Book Review: The Vegetable, or from President to Postman: A Comedy in Three Acts by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1923)

The original dust jacket of The Vegetable, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1923. The cover was designed by the famous Jazz Age illustrator John Held, Jr.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, early 1920's.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is not known as a playwright. However, when he was in high school and college, Fitzgerald wrote four plays for the Elizabethan Dramatic Club in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In addition to writing those four plays, Fitzgerald also acted in them. When he was at Princeton University, Fitzgerald was a member of the Triangle Club, a drama club that wrote and performed satirical musicals. Fitzgerald provided the lyrics for several Triangle Club shows during his college years. However, once Fitzgerald became a professional author in 1919, the only play that he published was a comedy entitled The Vegetable, or from President to postman. 

The Vegetable is a political satire, not the genre you might expect from an author best known for tackling subjects like love, class, status, and money. The title of the play comes from a quotation from “a current magazine.” (Fitzgerald doesn’t specify which one.) “Any man who doesn’t want to get on in the world, to make a million dollars, and maybe even park his toothbrush in the White House, hasn’t got as much to him as a good dog has—he’s nothing more or less than a vegetable.” The “vegetable” in question here is one Jerry Frost, a railroad clerk who does not seek to park his toothbrush in the White House. His wife, Charlotte, is annoyed that Jerry does not have more ambition. In fact, Jerry’s real dream is to be a postman. 

In the first act, Jerry is visited in his home by several characters—his aged father Dada, his sister-in-law Doris, a parody of a flapper, and a bootlegger named Snooks, who fixes Jerry several strong drinks. Jerry then has a dream/hallucination that he becomes President of the United States. 

The second act finds President Jerry Frost dealing with a number of crises—the state of Idaho wants to impeach him for naming his father Secretary of the Treasury, and the military is eager for war. One of my favorite exchanges in the play is between General Pushing—a play on John J. Pershing’s name—and Jerry:

General Pushing: The people are restless and excited. The best thing to keep their minds occupied is a good war. It will leave the country weak and shaken—but docile, Mr. President, docile. Besides—we voted on it, and there you are.

Jerry: Who is it against?

General Pushing: That we have not decided. (p.70) 

At the end of the second act, Jerry is impeached and removed from office. Act three finds us back at the Frost home, however, Jerry has been missing since the evening of his dream/hallucination. As the subtitle of the play indicates, Jerry has become a postman and found true happiness at last. 

Fitzgerald’s concerns about money and class show up during the play. His stage directions describe Doris: “She’s a member of that portion of the middle-class whose girls are just a little bit too proud to work and just a little bit too needy not to.” (p.22) When Jerry is dreaming that he’s President, he learns that Dada has destroyed all of the money in the Treasury. Dada has taken the Biblical adage about rich men getting into heaven to heart, and he believes he has saved the country. That tells us something about Fitzgerald’s own ambivalent relationship to money. 

Most critics of The Vegetable have noted that the first and third acts work well, while the second act is problematic at best. Personally, I think there are problems throughout the play, but I found the second act the most humorous. The second act is what makes the play, as the political satire becomes more pointed. 

The Vegetable satirizes the Babbitt-like mindless boosterism of the 1920’s—the idea that every man should have the drive to want to be President is clearly one that Fitzgerald finds ridiculous. And so he gives us an Everyman as President and it’s a disaster. 

Fitzgerald is also satirizing Warren G. Harding, who was President when Fitzgerald wrote the play. Harding was an affable Babbitt-type from Ohio who had somehow managed to win the presidency. He was regarded as a fairly ordinary and down to earth fellow. Unfortunately, Harding’s administration was about as successful as Jerry Frost’s. In the Teapot Dome scandal it emerged that the Secretary of the Interior had taken bribes from oil companies. Oops! Consequently, Harding is usually at the bottom of rankings of the presidents, hanging out with James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce. 

Fitzgerald’s satire of Harding was a little ahead of its time. The Teapot Dome scandal that exposed the corruption in Harding’s cabinet had yet to fully break at the time The Vegetable was performed. And unfortunately for Fitzgerald, in between the time the play was published in April 1923 and performed in November, Harding died. Thus Fitzgerald was satirizing Harding during the brief window when he was one of the most beloved Presidents in our nation’s history. This isn’t the only reason the play was not successful, but it certainly didn’t help.

Fitzgerald satirizes Harding’s use of language in Jerry’s speech at the end of act two, as he is trying to defend himself from impeachment. Jerry strings together a series of empty patriotic phrases and slogans, a clear parody of Harding’s speeches. In the Introduction to the 1976 paperback reprint of The Vegetable, Charles Scribner III alerts us to another parody of political language. Chief Justice Fossile’s declaration of impeachment is an almost verbatim repeat of the speech given by Congressman George Boutwell of Massachusetts at the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868. (p.xvi) I certainly didn’t catch that reference. 

Fitzgerald’s skill with humor is generally underappreciated. He wasn’t a humorist by any means, but he used irony very skillfully in his work, and there are numerous humorous moments throughout The Vegetable, even if it wasn’t the laugh-a-minute play Fitzgerald envisioned. 

While Fitzgerald was writing the play, he was convinced it was going to be a massive hit. This wasn’t unusual for Fitzgerald, as he was always optimistic about the commercial prospects for his writing. What is striking with The Vegetable is how lofty his hopes were, and how completely the play failed. 

In December of 1921, as he was writing the play, Fitzgerald made a bold prediction to his literary agent Harold Ober, writing in a letter to Ober: “My play is the funniest ever written + will make a fortune.” (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.32) 

That same month Fitzgerald also wrote much the same thing to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribner’s: “I am writing an awfully funny play that’s going to make me rich forever. It really is. I’m so damned tired of the feeling that I’m living up to my income.” (Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p.90) 

Fitzgerald continued his bold predictions in a March 2, 1922 letter to Ober: “I feel that Acts I + III are probably the best pieces of dramatic comedy written in English in the last 5 years.” (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.39)

When Fitzgerald had finished the initial draft of the play, he wrote to Perkins in August 1922: “It is, I think, the best American comedy to date and undoubtedly the best thing I have ever written.” In this same letter Fitzgerald heaps praise upon “Tarquin of Cheapside” and “The Off-Shore Pirate,” two of his weaker short stories, so maybe he was just feeling especially exuberant that day. As the letter concludes, Fitzgerald badgers Perkins for another advance, and writes “After my play is produced I’ll be rich forever and never have to bother you again.” Fitzgerald was wrong on both accounts, as the play flopped and he continued to borrow against future royalties from both Perkins and Ober. (The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edited by Andrew Turnbull, p.180) 

While Fitzgerald’s exuberant enthusiasm for The Vegetable may seem overstated, his Princeton friend Edmund Wilson, on his way to becoming one of the country’s most esteemed literary critics, had similar praise for the play. He wrote Fitzgerald: “As I say, I think that the play as a whole is marvelous—no doubt, the best American comedy ever written.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.164-5) Wilson’s hyperbolic enthusiasm for The Vegetable might indicate his limitations as a critic of Fitzgerald’s work. 

Throughout 1922 Fitzgerald tried to interest various theatrical producers in The Vegetable, but no one took the bait. I find that surprising, since he was probably at the peak of his popularity at that time, and was one of the hot young American novelists. However, the fact that no one wanted to produce it might also speak to the quality of the play. 

Fitzgerald decided to publish the play as a book first in order to attract a producer—an unusual decision. The book of The Vegetable was published on April 27, 1923, in a first printing of 7,650 copies. Sales were not outstanding. As Fitzgerald biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli wrote: “There was only one printing.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.176) The book was dedicated to Edmund Wilson and Katherine Tighe, a St. Paul friend who had helped Fitzgerald edit his first novel, This Side of Paradise. 

In a January 1923 note to Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald wrote: “To be advertised, it seems to me rather as a book of humor, like the Parody outline of History or Seventeen than like a play—because of course it is written to be read.” (Dear Scott/Dear Max, p.66) And that’s exactly the problem with the play—it’s meant to be read, not performed. Fitzgerald’s copious stage directions are some of the funniest things in the play, but it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to translate them to the stage. 

In November 1923, seven months the book publication, The Vegetable made its stage debut in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It did not go well. In a December 1923 letter Fitzgerald wrote: “My play (The Vegetable) opened in Atlantic City and foundered on the opening night. It did better in subsequent performances, but at present is laid up for repairs.” (Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p.138) The Vegetable played for one week in Atlantic City, with Fitzgerald rewriting and revising the script throughout the week, but it did not inspire anyone to produce it on Broadway. 

Fitzgerald uses The Vegetable as a comic motif throughout his 1924 essay “How to Live on $36,000 a Year.” In the essay, Fitzgerald keeps expecting that the play will bring him untold wealth. He writes about the first time he heard the play read by the cast: “I could almost hear the people scrambling for seats, hear the ghostly voices of the movie magnates as they bid against one another for the picture rights.” (A Short Autobiography, p.42) 

Fitzgerald goes on to describe opening night: “It was a colossal frost. People left their seats and walked out; people rustled their programs and talked audibly in bored impatient whispers. After the second act I wanted to stop the show and say it was all a mistake but the actors struggled heroically on.” (A Short Autobiography, p.43) 

Throughout the rest of his life, Fitzgerald was consistently dismissive of The Vegetable. The play is referenced in his letters more often than you might expect, but Fitzgerald never references it with any affection. Fitzgerald was always interested in his writing being discovered by new audiences, but he was continually uninterested in possible productions of The Vegetable, which is very surprising. That could be the key to his true feelings about the play—if he thought it was any good, he would have championed it more. 

In a February 1925 letter to Harold Ober Fitzgerald wrote: “The second act was the biggest flop of all on the Atlantic City try out—and the whole thing has already cost me about a year + a half of work so I’d rather let it drop. It’s honestly no good. From Feb. 1922 until Nov. 1923 I was almost constantly working + patching the damn thing + I don’t think I could bear to look at it anymore. If I ever change I’ll let you know.” (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.75) 

By 1929, Fitzgerald didn’t want the play produced at all. In a letter to Ober probably from late May, he wrote about a possible film version—which was never produced: “A talkie of Vegetable would be okay with me—only no more stage representations on any account, charity or otherwise. I wouldn’t feel guilty about a talkie.” (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.135) 

In a February 9, 1934 letter to Ober Fitzgerald was uncharacteristically terse: “Dear Harold: I don’t want ‘The Vegetable’ produced.” That’s the entire text of the letter. (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.203)

Fitzgerald explained himself in more detail in a letter to Barrett H. Clark, dated October 16, 1936. Clark was a drama critic and the executive director of the Dramatists Play Service. Fitzgerald wrote to him:

“’Vegetable’ reads well, but it simply won’t play, and I would be doing you a disservice and you would be doing an equal disservice to the prospective producers to offer it to them as part of any repertory. It reads well, but there is some difference between the first and second acts that is so disparate that every time a Little Theatre has produced it (and many of them have tried it), it has been a failure in a big way. This is not to say that I do not realize that the thing reads well, or that I am not tremendously grateful for your interest, but simply to say that I can’t give you the permission that you ask.” (Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p.456) 

Did he mention that it reads well? I think Fitzgerald knew deep down that The Vegetable clearly wasn’t his best work. Even Matthew J. Bruccoli, Fitzgerald’s most sympathetic biographer, didn’t have much good to say about The Vegetable: “The play is just not very funny, scarcely rising above the level of an undergraduate production. Despite Fitzgerald’s apprenticeship as a playwright, his talent was novelistic, not dramatic. His dialogue is not entertaining, and many of his jokes depend on the stage directions.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.165) 

Bruccoli is a perceptive critic about those qualities that made Fitzgerald’s work so brilliant on the page: “much of the effectiveness of Fitzgerald’s stories depends on elements of style and narrative technique that cannot be transferred to the stage. He was a storyteller, relying heavily on tone, language, point of view, and authorial voice. A Fitzgerald story or novel in dramatic form loses many of the qualities that make it a Fitzgerald work—as the disappointing movie versions of his novels have demonstrated.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.184)

For Fitzgerald fans like me who live in his hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota, The Vegetable has a couple of interesting connections. When Fitzgerald started writing the play, he and Zelda, and their daughter Scottie, were living on Goodrich Avenue in Saint Paul. In the play, the Frosts live on Osceola Avenue. (p.10) What street is two blocks south of Goodrich? Osceola Avenue, of course! There’s also a reference in the play to Crest Avenue, which is a fictitious street that also appears in Fitzgerald’s short story “The Popular Girl,” and is modeled after Saint Paul’s Summit Avenue. 

After The Vegetable failed, Fitzgerald found himself in debt, and so during the winter of 1923-4 he cranked out ten short stories for magazines. Fitzgerald finished the ten stories by March of 1924, and they earned him the impressive total of $16,450, which would be roughly $200,000 today. (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.185) Earning that much money also bought Fitzgerald time he needed to work on his third novel, which had been put on hold for much of 1923 as he focused on the production of The Vegetable. Fitzgerald’s working title for the novel was Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires. As Scott and Zelda sailed off to Europe in May of 1924, little did he know that his third novel would prove to be one of the greatest American novels of the 20^th century: a slim volume titled The Great Gatsby.