th things should be brighter. Typical episode: Yesterday I took your $100 into a Jewish Quick Loan Association paid them back what I owed from the last borrowing so that I could borrow $300 more. With the $300 I met the overdrawn checks and have $150 in cash to move with and to go on with. Something of this nature has happened two or three times a month every month since last fall. Ways and means take an extra day of time and worry every week and are largely responsible for the semi-embryonic state in which I have sent off several stories to you out of sheer desperation. I can see that situation has got to stop. I’d rather put Zelda in a public insane asylum and live on Esquire’s $200 a month because I can count on it and because he believes in me than see my morale being gradually sucked away by this struggle in the big time.⁷ In the old days it took me six weeks to write a story—or rather to write two or three stories and semi-stories, one of which I sent out. It still takes me the same length of time but the old two or three weeks I used to have between each production to ruminate, investigate and generally refresh myself with a change of scene or the sight of new activities, of new people, is simply missing. I come tired and dispirited to my work and leave it sick and exhausted and the fact that I am largely responsible for all this situation has nothing to do with the question and simply reproaching me about it only adds to the trouble.

The thing is I must take some drastic means and get out of it. If there’s any Hollywood idea in the offing this summer would be as good a time as any to take it up. I don’t think that if the Post turns down this doctor story for some such reason that there’s a swear word in it that might offend somebody in Arkansas that I would care to write for them again as long as Mr. Lorimer is actively at the steering wheel. The quality of fiction that he publishes now has never been so low; there are stories in there he wouldn’t have touched ten or twenty years ago, and I could not imagine his taking any of the chances that he used to take. He wants merely safe and sane repetitions as far as I can see. “Pitcairn Island” being the only really readable thing he has published since “Red Headed Woman.” ⁸ The world has simply moved beyond him and any number of other magazines are more enterprising.

Excuse this inordinately long letter.

Ever your friend, Scott

P.S. If one of the stories sells I hope I can count on a really big deposit, a couple of thousand anyhow this week. The actual fact of reducing a scale of living is an expensive process. My address will be the same until June 15.

Notes

1 “Cyclone in Silent Land,” an unpublished story about a nurse named “Trouble.” See Atkinson, “Lost and Unpublished Stories,” 51–52.

2 “The Intimate Strangers” was eventually published in mcCal’s 62 ( June 1935). “Crazy Sunday,” a Hollywood story, appeared in the american mercury 27 (October 1932) and was reprinted in taps at reveile (1935).

3 Booth Tarkington collected these stories in litle orvie (Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, Doran, 1934) ; they had ap-peared earlier in the post between June 1933 and November 1934.

4 George Horace Lorimer, editor of the post during most of the years Fitzgerald published there.

5. Fitzgerald means “Image on the Heart,” published as the lead story in the April 1936 issue of McCall’s.

6 Early in his career, Fitzgerald had signed contracts with these two magazines, giving them first refusal on all of his stories. Both magazines were attempting to lure him away from the Post.

7. Fitzgerald is referring to Arnold Gingrich, the editor of Esquire, who liked his writing and was willing to purchase most of the articles and stories he submitted, though at much lower figures than those paid by the Post and other mass-circulation magazines.

8. Pitcairn’s Island, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall (Boston: Little, Brown, 1934), was the third volume in  “The Bounty Trilogy.” The other two volumes were Mutiny on the Bounty (1932) and Men against the Sea (1934). Pitcairn’s Island was serialized in the Post before book publication, as was Katharine Brush’s novel Red-Headed Woman (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1931). Fitzgerald collaborated with the Hollywood screenwriter Marcel de Sano on a screenplay of Red-Headed Woman in 1931, but the producer Irving Thalberg rejected the script as too serious. The film, starring Jean Harlow, was shot in 1932 from a new screenplay by Anita Loos.

---

572. Monty Abrams, Mitchell Gertz Inc., Hollywood, to FSF

TLS, 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
June 3, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

An offer by the Gertz agency to represent Fitzgerald in selling the film rights of his story “Image on the Heart.” Ober always represented Fitzgerald in such negotiations; Fitzgerald routinely forwarded inquiries of this kind to Ober without answering them.

---

573. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
June 4, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

PLEASE SPECIAL DELIVERY THE CARBON OF HOSPITAL STORY IMMEDIATELY =  FITZGERALD .

¹ “Cyclone in Silent Land.” See the letter of May 31.

---

574. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I tried to get you on the telephone this afternoon but no answer.

I have been talking to the editor of the Pictorial and the best I have been able to get him to do is to say that he will pay $1000. for THE PEARL AND THE FUR and this on condition that they can make some changes in the story where it doesn't seem to them plausible. The editor says he doesn't want you to feel that he is trying to take advantage of you but he doesn't feel that this story is anywhere near as good as the first one they bought. He says he likes the character Dolly and if you have ideas for other stories about this character, he might like to have another one or two and I think he would pay the same price as he paid for the first story but he would want first a paragraph or two telling him what the story would be about. You might let me know what you want me to do about this. I am afraid we are rather at the mercy of the Pictorial as I think it would be very difficult to change Gwen's name again and try to sell it to a third magazine.

Graeme Lorimer was in yesterday and said that you had talked on the telephone to Miss Neall about CYCLONE IN SILENT LAND*  but he didn't know what had been decided about it. He said there were some things about the story he liked very much indeed. I presume from your telegram that Miss Neall gave you some suggestions and that you are rewriting the story.

I don't think you can count on anything from Hollywood at the present time. I think the days arc over when an author with a good name can go out to Hollywood for a month or two and pick up a sizeable amount of money. They would rather have a dramatist that has written a play that is a flop, whom they can get on a long contract at a moderate salary.

I am sure you can fix up the interne story so the Post will buy it.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

June 5, 1936

Notes:

* This story about a nurse named Trouble is not the same story as “Trouble” and was never published. Fitzgerald was attempting to start a series about a nurse.

---

575. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
June 8, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

CAN YOU DEPOSIT TWO HUNDRED = SCOTT.

---

576. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
June 11, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

CAN YOU DEPOSIT FIVE HUNDRED = SCOTT.

---

577. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald Esq., Cambridge Apts. Charles & 34th Sts., Baltimore, Md.

Dear Scott:

The new editor of College Humour has asked us for a story of yours. I find we have here four unsold ones, which we might show him. They are, TRAVEL TOGETHER, NIGHTMARE, WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT and ON YOUR OWN. of which I believe TRAVEL TOGETHER is the best of the lot.*

Since College Humour's outside price is $500.00 and since these are all old stories you may not wish to have them offered. Will you drop me a line about this?

Sincerely, [Constance Smith]

June 15,1936

Notes:

* College Humor published none of these stories.

---

578. FSF to Ober

June 19, 1936

TLS, 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

Dear Harold:

Do you think this is any good?¹ I thought it might amuse the New Yorker and pick up a few dollars. It’s an old idea I had hanging around in my head for a long time and didn’t do justice to it when I came to write it, but it seems to me too good to go back in the file. Do what you can with it.

I’m sorry but I would not like to sell “Travel Together” or “What to Do About It” or “On Your Own.” I’ve destroyed them here and while I still have “Nightmare” I’ve stripped the latter and used almost all of the best lines from it in “Tender is the Night” and I scarcely remember the plots of two of the stories now. All in all I think you’d better drop the idea.²

Ever yours, Scott

Notes

¹ “Thank You for the Light,” a vignette offered to and rejected by the by the New Yorker, who replied to Ober a couple weeks after receiving the manuscript with the following message: 'We're afraid that this Fitzgerald story is altogether out of the question. It seems to us so curious and so unlike the kind of thing we associate with him and really too fantastic. We would give a lot, of course, to have a Scott Fitzgerald story and we hope that you will send us something that seems more suitable. Thank you, anyhow, for letting us see this.' In the weeks that followed, Ober unsuccessfully marketed it to at least four other magazines—College Humor, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and Vogue—and it ended up shunted away in an 'unsold' file. The story was later rediscovered and finally published in the New Yorker in 2012.

² Of the other short stories mentioned here, 'On Your Own' was first published in Esquire in 1979 (where it was billed as Fitzgerald's 'last remaining unpublished short story'), while 'Travel Together,' 'What to Do About It,' and 'Nightmare (Fantasy in Black)' went unpublished until 2017, when they were released as part of I’d Die For You: And Other Lost Stories (a compilation of Fitzgerald's unpublished work).

---

579. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
June 22, 1936.

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore

THE STORY REACHES YOU IN MIDWEEK CAN YOU WIRE THREE HUNDRED = SCOTT.

---

580. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I think your idea for Bobby Breen is a good one but I think it is dangerous to do anything with it in its present shape. I spoke to Costain about this and he said he thought it was dangerous to offer an idea to a picture company unless it was worked out at some length with the individuality of the characters clearly outlined. I don't believe it would pay you just now to take the time to do this. I'll see if there is any safe way of presenting the idea as it stands.

The New Yorker still has the short piece you sent.* I think they will decide about it soon.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

June 25, 1936

I hope to get down to see you before long.**

Notes:

* “Thank You for the Light” was rejected by The New Yorker, College Humor, Harper's Bazaar, and Vanity Fair.

** Added in Ober's hand.

---

581. FSF to Ober

Telegram, From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
August 27, 1936.

Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina

OF COURSE I AM MORE THAN GRATEFUL FOR ANY POSITION YOU C [OULD] MAKE FOR SCOTTY I AM STILL IN BED WITH THE SHOULDER IT [WOULD] BE UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO MOVE BEFORE FOUR OR FIV[E DAYS] BROKEN BONES IN BACK ARE MUCH MORE SERIOUS THAN CAN BE IMAGINED EVER YOURS = SCOTT FITZGERALD.

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582. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I have your new story and I had a talk with Graeme Lorimer today and he told me that the story had arrived safely in Philadelphia. I have read about half of the story and like it very much indeed.

Sincerely yours,
[Harold Ober]

June 29, 1936

---

583. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I am very sorry that your mother has been ill and I hope she is now better. Let me know the next time you write.

I finished the new interne story TROUBLE* last night and it seems to me a good story and if the Post should decline it I am pretty sure I can sell it elsewhere. I spoke to Graeme Lorimer this morning and he said he believed his father was going to decide on the story sometime today.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

June 30, 1936

Notes:

* The Saturday Evening Post, 6 March 1937. Fitzgerald's last Saturday Evening Post story.

---

584. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq.

Dear Scott:

You may be interested in the following in a letter from Miss Neall:

“Personally, this last piece encouraged me a great deal because it shows that Mr. Fitzgerald still can write the simple love story, free of the melodrama that he introduced into his recent manuscripts.”

And here is what the New Yorker says about THANK YOU FOR THE LIGHT:

“We're afraid that this Fitzgerald story is altogether out of the question. It seems to us so curious and so unlike the kind of thing we associate with him and really too fantastic. We would give a lot, of course, to have a Scott Fitzgerald story and we hope that you will send us something that seems more suitable. Thank you, anyhow, for letting us see this.”

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

July 2, 1936

---

585. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. 1 East 34th Street Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I enjoyed my short visit with you Friday and I hope you can make us a real visit sometime this summer.

I am sending along the following paragraph from a letter I got this morning from Miss Neall:

“Mr. Fitzgerald told me on the telephone that he thought he would use his nurse “Trouble”, the heroine in his last story, in another story. When I mentioned this to Mr. Lorimer he seemed to think that it would be much better to have an entirely new character, even though she, too, is a nurse. Mr. Fitzgerald said he left the ending of his story rather up in the air because he thought he might want to use “Trouble” the second time. Frankly, I think his story would have been a lot better if he had given it a little more definite ending. We have often found that when writers have a series in mind they sometimes unconsciously hold over material for a future story that could be used in the one they are working on. I thought you might be interested to know Mr. Lorimer's reaction, so, if Mr. Fitzgerald says anything to you, you can advise him to create a new heroine.”

I am sorry the question went up to Mr. Lorimer at all for I think if you wrote another good story about Trouble, he would have liked it. Trouble is I think a delightful character. Perhaps you can write the next story using some other nurse and then go back to Trouble in the story after that.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

July 6, 1936

---

586. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald Esq., Grove Park Inn, Asheville, N.C.

Dear Scott:

I have your telegram asking the shortest number of words for a Post serial. The Post buys three parters and these should be from twenty-five to thirty thousand words in length. They also like four, five and six parters.

They do not like two part stories but occasionally buy them. Stories from fifteen to twenty thousand words in length are usually put into two parters. Mr. Lorimer has told me a number of times that he doesn't like two part stories and he has asked me to discourage authors from writing them. One of the most successful stories he had last year was a story we sold him by Richard Sherman entitled TO MARY WITH LOVE, which was a two parter.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

July 20, 1936

---

587. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 28 July 1936. (AO)

SORRY ABOUT ACCIDENT * WIRING THREE HUNDRED HAROLD OBER

Notes:

* Fitzgerald injured his shoulder while diving into a swimming pool.

---

588. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

How is your shoulder. I know that a shoulder is a very complicated thing to break and I hope that it is not very painful. Get somebody to write me and let me know how you are.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

August 6, 1936

I have a note this morning so you needn't answer this.*

Notes:

* Added in Ober's hand. Fitzgerald's letter is missing.

---

589. To Fitzgerald

Wire to Fitzgerald 13 August 1936. (AO)

POSSIBILITY HOLLYWOOD JOB ON STORY OF ADOLESCENTS AROUND SEVENTEEN YEARS MINIMUM FOUR WEEKS GUARANTEE FIFTEEN HUNDRED A WEEK STOP IF JOB APPEALS AND MATERIALIZES WHEN COULD YOU LEAVE WIRE ANSWER HAROLD OBER.

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590. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 18 August 1936. (AO)

FINE STORY THINK POST WILL LIKE IT WE WANT SCOTTIE Harold Ober

---

591. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I like THUMBS UP* very much indeed. I think it is one of the best stories you have written for a long time. It is a little long and perhaps later on can be cut. It seems to me also that with the addition of a sentence here and there you might give a little more warmth in the relationship between Tib and Joseph. I don't think it would have harmed to have let him recognize her a little sooner.

Of course we shall be delighted to have Scotty visit us. We have been counting on it all along and we shall be Very disappointed if she doesn't. My family is in Vermont at present but we expect to get back to Scarsdale about the 5th or 6th of September. When does Scotty get through at camp?

I expect to hear something from Hollywood within the next day or two and I may call you up on the telephone tonight.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober] August 18, 1936

Notes:

* This story was also titled “When This Cruel War—” and “Dentist Appointment.” After being rejected by American Magazine, Collier's, Cosmopolitan, Country Gentleman, Delineator, Ladies' Home Journal, Liberty, McCall's, Pictorial Review, Redbook, The Saturday Evening Post, Woman V Home Companion, and This Week, it was published by Collier's as “End of Hate,” 22 June 1940.

---

592. To Fitzgerald

Wire (cc) to Fitzgerald 21 August 1936. (AO)

THINK CAN SELL AMERICAN OR ELSEWHERE IF SHORTENED AND TWO MAIN CHARACTERS MADE MORE SYMPATHETIC SENDING THREE BUT WORRIED ABOUT AMOUNT WRITING Harold Ober

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593. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

As I wired you, I think the story ought to be shortened and simplified and I think you ought to see if you can't give a little more warmth to the story between the sister and Tib. If you have them recognize each other sooner you can make any conversation they have count for more. You can make changes in pencil on your carbon of the story and I can have it typed very quickly here.

I am wiring you the $300. you ask for. I take it from the telegram that you want it sent to you at Asheville. You have enough worry without my adding to it but do you realize that this $300. makes the amount I have advanced you almost exactly $11,000.? This is a good deal of a load for me to carry but I have faith in you and I want to do everything I possibly can to help you. I wish you would, however, fix up that assignment just as soon as you possibly can. I think all you have to do is to write a letter to the insurance company and they will send you the necessary papers.*

The moving picture deal is held up temporarily because a friend of one of the men said he had seen you in New York in December when you had been drinking. I have assured them that you have not been drinking this year and I think and hope things can be straightened out in a few days. If you could go out I think the change might be good for you and there is no reason why you couldn't save a good part of the amount you make.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

August 21, 1936

Notes:

* Fitzgerald assigned to Ober a portion of his life insurance in the event that he died before his debt to Ober was paid.

---

594. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, North Carolina

Dear Scott:

I had a long talk today with Knopf* who is interested in having you go to Hollywood for Metro and I think I have convinced him that you would do a good job and that they need not worry about you. Knopf is going back to Hollywood tomorrow and will go into the matter again and let me know what is decided. Knopf told me that things worked out badly the last time you were there but he wants you and is convinced that you will work seriously.

I think those confounded Esquire articles** have done you a great deal of harm and I hope you won't do any more.

Sincerely, [Harold Ober]

August 26, 1936

Notes:

* Edwin Knopf of MGM.

** The “Crack-Up” series

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595. FSF to C. W. Brugge, Sun Life Assurance Company (Baltimore)

TL (carbon), 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
September 7, 1936.

Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina

Dear Mr. Brugge:

I want to make an assignment in case of my death to Mr. Harold Ober of Scarsdale, New York, whose business address is 40 East 49th Street, New York City. The assignment is of $9,000 of my life insurance policy No. 1,112,346 in case of my death.

This has been agreed upon by Mr. Ober and myself. Will you consider this letter as a binding contract as I would like it to be or are there further formalities? If so my address will be care of Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina until further notice. With best wishes,

Very truly yours,
F. Scott Fitzgerald

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596. James B. Hurley (FSF’s secretary) to Ober

TLS, 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
September 7, I936.

Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina

The cover note for the carbon of Fitzgerald’s letter to the Sun Life Assurance Company.

---

597. FSF to Ober

TLS (photocopy), 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
September 10, 1936.

Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina

Dear Harold:

Today I have sent off a new version of the story¹ and have filled out the assignment forms just arrived from the Sun Life of Canada.² This is my first day when I considered getting dressed as the pain has exhausted itself but I have decided against it until tomorrow when I will go before a notary and execute the forms.

You have been wonderful to Scottie. Now that I am on my feet again for sure I will try to do some fast and efficient work but will not be north personally until the 20th.

Perhaps the Esquire articles were unfortunate.³ As you know they were emergency things, each one following a revision made on a Post story, helping to tide over the interval in between. Of course anybody would prefer to do the Post stories; in fact the longer a piece is the more I enjoy doing it—it is all the result of this working under pressure business, but I [unreadable] legacy from my mother, who has just died in Rockville, Maryland (where I was unable to go) and I am going to use some of it for a long needed rest and some slowly written pieces + debts, when it materializes.⁴

Ever yours,
F Scott Fitzgerald

Notes

¹ “Thumbs Up,” a Civil War story eventually published as “The End of Hate”.

² See the following letter.

³ Fitzgerald means the trio of essays, “The Crack-Up,” “Pasting It Together,” and “Handle with Care,” published in Esquire for February, March, and April 1936. Ober felt that the articles had hurt Fitzgerald’s reputation and affected the marketability of his stories.

⁴ Mollie McQuillan Fitzgerald died in September 1936; Fitzgerald’s share of her estate totaled almost $23,000, which he used primarily to pay Zelda’s old and current medical bills.

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598. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I have your telegram asking if I can raise $1000. and wire $300. to Baltimore immediately. I have wired $300. to the bank in Baltimore but I haven't any way of raising the additional $700. I have been trying to get a decision on THUMBS UP but I shall have to wait another day or two for this.

When do you expect the $2000. that is forthcoming from the estate? I shall need before the end of the month the $300. I have sent you today and I hope you will get the $2000. so that you can send me some money before then as I have a lot of payments coming due which have to be made.

I wish I knew where I could raise some more money. I am hoping to sell THUMBS UP before long but you know how difficult it is to predict the sale of a story.

Scotty came in to town with me yesterday and is staying for a day or two with her aunt.* She is very happy about school and she called me up just now to say that she was shopping for her uniform. She was delighted to get your letter yesterday. I am very glad that she is going to the Walker School as I know several girls who have gone there and I am sure Scotty will do very well there. She is coming back to Scarsdale with me Wednesday or Thursday and I hope she can stay with us until she starts school. Scotty says you are coming up to take her to school and if you do I hope you will come out to Scarsdale and I think we can arrange to drive you both to Simsbury if you would like to have us do so. Dick and his mother are now on their way to Exeter and Nat, my younger boy, begins school tomorrow.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

September 22, 1936

Notes:

* Mrs. Newman Smith, Zelda Fitzgerald's sister Rosalind.

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599. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

If you haven't seen the enclosed you will eventually so I may as well send it along to you.* I don't believe you had any idea the reporter was going to do what he did in this article. I suppose there is nothing to be done about it now.

Scottie has just come in and I am taking her out in the train to Scarsdale and I'll do my best to keep it from her.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

September 25, 1936

N Y Evening Post article with picture of Scott in bath robe. It shocked Scott so that he stopped drinking.**

Notes:

* Michel Mok, in “The Other Side of Paradise,” New York Post, 25 September 1936—an interview with Fitzgerald in Asheville, N.C., on his fortieth birthday—showed Fitzgerald as a despairing drunk.

** Added in Ober's hand.

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600. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

Scottie was disappointed that you couldn't come out to Scarsdale and drive up to school with her but I explained to her that you were not well enough to do it. She drove up with Anne* today and I am sure she is going to be very happy at the school. Last night she showed me her new uniform and all her new purchases. She is a charming girl and we are going to miss her.

Please do not worry too much about the piece in the New York Evening Post. Only the first early afternoon edition had your picture on the front page and it is a very cheap paper and very few people read it. I sometimes think that almost any kind of publicity is good publicity. I know that you are going to write other fine novels and many fine stories—better ones than you have ever done before.

I haven't any good news for you yet regarding the Civil War story**—it is with the Cosmopolitan now.

I hope you can come up to New York later on in the Fall and go up to visit Scottie. We will be glad to drive you up when you go.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober] October 2, 1936

Notes:

* Mrs. Harold Ober.

** “Thumbs Up” (“End of Hate”).

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601. To Ober

ALS (pencil), 3pp. n.d.—received 5 October 1936. Asheville, N.C. (AO)

(personal: Mr Ober only)

Dear Harold: I'll try to summarize all that's happened in the last two weeks. 1st about the story:*

It is all corrected except one part but I'm in a quandary about getting it typed because I can't send it off as is without having even the original that being in shorthand as the arm was just a broken mess one week (before last)** + I had to dictate again. The two available stenographers I found between jobs. + both are engaged but I'll think of something + shoot to get it off tomorrow night [, pe] its about a cartoonist + I like it + so [does] do the people who've heard parts of it.

2nd About the article about Michael Muck. I was in bed with temp about 102 when the [obliterated] phone rang and a voice said that this party had come all the way from N. Y to interview me. I fell for this like a damn fool, got him up, gave him a drink + accepted his exterior good manners. He had some relative with mental trouble (wife or mother) so I talked to him freely about treatments symtoms ect, about being depressed at advancing age and a little desperate about the wasted summer with this shoulder and arm—perhaps more freely than if had been well. I hadn't the faintest suspicion what would happen 4- I've never been a publicity seeker + never gotten a rotten deal before. When that thing came it seemed about the end and I got hold of a morphine file and swallowed four grains enough to kill a horse. It happened to be an overdose and almost before I could get to the bed I vomited the whole thing and the nurse came in + saw the empty phial + there was hell to pay. [D] for awhile + afterwards I felt like a fool. And if I ever see, Mr Mock what will happen will be very swift and sudden. Dont tell Perkins.

As to Scotty there's nothing I can say to thank you; when I'm straight there will be expenses you've undertaken for her we can allocate.

For the financial angle: I wait from day to day—unable now to buy medicines even, or to leave to the hotel because I couldn't pay a r.r fare [finance]—and twenty thousand of mine lies idle in a Baltimore Bank. Edgar Allen Poe Jr.*** the exector says he can advance me $2000 to $5000 (perhaps that much) but I wire him again and there is no news up to noon today. The hotel, doctors, Zelda's clinic ect clamor for money but there is none. By Maryland law I cant get the whole sum for six months but the other I cant understand. I want this to catch the only mail. I'll write the rest this afternoon.

Ever
Scott

Notes:

* Possibly “They Never Grow Older,” never published.

** Fitzgerald reinjured his shoulder by falling while he was still in a cast.

*** Lawyer who was settling Fitzgerald's mother's estate.

Beginning in the fall of 1936 Harold and Anne Ober acted as surrogate parents to Scottie Fitzgerald.

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602. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I have been trying for the last day or two to write you a letter but a number of authors have been in town and I haven't had a moment to write.

Your telegram came in today and I have wired you $200. With all the troubles you are having I hate to tell you about my own but it really has seriously embarrassed me to send you the money I have been sending you recently. I have had a lot of things to meet recently what with schools and other things and I hope that you can realize on the legacy very soon and send me as much as you can. Of course it would help some if we could sell a story and I hope the new story will come along as you say within two or three days. The Civil War story is in many ways a good piece of work but it is not what editors expect from you.

We had a letter from Scottie the other day and she seems to be very happy at school.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

October 8, 1936

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603. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I received your special delivery letter and if you can do what you outline in that letter I think I shall be able to get along. Take your time on the story you are working on and get it just the way you want it. It is much better to have it right than to hurry it.

We received a very nice letter from Zelda and one of her water-colors. It is a very beautiful one. We also had a letter from Scottie yesterday and she seems to be getting along very well in school. She is a delightful child and she writes delightful letters.

I hope your shoulder is getting better and that everything is going as well as possible with you. I hope you are not worrying any more about the newspaper article. I think newspaper men are probably right when they say that almost any kind of publicity is better than none.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

October 14, 1936

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604. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq; Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

We stopped in Simsbury yesterday and took Scottie out to lunch with us. She was prettier than I have ever seen her. She said she had lost about five pounds which she gained after she left camp. She showed us all over the school and I am sure she is very happy there. Miss Sergeant and one of her teachers told us that she was doing very good work and that everybody liked her. She is looking forward to a visit from you at Thanksgiving time.

Are you going to try to finish the story you are working on before you take your rest? Don't bother to answer this. I hope your shoulder is better.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

October 19, 1936

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605. To Fitzgerald

TL(cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I haven't bothered you with letters lately because I wanted you to have a complete rest from writing or even thinking about writing. I am glad, however, to have your note this morning and to know that you will be in New York either before or after Thanksgiving. This means I suppose that you are going up to see Scottie and I know she will be delighted for she has been counting on it.

I am sorry about the mixup over the $50. that was wired by Postal Telegraph to Baltimore. At the top of the telegram was written 'Asheville by way of Baltimore' so I thought you were on the way to Baltimore and that you would get the money at the Postal Telegraph office in Baltimore. If you still need the $50. let me know where to send it. I understand that you have given up your apartment in Baltimore and have no address there at the present time. Is that right?

Regarding unpublished stories: Both the McCall stories have been published. THE INTIMATE STRANGER was published in June 1935, and A COURSE IN LANGUAGES was published in April 1936 under the title IMAGE IN THE HEART. If you haven't seen copies of these magazines I'll have them for you when you get to New York.

The article MY LOST CITY which you wrote for the Cosmopolitan was one of a series. The Cosmopolitan ran a number of them and then decided that the readers might get a little tired of them so stopped publication. They tell me, however, that they are going to start very soon to publish the remaining articles in the series and your article will be published among the first.

Edwin Balmer tells me that GODS OF THE DARKNESS is now in type and that he is going to publish it within the next few months.

I am glad I am going to see you next week.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

November 19, 1936

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606. FSF to Ober

TLS, 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
November 23, 1936. Signed by secretary.

Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina

Dear Harold:

When I referred to the unpublished stories I did not mean the Red Book story nor the Cosmopolitan article about New York.¹ I meant the two stories about the little girl that we shipped to McCall’s, I thought, for which they paid $1500 and $1250, respectively. Don’t you remember them? The first one was about a girl who had no home and the second one was about a lost coat. Perhaps the vagueness with which I remember them is a spot upon their value, but anyhow McCall’s bought them and those are the stories I am referring to—don’t you remember, the ones that the Saturday Evening Post turned down and I changed the name of the protagonist? It may have been the American Magazine, but I am almost sure it was McCall’s, and I know they were accepted and that the money was paid. I am sure your letter must have been written when you did not have the data in hand, because I have beside me the account of the sale. The first was called Make Yourself at Home and the second was called The Pearl and the Fur.

Am glad that Balmer is publishing the fourth [of] the medieval stories in the Red Book.

I am not going North, after all, on Thanksgiving. The expense is too great and I am still in such rotten condition that I wouldn’t dare risk a blizzard and possible pneumonia. That sounds pretty cowardly, doesn’t it. But I have thought it over and talked it over with the doctors and it would simply be a sort of gesture which would eventually end up in adding to the totality of trouble. I am still a sick man, Harold, and to see Scottie in this mood would be no benefit to her.

Ever yours, Scott Fitzgerald

Notes

 “Gods of Darkness,” the fourth Philippe story, and “My Lost City,” eventually published after Fitzgerald’s death in The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (New York : New Directions, 1945). Cosmopolitan, which retained the serial rights, eventually published “My Lost City” in its July 1951 issue.

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607. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

I don't know why I forgot about the two girl stories when I wrote you about unpublished stories. These were sold to the Pictorial Review and the editor tells me they will probably be published in the Spring not before March or April.

I am sorry not to see you but I think it would be a great mistake for you to come north in this kind of weather until you are perfectly well. I am afraid Scottie was disappointed but I am sure she doesn't want you to come up when you are not well. We hear from her quite often and will try to run up and see her the first chance we get.

The last time we saw Scottie she was hoping to go to Baltimore for Christmas because there were some dances she wanted to go to. If she doesn't go to Baltimore and there isn't any other place she particularly wants to go, we will be delighted to have her come to Scarsdale.

I hope you are getting a rest and I hope you will soon be in fine shape.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

November 27, 1936

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608. FSF to Ober

TLS, 1 p., From The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2004)
December 4, 1936. Signed by secretary.

Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina

Dear Harold:

Scottie gets out of school the 18th, and I am so anxious to get at least two stories done that I don’t want to leave here until the night of the 20th. Could you take Scottie from the 18th to the 21st? I am sure her aunt, Mrs. Smith, will take her the 21st, at least, and put her on the train. ₁ I am certainly accepting your kind offer in earnest. I have been sick as hell again, but am back at work on the story. Thanks for the information about the Pictorial Review stories. Scottie arrives at the Grand Central Station at 11:40 a.m., Friday, December 18th.

Yours,
Scott

Notes

¹ Zelda’s sister Rosalind Sayre Smith was the model for Marion Peters in Fitzgerald’s 1931 story “Babylon Revisited.”

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609. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. Grove Park Inn Asheville, N. C.

Dear Scott:

Of course we shall be delighted to have Scottie until you are ready for her and I'll meet her train on Friday, the 18th, and take her out to Scarsdale with me.

I am sorry you have been laid up again. I hope you will be able to get some rest before you start again to work.

I am writing Scottie a note telling her I will meet her.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

December 9, 1936

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610. To Ober

Wire to Ober 17 December 1936. Asheville, N.C.

SCOTTIES SIDE KICK PEACHES * IS GIVING SOME PARTY IN BALTIMORE ON THE NINETEENTH AND SHE IS DETERMINED TO BE AMONG THOSE PRESENT STOP I HOPE TO HEAVEN YOU HAVENT MADE ANY SPECIAL PREPARATIONS FOR HER IF YOU STILL WANT HER I KNOW SHE WOULD LOVE TO BE WITH YOU FOR COUPLE OF DAYS TOWARD THE END OF HOLIDAYS AM COUNTING ON SEEING YOU THE TWENTY THIRD IF POSSIBLE FITZGERALD.

Notes:

* Peaches Finney, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Eben Finney of Baltimore.

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611. To Fitzgerald

TL (cc), 1 p. (AO)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Esq. c/o Mrs. Isobel Owens 5101 Roland Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Scott:

I haven't much idea where you are—I think you may be in Baltimore. I had a telegram just before Christmas from Edgar Allan Poe, Jr. asking if I couldn't deposit $500. for you but I was absolutely broke at the time and will be until after the first of the year. He said you were expecting some money in a couple of days so I hope that came through all right and relieved the difficulty.

Anne received a very attractive Christmas present from Scottie and wants to thank her for it but doesn't know where to reach her. We are hoping that she will stay with us before she goes back to school. We also received a very attractive Christmas card from Zelda and you and I want to thank you for that.

I know that 1936 has been a very bad year for you and I hope and feel sure that 1937 is going to be a better one. If you can only get back your health I am sure that everything will be all right.

Here is a comment from an editor who has just turned down THUMBS UP:

“I thought it was swell but all the femmes down here said it was horrid. The thumbs, I suppose, were too much for them.”

I have talked to several editors and I think it is mostly because of the incident about the thumbs that this story has not sold. Another criticism of the story has been that it wanders about a good deal. Do you think there is anything that you could substitute for the hanging by the thumbs—something that is not so harrowing? I think the story might be salvaged if you feel like doing a little more work on it.

Please drop me a line and let me know where and how you are.

Sincerely yours, [Harold Ober]

December 30, 1936

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Fitzgerald's total earnings for 1936 were $10,180. He sold four stories ($7,650) and nine pieces to Esquire ($2,250). His book royalties were $81.18.

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WHO'S WHO

Harold Ober (1881–1959) was Fitzgerald’s agent for magazine writings. Most of Fitzgerald’s income came from the magazines, and through Ober’s efforts The Saturday Evening Post paid Fitzgerald his peak price of $4,000 per story in 1929. Ober received a ten-percent fee. The Ober-Fitzgerald financial relationship was complex with Ober acting as Fitzgerald’s banker, making interest-free loans against unsold and even unwritten stories. The Obers became Scottie’s surrogate parents during her prep-school and Vassar years. Fitzgerald broke with Ober in 1939 over the agent’s refusal to commence a new cycle of loans after Fitzgerald had paid his debts.

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Published as book in 1973.

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Перевод: «Твой Скотт Фитц…»: Переписка Ф. Скотта Фицджеральда и литературного агента Гарольда Обера.

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