Now regarded as one of the most important voices in American literature, F Scott Fitzgerald died in obscurity, ignored and largely forgotten. The glitzy lifestyle of endless parties, cocktails and everyone wanting to be his friend a distant memory.

In the nineteen twenties, he and his highspirited wife Zelda, were the living embodiments of the Jazz Age – handsome, successful and buzzing with energy – but like the Jazz Age their lifestyle was unsustainable.

In this video, I explore the brilliant but all too short life of F Scott Fitzgerald. A burdened life, fatally intertwined with that of the artistic but troubled Zelda. I reveal how the lives of two of America’s brightest young things slowly unraveled, with Zelda in and out of mental hospitals and Scott drowning his sorrows with alcohol.

It is a sad story of two lives prematurely extinguished, but also a story about love, about how their love endured through all the temptations and troubles that fate put in their paths.

Finding Out More:
There are many individual biographies of F Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre/Fitztgerald, some blame Zelda for Scott’s downfall, others blame Scott’s drinking for Zelda’s mental illness. The joint biography Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald: A Marriage: Sometimes Madness is Wisdom by Kendall Taylor explores their lives together. But the book I found the most enjoyable and revealing was Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald I have added this and some of the other biographies to my Amazon store page if you are interested: https://www.amazon.com/shop/professor...

F Scott Fitzgerald – a Troubled Life, Cut Short | Documentary

Academic References;
Bruccoli, MJ (2002) Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2nd rev. ed.), Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press.
Goodwin, D. W. (1970). The Alcoholism of F. Scott Fitzgerald. JAMA, 212(1), 8690.
Esteve, N., and Huertas, R. (2018). Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald and psychoanalysis: The construction of Tender Is the Night (1934). Culture and History Digital Journal, 7(1). Irwin, J. M. (1987). F. Scott Fitzgerald's little drinking problem. The American Scholar. 56 (3), 415427.
Mizener, A (1951) The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin.
Seeman, MV (2016) Gendering psychosis: the illness of Zelda Fitzgerald. Med Humanities, 42: 6569.
Wood, ME (1992) A Wizard Cultivator: Zelda Fitzgerald's Save Me the Waltz as Asylum Autobiography. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 11 (2), 223264.

Copyright Disclaimer:
The primary purpose of this video is educational. I have tried to use material in the public domain or with Creative Commons Nonattribution licences wherever possible. Where attribution is required, I have listed this below. I believe that any copyright material used falls under the remit of Fair Use, but if any content owners would like to dispute this, I will not hesitate to immediately remove that content. It is not my intention to infringe on content ownership in any way. If you happen to find your art or images in the video, please let me know and I will be glad to credit you.

Images:
Wikimedia Commons
Princeton University Library

Music:
Scott Joplin – The Entertainer – User.IE (public domain)
Scott Joplin Gladiolus Rag Pathé Dance Orchestra (public domain)
Scott Joplin – March Majestic (public domain)
Scott Joplin – Solace performed by Constantin Stephan. CC4.0
Original Dixieland Jazz Band Livery Stable Blues (1917, public domain)
Jazz Clarinet – Serolillo – CC2.5
Jazz Trombone – Serolillo – CC2.5
Sweet Georgia Brown Dixieland Band of the United States Army Field Band's Jazz Ambassadors (public domain)
Scott Joplin Ragtime Betty João Pedro Cunha, violin, Pedro Carlos Silva, piano. CC3.0
Cinus Laurent Etude n°6 Free Art Licence
Vladan Kuzmanović Concert for Half Piano in E Flat Major CC4.0
Jonathon Little Sacred Prelude, Op.1, for string quintet. Soloists of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra CC3.0
Lloyd Rogers Slow – CC0
Carl Reinecke Wind Octet Op. 216 3. Adagio Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet: Felix Skowronek, flute; Laila Storch, oboe; Clarinets: William McColl and Julie Oster, Horns: Christopher Leuba and David Cottrell, Bassoons: Arthur Grossman and Gary Claunch. CC2.0
Sergei Rachmaninov – Vocalise Roxana Pavel Goldstein, violin and Monica Pavel piano CC2.0
Sergei Rachmaninov – Concerto No 2 for Piano and Orchestra in C minor. Pianist. Kuneu (Ku Hanho) Piano, Citi Philharmonic Orchestra. CC Reuse Allowed.
Sergei Rachmaninov Prelude in B Minor, Op. 32, No. 10, performed by La Pianista. CC3.0
Claude Debussy – Deuxième Arabesque Patrizia Prati. CC ‎4.0
Claude Debussy – Rêverie – David Hernando Vitores ‎CC4.0

Video produced by Graeme Yorston and Tom Yorston.