F. Scott Fitzgerald, drawing by Gordon Bryant for Shadowland magazine, 1921. Larger.
The distinction between fantasy and reality tends to disappear in California, especially in Hollywood where fantasy is big business. At least, that's the way it seemed to Lost Generation writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who came to town to make a few bucks writing movies.
Fitzgerald arrived in Hollywood in 1937 with a contract to write for MGM. But perhaps his best writing at that time wasn't for the pictures; it was about the pictures. In his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, Cecilia Brady—-Fitzgerald's narrator—-is the daughter of a studio owner, and she sees clearly how the Hollywood dream factory works.
There is never a time when the studio is absolutely quiet. There is always a night shift of technicians in the laboratories and dubbing rooms and people on the maintenance staff dropping in at the commissary. But the sounds are all different—-the padded hush of tires, the quiet tick of a motor running idle, the naked cry of a soprano singing into a nightbound microphone. . . .
Under the moon the back lot was thirty acres of fairyland—not because the locations really looked like African jungles and French ch‚teaux and schooners at anchor and Broadway by night, but because they looked like torn picture books of childhood, like fragments of stories dancing in an open fire. I never lived in a house with an attic, but a back lot must be something like that, and at night of course in an enchanted distorted way, it all comes true.
F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, and never completed his Hollywood novel, a work that some readers felt had the potential to rival Fitzgerald's best work, The Great Gatsby.
The Big Table
From "Boil Some Water—Lots of It," 1940. Read Online
"Actress Angela Lansbury clad in costume for role in the movie "The Court Jester," eating a hamburger w. actor Basil Rathbone while sitting at lunch in large Paramount Studio commissary during a day of filming," photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life magazine, 1954. Larger.
Though insiders might brag to outsiders that movie studios "are democratic. . . from the big shots right down to the prop boys," according to one Hollywood writer, the studio caste system was just as rigid as any aristocracy.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about Hollywood in a series of stories featuring the character Pat Hobby, a successful writer for the silent screen who never quite got the hang of writing dialogue for the "talkies." Now, Pat has his seat at the "Big Table" in a studio canteen.
Once Pat had been a familiar figure at the Big Table; often in his golden prime he had dined in the private canteens of executives. Being of the older Hollywood he understood their jokes, their vanities, their social system with its swift fluctuations. But there were too many new faces at the Big Table now—faces that looked at him with the universal Hollywood suspicion. And at the little tables where the young writers sat they seemed to take work so seriously. As for just sitting down anywhere, even with secretaries or extras—Pat would rather catch a sandwich at the corner.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby stories first appeared in Esquire magazine. "Boil Some Water—Lots of It" was published there in 1940.
Christmas Presents
From Pat Hobby's Christmas Wish, 1940. Read Online
Esquire Magazine, May 1940 with fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Larger.
Conventional wisdom says that in Hollywood all that counts are appearances. And, according to one studio insider, that's a pretty good rule.
Just before his untimely death in 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald created a series of stories about a washed-up studio hack named Pat Hobby, a canny screenwriter who'll find a way to look good even when he's scamming good will during the holiday season.
It was Christmas Eve in the studio. By eleven o'clock in the morning, Santa Claus had called on most of the huge population according to each one's deserts.
Sumptuous gifts from producers to stars, and from agents to producers arrived at offices and studio bungalows; on every stage one heard of the roguish gifts of casts to directors or directors to casts; champagne had gone out from publicity office to the press. And tips of fifties, tens and fives from producers, directors and writers fell like manna upon the white collar class.
In this sort of transaction there were exceptions. Pat Hobby, for example, who knew the game from twenty years' experience, had had the idea of getting rid of his secretary the day before. They were sending over a new one any minute—but she would scarcely expect a present the first day.
F. Scott Fitzgerald died before all of his Pat Hobby stories appeared in Esquire magazine. They were eventually collected into a single volume more than twenty years later.
Director Herbert Brenon with actress Alla Nazimova, photographer unknown, 9 August 1916. Larger.
Even before the road to Hollywood led through film school, the movies were tough to break into. That is, unless you had just the right mix of ego mania and psuedo-competence.
F. Scott Fitzgerald came to Hollywood in 1937 to write for the movies. There, he created a series of short stories about down-on-his-luck screenwriter Pat Hobby, an opportunistic hack who felt at home with actors, producers, and even thriving but talentless directors.
Director Dick Dale was a type that, fifty years ago, could be found in any American town. Generally he was the local photographer, usually he was originator of small mechanical contrivances and a leader in bizarre local movements, almost always he contributed verse to the local press. All the most energetic embodiments of this "Sensation Type" had migrated to Hollywood between 1910 and 1930, and there they had achieved a psychological fulfillment inconceivable in any other time or place. At last, and on a large scale, they were able to have their way.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Hollywood stories appeared in Esquire magazine from 1940 to 1941. In 1962 they were collected under the title, The Pat Hobby Stories.
below to hear radio segment.
