Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald (October 26, 1921 – June 18, 1986) was the only child of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. She was a writer, a journalist (for The Washington Post and The New Yorker among others), and a prominent member of the United States Democratic Party. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1992.
"Scottie" was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her mother supposedly remarked upon her birth that she hoped she would be a "beautiful little fool." In The Great Gatsby (1925), Daisy Buchanan says that about her daughter.
Scottie and her first husband, Samuel Jackson (Jack) Lanahan, a prominent Washington lawyer, were popular hosts in Washington in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, she wrote musical comedies about the Washington social scene which were performed annually to benefit the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Washington. Her show Onward and Upward with the Arts was considered for a Broadway run by director David Merrick.
Scottie had four children with her first husband, the eldest of whom, known as Tim, committed suicide at age 27. Eleanor Lanahan (known as Bobbie), an artist and writer, is the author of the biography, Scottie, The Daughter of . . . : The Life of Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith, published in 1995.
Her second marriage to Grove Smith ended in divorce in 1979; they had been living separate lives for years. Scottie had moved earlier to her mother Zelda's hometown of Montgomery, Alabama; though she traveled more than she stayed there, she became a beloved and well-known part of the community.
Famous quotes containing the words scott fitzgerald, frances, scott and/or fitzgerald:
“I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“If Rosa Parks had taken a poll before she sat down in that bus in Montgomery, she’d still be standing.”
—Mary Frances Berry (b. 1938)
“What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)