The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald

After reading the story of Salka Viertel working for Irving Thalberg in Donna Rifkind’s The Sun and Her Stars, I was put to mind to read Fitzgerald’s novel whose title character is based on Thalberg, inspired by Fitzgerald’s own work as a screenwriter during the late 1920s and the decade of the 30s. I had read Tender is the Night a few years ago following a similar thought path. The main character in Tender is the Night, Dick Diver, is supposedly based on Gerald Murphy, an artist who I admire and who lived an amazing decade on the French Riveria in the 1920s with his wife Sara as ex pat Americans surrounded by Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso and many others (not unlike Salka Veirtel surrounded by the “stars” in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, in Santa Monica). Of course I’ve read The Great Gatsby, three or four times, as well as attending a performance of Gatz, by the theater group called The Elevator Repair Company where the entire text of the novel is read and dramatized over the course of 6 or 7 hours.

Fitzgerald was working on The Last Tycoon in Hollywood when he died in December 1940 of a sudden heart attack at the age of forty-four. He had written a rough draft of about half of the novel. The manuscript was covered with notes for future revisions. Among his other papers he left character sketches, an outline, and a letter to his publisher giving the plan of the story. So with this, and the memories of friends he had described the novel to, we have a pretty good idea of what he intended, but what we actually have of the novel is very incomplete and very much a work in progress.

The setting is an unnamed film studio in Hollywood. Monroe Stahr is the “boy genius” producer, now aged 35 or so. He runs the studio with an older partner named Pat Brady. Brady’s daughter, Cecilia, has come home from Bennington for the summer between her Junior and Senior year.

The story was to have been a story of rivalry between the two men, narrated by Cecilia ending with Stahr dead in a plane crash and Brady murdered by a hitman hired by Stahr. But that remained unwritten. What we have is a couple of long chapters following Stahr’s work at the studio, and a long chapter of Stahr woo-ing an English girl he falls in love with after glimpsing her briefly and seeing in her a resemblance to his dead wife. Fitzgerald has the novel narrated by Cecilia. There would have been a final scene at the end with her in a tuberculosis hospital in Arizona with the novel framed as her telling of the events from a few years earlier. But the device of Cecilia narrating in first person then shifting to third person for the many scenes she’s not involved in comes off very awkwardly, leading to phrases like, “Father told me,” “Prince Agge is my authority for the luncheon in the commissary…,” and “This is Cecilia taking up the narrative in person.” I hope Fitzgerald would have reconsidered that narrative device in the final version.

There’s not much use to summarizing the plot, so I’ll just describe three scenes that I think are marvelous.

In Chapter Three, Stahr meets with a writer named George Boxley in his office. Boxley is introduced as a “novelist” so it’s likely the conversation is based on Fitzgerald’s own frustrating experience working at the studio. Stahr isn’t pleased with the progress of a script Boxley’s working on. Boxley isn’t either. He complains about the “hacks” that he’s forced to work with. But it’s clear Boxley just doesn’t understand how stories are told in movies. Stahr starts improvising a story about a woman who walks into a room. She dumps her purse on the desk and fishes out a few particular coins. She lights a wood stove and moves to burn a pair of black gloves in the stove when she’s interrupted by the desk phone ringing. She picks up the phone and says, distinctly, “I’ve never owned a pair of black gloves in my life.” And so on. Boxley is captivated. And so are we. He asks what happens next. “I don’t know,” said Stahr. “I was just making pictures.”

All of Chapter Three and Four is delightful. We get a day in the life of Monroe Stahr as he works at the studio, meetings in his office, lunch at the commissary, and so on. He’s tireless, extremely engaged in all aspects of the art and business, and is very good at what he does. The studio employees treat him like a god as much as a boss. Chapter Four opens with Stahr arriving at a sound stage in the middle of a film shoot. The director is named Ridingwood. Stahr hears some grumbling and excuse making as he walks through the set and then asks the director to follow him outside. There’s a problem with the actress. “You’ve been photographing crap,” says Stahr. They step into his car and Stahr tells Ridingwood he’s sorry but, “I’m putting Harley on it.” Ridingwood asks if he should go back and finish the take, but Stahr tells Ridingwood that Harley walked in as they were walking out. It’s all been arranged beforehand. Ridingwood asks if he can at least go back and pick up the coat he left on the back of his chair, and Stahr reveals that he thought of that, and has it in his hand.

The first four chapters are only about 20 pages each. The unfinished chapter 6 is only 13 pages. The longest section is Chapter five, fifty-five pages. This chapter could be a beautiful, self-contained short story on its own. It begins with Cecilia, who has a crush on Stahr, planning to make her move on him. She’s going to show up at his office in the morning. She listens to the radio as she drives to the studio and hears, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” a Jerome Kern song from 1933. But at the office it’s clear Stahr isn’t interested. He’s smitten by another girl. She’s introduced anonymously in an earlier chapter. In that scene there’s an earthquake (based on the Long Beach earthquake of March 10, 1933) that floods the studio lot and Stahr sees a couple of girls floating down the floodwater seated on a giant prop bust of Shiva. He takes awhile to track her down. Now, in Chapter five, they meet properly at a ball at the Ambassador hotel. Cecilia watches them dance. Then Stahr and the girl, an English girl named Katherine Moore leave the party. Their flirting is hesitant. Katherine keeps holding back for some reason she won’t disclose. Stahr sees in her the image of his dead wife and wants her desperately. They arrange to meet again the next morning. Stahr picks her up in his car and they drive aimlessly out to the coast. Stahr mentions that he’s building a house on the beach up above Malibu and that becomes their destination. When they get there they explore the unfinished house. Stahr takes an unexpected phone call. Then Stahr drives her home but she’s still being coy about some secret reason that they can’t be together and they realize that when they say goodbye that will have to be the last they see each other. So they don’t say goodbye. Instead, at her apartment door she turns and they get back in the car and drive back to the unfinished house above Malibu, and make love. And then it’s evening and Stahr remembers that tonight is the night of the grunion run (something I remember very well growing up in Santa Monica), the night when this particular local fish comes up on the beach to spawn. They walk on the beach. They talk to a man collecting fish in a bucket. It’s all delightful and romantic. And then he drives her home again.

But at her door there’s some funny business about a letter. Katherine says she had a letter with her in the car but when she’s getting out she can’t find it. She says it isn’t important but even so she gets Stahr to help her look through all the car seats but can’t find it. Then, when Stahr gets home, he leaves the car for a houseboy to put away and sets himself up to read scripts for a couple of hours. The houseboy then comes in saying he found a letter in the car; it’s addressed to Stahr. At first he doesn’t open it, but at the end of the night he does open it. It’s a goodbye letter from Katherine confessing that she’s to be married any day now.

There’s an interlude of about a week in the middle of the chapter with Cecilia attempting to track down who this girl is. And then, when Stahr has almost completely forgotten about Katherine she calls him on the phone. She wants to apologize and explain. The two of them take another drive together, this time with a chauffeur driving a limousine with the two of them in the back. They drive up to Pasadena and back. They cross the famous “suicide bridge.” Katherine tells him the whole story. Apparently, Fitzgerald was setting up the man that she’s engaged to to have an important role later in the novel. But it’s obvious Stahr and Katherine are in love and the engagement is a mistake. Stahr holds on to a little hope because Katherine’s fiancee needs to finalize a divorce first and that’s taking longer than expected and he has yet to arrive in California. Stahr almost insists that they make tentative, impossible plans to meet again the next day and take a trip together up to the mountains.

Then, the next morning, Stahr goes into the office and there’s this, to close the story, and the chapter:

“There was a stack of telegrams–a company ship was lost in the Arctic; a star was in disgrace; a writer was suing for one million dollars. Jews were dead miserably beyond the sea. The last telegram stared up at him: I was married at noon today. Goodbye; and on a sticker attached, Send your answer by Western Union Telegram.”

It’s brilliant. And devastating. But that’s not the end of the novel, as planned. There’s another half chapter in draft manuscript form and all that stuff about the rivalry with Stahr’s partner and a murder and a plane crash yet to come. But that never got written. Fitzgerald’s friend, the writer and critic Edmund Wilson, gathered up the scraps of notes and sketches and the outline and published them together with the draft and we have, The Last Tycoon, published 1941, the year following Fitzgerald’s death.