Fitzgerald in Hollywood

Posted by Ed

Today's New York Times features a fun article by Charles McGrath on F. Scott Fitzgerald's unhappy stay in Hollywood in the late 1930s. Fitzgerald was one of many famous writers who moved to California in search of easy money; he produced a mountain of scripts without ever managing to make it big in the movie business.

My favorite detail from the article: Fitzgerald worked as a rewrite man on the script for Gone with the Wind for about a week, during which "he was forbidden to use any words that did not appear in Margaret Mitchell's text." He ended up being fired.