F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gravesite Becomes Tourist Destination After Release Of 'Great Gatsby' Movie

The Washington Post reports that since the film The Great Gatsby’s, the book "Gatsby" is on Amazon's bestsellers list, it's also led to a surge in visitors coming by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's graves, in suburban Maryland. The Post notes that many visitors leave graveside offerings, including "flowers, spare change and liquor. Aspiring authors leave pens, and admirers occasionally write handwritten notes. A top hat, adorned with a martini glass ribbon, is the most recent addition."

Ain't party like a Gatsby party

Three Hours Between Planes

Esquire (July 1941)

It was a wild chance but Donald was in the mood, healthy and bored, with a sense of tiresome duty done. He was now rewarding himself. Maybe.

When the plane landed he stepped out into a mid-western summer night and headed for the isolated pueblo airport, conventionalized as an old red ‘railway depot’. He did not know whether she was alive, or living in this town, or what was her present name. With mounting excitement he looked through the phone book for her father who might be dead too, somewhere in these twenty years.

No. Judge Harmon Holmes — Hillside 3194.

A woman’s amused voice answered his inquiry for Miss Nancy Holmes.

‘Nancy is Mrs Walter Gifford now. Who is this?’

But Donald hung up without answering. He had found out what he wanted to know and had only three hours. He did not remember any Walter Gifford and there was another suspended moment while he scanned the phone book. She might have married out of town.

No. Walter Gifford — Hillside 1191. Blood flowed back into his fingertips.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello. Is Mrs Gifford there — this is an old friend of hers.’

‘This is Mrs Gifford.’

He remembered, or thought he remembered, the funny magic in the voice.

‘This is Donald Plant. I haven’t seen you since I was twelve years old.’

‘Oh-h-h!’ The note was utterly surprised, very polite, but he could distinguish in it neither joy nor certain recognition.

‘ — Donald!’ added the voice. This time there was something more in it than struggling memory.

‘ . . . when did you come back to town?’ Then cordially, ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m out at the airport — for just a few hours.’

‘Well, come up and see me.’

‘Sure you’re not just going to bed?’

‘Heavens, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘I was sitting here — having a highball by myself. Just tell your taxi man . . . ’

On his way Donald analysed the conversation. His words ‘at the airport’ established that he had retained his position in the upper bourgeoisie. Nancy’s aloneness might indicate that she had matured into an unattractive woman without friends. Her husband might be either away or in bed. And — because she was always ten years old in his dreams — the highball shocked him. But he adjusted himself with a smile — she was very close to thirty.

At the end of a curved drive he saw a dark-haired little beauty standing against the lighted door, a glass in her hand. Startled by her final materialization, Donald got out of the cab, saying:

‘Mrs Gifford?’

She turned on the porch light and stared at him, wide-eyed and tentative. A smile broke through the puzzled expression.

‘Donald — it is you — we all change so. Oh, this is remarkable!’

As they walked inside, their voices jingled the words ‘all these years’, and Donald felt a sinking in his stomach. This derived in part from a vision of their last meeting — when she rode past him on a bicycle, cutting him dead — and in part from fear lest they have nothing to say. It was like a college reunion — but there the failure to find the past was disguised by the hurried boisterous occasion. Aghast, he realized that this might be a long and empty hour. He plunged in desperately.

‘You always were a lovely person. But I’m a little shocked to find you as beautiful as you are.’

It worked. The immediate recognition of their changed state, the bold compliment, made them interesting strangers instead of fumbling childhood friends.

‘Have a highball?’ she asked. ‘No? Please don’t think I’ve become a secret drinker, but this was a blue night. I expected my husband but he wired he’d be two days longer. He’s very nice, Donald, and very attractive. Rather your type and colouring.’ She hesitated, ‘ — and I think he’s interested in someone in New York — and I don’t know.’

‘After seeing you it sounds impossible,’ he assured her. ‘I was married for six years, and there was a time I tortured myself that way. Then one day I just put jealousy out of my life forever. After my wife died I was very glad of that. It left a very rich memory — nothing marred or spoiled or hard to think over.’

She looked at him attentively, then sympathetically as he spoke.

‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. And after a proper moment,’ You’ve changed a lot. Turn your head. I remember father saying, “That boy has a brain."’

‘You probably argued against it.’

‘I was impressed. Up to then I thought everybody had a brain. That’s why it sticks in my mind.’

‘What else sticks in your mind?’ he asked smiling.

Suddenly Nancy got up and walked quickly a little away.

‘Ah, now,’ she reproached him. ‘That isn’t fair! I suppose I was a naughty girl.’

‘You were not,’ he said stoutly. ‘And I will have a drink now.’

As she poured it, her face still turned from him, he continued:

‘Do you think you were the only little girl who was ever kissed?’

‘Do you like the subject?’ she demanded. Her momentary irritation melted and she said: ‘What the hell! We didhave fun. Like in the song.’

‘On the sleigh ride.’

‘Yes — and somebody’s picnic — Trudy James’s. And at Frontenac that — those summers.’

It was the sleigh ride he remembered most and kissing her cool cheeks in the straw in one corner while she laughed up at the cold white stars. The couple next to them had their backs turned and he kissed her little neck and her ears and never her lips.

‘And the Macks’ party where they played post office and I couldn’t go because I had the mumps,’ he said.

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘Oh, you were there. And you were kissed and I was crazy with jealousy like I never have been since.’

‘Funny I don’t remember. Maybe I wanted to forget.’

‘But why?’ he asked in amusement. ‘We were two perfectly innocent kids. Nancy, whenever I talked to my wife about the past, I told her you were the girl I loved almost as much as I loved her. But I think I really loved you just as much. When we moved out of town I carried you like a cannon ball in my insides.’

‘Were you that much — stirred up?’

‘My God, yes! I— ’ He suddenly realized that they were standing just two feet from each other, that he was talking as if he loved her in the present, that she was looking up at him with her lips half-parted and a clouded look in her eyes.

‘Go on,’ she said, ‘I’m ashamed to say — I like it. I didn’t know you were so upset then. I thought it wasme who was upset.’

‘You!’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t you remember throwing me over at the drugstore.’ He laughed. ‘You stuck out your tongue at me.’

‘I don’t remember at all. It seemed to me you did the throwing over.’ Her hand fell lightly, almost consolingly on his arm. ‘I’ve got a photograph book upstairs I haven’t looked at for years. I’ll dig it out.’

Donald sat for five minutes with two thoughts — first the hopeless impossibility of reconciling what different people remembered about the same event — and secondly that in a frightening way Nancy moved him as a woman as she had moved him as a child. Half an hour had developed an emotion that he had not known since the death of his wife — that he had never hoped to know again.

Side by side on a couch they opened the book between them. Nancy looked at him, smiling and very happy.

‘Oh, this is such fun,’ she said. ‘Such fun that you’re so nice, that you remember me so — beautifully. Let me tell you — I wish I’d known it then! After you’d gone I hated you.’

‘What a pity,’ he said gently.

‘But not now,’ she reassured him, and then impulsively, ‘Kiss and make up — ’

‘ . . . that isn’t being a good wife,’ she said after a minute. ‘I really don’t think I’ve kissed two men since I was married.’

He was excited — but most of all confused. Had he kissed Nancy? or a memory? or this lovely trembly stranger who looked away from him quickly and turned a page of the book?

‘Wait!’ he said. ‘I don’t think I could see a picture for a few seconds.’

‘We won’t do it again. I don’t feel so very calm myself.’

Donald said one of those trivial things that cover so much ground.

‘Wouldn’t it be awful if we fell in love again?’

‘Stop it!’ She laughed, but very breathlessly. ‘It’s all over. It was a moment. A moment I’ll have to forget.’

‘Don’t tell your husband.’

‘Why not? Usually I tell him everything.’

‘It’ll hurt him. Don’t ever tell a man such things.’

‘All right I won’t.’

‘Kiss me once more,’ he said inconsistently, but Nancy had turned a page and was pointing eagerly at a picture.

‘Here’s you,’ she cried. ‘Right away!’

He looked. It was a little boy in shorts standing on a pier with a sailboat in the background.

‘I remember — ’ she laughed triumphantly, ‘ — the very day it was taken. Kitty took it and I stole it from her.’

For a moment Donald failed to recognize himself in the photo — then, bending closer — he failed utterly to recognize himself.

‘That’s not me,’ he said.

‘Oh yes. It was at Frontenac — the summer we — we used to go to the cave.’

‘What cave? I was only three days in Frontenac.’ Again he strained his eyes at the slightly yellowed picture. ‘And that isn’t me. That’s Donald Bowers. We did look rather alike.’

Now she was staring at him — leaning back, seeming to lift away from him.

‘But you’re Donald Bowers!’ she exclaimed; her voice rose a little. ‘No, you’re not. You’re DonaldPlant.’

‘I told you on the phone.’

She was on her feet — her face faintly horrified.

‘Plant! Bowers! I must be crazy. Or it was that drink? I was mixed up a little when I first saw you. Look here! What have I told you?’

He tried for a monkish calm as he turned a page of the book.

‘Nothing at all,’ he said. Pictures that did not include him formed and re-formed before his eyes — Frontenac — a cave— Donald Bowers — ‘You threw me over!’

Nancy spoke from the other side of the room.

‘You’ll never tell this story,’ she said. ‘Stories have a way of getting around.’

‘There isn’t any story,’ he hesitated. But he thought: So she was a bad little girl.

And now suddenly he was filled with wild raging jealousy of little Donald Bowers — he who had banished jealousy from his life forever. In the five steps he took across the room he crushed out twenty years and the existence of Walter Gifford with his stride.

‘Kiss me again, Nancy,’ he said, sinking to one knee beside her chair, putting his hand upon her shoulder. But Nancy strained away.

‘You said you had to catch a plane.’

‘It’s nothing. I can miss it. It’s of no importance.’

‘Please go,’ she said in a cool voice. ‘And please try to imagine how I feel.’

‘But you act as if you don’t remember me,’ he cried, ‘ — as if you don’t remember Donald Plant!’

‘I do. I remember you too . . . But it was all so long ago.’ Her voice grew hard again. ‘The taxi number is Crestwood 8484.’

On his way to the airport Donald shook his head from side to side. He was completely himself now but he could not digest the experience. Only as the plane roared up into the dark sky and its passengers became a different entity from the corporate world below did he draw a parallel from the fact of its flight. For five blinding minutes he had lived like a madman in two worlds at once. He had been a boy of twelve and a man of thirty-two, indissolubly and helplessly commingled.

Donald had lost a good deal, too, in those hours between the planes — but since the second half of life is a long process of getting rid of things, that part of the experience probably didn’t matter.

The Lost Decade

Esquire (December 1939)

All sorts of people came into the offices of the news-weekly and Orrison Brown had all sorts of relations with them. Outside of office hours he was “one of the editors” — during work time he was simply a curly-haired man who a year before had edited the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern and was now only too glad to take the undesirable assignments around the office, from straightening out illegible copy to playing call boy without the title.

He had seen this visitor go into the editor’s office — a pale, tall man of forty with blond statuesque hair and a manner that was neither shy nor timid, nor otherworldly like a monk, but something of all three. The name on his card, Louis Trimble, evoked some vague memory, but having nothing to start on, Orrison did not puzzle over it — until a buzzer sounded on his desk, and previous experience warned him that Mr. Trimble was to be his first course at lunch.

“Mr. Trimble — Mr. Brown,” said the Source of all luncheon money. “Orrison — Mr. Trimble’s been away a long time. Or he feels it’s a long time — almost twelve years. Some people would consider themselves lucky to’ve missed the last decade.”

“That’s so,” said Orrison.

“I can’t lunch today,” continued his chief. “Take him to Voisin or 21 or anywhere he’d like. Mr. Trimble feels there’re lots of things he hasn’t seen.”

Trimble demurred politely.

“Oh, I can get around.”

“I know it, old boy. Nobody knew this place like you did once — and if Brown tries to explain the horseless carriage just send him back here to me. And you’ll be back yourself by four, won’t you?”

Orrison got his hat.

“You’ve been away ten years?” he asked while they went down in the elevator.

“They’d begun the Empire State Building,” said Trimble. “What does that add up to?”

“About 1928. But as the chief said, you’ve been lucky to miss a lot.” As a feeler he added, “Probably had more interesting things to look at.”

“Can’t say I have.”

They reached the street and the way Trimble’s face tightened at the roar of traffic made Orrison take one more guess.

“You’ve been out of civilization?”

“In a sense.” The words were spoken in such a measured way that Orrison concluded this man wouldn’t talk unless he wanted to — and simultaneously wondered if he could have possibly spent the thirties in a prison or an insane asylum.

“This is the famous 21,” he said. “Do you think you’d rather eat somewhere else?”

Trimble paused, looking carefully at the brownstone house.

“I can remember when the name 21 got to be famous,” he said, “about the same year as Moriarity’s.” Then he continued almost apologetically, “I thought we might walk up Fifth Avenue about five minutes and eat wherever we happened to be. Some place with young people to look at.”

Orrison gave him a quick glance and once again thought of bars and gray walls and bars; he wondered if his duties included introducing Mr. Trimble to complaisant girls. But Mr. Trimble didn’t look as if that was in his mind — the dominant expression was of absolute and deep-seated curiosity and Orrison attempted to connect the name with Admiral Byrd’s hideout at the South Pole or flyers lost in Brazilian jungles. He was, or he had been, quite a fellow — that was obvious. But the only definite clue to his environment — and to Orrison the clue that led nowhere — was his countryman’s obedience to the traffic lights and his predilection for walking on the side next to the shops and not the street. Once he stopped and gazed into a haberdasher’s window.

“Crêpe ties,” he said. “I haven’t seen one since I left college.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Massachusetts Tech.”

“Great place.”

“I’m going to take a look at it next week. Let’s eat somewhere along here — ” They were in the upper Fifties “ — you choose.”

There was a good restaurant with a little awning just around the corner.

“What do you want to see most?” Orrison asked, as they sat down.

Trimble considered.

“Well — the back of people’s heads,” he suggested. “Their necks — how their heads are joined to their bodies. I’d like to hear what those two little girls are saying to their father. Not exactly what they’re saying but whether the words float or submerge, how their mouths shut when they’ve finished speaking. Just a matter of rhythm — Cole Porter came back to the States in 1928 because he felt that there were new rhythms around.”

Orrison was sure he had his clue now, and with nice delicacy did not pursue it by a millimeter — even suppressing a sudden desire to say there was a fine concert in Carnegie Hall tonight.

“The weight of spoons,” said Trimble, “so light. A little bowl with a stick attached. The cast in that waiter’s eye. I knew him once but he wouldn’t remember me.”

But as they left the restaurant the same waiter looked at Trimble rather puzzled as if he almost knew him. When they were outside Orrison laughed:

“After ten years people will forget.”

“Oh, I had dinner there last May — ” He broke off in an abrupt manner.

It was all kind of nutsy, Orrison decided — and changed himself suddenly into a guide.

“From here you get a good candid focus on Rockefeller Center,” he pointed out with spirit “ — and the Chrysler Building and the Armistead Building, the daddy of all the new ones.”

“The Armistead Building,” Trimble rubber-necked obediently. “Yes — I designed it.”

Orrison shook his head cheerfully — he was used to going out with all kinds of people. But that stuff about having been in the restaurant last May . . .

He paused by the brass entablature in the cornerstone of the building. “Erected 1928,” it said.

Trimble nodded.

“But I was taken drunk that year — every-which-way drunk. So I never saw it before now.”

“Oh.” Orrison hesitated. “Like to go in now?”

“I’ve been in it — lots of times. But I’ve never seen it. And now it isn’t what I want to see. I wouldn’t ever be able to see it now. I simply want to see how people walk and what their clothes and shoes and hats are made of. And their eyes and hands. Would you mind shaking hands with me?”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Thanks. Thanks. That’s very kind. I suppose it looks strange — but people will think we’re saying good-by. I’m going to walk up the avenue for awhile, so we will say good-by. Tell your office I’ll be in at four.”

Orrison looked after him when he started out, half expecting him to turn into a bar. But there was nothing about him that suggested or ever had suggested drink.

“Jesus,” he said to himself. “Drunk for ten years.”

He felt suddenly of the texture of his own coat and then he reached out and pressed his thumb against the granite of the building by his side.

The Lost Decade

Esquire (December 1939)

All sorts of people came into the offices of the news-weekly and Orrison Brown had all sorts of relations with them. Outside of office hours he was “one of the editors” — during work time he was simply a curly-haired man who a year before had edited the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern and was now only too glad to take the undesirable assignments around the office, from straightening out illegible copy to playing call boy without the title.

He had seen this visitor go into the editor’s office — a pale, tall man of forty with blond statuesque hair and a manner that was neither shy nor timid, nor otherworldly like a monk, but something of all three. The name on his card, Louis Trimble, evoked some vague memory, but having nothing to start on, Orrison did not puzzle over it — until a buzzer sounded on his desk, and previous experience warned him that Mr. Trimble was to be his first course at lunch.

“Mr. Trimble — Mr. Brown,” said the Source of all luncheon money. “Orrison — Mr. Trimble’s been away a long time. Or he feels it’s a long time — almost twelve years. Some people would consider themselves lucky to’ve missed the last decade.”

“That’s so,” said Orrison.

“I can’t lunch today,” continued his chief. “Take him to Voisin or 21 or anywhere he’d like. Mr. Trimble feels there’re lots of things he hasn’t seen.”

Trimble demurred politely.

“Oh, I can get around.”

“I know it, old boy. Nobody knew this place like you did once — and if Brown tries to explain the horseless carriage just send him back here to me. And you’ll be back yourself by four, won’t you?”

Orrison got his hat.

“You’ve been away ten years?” he asked while they went down in the elevator.

“They’d begun the Empire State Building,” said Trimble. “What does that add up to?”

“About 1928. But as the chief said, you’ve been lucky to miss a lot.” As a feeler he added, “Probably had more interesting things to look at.”

“Can’t say I have.”

They reached the street and the way Trimble’s face tightened at the roar of traffic made Orrison take one more guess.

“You’ve been out of civilization?”

“In a sense.” The words were spoken in such a measured way that Orrison concluded this man wouldn’t talk unless he wanted to — and simultaneously wondered if he could have possibly spent the thirties in a prison or an insane asylum.

“This is the famous 21,” he said. “Do you think you’d rather eat somewhere else?”

Trimble paused, looking carefully at the brownstone house.

“I can remember when the name 21 got to be famous,” he said, “about the same year as Moriarity’s.” Then he continued almost apologetically, “I thought we might walk up Fifth Avenue about five minutes and eat wherever we happened to be. Some place with young people to look at.”

Orrison gave him a quick glance and once again thought of bars and gray walls and bars; he wondered if his duties included introducing Mr. Trimble to complaisant girls. But Mr. Trimble didn’t look as if that was in his mind — the dominant expression was of absolute and deep-seated curiosity and Orrison attempted to connect the name with Admiral Byrd’s hideout at the South Pole or flyers lost in Brazilian jungles. He was, or he had been, quite a fellow — that was obvious. But the only definite clue to his environment — and to Orrison the clue that led nowhere — was his countryman’s obedience to the traffic lights and his predilection for walking on the side next to the shops and not the street. Once he stopped and gazed into a haberdasher’s window.

“Crêpe ties,” he said. “I haven’t seen one since I left college.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Massachusetts Tech.”

“Great place.”

“I’m going to take a look at it next week. Let’s eat somewhere along here — ” They were in the upper Fifties “ — you choose.”

There was a good restaurant with a little awning just around the corner.

“What do you want to see most?” Orrison asked, as they sat down.

Trimble considered.

“Well — the back of people’s heads,” he suggested. “Their necks — how their heads are joined to their bodies. I’d like to hear what those two little girls are saying to their father. Not exactly what they’re saying but whether the words float or submerge, how their mouths shut when they’ve finished speaking. Just a matter of rhythm — Cole Porter came back to the States in 1928 because he felt that there were new rhythms around.”

Orrison was sure he had his clue now, and with nice delicacy did not pursue it by a millimeter — even suppressing a sudden desire to say there was a fine concert in Carnegie Hall tonight.

“The weight of spoons,” said Trimble, “so light. A little bowl with a stick attached. The cast in that waiter’s eye. I knew him once but he wouldn’t remember me.”

But as they left the restaurant the same waiter looked at Trimble rather puzzled as if he almost knew him. When they were outside Orrison laughed:

“After ten years people will forget.”

“Oh, I had dinner there last May — ” He broke off in an abrupt manner.

It was all kind of nutsy, Orrison decided — and changed himself suddenly into a guide.

“From here you get a good candid focus on Rockefeller Center,” he pointed out with spirit “ — and the Chrysler Building and the Armistead Building, the daddy of all the new ones.”

“The Armistead Building,” Trimble rubber-necked obediently. “Yes — I designed it.”

Orrison shook his head cheerfully — he was used to going out with all kinds of people. But that stuff about having been in the restaurant last May . . .

He paused by the brass entablature in the cornerstone of the building. “Erected 1928,” it said.

Trimble nodded.

“But I was taken drunk that year — every-which-way drunk. So I never saw it before now.”

“Oh.” Orrison hesitated. “Like to go in now?”

“I’ve been in it — lots of times. But I’ve never seen it. And now it isn’t what I want to see. I wouldn’t ever be able to see it now. I simply want to see how people walk and what their clothes and shoes and hats are made of. And their eyes and hands. Would you mind shaking hands with me?”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Thanks. Thanks. That’s very kind. I suppose it looks strange — but people will think we’re saying good-by. I’m going to walk up the avenue for awhile, so we will say good-by. Tell your office I’ll be in at four.”

Orrison looked after him when he started out, half expecting him to turn into a bar. But there was nothing about him that suggested or ever had suggested drink.

“Jesus,” he said to himself. “Drunk for ten years.”

He felt suddenly of the texture of his own coat and then he reached out and pressed his thumb against the granite of the building by his side.

Legend of F. Scott Fitzgerald lives on

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s characters – and their highs and lows – resonate nearly a century after the St. Paulite found fame.
Few, if any, American authors have come to be so closely associated with an era like F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Roaring Twenties.
Funny thing is, despite being that link to a bygone period, Fitzgerald and his work are proving timeless.
With the fourth film adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” opening Friday, the St. Paul native has come, well, roaring back into our consciousness — that is, if he ever actually left.
Plaques still mark two of his childhood homes in St. Paul, nighttime hotspots in the Twin Cities often resemble a scene out of Fitzgerald’s flapper-happy, party-hardy heyday, and “Gatsby” remains a high school staple; it is among the novels listed for 11th-graders in the Common Core State Standards adopted by 46 states.
That makes sense, according to Fitzgerald chronicler Patrick Coleman. “I was once told by an English teacher that this is the quintessential book to give high school kids,” said Coleman, acquisitions librarian at the Minnesota Historical Society, “because everybody in high school is trying to be somebody else, they’re trying on this disguise. So [a similarly masquerading Jay Gatsby] naturally resonates with adolescents.”
It doesn’t hurt, Coleman added, that the novel “is just so beautifully written, those sentences are stunning sometimes, and that’s what prompts these revisits to the big screen.”
The latest celluloid iteration finds Leonardo DiCaprio succeeding Robert Redford (1974), Alan Ladd (1949) and Warner Baxter (1926) in the title role.
The timing of this release, as well as the 1974 release during the Watergate/Vietnam/oil crisis era, is no coincidence, said Macalester English Prof. James Dawes.
“There are two F. Scott Fitzgeralds,” Dawes said of the author’s turbulent career and life. “One is successful, and one is a failure. When Americans are facing crisis or are afraid of failure, the Fitzgerald who was a failure becomes culturally useful to us. He helps us work through our feelings about failure in a way that allows us to have compassion for ourselves. When things are exuberant and successful, he represents an America that is crass and overdone.”
He’s Nick, not Gatsby
St. Paul got glimpses of Fitzgerald in both modes. After World War I (when the dapper young man reportedly had his Army garb tailored by Brooks Brothers), he landed in New York to work in advertising. When that ended badly, a humbled Fitzgerald moved into the third floor of his family’s home at 599 Summit Av., where he finished “This Side of Paradise.”
That debut novel sold out its first printing in three days, rocketing Fitzgerald to immediate fame. “He was a wild commercial success,” said Fitzgerald scholar Patricia Hampl. “No writer can become famous overnight, like a rock star, the way he did anymore. I don’t think rock stars can.”
The book’s publication convinced Zelda Sayre that Fitzgerald was worthy of betrothal, and after their wedding they stayed in New York for several months, basking in his newfound celebrity. The “successful” Fitzgerald and his wife then headed back to St. Paul, moving into the Commodore Hotel in a neighborhood that has changed so little that, as Coleman said, “he would know where he was if he came back today.”
The couple caroused at the University Club, the White Bear Yacht Club and the Commodore (although the Art Deco bar at the now-private residence, which many believe was a hangout, was not crafted until the 1930s).
Not long after their daughter, Frances Scott “Scottie” Fitzgerald, was born here in 1921, the Fitzgeralds embarked for France, where they hobnobbed with other literary luminaries and he wrote his most enduring work, “The Great Gatsby.”
‘An old romantic feel’
Although some people regard the lead character as autobiographical, Hampl disagrees.
“Fitzgerald should not be conflated with Gatsby,” she said. “The action is in New York and Long Island, but the story is told from a St. Paul perspective. It’s a faux memoir by [narrator Nick Carraway, a St. Paul native], who himself has kind of given up an attempt to be a stylish person in New York and come back home, in effect a failure.”
Fitzgerald’s post-Gatsby career would veer between lofty peaks and deep valleys, with huge paychecks for short stories in magazines, alcoholism, a lucrative “Gatsby” silent-film adaptation (now lost) and Zelda’s lengthy hospitalization for a bipolar disorder. Fitzgerald’s last royalty check was for $13.13, Hampl said, and he died in 1940 “a humbled man who saw with clarity how this country savages its darlings.”
But the image most folks carry around today is of the Fitzgeralds’ halcyon days as a freewheeling, carousing couple out on the town.
That scene occasionally is re-created during private parties at the Prohibition bar in Minneapolis’ “W’’ Hotel, said sales and marketing director Molli O’Rourke.
She added that customers in general “are really excited about the cocktails of that era,” especially in a space “with these elegant elements that have been there since the building was built [in the 1920s], with an old romantic feel and all this gossip behind it.”
Sounds like a place where F. Scott and Zelda would have felt right at home.

Idol Worship: Zelda Fitzgerald, The First American Flapper

I was distraught when I read about 2013's The Great Gatsby missing the mark on the flapper.

Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel of the same name has inspired a resurgence of twenties-inspired clothing, as well as inspiring the most consistent and multi-faceted set of synonymous advertising campaigns probably of all time. Seriously, we all know this movie is a thing, right? Because if they haven't shoved it down your throat at the bus stop, in your favorite fashion magazine, or on television yet you probably just don't even go here.
But moving on.
Gatsby is responsible, then, for a cultural remembrance of what defined The Roaring Twenties: parties and bullshit. With glamourous clothes, illegal booze and a short skirt on top, the film is dripping in nostalgia for prohibition and the sensual and secret lifestyle of the speakeasies. Yet the adaptation lacks true appreciation for the impact one of its most iconic characters had on this world: The Flapper. And the main cause is that the novel inspiring the film had the same problem. (The problem with both is the male gaze but let's not get too depressed.)
The flapper movement wasn’t simply a fashion trend, as Emily Spivack at Smithsonian.com’s Threaded blog explains; it was a full-blown, grassroots feminist revolution.
First, these flappers ditched the constraining, skin-covering clothes of their Edwardian mothers... These young women would load up with affordable costume jewelry and take their newly invented lipstick tubes and compacts out with them to speakeasies, where they would smoke, drink hard liquor, listen to jazz, and dance the Charleston, the Black Bottom, or the Lindy Hop, dances considered sexually provocative... They dated casually, flirting, kissing, and even had sex with men they had no interest in committing to...
She rejected the notion that women should be submissive and keep to their “separate sphere” of the home. She proved that women could work and live independent from men—and party just as hard. She opened up new conversations about dating, sexuality, and sexually transmitted diseases. Along with all those feminist hallmarks, she also created a new, more demanding beauty standard for women that requires wearing makeup, tanning, and dieting and exercising to stay lithe and youthful.
Keep all this in mind while you watch the new “Gatsby.” Like the 1926 Sears catalog, Hollywood is exploiting an ever-popular cultural phenomenon to sell you something. But these vain, manipulative characters wrecking havoc onscreen in their fabulous Prada shifts are not the true flappers, the ones who made the world as we know it.
This is pretty devastating news considering how amazing the legacy and history of The Flapper really is. Flappers were a clique you didn't wanna fuck with: girls who drank, danced, socialized, slept around, wore short dresses - and all when it was not fashionable, or marketable, or easy. They lacked shame and a sense of decency, went out alone at night, embraced androgyny, lit their own cigarettes, and looked flawless while doing it. 

Flappers, who ironically found themselves often at odds with suffragettes, embodied women's liberation by stepping out into the world and simply doing them, and whoever else they were interested in doing because, I mean, c'mon, #YOLO!!!
The Great Gatsby was one of the only books I actually read when it was assigned to me in high school. I wanted to really explore the time through the imagery and the people and the voices; I was intrigued as a young girl by the cute and sexy rebellion that was The Roaring Twenties, the powerful femininity that you could still smell, reeking off of every sequined dress. In a world currently populated by party girls with brains and bravado, one must appreciate the originals.
And one can't appreciate flappers without appreciating Zelda Fitzgerald.
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was "the first American flapper."
Born July 24, 1900 as Zelda Sayre, she married F. Scott Fizgerald in 1920 in what was an instant celebrity union. The couple's exploits fed the tabloids of the time, following Fitzgerald's eventual descent into alcoholism and Zelda's struggle to stay afloat under the pressure of the media spotlight and her relative inability to establish her own space in history. They set a stylistic and cultural standard for the times.
Of being a flapper, she wrote:
The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure, she covered her face with powder and paint because she didn’t need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart. She had mostly masculine friends, but youth does not need friends—it needs only crowds.
The partnership between the reigning couple of The Roaring Twenties was, at its best, a wild and intoxicating romance, and at other times a devastating and public fit of fury.
The Fitzgerald marriage rather predictably suffered from a gender imbalance: Zelda wanted to be known more for her individual capabilities and talents - for her own mind. She had been the inspiration for Fitzgerald's Daisy in Gatsby, and he had used excerpts of her diary writings in his pieces. Her work had even been published in magazines widely throughout the twenties. Yet she was unable to break out of his shadow and be appreciated for her own writing and unique voice. In 1922, she wrote:
To begin with, every one must buy this book for the following aesthetic reasons: First, because I know where there is the cutest cloth of gold dress for only $300 in a store on Forty-second Street, and, also, if enough people buy it where there is a platinum ring with a complete circlet, and, also, if loads of people buy it my husband needs a new winter overcoat, although the one he has has done well enough for the last three years... It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and, also, scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.
The marriage between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre relationship dissolved publicly and abysmally in 1929, with Zelda in a mental institution. In 1932, she published Save Me The Waltz, written during her stay. The book was a semi-autobiographical story of their failed relationship; her ex-husband responded by publishing his side of the story in 1934, with Tender is the Night. Later on Zelda pursued painting, but reception was less than positive. She died in 1940.
Zelda Fitzgerald was a woman born to tell a story. Although her own story is one of a struggle to be seen, it is clear she left an imprint on our shared cultural history, setting the standard for a movement that birthed some of our most integral values: sexual freedom, general badassery, and alternative lifestyle haircuts. Inspired, self-righteous, and full to the brim with equal parts ego and prowess, she described herself as acting "without a thought for anyone else."
"I did not have a single feeling of inferiority, or shyness, or doubt," she added, "and no moral principles."

Design in Plaster

Esquire (November, 1939)

“How long does the doctor think now?” Mary asked. With his good arm Martin threw back the top of the sheet, disclosing that the plaster armor had been cut away in front in the form of a square, so that his abdomen and the lower part of his diaphragm bulged a little from the aperture. His dislocated arm was still high over his head in an involuntary salute.

“This was a great advance,” he told her. “But it took the heat wave to make Ottinger put in this window. I can’t say much for the view but — have you seen the wire collection?”

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” his wife answered, trying to look amused.

It was laid out on the bureau like a set of surgeons’ tools — wires bent to every length and shape so that the nurse could reach any point inside the plaster cast when perspiration made the itching unbearable.

Martin was ashamed at repeating himself.

“I apologize,” he said. “After two months you get medical psychology. All this stuff is fascinating to me. In fact — ”he added, and with only faint irony, “ — it is in a way of becoming my life.”

Mary came over and sat beside the bed raising him, cast and all, into her slender arms. He was chief electrical engineer at the studio and his thirty-foot fall wasn’t costing a penny in doctor’s bills. But that — and the fact that the catastrophe had swung them together after a four months’ separation, was its only bright spot.

“I feel so close,” she whispered. “Even through this plaster.”

“Do you think that’s a nice way to talk?”

“Yes.”

“So do I.”

Presently she stood up and rearranged her bright hair in the mirror. He had seen her do it half a thousand times but suddenly there was a quality of remoteness about it that made him sad.

“What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

Mary turned, almost with surprise.

“It seems strange to have you ask me.”

“Why? You almost always tell me. You’re my contact with the world of glamour.”

“But you like to keep bargains. That was our arrangement when we began to live apart.”

“You’re being very technical.”

“No — but that was the arrangement. As a matter of fact I’m not doing anything. Bieman asked me to go to a preview, but he bores me. And that French crowd called up.”

“Which member of it?”

She came closer and looked at him.

“Why, I believe you’re jealous,” she said. “The wife of course. Or he did, to be exact, but he was calling for his wife — she’d be there. I’ve never seen you like this before.”

Martin was wise enough to wink as if it meant nothing and let it die away, but Mary said an unfortunate last word.

“I thought you liked me to go with them.”

“That’s it,” Martin tried to go slow, “ — with ‘them,’ but now it’s ‘he.’”

“They’re all leaving Monday,” she said almost impatiently. “I’ll probably never see him again.”

Silence for a minute. Since his accident there were not an unlimited number of things to talk about, except when there was love between them. Or even pity — he was accepting even pity in the past fortnight. Especially their uncertain plans about the future were in need of being preceded by a mood of love.

“I’m going to get up for a minute,” he said suddenly. “No, don’t help me — don’t call the nurse. I’ve got it figured out.”

The cast extended half way to his knee on one side but with a snake-like motion he managed to get to the side of the bed — then rise with a gigantic heave. He tied on a dressing gown, still without assistance, and went to the window. Young people were splashing and calling in the outdoor pool of the hotel.

“I’ll go along,” said Mary. “Can I bring you anything tomorrow? Or tonight if you feel lonely?”

“Not tonight. You know I’m always cross at night — and I don’t like you making that long drive twice a day. Go along —be happy.”

“Shall I ring for the nurse?”

“I’ll ring presently.”

He didn’t though — he just stood. He knew that Mary was wearing out, that this resurgence of her love was wearing out. His accident was a very temporary dam of a stream that had begun to overflow months before.

When the pains began at six with their customary regularity the nurse gave him something with codein in it, shook him a cocktail and ordered dinner, one of those dinners it was a struggle to digest since he had been sealed up in his individual bomb-shelter. Then she was off duty four hours and he was alone. Alone with Mary and the Frenchman.

He didn’t know the Frenchman except by name but Mary had said once:

“Joris is rather like you — only naturally not formed — rather immature.”

Since she said that, the company of Mary and Joris had grown increasingly unattractive in the long hours between seven and eleven. He had talked with them, driven around with them, gone to pictures and parties with them — sometimes with the half comforting ghost of Joris’ wife along. He had been near as they made love and even that was endurable as long as he could seem to hear and see them. It was when they became hushed and secret that his stomach winced inside the plaster cast. That was when he had pictures of the Frenchman going toward Mary and Mary waiting. Because he was not sure just how Joris felt about her or about the whole situation.

“I told him I loved you,” Mary said — and he believed her, “I told him that I could never love anyone but you.”

Still he could not be sure how Mary felt as she waited in her apartment for Joris. He could not tell if, when she said good night at her door, she turned away relieved, or whether she walked around her living room a little and later, reading her book, dropped it in her lap and looked up at the ceiling. Or whether her phone rang once more for one more good night.

Martin hadn’t worried about any of these things in the first two months of their separation when he had been on his feet and well.

At half-past eight he took up the phone and called her; the line was busy and still busy at a quarter of nine. At nine it was out of order; at nine-fifteen it didn’t answer and at a little before nine-thirty it was busy again. Martin got up, slowly drew on his trousers and with the help of a bellboy put on a shirt and coat.

“Don’t you want me to come, Mr. Harris?” asked the bellboy.

“No thanks. Tell the taxi I’ll be right down.”

When the boy had gone he tripped on the slightly raised floor of the bathroom, swung about on one arm and cut his head against the wash bowl. It was not so much, but he did a clumsy repair job with the adhesive and, feeling ridiculous at his image in the mirror, sat down and called Mary’s number a last time — for no answer. Then he went out, not because he wanted to go to Mary’s but because he had to go somewhere toward the flame, and he didn’t know any other place to go.

At ten-thirty Mary, in her nightgown, was at the phone.

“Thanks for calling. But, Joris, if you want to know the truth I have a splitting headache. I’m turning in.”

“Mary, listen,” Joris insisted. “It happens Marianne has a headache too and has turned in. This is the last night I’ll have a chance to see you alone. Besides, you told me you’d never had a headache.”

Mary laughed.

“That’s true — but I am tired.”

“I would promise to stay one-half hour — word of honor. I am only just around the corner.”

“No,” she said and a faint touch of annoyance gave firmness to the word. “Tomorrow I’ll have either lunch or dinner if you like, but now I’m going to bed.”

She stopped. She had heard a sound, a weight crunching against the outer door of her apartment. Then three odd, short bell rings.

“There’s someone — call me in the morning,” she said. Hurriedly hanging up the phone she got into a dressing gown.

By the door of her apartment she asked cautiously.

“Who’s there?”

No answer — only a heavier sound — a human slipping to the floor.

“Who is it?”

She drew back and away from a frightening moan. There was a little shutter high in the door, like the peephole of a speakeasy, and feeling sure from the sound that whoever it was, wounded or drunk, was on the floor Mary reached up and peeped out. She could see only a hand covered with freshly ripening blood, and shut the trap hurriedly. After a shaken moment, she peered once more.

This time she recognized something — afterwards she could not have said what — a way the arm lay, a corner of the plaster cast — but it was enough to make her open the door quickly and duck down to Martin’s side.

“Get doctor,” he whispered. “Fell on the steps and broke.”

His eyes closed as she ran for the phone.

Doctor and ambulance came at the same time. What Martin had done was simple enough, a little triumph of misfortune. On the first flight of stairs that he had gone up for eight weeks, he had stumbled, tried to save himself with the arm that was no good for anything, then spun down catching and ripping on the stair rail. After that a five minute drag up to her door.

Mary wanted to exclaim, “Why? Why?” but there was no one to hear. He came awake as the stretcher was put under him to carry him to the hospital, repair the new breakage with a new cast, start it over again. Seeing Mary he called quickly.“Don’t you come. I don’t like anyone around when — when — Promise on your word of honor not to come?”

The orthopedist said he would phone her in an hour. And five minutes later it was with the confused thought that he was already calling that Mary answered the phone.

“I can’t talk, Joris,” she said. “There was an awful accident — ”

“Can I help?”

“It’s gone now. It was my husband — ”

Suddenly Mary knew she wanted to do anything but wait alone for word from the hospital.

“Come over then,” she said. “You can take me up there if I’m needed.”

She sat in place by the phone until he came — jumped to her feet with an exclamation at his ring.

“Why? Why?” she sobbed at last. “I offered to go see him at his hotel.”

“Not drunk?”

“No, no — he almost never takes a drink. Will you wait right outside my door while I dress and get ready?”

The news came half an hour later that Martin’s shoulder was set again, that he was sleeping under the ethylene gas and would sleep till morning. Joris Deglen was very gentle, swinging her feet up on the sofa, putting a pillow at her back and answering her incessant “Why?” with a different response every time — Martin had been delirious; he was lonely; then at a certain moment telling the truth he had long guessed at: Martin was jealous.

“That was it,” Mary said bitterly. “We were to be free — only I wasn’t free. Only free to sneak about behind his back.”

She was free now though, free as air. And later, when he said he wouldn’t go just yet, but would sit in the living room reading until she quieted down, Mary went into her room with her head clear as morning. After she undressed for the second time that night she stayed for a few minutes before the mirror arranging her hair and keeping her mind free of all thoughts about Martin except that he was sleeping and at the moment felt no pain.

Then she opened her bedroom door and called down the corridor into the living room:

“Do you want to come and tell me good night?”