• 10 •
Zelda’s initial impression of Highland was positive. It seemed a welcoming place situated on fifteen acres of landscaped grounds with tennis courts, swimming pools, and flagstone walks winding through oak groves and pine forests. Compared to Craig House it was moderately priced with a quarterly fee of $1,200. Pleading hardship, Scott negotiated the lower monthly rate of $240. To that was added $100 for Zelda’s personal expenses and costs of day trips. Female patients were housed in Old Central, which overlooked tennis courts and flower gardens, and men stayed at Oak Lodge with mountain views, a well-stocked library, and club room for billiards.
Dr. Robert Carroll had founded Highland Hospital in 1904 and lived on the grounds in an impressive Norman-style residence. His wife, Grace, had been a concert pianist and ran a music school in their home, giving lessons and holding performances in an assembly room that could seat two hundred. A forceful and demanding man with a large nose and even larger ears, Dr. Carroll ruled by moral authority and established discipline from the moment people arrived. Female patients could not wear makeup, mirrors were forbidden in their rooms, and Sunday vespers at 4:30 were obligatory. Everyone was expected to cooperate in the hospital’s systematic routine, and even staff members were wary of Carroll’s authoritarian rule. As one student nurse recalled1, the class was a little frightened of Dr. Carroll and in awe of the dictatorial doctor. Carroll pursued his medical degree at Marion Sims College of Medicine, going on to complete psychiatric training at Chicago’s Rush Medical College, where Ernest Hemingway’s father had studied. Having begun his career as a pharmacist, he had a broad understanding of the body’s response to drugs, and generally believed they did more harm than good. He theorized that mental disorders stemmed from toxic substances in the body, and that by restricting the diet to certain foods and having patients engage in rigorous exercise, enough poisons could be dispelled to keep nervous diseases under control. Zelda’s daily regimen involved a five-mile tromp through nearby hills, where rustic seats dotted the countryside and pegboards strategically were placed to let patients keep track of progress. Everyone had a personal goal and was expected to work toward it. The aim was to develop endurance, and given Zelda’s natural athleticism, this proved effective.
Along with required walks, camping trips, and climbing expeditions, there was competitive baseball, softball, and basketball as well as tennis tournaments. Landon Ray directed outdoor activities. He was eight years younger than Zelda, attractive, and full of energy. They often took walks together, gathering wood for camping excursions, and he recalled one hike across Sunset Mountain when it started to rain, and Zelda trudged off into the briers to gather dry kindling. When the two were alone, things remained calm, but Zelda resented the intrusion of others, especially if female. “She once became so possessive,”2 Landon recalled, “that she slapped a cup of coffee out of the hand of another woman who approached us in conversation.”
Unorthodox in his thinking, Dr. Carroll prepared a graphoanalysis of Zelda’s handwriting to better understand her character, and it accurately captured the spirit of her personality and approach to life. It described her as
an enthusiastic person with an active mind3 and with great firmness and determination of character, and the will to have her way recognized or there will be trouble; but all in an amiable and quiet and even tempered manner. While having a scientific mind, her ideas are often inspirational, her intuition even amounting to psychic power. Is earnest and conscientious. Has social gift which makes her companionable, but she is bored by too much concentration on any subject. She has very little reasoning power and does not think connectedly or logically. Has decided creative ability, and is interested in life in general, but does not attach herself deeply to any one love, and does not demonstrate affection, her head ruling her emotions. She is capable of great efficiency in any work she undertakes. She has a variety of interests and some gift as a teacher and can transfer her impressions and knowledge with ease, and acts impulsively and hastily on occasions. Has little talent for the waiting game. Most contradictory nature. In almost every trait she has touches of the opposite. One thing the matter is, that she cannot concentrate on anything very long. Has scattered her energies in every direction, and has unsettled her gifts.
That Carroll could construe this from Zelda’s handwriting in a matter of days, whereas Craig House remained baffled by her personality after two months, is indicative of his nontraditional treatment approaches.
Highland’s prospectus summarized its innovative interventions and advertised itself as “an institution employing all rational methods4 in the treatment of nervous, habit, and mental cases, especially emphasizing the natural curative agents—rest, climate, water, diet, work and play.” Its restrictive dietary rules stressed natural juices, starches, and vegetables, but no meat, milk, or eggs. Sweets were kept to a minimum, and no alcohol or tobacco allowed. Diet laboratories were maintained in each building, where specially developed meals were prepared. Since Carroll had no faith in laboratory-produced vita-mins, considering them of little value, he viewed regulated diets as the only remedy for digestive problems. His nutritional beliefs were influenced by Presbyterian minister, Sylvester Graham, who concluded in the nineteenth century that a diet of fruits, vegetables, starches, and limited dairy could help manage neuroses. The Grahamite movement waned after its founder’s death, but one of his followers, John Harvey Kellogg, superintendent of Michigan’s Battle Creek Sanitarium, required patients to follow a similar regimen, and while experimenting with dietary options, perfected the corn flake, which was served daily to good result. He pioneered the wellness movement promoting biologic living and published Good Health magazine, which advocated a grain and vegetable diet, no alcohol or coffee, and chaste living to avoid syphilis, which before antibiotics was a highly contagious and deadly disease. Dr. Carroll based much of his nutritional thinking on the magazine’s articles, with current and past issues displayed in Highland’s library and made available to patients.
No whims of palate were allowed at Highland, and Zelda followed its regimen with wry humor. “Now, the head doctor had devoted considerable research5 to proving his point, that people were noticeably stupid, but not to be blamed for it. He couldn’t understand why everybody didn’t subscribe to living forever on milk and green vegetables, with chicken for national holidays and ice-cream twice a year.” The occasional treat was a peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat. After years in mental institutions, Zelda had learned to survive their arbitrary rules, accepting that manifestations of human spirit always were regarded as illness and subject to reprimand: “Knowing this, patients (mostly) suppress themselves6 as much as possible, endure, and hope to get out.” Each day was like the former and followed a strict regimen: gym class every morning, then occupational therapy followed by a walk. Visitors were not allowed during the first phase of treatment, and unannounced guests never permitted into patients’ rooms. Nurses kept close watch on patients, and Zelda quickly learned to be mindful of staff members who always were snooping around.
Conscious of the connection between body and mind, Highland encouraged individual and group therapy sessions, along with reeducation programs tailored to patients’ needs. Within months, Zelda’s suicidal tendencies eased, and she started showing interest in her surroundings. For the Highland’s New Year’s costume ball in 1936, she choreographed a ballet, but there was still a feverish tinge to her dancing, and if nurses forgot to monitor her, she would practice to the point of exhaustion and be unstable the following day. Patients had to select some type of occupational therapy and Zelda chose art, trudging into nearby hills to paint the landscape. After setting up the portable easel a fellow patient had made for her, she painted the hollyhocks and rhododendrons that abundantly grew there and filled her room with magnolias and angel’s trumpets that bloomed at night.
Along with his regimen of nutrition and exercise, Dr. Carroll promoted hydrotherapy, which he believed cleansed the system of toxins and produced tonic reactions not otherwise obtainable. He installed a new bath department in Central Building with sitz tubs, Turkish and Russian steam baths, and needle showers. Patients often underwent hydrotherapy sessions there before starting rest cures, which he felt offered unparalleled results for tension and exhaustion. This individualized treatment of overfeeding and complete relaxation required a private nurse and was an expensive proposition few could afford. However, since Highland operated a training program associated with Duke University, offering postgraduate courses in psychiatric nursing, costs were reduced since student nurses could serve in this capacity.
Science at any time is a consensual reality, and by the time Zelda arrived, Highland already had begun experimenting with insulin and electroconvulsive therapies to shorten the duration of schizoid symptoms. Metrazol had been replaced by insulin because it brought patients to coma more easily, and Manfred Sakel had renamed the new procedure insulin shock behandlung. Both drugs relieved symptoms in a similar way by dimming brain function. In May 1936, Sakel reported to the Swiss Psychiatric Society that he had observed improvement in numerous patients, and his improved method entered the psychiatric arsenal as its latest intervention. Sakel even moved to New York where he promoted its use in American hospitals. Although there was no scientific evidence or understanding of how insulin shock therapy or electroshock therapy worked, the dramatic recoveries doctors witnessed were enough for them to promote the procedures. Adolf Meyer quickly instituted insulin shock procedures at Phipps Clinic and recommended the treatment to colleagues.
Dr. Carroll was one of his collaborators and enthusiastically supported the new intervention: “The benefits of scientific treatment have been strikingly enlarged7 these last years,” he wrote, “through the introduction of insulin, drug, and electric shock treatment—each offering special helpfulness in various types of mental disorder. Such specific treatment, followed by an adequate period of physical and emotional re-education, accomplishes degrees of restoration previously unknown.” What Carroll meant by emotional reeducation was interactive therapy that trained patients how to reduce anxiety by altering behavior.
Mildred Squires, now acting director of the Long Island Home for Nervous Invalids in Amityville, New York, also supported the use of insulin and metrazol therapies, and discussed their effectiveness in the Psychiatric Quarterly. Although she felt some schizophrenics had more on their mind than shock could divert, for others the treatment successfully interrupted the illness and broke apart frustrating states. She cautioned, however, that patients responded to convulsive therapies at different intensities, and advised doctors to approach treatments both quantitatively and qualitatively. Certain patients reacted more favorably to metrazol than insulin, or the reverse, and these differences appeared related to their prepsychotic personalities and hostilities underlying their psychoses. Squires believed success depended on whether the illness was still in flux and the patient fighting to get well, or if the person had given up. It was what her former boss, Adolf Meyer, had warned against, if Zelda remained institutionalized.
Since there were no standard guidelines for insulin treatments, doctors developed individual approaches. The preferred daily dosage was gradually increased until comas were produced, each lasting up to an hour and terminated by intravenous glucose. Seizures sometimes occurred before or during the coma, when there would be much moaning and thrashing about. All patients at Highland undergoing this treatment were kept together on the fifth floor of Central Building, where they were carefully watched, since there was always the danger of hypoglycemic aftershocks.
In addition to standard fees, specific treatments like insulin and electric shock therapy, incurred additional charges, and Scott was having difficulty paying the adjusted rate. All his books were out of print or going that way, and he was $40,000 in debt. He wrote Harold Ober that Craig House was suing him for nonpayment of fees, and that it was impossible to write under these conditions. “I realize that I am at the end of my resources8 physically + financially. After getting rid of this house next month + storing furniture, I am cutting expenses to the bone, taking Scottie to Carolina instead of camp + going to a boarding house for the summer.”
He relocated to Tryon, North Carolina, about an hour north of Asheville, and immediately after arriving, was introduced to Nora and Maurice Flynn. Nora was the youngest of the five Langhorne sisters, Southern belles who became Northern debutantes, each exceptional in her own way. Phyllis wed a renowned British economist, Lizzie became the wife of a Southern gentleman farmer, and the most celebrated, Nancy, married Waldorf Astor, the richest man in England, later becoming a member of Parliament and championing women’s rights. The most beautiful, Irene, became the wife of Charles Dana Gibson and was immortalized as the “Gibson girl,” fashion icon of the twenties. Of the five, Nora was the most independent and high spirited, and like Zelda craved attention. Her affairs were not only about passion; she loved the “idea” of romance and one followed closely on another. Her first marriage to British architect Paul Phillips ended as a result of her infidelity and after divorcing him, she wed Maurice Bennett Flynn, nicknamed “Lefty” because he kicked with his left foot while playing football for Yale. Like Edouard and Tommy Hitchcock, the good-looking Flynn had been a fighter pilot, then went on to star in silent films. Predictably, Nora became involved with Scott in Tryon, and later he boasted she fell in love with him and wanted to run off, but he declined because of not wanting to be her last conquest. Scott found Nora and Lefty engaging narrative material and fictionalized their marriage in a story called “The Intimate Strangers,” in which the couple, Sara and Killian, while loving one another, remain strangers scarred by past relationships. In notes for the story, summarized under the heading “Descriptions of girls: the fearlessness of women,” Scott expressed his astonishment over the recklessness of females like Nora and Zelda, who entered perilous situations without thinking, spoiled babies, he thought, who never felt the economic struggle. He considered Zelda the most reckless of them all, someone who never planned, just let herself go and allowed the overwhelming life in her to do the rest.
When Zelda began showing improvement she was permitted weekend excursions and visited Rosalind in Manhattan, who noted her sister’s progress. “At Asheville, where much of the institutional atmosphere was lost in pleasant lodgings9, but where uncompromising strictness was the rule, and cooperation of the patient was demanded, Zelda bloomed again, and on several visits to me in New York during that period, was almost like her old self, beautiful once more, still interested in music, the theatre and art, but toned down to an almost normal rhythm.” To see her more regularly, Scott moved from Tryon to Asheville during the summers of 1936–1937 and stayed at the Grove Park Inn. The massive granite structure had a long terrace lined with rocking chairs, from where one had a panoramic view of the Blue Ridge Mountains and across the valley, Highland Hospital. For Zelda’s thirty-sixth birthday that July, Scott planned an excursion into those mountains, but the day got ruined after he injured himself diving into Grove Park’s pool. “I left the hotel for the hospital that morning10, fully intending to be back here in time to lunch with you,” he wrote apologetically, “but the xray showed that there was a fracture in the joint of the shoulder, and a dislocation of the ball and socket.” To compensate for the disappointment, he brought her to the Grove Park Inn for lunch the following week, where they ate in the formal dining room and she ordered a cucumber salad. Although it was important for Zelda to remain calm, Scott was still capable of provoking a stressful situation. While they waited by the lobby’s elevator to go upstairs, Scott approached a group of librarians meeting there and introduced himself as the author of a Ernest Hemingway novel. When one of them expressed doubts, he countered, “You don’t believe me, do you? I’m Scott Fitzgerald11. I wrote Of Time and the River.” The assertion made the librarian laugh:
I assured him, that either he wasn’t Fitzgerald, or he hadn’t written Of Time and the River. This effrontery on my part only increased his indignation. It was unthinkable that a mere snippet of a librarian should doubt the word of a celebrated author. Meanwhile, the woman at his elbow kept muttering impatiently, “Come on, Scott! Come, on Scott!” “I’ll prove to you that I’m Scott Fitzgerald. Come with me!” He was quite excited now, and my companion and I followed him through the crowd to the hotel registration desk. A dark haired little clerk on duty there saw us coming. The alleged Mr. Fitzgerald said to him indignantly, “You tell this young lady who I am!” The clerk took in the situation at a glance. In a quiet, even voice and looking directly at me, he said: “This is Mr. Scott Fitzgerald. He wrote Of Time and the River.” We walked over to the elevator after this, and the Fitzgeralds, as they proved to be, got out before we did. Mr. Fitzgerald turned and looking me straight in the eye, delivered his parting shot. “Any time you read a book about a river, remember I wrote it!”
Although Scott was having money problems and being hounded by Zelda’s former hospitals for nonpayment, he still enrolled Scottie at Ethel Walker’s School in Connecticut, one of the most expensive preparatory schools for young women. As she later recalled, “The choosing of what was then, one of the five or six best-known rich girls’ schools12 in the country, illustrates once again that curious conflict of attitudes he had about money and society with a capital S. In one sense, I think he would have hated it, if I hadn’t been at a ‘chic’ school, but no sooner was I there, than he started worrying about its bad influence on me.” To pay its hefty fees, Scott borrowed additional funds from Maxwell Perkins and Harold Ober and approached Rosalind and Newman, who declined, saying it would be an inconvenience. Scott reminded Zelda that when he had loaned Newman $500 in 1925, it hadn’t been any more convenient for him.
Awkward as it was, Scott had to request additional money from Harold in May 1937. “What I need is a substantial sum13: 1st to pay a percentage on the bills, 2nd for a full month’s security + 3rd to take Zelda for a three day trip to Myrtle Beach, which I’ve been promising for two months and which the sanitarium wants her to take. She hasn’t been out of hospital for 3½ years + they feel that she’s well enough for the trip.” Harold sent the money, but two weeks later, when Scott requested another advance, he closed the tap and said no. Scott was incensed and appealed to Max Perkins, who wired $600, enough for Scottie’s tuition and Zelda’s hospital expenses. Weeks later, when the situation again became desperate, he telegraphed Oscar Kalman in St. Paul that he was deeply in debt to Scribner’s and the insurance company, and no longer could pay the typist or buy medicine. He asked Oscar for an immediate $1,000 and $5,000 within the week. Oscar wired it immediately, and that was followed by a check from the Murphys. Scott wrote both his appreciation, saying their generosity was the only pleasant thing to surface in a world where he felt passed by.
Temporary relief came that summer, when Scott’s mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage and there were funds from her estate. Now, when he visited Highland he could take Zelda shopping in Asheville and to dinner. She never missed an opportunity to plead with him for a normal life. “There are so many houses I’d like to live in with you14. I don’t know how you get one, but I think if we saved a great many things—stamps and cigar bands, soap wrappers and box tops we could have it some way.”
That reality seemed increasingly unlikely. When he rented a cottage in the North Carolina countryside and brought everyone together, Zelda’s fluctuating moods required constant supervision and allowed no time to concentrate on anything else. He summarized the experience to Dr. Carroll: “There would be episodes of great gravity that seemed to have no build up15, outbursts of temper, violence, rashness, etc. that could neither be foreseen nor forestalled.” When the couple met with a psychiatrist at Highland to discuss the situation, the doctor was struck by their shared intimacy. They understood each other so well and could shift from anger to amusement in seconds. In an effort to illustrate something unsettling, Scott referred to an incident that had occurred while they were out riding, but when Zelda denied it, Scott simply shrugged it off, saying perhaps it was a schizophrenic horse. Zelda thought that hysterical and burst into laughter, complimenting him on the joke.
Their sense of humor was still intact, but so were other things. Though more than a decade had passed since the Jozan episode, Scott still was replaying its drama, and that year McCall’s published “Image on the Heart,” his most detailed working out of Zelda’s betrayal. Filled with predictable twists, the story opens in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where Scott’s male protagonist, Tom, learns that Tudy’s husband has drowned on their honeymoon. Barely knowing her, he convinces Tudy to let him fund a trip to France. “He fell in love with her helplessness16, and after a few months he persuaded her to let him lend her the money to go abroad and study for a year.” Soon afterward, he proposes and she accepts, but conflict emerges when Tom arrives in Provence for the wedding and discovers Tudy has become involved with a French pilot, Lieutenant Riccard. Aware things have changed, he asks, “Are you by any chance interested in this French boy17? If you are, it’s all right with me. We’ve been apart for a long time.” Tudy denies any relationship, but later kisses Riccard in front of Tom. When he objects, complaining, “You didn’t actually have to kiss him tonight,”18 she counters in typical Zelda fashion, “You were there—you saw19. There was nothing secret about it. It was in front of a lot of people.” The two men later confront each other, and Riccard agrees not to see Tudy again, but upon leaving defiantly flies his plane over Tom’s car, something Edouard may have done at Villa Marie. Then, when Tudy leaves for Paris to shop for the wedding, Riccard follows and takes the train back with her, getting off in Lyon so Tom will remain unaware. Only after the wedding does he discover that they have been together, and the seeds of doubt are planted: “He had to decide now, not upon what was the truth20, for that, he would never know for certain, but upon the question, as to whether he could now and forever put the matter out of his mind, or whether it would haunt their marriage like a ghost.” The heroine never reveals what occurred between herself and the French lieutenant, so Tom’s torment is not put to rest, and their marriage begins under this cloud of suspicion. Like Zelda, who neither confirmed nor denied suspicions, Tudy allows her husband to imagine the worst. Professio fundo vita—art follows life.
After Scott celebrated New Year’s Eve with Zelda, he returned to Tryon where he received word from the Murphys that their second son, Patrick, had died. He replied immediately: “The telegram came today, and the whole afternoon was sad21 with thoughts of you, and the past, and the happy times we had once. Another link binding you to life is broken, and with such insensate cruelty. . . . The golden bowl is broken indeed, but it was golden; nothing can ever take those boys away from you now.”
Their telegram was followed by a letter from Harold Ober, asking if Scott felt well enough to make another attempt screenwriting in Hollywood. Scott was still angry over his begrudging response for a loan but replied in the affirmative. Harold then negotiated a six-month contract at MGM, beginning in July 1937 with an extension and raise in January 1938, if things went well. The weekly salary was $1,000, out of which Scott agreed to pay Harold $600 against what he owed, plus a commission for obtaining the job and money against his debt to Scribner’s and Max. That left practically nothing for him.
He took a train from North Carolina to Manhattan to meet with Harold and attend the American Writers’ Congress, where Ernest was presenting an anti-Fascist speech before the audience of 3,500 writers. Afterward, everyone was discussing it and Scott felt uncomfortable and deflated. When Carl Van Vechten ran into him at the Algonquin the following day, he was shocked how defeated he looked. “I was to have lunch with Edmund Wilson22. We were to meet at the Algonquin. As I came into the room, my eyes had to readjust to the darkness, and I noticed a man with Wilson. I didn’t recognize him and went forward to be introduced. It was a terrible moment; Scott had completely changed. He looked pale and haggard.”
Scott arrived in Hollywood eager to work but with little energy. He budgeted thirty dollars a week for Zelda and a monthly allowance for Scottie, and when he sent his daughter the July check, emphasized his resolve to avoid studio politics. “I must be very tactful, but keep my hand on the wheel from the start23, find out the key man among bosses and the most malleable among the collaborators, then fight the rest tooth and nail until, in fact or in effect, I’m alone on the picture.” It sounded optimistic but wasn’t the way Hollywood worked.
Assigned to a third-floor office in the Thalberg Building on the Culver City lot, he kept to himself, which was interpreted as arrogance. By now he was suffering from hypoglycemia, which gave him a tremendous craving for sugar. Generally, he would skip lunch in the studio commissary and eat chocolate bars at his desk, smoking filtered Raleighs and drinking Coca-Cola, sometimes thirty a day. If someone stopped by uninvited, he showed annoyance by acting rudely, which made others criticize him behind his back. On day one, he was asked to polish the script of A Yank at Oxford starring Robert Taylor, an easy assignment given all he had written about Princeton. Nevertheless, he had difficulty getting down to work because the whole endeavor seemed pointless.
Ernest then arrived to arrange studio distribution for the Spanish Civil War documentary he had cowritten with Lillian Hellman and Archibald MacLeish. Dorothy Parker and husband Alan Campbell also were in Hollywood and made sure Scott got invited to the screening of Ernest’s film at the home of Frederick March and Florence Eldridge. Ernest was to ask for contributions, and on the day of the event, Robert Benchley invited both authors to lunch, neither knowing the other would attend. Afterward, Ernest sent Scott an autographed copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls, prompting him to write Zelda with apparent envy, that Ernest’s novel was a Book of the Month Club selection, and had been sold to the movies for $100,000. It was a far cry from Paris, he reminded her, when Ernest used to deride him for discussing “mere” sales. The novel would sell half a million copies in its first six months and make Ernest a wealthy man.
Almost evangelical in his resolve to remain sober, Scott avoided heavy drinkers and declined an invitation from Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker to go bar hopping along Sunset Boulevard, where both were regulars at Mocambo and Trocadero. Robert lived at the Garden of Allah on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights, a group of villas and cabins converted to a hotel and apartments in 1927. It formerly was the residence of actress Alla Nazimona, who co-founded United Artists Studio with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, D. W. Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin. Of Russian Jewish parentage, she was born Adelaida Yakovlevna Leventon in the Crimea and immigrated to America in 1905, reinventing herself many times over and becoming a leading silent film star.
Convenient for transients in the movie industry, when Robert Benchley moved in, the property housed twenty-five two-story stucco bungalows surrounding a swimming pool and catered to producers, actors, and screen-writers, who often were seen typing away outside their apartments. Every afternoon, residents congregated in Robert’s bungalow for tea martinis served in cups and saucers from a glass teapot. The regulars included Dorothy Parker, John O’Hara, Charlie Butterworth, John McClain, and Eddie Mayer. When Scott stopped by, he noticed how much Robert could throw down and warned, “Don’t you know that drinking is slow death24?” to which his host quipped, “So, who’s in a hurry25?” Robert had come to Hollywood as a writer, but RKO subsequently hired him as an actor, and in 1935 he won an Oscar for the short film How to Sleep. Usually cast as an urbane sophisticate and heavy drinker, he was credited with the line, “Let’s get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini,”26 to which Dorothy Parker added the quatrain, “I like to drink a Martini, but only two at the most, three I’m under the table, four I’m under the host27.”
Before Scott arrived, Edwin Knopf had rented him a Santa Monica apartment with a nice ocean view, but it was too far from the studios. So, when Carmel Myers suggested the Garden of Allah, he relocated there and occupied Villa number 1. It really was two apartments, upper and lower, and Scott used the second floor, while screenwriter, Eddie Mayer, lived in the space below. What made the place so convenient were its maid and room service. Billy, the Schwab’s Pharmacy boy, delivered alcohol and cigarettes to the bungalows, and Ben, the bellboy, ferried sandwiches from Greenblatt’s delicatessen across the street. As one former guest recalled, you could wake up at 10 a.m., phone Schwab’s, and be certain that a bottle of Jack Daniel’s would be at your villa by the time you’d hung up.
On Bastille Day, July 14, Robert hosted a party to celebrate the engagement of his friend Sheilah Graham, which began at her place on Kings Road and then moved to his apartment. Robert called Scott to come over, and Sheilah saw him there for the first time. The two never spoke that evening, but Sheilah later asked Robert who he was. When he told her it was Scott Fitzgerald, she was impressed. Not that she had read his books; she simply was aware of his reputation. Two weeks later, they met again at a dinner dance sponsored by the Writers Guild at the Coconut Grove and exchanged a few words. The next day Eddie Mayer telephoned Sheilah to say Scott wanted to be formally introduced. Eddie had his own history with Sheilah. Unattractive, he had a hard time charming women, but managed to seduce Sheilah during her first months in Hollywood.
There was something about the glow of Sheilah’s complexion that reminded Scott of the youthful Zelda, and he would later describe it in The Last Tycoon : “The skin with its peculiar radiance28, as if phosphorus had touched it, the mouth with its warm line that never counted costs.” Like Zelda, chosen by classmates as the girl with the most kissable lips, Sheilah’s mouth was her best asset, set off by straight white teeth and a seductive smile. Uninhibited sexually, she openly admitted that, if not always happy, from the time of first discovering sex, she used it to get what she wanted. The year before, she had been involved with King Vidor, divorced from Elizabeth Boardman, and he had mentioned marriage, but just before Christmas eloped with somebody else. With the resourcefulness to survive anything, she considered it a temporary setback and quickly recovered. As Zelda had done in Montgomery, Sheilah played one man off against another and had no reservations about lying to ensnare them. A self-invented woman, when Scott asked her age, she responded twenty-seven, although actually thirty-four, and when he inquired how many men she had slept with, Sheilah answered eight, adding that was only an approximate figure. It probably was closer to eighty. Since the film industry was fabricated from lies and those running it as shallow as she, Sheilah thrived in Hollywood.
Sheilah accentuated her English accent and masqueraded as British upper class, when actually she was the daughter of an impoverished Jewish couple who fled Ukrainian pogroms to settle in Leeds, England. Born to Rebecca and Louis Shael in 1904 and named Lily, she was the youngest of six children. Her father was a tailor who died of tuberculosis when she was three, and her mother, who was illiterate and could not speak English, was forced to clean public toilets and do laundry to survive. With too many mouths to feed, when Lily was six, her mother deposited her at the Jewish Hospital and Orphan Asylum in south London, which became her home for the next eight years. While there she figured out how things worked, and changed the spelling of her name from Shael, to the more refined German sounding Shiel. She never fully recovered from being abandoned or the feelings of unworthiness that followed her throughout life. After leaving the orphanage and working as a housemaid, she found a job demonstrating toothbrushes and was noticed by John Gilliam, twenty-five years her senior. When they married, she changed her name to Sheilah, took speech lessons, and began reinventing herself. Although still married to John, she came alone to America in 1935 and bluffed her way into a newspaper job in New York, then got transferred to Los Angeles where she evolved into a gossip columnist. Two years later, Sheilah divorced John and became engaged to the Marquess of Donegall, part of their unwritten marriage contract being that she would give him a male heir. Always looking for a better deal, when she met Scott, she calculated him a wiser choice, believing she stood less risk of being discovered a fraud.
No longer widely read, Scott was still considered a celebrated author and Sheilah viewed him as an intellectual. He seemed to inhabit a world of lofty ideas, and when he put her on a reading program, she fancied herself the heroine in Shaw’s Pygmalion. She was flattered by his interest and legitimized by his presence, but according to her son, “not in his league at all29. Perhaps she had been with too many men; told outrageous lies.” Acknowledging this, Sheliah told Eddie Mayer that she never understood why he loved her, since he had always fallen for rich and confident girls.
Deception was rampant on both sides. Sheilah concealed her impoverished Jewish background, and Scott kept his alcoholism under wraps, initially at least. When he brought her east to meet Maxwell Perkins, Harold Ober, and the Murphys, the reviews were mixed. Some of his friends considered her shallow and materialistic, while others thought she was a steadying influence. Scott remained conflicted, and Helen Hayes thought he stayed because she provided emotional support and treated her badly because she represented the second rate into which he had fallen. Clearly he was ambivalent. He never spelled her first name correctly, inverting the i with the e, and appreciated the fabrication more than the woman. These were Scott’s declining years, and Sheilah provided what he needed. She genuinely admired Scott and never considered him a failure, and he appreciated their relationship for what it was. “Better take it now. It is your chance, Stahr,”30 he wrote in The Last Tycoon. “This is your girl. She can save you . . . she can worry you back to life.”
Though she knew Scott was married, Sheilah was unaware how connected he was to Zelda. He never discussed his marriage, and when she suggested they wed and have children, he was astonished she could think he had the energy or interest for a second wife and offspring. There was much brooding by Sheilah over this, but she moved in with him anyway, locating a Malibu beach cottage rental, owned by Frank Case who managed the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Since Scott did not own a car, she used hers to move his things from the Garden of Allah. The entire time they lived in Malibu, he never went into the ocean or took his shoes off on the sand, still embarrassed by the sight of his feet. He even kept his socks on in bed, which was fine with Sheilah, who never took off her brassiere. That summer, when Scottie and Peaches Finney visited California, things became awkward when Scott asked Sheilah to remove her belongings temporarily from the house. That he considered her something to be hidden came as a shock.
To commute to the studios, Scott bought a 1937 Ford from S. J. Perelman, who was married to Laura Weinstein, sister of Nathanael West. It wasn’t long before it got stolen, and with wry humor he wrote Scottie, “The police have just called telling me they’ve recovered my car31. The thief ran out of gas and abandoned it in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. I hope next time he gets a nice big producer’s car with plenty of gas in it.”
During their time together, Scott and Sheilah moved three times: from the Malibu beach cottage to a guest house on the estate of Edward Everett Horten in Encino, and when that drive proved too long for Sheilah, from the San Fernando Valley back into West Hollywood. For appearances, she rented an apartment at 1443 North Hayworth Avenue, while he leased a smaller one at 1403 North Laurel Avenue. Among his neighbors in the L-shaped complex were Lucille Ball, who was dating band leader Desi Arnaz, and Joyce Matthews, who would marry Milton Berle and then Billy Rose. Schwab’s Pharmacy was two blocks east, where Scott would drink a chocolate malted, and Greenblatt’s deli on the corner of Sunset and Hayward, where he and Sheilah ate blintzes.
Zelda wrote Scott weekly letters, but lacking his actual address sent them in care of his Hollywood agent, Phil Berg. She wanted a family reunion, and in spring of 1938, Scott organized one at Virginia Beach. It quickly unraveled after Zelda got into an argument with Scottie, and Scott headed for the bar. Afterward, during one of Scott’s alcoholic tirades, Zelda wandered the corridors saying he was a dangerous lunatic in need of institutionalization. When doctors arrived to calm Scott down, it took him some time to convince them that she was the crazy one.
Another year would pass before they saw each other again, for the last time. After New Year’s, Highland was organizing a trip to Cuba for a selected group of patients, but because Scott was late giving approval, Zelda remained behind. To make up for that, Scott planned a trip to Cuba in April after Paramount canceled Air Raid, the film on which he had been working. Today, a nonstop flight from Los Angeles to North Carolina might take six hours, but in 1939, it could take eighteen to twenty-one, with four stops en route. Scott drank during the entire trip, and by the time the Fitzgeralds reached Club Kawama in Varadero, Cuba, 140 kilometers east of Havana, he was incoherent. Once he and Zelda checked in, he took off alone and got into a brawl at a cockfight. Zelda managed to get them on a plane to New York, where Scott picked another fight with a cab driver, then collapsed at the Algonquin Hotel. After having him admitted to Doctors’ Hospital, she boarded the train back to Asheville alone. Two weeks later, when Scott finally returned to Los Angeles, he was filled with remorse and wrote Scottie he was considering bringing Zelda to California for a visit. But after a week back at the studios, he realized how much his absence had set him back, and that his contract was in jeopardy. He wrote Zelda, “I don’t know how this job is going32; things depend on such hairlines here—one must not only do a thing well, but do it as a compromise, sometimes between utterly opposed ideas of two differing executives. The diplomatic part in business is my weak spot.” As his six-month MGM contract end neared, with only one screen credit to his name, his agreement was not renewed. Scott’s firing ultimately came down to money. That January, the studio was obligated to raise his weekly salary to $1,500 and felt he wasn’t worth it. Though he had remained sober for long periods, when he did relapse and miss work, Hollywood labeled him an unreliable drunk.
Without his MGM salary it was impossible to meet even basic expenses, and he began drinking again. Empty liquor bottles filled the garbage bin, daily consumption starting with beer, up to six 6-packs a day, and ending with a quart of gin. There were no further studio assignments so he returned to writing The Last Tycoon about the men who controlled Hollywood’s movie business and particularly Irving Thalberg, who two years earlier had died at thirty-seven. Its central female character, Kathleen, was based on Sheilah, and the narrator, Cecelia, who regards events from a distance of several years, modeled after Lois Moran. Collier’s agreed to pay up to $30,000 after approving the first fifteen thousand words, but after completing the initial chapter, Scott only had six thousand and requested a decision on that. When editors were unwilling to commit, he struggled to complete the rest.
Kathleen, called Thalia in an early version, is portrayed as the archetypical outsider who belongs nowhere, not even in Hollywood, a sanctuary for outcasts. As might be expected, Scott drew on his relationship with Sheilah for narrative and dialogue. But she was less quotable than Zelda, as when she gushes that being with Stahr makes her feel fluttery, like on a day in London during a caterpillar plague, when a furry thing dropped in her mouth. Scott’s notes for Kathleen’s character imply his ambivalence about Sheilah: “Stahr cannot bring himself to33 marry Thalia, [Kathleen]. It simply doesn’t seem part of his life. . . . Thalia is poor, unfortunate and tagged with a middle class exterior which doesn’t fit in with the grandeur Stahr demands from life.”
With no income, Scott fell behind in Highland’s payments and wrote Dr. Carroll, “I hope you will find it possible to let things go34 as they are for another month, trusting me as you did before. It is simply impossible to pay anything even on installments, when one drives a mortgaged Ford, and tries to get over the habit of looking into a handkerchief for blood while talking to a producer. . . . I hope this does not mean Zelda will be deprived of ordinary necessities.” Apparently it wasn’t, for that November she and some other patients joined Dr. Carroll for a three-week visit to Sarasota, Florida, where Zelda took courses in drawing and clothes designing at the Ringling School of Art. “I’m tanning myself and happy in such a fine heaven,”35 she wrote Scott. “In this part of Florida, life seems to have nothing further to worry about than to open its shutters to a bright and new bazaar or newly acquired aspiration.” Still uncertain about Scott’s home address, she sent the card to his Hollywood agent, but now wanted to know where he was living. “What is your actual address36? S’pose I wanted to phone you—or do something unprecedented like that? . . . What would I do if I should have a bad dream, or an inspiration?” When he finally sent his apartment’s address on North Laurel, he began receiving letters pleading for release. She had been at Highland almost four years and wanted to live in Montgomery with her mother. “Janno had indeed learned a lot of things about minding their [Highland’s] rules37 by the time the apples blossomed,” she wrote in Caesar’s Things. “Now that she was able to cooperate in these very expensive obligations, what she wanted most on earth was to be free of them.” She had long since given up making friends with fellow patients who somehow managed to get away, and her mental state had improved, so what was the point of staying there?
Nor could Scott afford to keep her at Highland. There were no future contracts or advances from Harold. Upset over the debt she was incurring, Zelda discussed the situation with her sister, Marjorie, who asked Scott why he remained insistent she remain. “If you can’t pay her board38, where is she to go? Or is Dr. Carroll to keep her free of charge? Zelda only wants to go home, because she also is worried about you, and thinks she could quit being such a financial drain on you.” Scott discussed the possibility with Carroll, who rejected the idea and explained his reasoning: “The facts remain unchanged—that she has been mentally injured39, that the central nervous system is peculiarly susceptible, and that she should be protected with the same intelligence that any family would expect to give a member who has suffered from a damaging tuberculosis. Our suggestions have been carefully thought out, and include her having short vacations of ten days to three weeks about once in two months during the year. She is not prepared to live comfortably with any of the members of her family.” Although Zelda’s sisters and mother continued requesting her release, Scott was uncertain if she could function outside the hospital and fearful of being held responsible should she bring harm to herself or others.
At this point, Zelda appears to have taken the situation into her own hands, for Dr. Carroll did an abrupt about-face. Why this occurred may be connected to a rape accusation from one of his patients. There is some suggestion that Carroll was intimate with several, and that Zelda was among this group. Dr. Irving Pine, another psychiatrist on Highland’s staff, testified to that accusation, saying, “Dr. Carroll treated his women patients badly, including Zelda40.” Determined to use Carroll’s legal difficulties as leverage for her release, Zelda wrote John Biggs, “The proprietor (Carroll) has been implicated in a rape case41 (which could no doubt be substantiated from legal records) and might be willing to compromise.” In some fashion Zelda maneuvered the situation to secure her release and wrote the prerequisite farewell letter to Highland’s staff: “That life should once again have become desirable42 is a matter of my deepest gratitude to Dr. Carroll. . . . For the gracious supervision and the careful guidance that I have received at Highland Hospital, I am once more, gratefully yours.” Scott then wrote Zelda’s mother. “This morning I have a letter from Dr. Carroll43, in which he suggests for the first time, that Zelda try life in Montgomery. This is a complete about face for him, but I do not think his suggestion comes from any but the most sincere grounds.”
Before approving her release, Scott insisted that Carroll provide him a formal letter absolving him of any responsibility in event of relapse and guaranteeing that Zelda could reenter Highland whenever necessary. It was an agreement he always wanted from Dr. Meyer but could never obtain. Now, everything hinged on that same issue. After much consideration, Carroll finally consented, and on April 15, 1940, Zelda boarded an early morning bus for Montgomery. In her purse was a letter from Scott, written with unfamiliar coolness: “I do hope this goes well44. Wish you were going to brighter surroundings, but this is certainly not the time to come to me, and I can think of nowhere else for you to go in this dark and bloody world. I suppose a place is what you make it, but I have grown to hate California and would give my life for three years in France. So Bon Voyage and stay well.”