In what F. Scott Fitzgerald would later call "one of the silliest mistakes I ever made," the renowned author and recovering alcoholic visited campus in 1939 for an infamous weekend of drunken revelry while attempting to research for a screenplay about the College's Winter Carnival with co-author Budd Schulberg '36.
Hollywood producer Walter Wanger, a member of the class of 1915, originally gave Schulberg the task of writing the 'Winter Carnival' movie in the fall of 1938, according to an article in a 1939 issue of The Dartmouth. After seeing a initial draft of the screenplay, Wanger decided to assign another writer to collaborate with Schulberg.
"I asked who I would be working with and [Wanger] said F. Scott Fitzgerald," Schulberg said in an interview with The Dartmouth last week. "I thought [Fitzgerald] had died. He was a very famous person who I hadn't heard about in a while, and I assumed he had passed away."
After the two writers began to rewrite the screenplay, Wanger insisted that they all travel to the upcoming 1939 Carnival for research.
"Scott had been on the wagon not drinking for a year and his agent assured Wanger that Scott no longer drank and would be reliable," Schulberg said. "When we got to the plane to fly east, my father brought to the plane two bottles of champagne because he was excited I was working with Scott. That was [Fitzgerald's] undoing."
By the time the plane reached its first pit stop to refuel, Schulberg said "Scott was already on his way back to drinking."
"That was the beginning of a terrible weekend," Schulberg said.
During these "terrible" few days, Schulberg and Fitzgerald visited both Alpha Delta and Psi Upsilon fraternities, according to a 2003 article in The New York Times.
Fitzgerald's and Schulberg's drinking exploits continued beyond the fraternity houses after they were asked to meet with several Dartmouth professors and other faculty members excited about their visit.
"Both of us looked disreputable... I don't think, honestly, we'd changed our clothes since we'd left the airplane," Schulberg said in a 2003 interview with The New York Times. "And on top of all the other drinking, a favorite sociology professor of mine was a huge fan of Fitzgerald's, and so to celebrate, at a moment when I was trying to taper Scott off, he came to the room with a bottle of whiskey and it all started all over again."
Fitzgerald and Wanger were interviewed by John D. Hess '39 in the February 11, 1939 issue of The Dartmouth.
"In a chair directly across from Mr. Wanger was Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who looked and talked as if he had long since become tired of being known as the spokesman of that unfortunate lost generation of the 1920s," Hess wrote.
Fitzgerald's composure at the interview didn't last long, as he and Schulberg spent the rest of weekend drinking, instead of writing.
"Finally, on the end of the weekend, Wanger was so exasperated with us that he fired both us," Schulberg said in an interview with The Dartmouth last week.
After a drunken scene outside the Hanover Inn, Wanger forced the writers to leave campus, and they boarded a midnight train to New York City. Once they arrived, however, the two struggled to get a hotel. They had left their luggage in Hanover and had not changed their clothes since before they left Hollywood, according to Schulberg's interview with The New York Times.
"No hotel would accept us, they all turned us down, because of what we looked like -- a couple of bums," Schulberg recalled. "And then at that point, Scott said 'Take me to the hospital because that's where I always go when no hotel will take me,' and that's where I took him."
Schulberg was later able to procure a hotel room, and Wanger rehired him a few days later to finish the script for the movie.
"He rehired me a couple of days later because I was so close to the Carnival having just been out of the school," Schulberg said in an interview with The Dartmouth last week.
Fitzgerald later wrote a letter to Schulberg in February 1939 offering some additional ideas for the screenplay although he was no longer involved in the writing process.
"I wish you well, and I won't forget the real pleasure of knowing you, and your patience as I got more and more out of hand under the strain," Fitzgerald wrote. "In retrospect, going east under those circumstances seems one of the silliest mistakes I ever made."
For Schulberg, however, the Dartmouth experience was still difficult to encapsulate in one script.
"It's not too easy, you know, to cram the whole of this 'Dartmouth Spirit' into a Carnival story and really grasp it," Schulberg said in the interview. "It's a whole year's job... and there are plenty of headaches."
