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A friend told of Fitzgerald's generosity to a writer who was then unknown: "After Scribners showed a reluctance to publish Ernest Hemingway, [Scott] issued an ultimatum. All that I recall of it was that it ended, 'or else.' " Henry Wales, an American correspondent in Paris, told how Fitzgerald did battle one night in an elegant Montmartre nightclub against six Argentines armed with champagne bottles, with the damages in broken glassware alone amounting to $500. Two close friends, Millionaire Gerald Murphy and oldtime Cinemactress Lois Moran, spoke as the original models of Dick Diver and Rosemary, two of Fitzgerald's principal characters in Tender Is the Night.
Cracked Plate. Arthur Mizener, Fitzgerald's biographer (The Far Side of Paradise), told how Scott and Zelda expected nothing but joy out of life and quarreled bitterly when they were disappointed. "We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promises of American advertising," Zelda once said. "I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail, and that mud will give you a perfect complexion." After Zelda became ill, Fitzgerald said. "I left my capacity for hoping on the little road that led to Zelda's sanitarium." He wrote her: "Do you remember before keys turned in locks, when life was a closeup and not an occasional letter, that I hated to swim naked from the rocks while you liked absolutely nothing better? Still stupid with grief, I find these are the only quarrels I remember." And Zelda could only reply: "Oh Dodo, Dodo, I love you anyway, even if there isn't any me or any love, or even life, I love you."
When the sanitarium caught fire, Zelda died in the flames. At 39, Fitzgerald "suddenly realized that I had prematurely cracked, cracked like an old plate." He recovered enough to write part of a novel about Hollywood, The Last Tycoon, which might have been his masterpiece. But when he had reached the middle of chapter six, a heart attack ended his life at 44. Almost nobody came to the bare funeral home where his body lay. But his old friend Dorothy Parker did. Her hard-boiled epitaph, too strong for last week's radio show, echoed Fitzgerald's own tag line to The Great Gatsby. Looking at the corpse, she said, "The poor son of a bitch."