Property from the Jean Hart Kislak Collection

Fitzgerald, Zelda Sayre

Autograph letter signed ("Zelda Fitzgerald")

2 pages (280 x 150 mm), to Gilbert [Seldes], 322 Sayre St., Montgomery, Ala. Ja꧅n 4, 1944; some age-toning, small stain.

An entreaty on behalf of a young actress and protégé of F. Scott Fitzgerald𒐪's, Miss Eleanor Turnbull.

Zelda writes to Seldes ("Dear Gilbert") the renowned critic and modernist tastemaker, two decades after he praised her husband's Gatsby. Indeed it seems some time has passed since the two were in touch at all, "Trusting that these years of dramatic intensities and so-compelling exigencies have not obliterated your cont♚act with the theatre ..." 

She goes on the recommend Miss Eleanor Turnbull, a protégé of Scott's "endowed with emotional power and spontaneity," who so impressed him when she was a child that he suggested t🅺hat she study to be an actress. Zelda hopes Seldes can advise Eleanor regarding the vagaries of Broadway.

Eleanor Turnbull was 9 when she met Scott. He was then a writer in residence at her parents estate outside of Baltimore, Tri𒈔mbush, while he lectured under an endowment the Turnbulls had provided to Johns Hopkins. She was frequent playmate of Scottie and her brother Andrew was onꦦe of the novelist's earliest biographers.

Eleanor did move to New York to try her luck in the theatre, but it was her roommate, Peggy Cass, who went on to a career. In any case, the child had indeed struck a chord with the writer, enough that🙈 his wife was willing to provide references so many years after their days in Baltimore, and some fou✱r years after Scott died.