Fitzgerald's story is set in the brutal life of the great studios of 1930s Hollywood, with their flocks of actors, writers and directors seething with interpersonal and sexual politics. Although less than 6,400 words, it has a more novel-like than story-like structure, being set over several days and settings, though the driving story and few characters make it a story rather than a novel.
Screenwriter Joel Coles spends his Sundays working — at the moment he is rewriting a Eugene O'Neill play in which a famous actress is to play the lead. He is "twenty-eight and not yet broken by Hollywood" after his first six months there. But on this Sunday, he is invited to tea by the director Miles Calman: a big step up for a writer.
Stella, Calman's neglected wife, presses highballs on Joel — he had promised himself not to drink, especially as the director is loudly opposed to alcoholism — and flirts with him. He chats with the director's mother. Overjoyed by the success he is making, he offers to do his party piece, just as people are leaving. Unfortunately, it is a mocking imitation of an independent producer, Dave Silverstein. You don't mock producers in Hollywood, and the audience, including a famous actress, disassociate themselves silently from his act. "The faces surrounding him in the gently molded light were intent and curious, but there was no ghost of a smile anywhere; directly in front the Great Lover of the screen glared at him with an eye as keen as the eye of a potato." Joel realises that he has not only made a fool of himself, but been irreparably damaged among people on whom his career depends.
Next morning, he writes a horrified, crawling note of apology to Miles Calman. He slinks around the set, so furtive that a security man demands sight of his pass. His buddy Nat Keogh — the archetypal heavy drinker of Hollywood — tries to laugh him out of it, but it is not until next morning he gets a kind telegram from Stella Calman inviting him to a buffet supper that he is comforted.
"Crazy Sunday again", and Joel lunches alone on "trout, avocado salad and a pint of California wine" before dressing carefully for Mrs Calman's sister's supper. In a brief leap from the third-person-subjective mode in which he writes most of the story into third-person-omniscient, Fitzgerald writes: "Miles and Stella arrived in riding clothes — they had been quarrelling fiercely most of the afternoon on all the dirt roads back of Beverly Hills".
Only now does Fitzgerald describe the director: "Miles Calman, tall, nervous, with a desperate humor and the unhappiest eyes Joel ever saw". The problem between the couple is her discovery of an affair Miles Calman is having with an actress, Eva Goebel, his wife's best friend. Husband and wife — separately and together — confide in Joel, then the husband invites him home with them. At home they continue to squabble, using Joel as an intermediary. He realises he is falling in love with her.
Back in the studio during the week, Joel phones Miles but Stella answers; she invites him to a dinner and theatre party because her husband will be flying to a big Notre Dame game. Joel cautiously mentions the invitation to Miles, who dithers jealously then decides to take Stella himself, but on a whim invites Joel too.
"Joel could not get to the dinner. Self-conscious in his silk hat against the unemployment, he waited for the others in front of the Hollywood Theatre and watched the evening parade: obscure replicas of bright, particular picture stars, spavined men in polo coats…" Stella appears, stunning in a sparkling ice-blue dress; Miles had decided to fly to the game after all, and she's just got a telegram to say he's starting back. Afterwards — paranoid that the crazily jealous Miles might be watching her in secret — she invites Joel home. He goes, flirts with her, but is confused — "I have a strange feeling that I'm a sort of pawn in a spite game you're playing against Miles" — she continues to get emotionally blackmailing "I love you" telegrams from Miles — it is implied that Joel and Stella have sex. He is preparing to go — the phone rings with another telegram and Stella answers — the clock strikes midnight as she holds the receiver to her ear, and she falls senseless to the floor — "The telephone mouthpiece was still grinding and he put it to his ear. '—the plane fell just this side of Kansas City. The body of Miles Calman has been identified and—' He hung up the receiver."
"Joel thought of Miles, his sad and desperate face in the office two days before. In the awful silence of his death all was clear about him. He was the only American-born director with both an interesting temperament and an artistic conscience." But now, as Stella desperately tries to make Joel stay with her, he realises that he is her only link with Miles, and if he does stay, he is doomed to be a surrogate for the man she loved.
History
The short story is noteworthy because although Fitzgerald commanded respectable compensation and respect for his work, "Crazy Sunday" was turned down by nearly a dozen magazines before its eventual acceptance by American Mercury.
Fitzgerald is said to have refused all requests to revise the story as suggested, and later mandated, by editors. Thus, the story retained the original length and content, despite any risk of controversy. The story is reportedly based on Fitzgerald's own experiences at a similar party hosted by Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg during the time Fitzgerald was working in Hollywood. Thalberg, a genius of film who was born with a congenital heart defect and died aged 37 of a heart attack, was the subject of The Last Tycoon, the novel Fitzgerald almost completed when he died. The story also illustrates Fitzgerald's attitude to alcoholism.
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress who was active on film from 1919 through 1942. Shearer often played spunky, sexually liberated ingénues. She appeared in adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O'Neill, and William Shakespeare, and was the first five-time Academy Award acting nominee, winning Best Actress for The Divorcee (1930).
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and ability to select scripts, choose actors, gather production staff, and make profitable films, including Grand Hotel, China Seas, A Night at the Opera, Mutiny on the Bounty, Camille and The Good Earth. His films carved out an international market, "projecting a seductive image of American life brimming with vitality and rooted in democracy and personal freedom", states biographer Roland Flamini.
Marie Prevost was a Canadian-born film actress. During her 20-year career, she made 121 silent and sound films.
The Last Tycoon is an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1941, it was published posthumously under this title, as prepared by his friend Edmund Wilson, a critic and writer. According to Publishers Weekly, the novel is "generally considered a roman a clef," with its lead character, Monroe Stahr, modeled after film producer Irving Thalberg. The story follows Stahr's rise to power in Hollywood, and his conflicts with rival Pat Brady, a character based on MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer.
Louis Burt Mayer was a Canadian-American film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM) in 1924. Under Mayer's management, MGM became the film industry's most prestigious movie studio, accumulating the largest concentration of leading writers, directors, and stars in Hollywood.
The Last Tycoon is a 1976 American period romantic drama film directed by Elia Kazan and produced by Sam Spiegel, based upon Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel The Last Tycoon. It stars Robert De Niro, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson, Donald Pleasence, Jeanne Moreau, Theresa Russell and Ingrid Boulting.
Tender Is the Night is the fourth and final novel completed by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in French Riviera during the twilight of the Jazz Age, the 1934 novel chronicles the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist, and his wife, Nicole, who is one of his patients. The story mirrors events in the lives of the author and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald as Dick starts his descent into alcoholism and Nicole descends into mental illness.
Red-Headed Woman is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic comedy film, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, based on the 1931 novel of the same name by Katharine Brush, and a screenplay by Anita Loos. It was directed by Jack Conway and stars Jean Harlow as a woman who uses sex to advance her social position. During the course of the film, Harlow's character breaks up a marriage, has multiple affairs, has premarital sex, and attempts to kill a man.
Stella Crawford is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Sophie Thompson from 7 September 2006 to 23 July 2007.
Camille is a 1936 American romantic drama film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer directed by George Cukor, and produced by Irving Thalberg and Bernard H. Hyman, from a screenplay by James Hilton, Zoë Akins, and Frances Marion. The picture is based on the 1848 novel and 1852 play La dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The film stars Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Jessie Ralph, Henry Daniell, and Laura Hope Crews. It grossed $2,842,000.
Jonas, is a Disney Channel Original Series created by Michael Curtis and Roger S. H. Schulman, starring the Jonas Brothers. The pilot was filmed in September 2008, the series premiered on Disney Channel on May 2, 2009, and became available on demand starting on April 25, 2009.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
La Bohème is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by King Vidor, based on the 1896 opera La bohème by Giacomo Puccini. Lillian Gish and John Gilbert star in a tragic romance in which a tubercular seamstress sacrifices her life so that her lover, a bohemian playwright, might pen his masterpiece. Gish, at the height of her influence with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, asserted significant control over the production, determining the story, director, cast, cinematography, and costume design. In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.
Frankie Pierre is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders. She appears between 24 June 1996 and 25 March 1997, played by Syan Blake. Portrayed as a "super-bitch" and home wrecker, Frankie attempts to ruin the established relationships of several characters during her nine months on the soap, purposefully seducing attached men.
An Awfully Big Adventure is a 1995 British coming-of-age film directed by Mike Newell. The story concerns a girl who joins a local repertory theatre troupe in Liverpool. During a winter production of Peter Pan, the play quickly turns into a dark metaphor for youth as she becomes drawn into a web of sexual politics and intrigue.
Cassandra Freedman is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Neighbours, played by Tottie Goldsmith. She made her first screen appearance during the episode broadcast on 10 February 2009. Goldsmith did not have to audition for the role of Cassandra and was instead chosen by the producers for the role. The actress began filming her first scenes at the end of September 2008. She was initially contracted for six weeks, but this was extended after she impressed the producers with her performance. Goldsmith filmed her final scenes in January 2009 and Cassandra's departure was aired on 29 April 2009.
The First Time is a 2012 American teen romantic comedy film written and directed by Jon Kasdan, starring Britt Robertson, Dylan O'Brien, James Frecheville, and Victoria Justice.
Bedside Manner is a 1945 American comedy film directed by Andrew L. Stone and starring John Carroll, Ruth Hussey, Charles Ruggles and Ann Rutherford. It is based on a 1944 Saturday Evening Post story of the same name by Robert Carson and was distributed by United Artists. The film was re-released in 1950 by Astor Pictures under the title Her Favorite Patient.
Cleo McQueen is a fictional character from the British soap opera Hollyoaks, played by Nadine Mulkerrin. Cleo is a member of the show's established McQueen family and was introduced as the younger sister of Porsche and Celine McQueen, who arrived in late 2014. Actress Jennifer Metcalfe, who plays Mercedes McQueen, suggested that more McQueens should be introduced, as she knew the show was losing two members of the family. Mulkerrin had previously auditioned for the role of Phoebe Jackson, however this role was later given to Mandip Gill. Upon learning she had been cast as Cleo, she gave up her job as a waitress and relocated to Liverpool, where the show is filmed. She made her first appearance during the episode broadcast on 26 January 2015. Mulkerrin took maternity leave from the show in 2019, departing in the episode broadcast on 4 November 2019. She returned on 18 November 2020.
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