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78 pages

English

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A Hollywood hack who has fallen on hard times since the end of the Silent Era, Pat Hobby spends his time hanging out in the studio lot attempting to devise schemes - such as pressing his secretary for blackmail material against a studio executive - to get more work and earn on-screen credits. Oblivious to his own shortcomings and filled with feelings of self-importance, he embarks on a course towards ever-increasing humiliation, suffering setbacks on both the professional and romantic fronts. A vivid account of Hollywood and its politics and hierarchies, these stories - which draw from Fitzgerald's own travails as a screenwriter - were first printed in Esquire, although they were written with a view to being published as a cohesive volume.

Informations

Publié par	Alma Books
Date de parution	01 janvier 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780714547428
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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The Pat Hobby Stories
F. Scott Fitzgerald

ALMA CLASSICS

Alma Classics Ltd London House 243-253 Lower Mortlake Road Richmond Surrey TW 9 2 LL United Kingdom www.almaclassics.com
The Pat Hobby Stories first published in volume form in 1962 This edition first published by Alma Books Ltd in 2014
Notes © Alma Classics Ltd Extra Material © Richard Parker
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, C R0 4 YY
isbn : 978-1-84749-385-9
All the pictures in this volume are reprinted with permission or pre sumed to be in the public domain. Every effort has been made to ascertain and acknowledge their copyright status, but should there have been any unwitting oversight on our part, we would be happy to rectify the error in subsequent printings.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

Contents
The Pat Hobby Stories
Pat Hobby’s Christmas Wish
A Man in the Way
“Boil Some Water – Lots of It”
Teamed with Genius
Pat Hobby and Orson Welles
Pat Hobby’s Secret
Pat Hobby, Putative Father
The Homes of the Stars
Pat Hobby Does His Bit
Pat Hobby’s Preview
No Harm Trying
A Patriotic Short
On the Trail of Pat Hobby
Fun in an Artist’s Studio
Two Old-Timers
Mightier than the Sword
Pat Hobby’s College Days
Note on the Text
Notes
Extra Material
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Life
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Works
Select Bibliography

Other books by F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
published by Alma Classics
All the Sad Young Men Basil and Josephine
Babylon Revisited and Other Stories
The Beautiful and Damned Flappers and Philosophers
The Great Gatsby
The Last of the Belles and Other Stories The Last Tycoon
The Love Boat and Other Stories
Tales of the Jazz Age
Tender Is the Night
This Side of Paradise

The Pat Hobby Stories

Pat Hobby’s Christmas Wish
1
I t was Christmas Eve in the studio. By eleven o’clock in the morning, Santa Claus had called on most of the huge population according to each one’s deserts.
Sumptuous gifts from producers to stars, and from agents to producers, arrived at offices and studio bungalows; on every stage one heard of the roguish gifts of casts to directors or directors to casts; champagne had gone out from publicity office to the press. And tips of fifties, tens and fives from producers, directors and writers fell like manna upon the white-collar class.
In this sort of transaction there were exceptions. Pat Hobby, for example, who knew the game from twenty years’ experience, had had the idea of getting rid of his secretary the day before. They were sending over a new one any minute – but she would scarcely expect a present the first day.
Waiting for her, he walked the corridor, glancing into open offices for signs of life. He stopped to chat with Joe Hopper from the scenario department.
“Not like the old days,” he mourned. “Then there was a bottle on every desk.”
“There’re a few around.”
“Not many.” Pat sighed. “And afterwards we’d run a picture – made up out of cutting-room scraps.”
“I’ve heard. All the suppressed stuff,” said Hopper.
Pat nodded, his eyes glistening.
“Oh, it was juicy. You darned near ripped your guts laughing…”
He broke off as the sight of a woman, pad in hand, entering his office down the hall recalled him to the sorry present.
“Gooddorf has me working over the holiday,” he complained bitterly.
“I wouldn’t do it.”
“I wouldn’t either except my four weeks are up next Friday, and if I bucked him he wouldn’t extend me.”
As he turned away, Hopper knew that Pat was not being extended anyhow. He had been hired to script an old-fashioned horse opera, and the boys who were “writing behind him” – that is working over his stuff – said that all of it was old and some didn’t make sense.
“I’m Miss Kagle,” said Pat’s new secretary.
She was about thirty-six, handsome, faded, tired, efficient. She went to the typewriter, examined it, sat down and burst into sobs.
Pat started. Self-control, from below anyhow, was the rule around here. Wasn’t it bad enough to be working on Christmas Eve? Well – less bad than not working at all. He walked over and shut the door – someone might suspect him of insulting the girl.
“Cheer up,” he advised her. “This is Christmas.”
Her burst of emotion had died away. She sat upright now, choking and wiping her eyes.
“Nothing’s as bad as it seems,” he assured her unconvincingly. “What’s it, anyhow? They going to lay you off?”
She shook her head, did a sniffle to end sniffles and opened her notebook.
“Who you been working for?”
She answered between suddenly gritted teeth.
“Mr Harry Gooddorf.”
Pat widened his permanently bloodshot eyes. Now he remembered he had seen her in Harry’s outer office.
“Since 1921. Eighteen years. And yesterday he sent me back to the department. He said I depressed him – I reminded him he was getting on.” Her face was grim. “That isn’t the way he talked after hours eighteen years ago.”
“Yeah, he was a skirt-chaser then,” said Pat.
“I should have done something then when I had the chance.”
Pat felt righteous stirrings.
“Breach of promise? That’s no angle!”
“But I had something to clinch it. Something bigger than breach of promise. I still have too. But then, you see, I thought I was in love with him.” She brooded for a moment. “Do you want to dictate something now?”
Pat remembered his job and opened a script.
“It’s an insert,” he began. “Scene 114 A.”
Pat paced the office.
“Ext. Long Shot of the Plains,” he decreed. “Buck and Mexicans approaching the hyacenda.”
“The what?”
“The hyacenda – the ranch house.” He looked at her reproachfully. “114 B. Two Shot: Buck and Pedro. Buck: ‘The dirty son of a bitch. I’ll tear his guts out!’”
Miss Kagle looked up, startled.
“You want me to write that down?”
“Sure.”
“It won’t get by.”
“I’m writing this. Of course, it won’t get by. But if I put ‘you rat’, the scene won’t have any force.”
“But won’t somebody have to change it to ‘you rat’?”
He glared at her – he didn’t want to change secretaries every day.
“Harry Gooddorf can worry about that.”
“Are you working for Mr Gooddorf?” Miss Kagle asked in alarm.
“Until he throws me out.”
“I shouldn’t have said—”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “He’s no pal of mine any more. Not at three fifty a week, when I used to get two thousand… Where was I?”
He paced the floor again, repeating his last line aloud with relish. But now it seemed to apply not to a personage of the story but to Harry Gooddorf. Suddenly he stood still, lost in thought. “Say, what is it you got on him? You know where the body is buried?”
“That’s too true to be funny.”
“He knock somebody off?”
“Mr Hobby, I’m sorry I ever opened my mouth.”
“Just call me Pat. What’s your first name?”
“Helen.”
“Married?”
“Not now.”
“Well, listen Helen: what do you say we have dinner?”
2
O n the afternoon of Christmas Day , he was still trying to get the secret out of her. They had the studio almost to themselves – only a skeleton staff of technical men dotted the walks and the commissary. They had exchanged Christmas presents. Pat gave her a five-dollar bill, Helen bought him a white linen handkerchief. Very well he could remember the day when many dozen such handkerchiefs had been his Christmas harvest.
The script was progressing at a snail’s pace, but their friendship had considerably ripened. Her secret, he considered, was a very valuable asset, and he wondered how many careers had turned on just such an asset. Some, he felt sure, had been thus raised to affluence. Why, it was almost as good as being in the family, and he pictured an imaginary conversation with Harry Gooddorf.
“Harry, it’s this way. I don’t think my experience is being made use of. It’s the young squirts who ought to do the writing – I ought to do more supervising.”
“Or?”
“Or else,” said Pat firmly.
He was in the midst of his daydream when Harry Gooddorf unexpectedly walked in.
“Merry Christmas, Pat,” he said jovially. His smile was less robust when he saw Helen: “Oh, hello Helen – didn’t know you and Pat had got together. I sent you a remembrance over to the script department.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
Harry turned swiftly to Pat.
“The boss is on my neck,” he said. “I’ve got to have a finished script Thursday.”
“Well, here I am,” said Pat. “You’ll have it. Did I ever fail you?”
“Usually,” said Harry. “Usually.”
He seemed about to add more when a call boy entered with an envelope and handed it to Helen Kagle – whereupon Harry turned and hurried out.
“He’d better get out!” burst forth Miss Kagle, after opening the envelope. “Ten bucks – just ten bucks – from an executive – after eighteen years.”
It was Pat’s chance. Sitting on her desk, he told her his plan.
“It’s soft jobs for you and me,” he said. “You the head of a script department, me an associate producer. We’re on the gravy train for life – no more writing – no more pounding the keys. We might even… we might even… if things go good we could get married.”
She hesitated a long time. When she put a fresh sheet in the typewriter, Pat feared he had lost.
“I can write it from memory,” she said. “This was a letter he typed himself on February 3r