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Important DS, three pages, 8.5 x 11, August 26, 1940. Contract between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Twentieth-Century Fox, employing him as a "scenario writer in creating, composing, revising and adapting literary works or compositions, including dialogue and/or continuity suitable for use in the production of motion pictures" for a period of tour weeks, at the rate of $1000 per week. Neatly signed at the conclusion in fountain pen by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and countersigned by a studio vice president and a notary. Stapled into its original blue legal folder, along with an "Exhibit A" rider outlining the "formula for determination of screen play credits." In very fine condition.
This document, the studio's retained copy, is Fitzgerald's final contract for screen writing during his last stay in Hollywood. He undertook the work to finance time to finish his novel, The Last Tycoon, a story about the movie industry, posthumously published in 1941. Writes biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli in Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: 'Fitzgerald's last screenwriting assignment came when Twentieth Century-Fox hired him to prepare a screenplay from The Light of Heart, Emlyn Williams's play about an alcoholic actor. The job paid $1,000 per week from August 26 to October 15 [the four weeks was extended to six]. He submitted three drafts, but his version was rejected as too gloomy. The assignment was turned over to Nunnally Johnson. At Fox he was also involved in a story conference for Everything Happens at Night, a Sonja Henie vehicle, and may have worked briefly on Brooklyn Bridge, a proposed movie about the building of the bridge.' Fitzgerald died in Hollywood on December 21, 1940, the novel which he desperately tried to complete left unfinished.
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