Anecdotes

Filmed entirely on location in Savannah, Georgia.

The television film depicts both Zelda Fitzgerald (Blythe Danner) and her fictionalized counterpart Ailie Calhoun (Susan Sarandon) as a Southern belle who is politically indifferent to ongoing societal events. Yet, according to Nancy Milford's 1970 biography "Zelda," Zelda Fitzgerald was politically active throughout her life. She often attended weekly meetings of the Daughters of the Confederacy. A neo-Confederate by upbringing, Zelda later became "taken with the idea of fascism as a way of holding everything together, of ordering the masses." She later declared to acquaintances that fascism served "to keep things from falling apart and to keep the finer things from being lost or extinguished."

While this television movie was filming in Savannah, Georgia, in 1973, the cast and crew received a visit from Frances Scott Fitzgerald Smith, the only child of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald. A photo of Scottie posing with Richard Chamberlain, Blythe Danner, Leslie Williams, and director George Schaefer is in the collection of the Scottie Fitzgerald Smith Papers at the Archives and Special Collections Library at Vassar College.

One of a number of 1970s productions either about F. Scott Fitzgerald or an adaptation of his literary works including Gatsby le magnifique (1974), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976), F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1975), and Le dernier nabab (1976).

Although this television film is mostly accurate in its depiction of the lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald, the film omits any reference to Ginevra King, Scott's first love. This is due to the fact that the full extent of Scott's relationship with Ginevra was not known to biographers until the 2000s. During his courtship of Zelda, Scott wrote Ginevra each day and begged her to resume their previous romantic relationship. As the affection between Zelda and Scott cooled after their marriage, Scott continued to obsess over the loss of Ginevra and, for the remainder of his life, Scott could not think of Ginevra "without tears coming to his eyes". Fitzgerald immortalized Ginevra as the character of Daisy Buchanan in his 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby."