Jazz, Fame and Death. The Life of Zelda Fitzgerald

Written by Rory Thornfield

In 1918, a girl who smoked cigarettes and rode motorcycles appeared on the dance floor of the Montgomery Country Club – a scandal in the conservative Southern city. A decade later, that same woman danced barefoot at New York parties alongside a famous writer, and later still, she wrote a novel in a locked room of a psychiatric hospital.

Legislator’s Daughter from Alabama

When Anthony Dickinson Sayre’s sixth daughter was born in Montgomery on July 24, 1900, no one predicted the girl would grow up to become the family’s greatest scandal. Sayre was a state legislator, author of a legal act stripping rights from Black residents of Alabama. The family lived in a house that once served as the Confederate White House – the history of the South hung there in the air, thick as humidity before a storm.

Zelda grew up in luxury provided by her father’s wealth. She had everything: money, position, a future laid out like a lace doily on a tea table. But instead of cultivating Southern manners, she preferred to swim and dance until she dropped.

When she started chewing gum, smoking, and riding motorcycles, the older generation of Montgomery shook their heads. Despite this – or perhaps because of it – the local elite considered her the best catch in town. A beautiful rebel from a good family was a rarity.

One Hundred Rejections and One Success

Scott Fitzgerald came from the North penniless, but with a notebook full of literary ambitions. He’d abandoned Princeton for writing, sent nineteen stories to publishers – received one hundred rejections. This was a boy with no future, at least in the eyes of the Sayre family.

Zelda wasn’t interested in poor dreamers. She needed concrete things: money, fame, a life worthy of her beauty. When Scott came asking for her hand, her parents firmly refused consent – until he made his fortune, there would be no talk of marriage.

Then something unexpected happened. The novel „This Side of Paradise” shot up like a rocket, making Scott a star of literary New York. Zelda immediately agreed to marry. They wed on April 3, 1920, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral without their parents present – the young couple didn’t wait for family blessings.

Thirty Thousand a Year on Self-Destruction

The twenties transformed the Fitzgeralds into icons of the era. They spent thirty thousand dollars annually on parties that shocked New York. Scott drank so intensely that at receptions he’d end up under tables, eat soup with a fork, sometimes take off his pants.

Zelda drank with him, but alcohol triggered hysterical attacks in her – only morphine injections could calm her down. She attempted suicide while intoxicated. In 1921 she gave birth to a daughter, Frances, called Scottie, and spoke words her husband later put in Daisy Buchanan’s mouth: „I hope she’ll be beautiful and stupid.” Scott recorded that phrase in „The Great Gatsby.”

Desperately seeking escape from alcohol and chaos, Zelda threw herself into ballet training – seven hours daily, starvation, obsession. Her body had its limits, however. In 1930 she began seeing faces in flowers and hearing their voices. Doctors made their diagnosis: schizophrenia and a whole catalog of other mental disorders.

Literature as Marital Battlefield

From a locked psychiatric hospital room, Zelda sent her novel „Save Me the Waltz” out into the world in 1932. Scott flew into a rage – he took the manuscript, cut out a third of the text, blocked promotion. His wife was trying to steal his life for literature, but he’d already claimed that life for himself.

Zelda began writing „Frederica,” Scott released „Tender Is the Night” – the story of a man with a mentally ill wife. It was their relationship poured onto paper, without mercy and without pity. After reading it, Zelda collapsed completely.

She wrote him letters full of accusations: he’d stolen her life, made her into a literary character, sold her suffering to readers. She begged for divorce. Scott refused. He died in 1940 from heart disease caused by alcoholism, leaving her in hospitals. On March 10, 1948, Zelda burned alive in a facility in Asheville – room locked for the night, windows secured with bars.

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Rory Thornfield

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Rory's grandfather left behind a wartime diary filled with accounts of a minor Burma skirmish that history books never mentioned. Reading it, Rory realized: behind every famous battle are dozens of forgotten struggles, each with its own human drama.

His preferred topics: The overlooked corners of military history – secondary campaigns, shadow battalions, local conflicts that never made headlines. From medieval sieges to twentieth-century expeditions, he focuses on the soldiers, not the generals. The people who faced impossible choices and carried those experiences forever.

Rory strips away the romanticism without losing respect for those who served. He combines tactical analysis with personal stories, examining human endurance and moral complexity rather than celebrating warfare. His writing is balanced, thoughtful, and deeply researched.

Outside work, Rory visits forgotten battlefields (now quiet farmland), photographs war memorials nobody tends anymore, and interviews veterans' families.