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A Guide To F. Scott Fitzgerald's Los Angeles
F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1937 and a 1931 map of Los Angeles (Image of F. Scott Fitzgerald via Wikimedia Commons, background map courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Map Collection)
Obituaries of F. Scott Fitzgerald tend to focus on his defining Jazz Age fiction. But did you know he was once a miserable, struggling L.A. screenwriter, just like you?
F. Scott Fitzgerald left Maryland for Los Angeles in 1937 and spent the last three years of his life punching up scripts for MGM, not particularly happily; a lengthy Atlantic profile quotes Fitzgerald describing Hollywood as “a hideous town…full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement.” (If only he’d lived to see his unfinished final novel, The Last Tycoon, get made into an Amazon series starring Kelsey Grammer…)
Fitzgerald may not have been full of praise for Los Angeles, but he certainly left his mark on the city; L.A. Magazine’s detailed account of Fitzgerald’s 1930s Hollywood exploits makes it clear that for a guy who purported to hate Hollywood, Fitzgerald sure got around. Click through for a photo guide to the glamour and gloom of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Los Angeles.
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