American Masters F. Scott Fitzgerald Winter Dreams Part 7

This American Masters documentary takes a solemn look at F. Scott Fitzgerald's life and literary legacy. While acknowledging his demons (alcoholism, his wife Zelda's mental illness), it only glancingly refers to his and Zelda's infamous antics and notorious partying. Instead, this 85-minute biography looks at the influence of his St. Paul, Minnesota, childhood, where he was the poorest in a well-to-do neighborhood, and the driving ambition that sent him to Princeton, where he never felt he measured up to his wealthier classmates. This obsession with class and money drove his writing and his marriage to Zelda, a socially prominent Southern belle. Weighing in are such literary luminaries as biographer A. Scott Berg and novelists E.L. Doctorow and Ward Just, as well as the usual host of scholars. These experts are balanced nicely with the reminiscences of those who knew the Fitzgeralds more intimately, including former neighbors and Zelda's childhood friends.

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