Saturday, April 23, 2016

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald


Dancer, writer, artist.

So I was reading yesterday that actress Scarlett Johannsen will be tackling the role of Zelda Fitzgerald when F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, "The Beautiful and The Damned" comes to life in the movies soon.

I've always felt a certain huge, protective instinct where Zelda is concerned because she is a fairly close relative of mine (she is a cousin, as many times removed as our generations are) and I've always felt she got the short end of the stick where her marriage and career were concerned. Oh yes, and also where her mental health was concerned. Many people know her as "crazy Zelda," the woman who "tormented" F. Scott Fitzgerald through his most productive years. And this is simply not the case.

Zelda was a writer, an artist and a dancer in her own right and dealt not only with issues of depression, but also the unspeakable anger at having her work stolen by her husband, who regularly plagiarized her journals for fodder in his own writing. As a strong woman living in the early part of the 20th century, there was also a societally-ingrained, gender-based handicap which denied her the ability to live her own life on her own terms, due to the rampant sexism of the age. 

I first came to understand that I was related to Zelda when I got compared to her regularly when I was younger, especially in my wilder days. The "Zelda gene" was something that was of some concern to my family. When I danced (in full formal wear) into the fountains at the Music Center after a classical music concert in Los Angeles I was called Zelda. When I led the conga line into the swimming pool at a friend's wedding, I was called Zelda. When I climbed out a bathroom window at a fancy restaurant in Las Vegas and walked into the desert after getting an unexpected marriage proposal from a man I did not want to marry, I was called Zelda. So I guess it made sense that I felt like she was almost a secret sister of mine, genetically similar, creative, untamed and the wild child my father's family line somehow tends to produce on a semi-regular basis. Zelda was the one for her generation. I was for mine.

Unhappily married.

But Zelda was also diagnosed as a schizophrenic and sent into numerous, tortuous treatments that made whatever condition she really suffered from even worse. When ancestry tools first became available, I started researching both her maternal and paternal family, concerned that there really was a schizophrenic (and not just a wild child) gene in our family. 

Upon further research I learned that there was a history of mental health issues on her mother's side of the family, not her father's (through which we are related), and that today Zelda might be more accurately diagnosed as bi-polar or possibly just unhappily married and artistically frustrated to the point of clinical depression and suicidal tendencies. Think Vincent Van Gogh or Sylvia Plath, not Charles Manson.

And so I find myself in some ways wondering if Zelda's life might have turned out as happily as my own if she'd simply had a better (or no) husband, gotten treatment or just wised up early on about the hazards of binge drinking, and lived her life not quite so in the limelight. Perhaps she would have established her own limelight as a dancer, a novelist, a poet or an artist, on her own terms.

The one thing I know is that Zelda is one of us, my paternal tribe, and therefore I hope for everyone's sake that Ms. Johannsen portrays her not just as the quintessential, two dimensional drunken southern belle stereotype actresses usually tap into when portraying her, but instead attempts to portray her as the artist, -- the offbeat, smart, creative, courageous and wild thinker she was. 

I would hope for no less, if it was me and my life up there on that screen.

"Great Smoky Mountains" by Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald






9 comments:

  1. Oh how very interesting! I know so little about her. This is exactly the kind of biography and/or memoir I love to read. Are there any good ones that you can recommend? I have faith in SJ. If I could have sat through Midnight in Paris I might have a better idea of who she was (or wasn't actually) but I couldn't stand that movie. Was thinking I might read We Were All So Young which is about Sarah someone who was a frequent hostess of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the south of France.

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  2. I believe it was Sarah Murphy who hosted the Fitzgeralds and ultimately broke away from them because of their awful behavior. I'd like to read We Were All So Young, too. My favorite Zelda biography is Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise by Sally Cline. She did a lot of research no one else ever bothered to, and it's not only a great read but also a really fair treatment of everyone all the way around.

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    1. Ordered Her Voice in Paradise and Everybody Was So Young. Thanks! I like to do theme reading on vacation and sort of immerse myself in a particular time/subject. If I can make myself, I'll finally read Tender is the Night too. Though I struggle to get through fiction, I'm embarrassed to say!

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    2. I do too, unless it's really, really good fiction. I'm going to check out We Were So Young from the library and maybe we can compare notes when we're done! Enjoy Her Voice in Paradise, I thought it was so interesting.

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  3. I read "Zelda" by Nancy Mitford many years ago. What a fascinating woman! Incredibly gifted. How interesting you are related to her. Thanks for sharing.

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  4. I read "Zelda" by Nancy Mitford many years ago. What a fascinating woman! Incredibly gifted. How interesting you are related to her. Thanks for sharing.

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  5. "Zelda" was actually the first book I read about her -- it's kind of the classic, right? But several have come out since then that take a more modern view of her breakdown and a more feminist view of her struggles to achieve her own success, which I think is actually more sympathetic than Mitford's take on the whole thing. But a lot more information has come to light since "Zelda" was written, so that's probably why.

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    1. You've piqued my curiosity! Now I have to read the one by Sally Cline.

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    2. You've piqued my curiosity! Now I have to read the one by Sally Cline.

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