Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works amid the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter.įollowing the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934). While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson completed and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. 1.4 Struggles and literary breakthrough.1.9 Sojourn in Hollywood and Lois Moran.Life Childhood and early years įitzgerald (left), unbreeched as a child in St. After his birth, his parents moved to a two-story home (right) in Buffalo, New York. His family never owned a house they only rented. īorn on September 24, 1896, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to a middle-class Catholic family, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was named after his distant cousin, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics for the American national anthem ' The Star-Spangled Banner'. His mother was Mary 'Molly' McQuillan Fitzgerald, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer.
