F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American writer whose works primarily depict the freewheeling roaring twenties lifestyle among the rich and celebrated. His best known novel, The Great Gatsby, encapsulates the concepts.
His short stories, while covering the same theme, sometimes verged into more fantastic territory, as in "The Diamond as Big as a Ritz" (in which an obscenely rich family hide their riches from the government and kill all less wealthy friends who visit) and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (about a reverse aging man, adapted for film in 2008).
References
- The Miss Piggy Cover Girl Fantasy Calendar, for the month of December, spoofed The Saturday Evening Post, complete with an excerpted text parody of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who contributed over sixty short stories to the magazine.
- The title of the piece is "Tender Is the Frog (or) The Great Frogsby," referencing both The Great Gatsby and the final novel which the author completed in his lifetime, Tender Is the Night (1934). Neither novel actually appeared in Saturday Evening Post. The entire text parodies Fitzgerald's emphasis on how fascinating the lives of the rich are, evidenced in Gatsby but also throughout his work.
- The observers who gossip about Kermit are Anson Hunter and Paula Legendre from the story "The Rich Boy" (1926).
- Miss Piggy is cast as Piggy de Cochon, alluding to Fitzgerald's tendency to use "de" in the French surnames of his wealthy women, often acquired by marrying nobility, used in "The Intimate Strangers" (1935) and "The Discard" (posthumously published in 1948).
- Piggy de Cochon is a debutante, as in the author's early play The Debutante (1917). Fitzgerald reworked the play and other writings into his first novel This Side of Paradise (1920), which alludes to two characters meeting in the resort town Bar Harbor in Maine (Boar Harbor here). Bar Harbor was also name dropped in one of Fitzgerald's actual Saturday Evening Post stories, "The Perfect Life" (1929).
Connections
see The Great Gatsby for more
- Robert De Niro played Monroe Stahr in The Last Tycoon (1976 film)
- Shelley Duvall played Bernice in Bernice Bobs Her Hair (TV, 1976)
- Jason Flemyng played Thomas Button in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008 film)
- Kelsey Grammer played Pat Brady in The Last Tycoon (TV, 2016-2017)
- Taraji P. Henson played Queenie in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008 film)
- Anjelica Huston played Edna in The Last Tycoon (1976 film)
- Elias Koteas played Monsieur Gateau in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008 film)
- Roger Moore played Paul in The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954 film)
- Julia Ormond played Caroline in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008 film)
- Robert Picardo played Leopold Ferber in The Last Tycoon episode "Eine Kleine Reichmusik" (2017)
- Orson Welles played Braddock Washington in "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" (radio, 1945)
