DS, one page, 8.5 x 11, April 13, 1939. Official letter from Paramount Pictures requesting F. Scott Fitzgerald to confirm that, following the termination of an earlier contract, he will render his services “as a writer in connection with the screenplay of the motion picture photoplay tentatively entitled AIR RAID…for a total compensation of One Thousand Two Hundred Dollars.” Signed at the conclusion in black ink by Fitzgerald. The contract is marked with a large 'X' and is not countersigned by a studio executive. In fine condition.
Fitzgerald struggled throughout 1939—his contract with MGM was not renewed, he was hospitalized twice for alcoholism, and he only managed to pick up odd jobs working on movie script re-writes, one of which was for the referenced Paramount film Air Raid, which was ultimately never greenlit for production. Fitzgerald’s reliance on Hollywood, and the industry’s subsequent dismissal of his talents, pushed him to return to drinking. By year’s end, however, Fitzgerald achieved sobriety whilst working on his Pat Hobby stories and his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, a work left unfinished by his early death in December 1940. A significant document that underlines the desperation and frustration felt by Fitzgerald during a trying period of the writer's life.
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