Friday, April 19, 2019

An Essay on F. Scott Fitzgerald: Irving Thalberg as the model for Monroe Stahr in The Last Tycoon (1941)


F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham, 1939.


Producer Irving Thalberg and his wife, actress Norma Shearer.
In the last year of his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald was hard at work on a novel about Hollywood. The Last Tycoon wasn’t finished when Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940, and it was published the following year as an unfinished novel. The titular tycoon of the novel is Monroe Stahr, a movie producer modeled after Irving Thalberg, a producer and executive at MGM. Thalberg famously didn’t take screen credit on his movies, saying that “credit you give yourself isn’t worth having.” Due to a congenital heart disease, Thalberg knew he would be lucky to live to thirty. He rose to be head of production at MGM by the age of 26, and he died in 1936 at the age of 37.

The Last Tycoon focuses on the struggle between Stahr and Pat Brady, another executive at the studio. The conflict between Stahr and Brady was based on the real-life differences between Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer at MGM. In 1933, Mayer emerged victorious in the power struggle, as he stripped Thalberg of his role as head of production. However, Thalberg retained control over his own production unit and was still able to have creative control over the movies he produced. In retrospect, Mayer’s move seems like a pretty desperate power grab, since Thalberg only had three more years to live. But the move consolidated Mayer’s hold on power at MGM. 

Fitzgerald portrays the conflict between Stahr and Brady as the classic battle between art and commerce, which was a conflict that Fitzgerald felt quite intensely throughout his own life. Fitzgerald was always torn between turning out short stories for ready money and writing the serious novels that he felt his reputation would ultimately be judged upon. Fitzgerald biographer Andrew Turnbull wrote that the conflict between Stahr and Brady exemplified the battles of “art versus money, quality versus quantity, the individualist versus the industrialist.” (Scott Fitzgerald, p.306) This also fits in with Fitzgerald’s own romanticismhe saw Stahr as the last relic of a bygone age, and Brady as the technocratic bean-counter who is only interested in the bottom line. Guess which character Fitzgerald identified with more. 

Fitzgerald knew Thalberg a bit from his visits to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. In 1927, Fitzgerald was working on the script for a movie called Lipstick, which was never produced.  During this trip, Fitzgerald met Thalberg and had an interesting conversation with him in the MGM commissary. Fitzgerald later wrote a memo detailing a story Thalberg told him about a man deciding what route a railroad should take when there were several options that all seemed similar. Thalberg’s point was that the decision was ultimately quite arbitrary, but the person who chose the route had to act as though there was a good reason for their choice. The anecdote was obviously an allegory for the movie business, with Thalberg as the person choosing the railroad route, or making the artistic decisions for the movie. This story found its way into The Last Tycoon, in less detailed form, as the story that Stahr tells the pilot of his plane at the end of the first chapter. Fitzgerald wrote in his memo about this conversation with Thalberg: “I was very much impressed by the shrewdness of what he saidsomething more than shrewdnessby the largeness of what he thought and how he reached it at the age of 26.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, by Matthew J. Bruccoli, p.257) 

In November of 1931, Fitzgerald returned to Hollywood to work on a script rewrite for a picture of Thalberg’s, Red-Headed Woman. MGM paid him $1,200 a week, money that Fitzgerald badly needed to buy time to work on his novelthe long-gestating book that would become Tender Is the Night. Scott left Zelda and their daughter Scottie back in Montgomery, Alabama. He was worried about Zelda’s health, as she had suffered a nervous breakdown in 1930 and had only recently been discharged after 15 months in a clinic in Switzerland. Fitzgerald left Hollywood after finishing the draft of his script in six weeks, although MGM wanted him to stay on for additional rewrites. Fitzgerald’s script was eventually rewritten by Anita Loos. 

It was during this stay in Hollywood that Fitzgerald attended a party at the home of Irving Thalberg and his wife, the actress Norma Shearer. The party provided the material for one of Fitzgerald’s finest short stories, “Crazy Sunday,” published in October, 1932. Several drinks into the afternoon, Fitzgerald performed a satirical song called “Dog” that he had written with Edmund Wilson. His performance went over like a lead balloon. Actor John Gilbert booed Fitzgerald. (Gilbert is referred to in “Crazy Sunday” by his nickname, “The Great Lover.”) It should have been evident to all present that “Dog” was not merely a bad song, but a deliberately bad song:

“Dog, DogI like a good dog
Towser or Bowser or Star
Clean sort of pleasure
A four-footed treasure
And faithful as few humans are!
Here, Pup: put your paw up
Roll over dead like a log!
Larger than a rat!
More faithful than a cat!
Dog! Dog! Dog!”
(Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.132-3)

Personally, I find “Dog” quite funny, although it’s certainly not sophisticated humor. The day after the party, Norma Shearer sent Fitzgerald a telegram: “I thought you were one of the most agreeable persons at our tea.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.318) In “Crazy Sunday,” the character modeled after Shearer sends a similarly worded telegram. 

After Thalberg’s death in 1936, Fitzgerald wrote an interesting letter to his old Saint Paul friend Oscar Kalman. The letter was written on September 19, 1936, just five days after Thalberg’s death:

“Thalberg’s final collapse is the death of an enemy for me, though I liked the guy enormously. He had an idea that his wife and I were playing around, which was absolute nonsense, but I think even so that he killed the idea of either {Miriam} Hopkins or Fredric March doing Tender is the Night.” (Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Margaret M. Duggan, p.451-2) 

Whoever typed the letter for Scott made some errors, as “Thalberg” is rendered as “Talbert,” and March’s last name is spelled “Marsh.” This is ironic, given Scott’s own issues with spelling, especially of people’s names. 

There’s a lot to unpack in those two sentences about Thalberg. First, there’s the contradiction inherent in calling someone an “enemy” that you liked “enormously.” Nowhere else in his letters or notebooks does Fitzgerald denigrate Thalberg, so the reference to him as an “enemy” is jarring. Nothing else points to their relationship being antagonistic. Perhaps it’s just an indication of where Fitzgerald was in his own lifehis mother died at the beginning of September, 1936, and this letter was written just five days before journalist Michel Mok visited Fitzgerald and wrote a vicious take-down that showed Fitzgerald at his lowest ebb. Mok’s article, titled “The Other Side of Paradise: Scott Fitzgerald, 40, Engulfed in Despair” was published on September 25, 1936 in the New York Evening Post. Once Fitzgerald read the article in print, he swallowed morphine in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. (Turnbull, p.280) 

Moving on to Fitzgerald’s complaint that Thalberg scuttled a movie version of Tender Is the Night, biographer, and leading Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli writes: “Fitzgerald had made a late-night alcoholic phone call to Thalberg in 1934 offering him the movie rights to Tender.” He then adds in a footnote: “Fitzgerald’s suspicion that Thalberg blocked the movie sale of his book is unsupported.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.463) Bruccoli doesn’t offer any source for the “late-night alcoholic phone call” to Thalberg, and it’s not referenced in any other source I encountered, so we just have to take Bruccoli’s word for it. It’s not impossible that the phone call happened, especially given Fitzgerald’s respect for Thalberg. Fitzgerald would have wanted his novel in good hands, and it was well-known that Thalberg liked adapting novels and plays for moviesgetting Thalberg involved in a movie of Tender would ensure that it would be a prestige production. It could be possible that Fitzgerald’s mixed feelings after Thalberg’s death stem from this supposed phone call. Maybe Thalberg told the drunken Fitzgerald to stuff it. Bruccoli makes the point that Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March weren’t under contract to MGM at the time, so it would seem unlikely that Thalberg would have been able to prevent them from doing a movie of Tender. 

Harold Ober, Fitzgerald’s literary agent, wrote to him in December 1934 about his telephone habits:

“I do think it would be better if you would make it a rule not to call up or write editors, and while I am on the subject I think it would be better if you did not call up or write to moving picture executives…You are apt to use the telephone when you are not in your most rational state of mind and when you do call anyone up in that way it only adds to the legend that has always been ready to crop outthat you are never sober.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.390) 

So perhaps Fitzgerald did make a drunken phone call to Thalberg, and perhaps Thalberg is the unnamed “moving picture executive” that Ober references. 

Finally, is there any truth behind Thalberg’s jealousy regarding Scott and Norma Shearer? It’s impossible to know for certain, of course. But Shearer and Fitzgerald seem to have been friendly. Her telegram to him after the “Dog” party was a kind gesture. In a letter to his daughter Scottie dated October 8, 1937, Fitzgerald wrote: “Norma Shearer invited me to dinner three times but I couldn’t gounfortunately, as I like her. Maybe she will ask me again.” (The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Andrew Turnbull, p.31) This shouldn’t necessarily be interpreted as romantic interest on Shearer’s part, but it certainly seems as though she liked Fitzgerald. You wouldn’t go to the trouble of asking someone to dinner three times if you didn’t like them.

Fitzgerald worked as a screenwriter on two of Shearer’s movies after Thalberg diedMarie Antoinette and The Womenbut he didn’t make substantial contributions to either of them and didn’t receive screen credit. 

Found among Fitzgerald’s papers after his death was a draft of an inscription he wrote that he was planning to send to Norma Shearer after The Last Tycoon was completed. He wrote:

“…though the story is purely imaginary perhaps you could see it as an attempt to preserve something of Irving. My own impression shortly recorded but very dazzling in its effect on me, inspired the best part of the character of Stahrthough I have put in some things drawn from of other men and, inevitably, much of myself.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.462) 

This again indicates that Fitzgerald felt fondly towards Shearer, as he had the forethought to write an inscription for a novel that wasn’t even half-finished when he died. 

What I suspect is closest to the truth about Shearer and Fitzgerald is that they might have simply been attracted to each other, but never acted upon those feelings. Fitzgerald was entranced by beautiful women, and Norma Shearer certainly fell into that category. Fitzgerald was a very handsome fellow himself, and he could focus like a laser beam on women he liked. Margaret Turnbull, who rented a house on her property to Fitzgerald in the early 1930’s, said of him: “He was the only man I’ve ever known who would ask a woman a direct question about herself…he did seem to care and he always told you plain truths about yourself.” (Zelda, by Nancy Milford, p.258.) Turnbull also said that Fitzgerald “had this extraordinary quality of giving you his undivided attention.” (Fool for Love, by Scott Donaldson, p.191)

Thalberg’s jealousy could also stem from Fitzgerald’s short story “Crazy Sunday.” The story is all about a screenwriter committing adultery with a married actress based pretty clearly on Norma Shearer. The Shearer character, Stella Walker, is married to Miles Calman, and even though he is a director rather than a producer, aspects of his life clearly fit Thalberg’s own. He’s sickly, he’s married to a movie star, and “he had never made a cheap picture though he had sometimes paid heavily for the luxury of making experimental flops.” (The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p.704) We don’t know if Thalberg ever read “Crazy Sunday,” and if he did, what his reaction to the story was. I would imagine that if he read it he was probably less than thrilled by it. In the story, Miles Calman dies in a plane crash, prefiguring the fate of Monroe Stahr. 

Fitzgerald outlined his plans for The Last Tycoon in a September 29, 1939 letter to Kenneth Littauer, the fiction editor at Collier’s magazine. Fitzgerald was hoping to secure an advance from the magazine in order to finish the novel, which the magazine would then serialize. The deal with Collier’s eventually fell through. 

In the letter Fitzgerald reveals Thalberg to be the inspiration for Stahr, writing “Thalberg has always fascinated me. His peculiar charm, his extraordinary good looks, his bountiful success, the tragic end of his great adventure.” (Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p.546) “I’ve chosen him for a hero (this has been in my mind for three years) because he is one of the half-dozen men I have known who were built on the grand scale.” (p.549) Fitzgerald’s comment that the idea has been in his mind for three years indicates that the idea would have come to him just after Thalberg’s death. 

Fitzgerald wrote “If one book could ever be ‘like’ another I should say it is more ‘like’ The Great Gatsby than any other of my books.” (p.549) Like Jay Gatsby, Monroe Stahr is a visionary, a dreamer, an outsider who has built himself up into a great man. Whereas Gatsby is trying to win Daisy back, Stahr finds an echo of his past in Kathleen, who looks just like his dead movie star wife. Both books are also narrated in the first person, but by someone who is not the main character. Just as we see Gatsby through the eyes of Nick Carraway, so too we see Stahr through the eyes of Cecilia Brady. A difference between the two novels is that in Tycoon we are privy to scenes that Cecilia herself is not a direct observer of. 

Fitzgerald’s romanticism is on display again in the letter, as he writes: “It is an escape into a lavish, romantic past that perhaps will not come again into our time.” (p.549) Matthew J. Bruccoli writes about Fitzgerald and Stahr: “He saw both his hero and himself as coming at the end of an American historical process and believed there would be no more Stahrs.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.464) This fits in with a quote from Fitzgerald’s Notebooks, “I am the last of the novelists for a long time now.” That’s a somewhat melodramatic quote, since there were obviously lots of other novelists still writing at the time Fitzgerald was working on The Last Tycoon. But perhaps what it really meant to Fitzgerald was that he felt as though he was the last romantic novelist, the last one with an attachment to the old world that he felt was slipping away. 

In Paradise Lost, David Brown’s biography of Fitzgerald, he writes that “In creating Stahr, Fitzgerald envisioned one last lofty attempt by an individual to put his aesthetic imprint on an entire civilization.” (p.324) I suspect that Fitzgerald identified with Thalberg/Stahr as a creator of art. Fitzgerald may well have also seen himself as someone who was trying to “put his aesthetic imprint on an entire civilization.”

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