The trip south wasn’t a complete waste, however, because he found the love of his life: a charming and strong-willed Southern belle. The two fell in love, but the girl refused to marry him because he didn’t have enough money. So he set out to earn the fortune that would win his fiancée back to him.

“Babylon Revisited” was one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s finest short stories. It was published in The Saturday Evening Post on February 21, 1931, and in 1954, it was adapted into a movie called The Last Time I Saw Paris.

Up to this point, the story describes the early career of both the fictional Jay Gatsby and his creator, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gatsby eventually went to work for bootleggers. Fitzgerald returned home to Minnesota and threw himself into writing. Within a year, his career took off when he was discovered by both a book publisher and the editors of The Saturday Evening Post.

In April 1920, Scribner published his first novel, This Side of Paradise. The book was an immediate success; the entire first edition of 60,000 copies sold out within three days.

But even before the novel hit bookstores, the Post was publishing his short stories. Years later, he recalled his excitement at the news of the Post accepting his work: “I’d like to get a thrill like that again but I suppose it’s only once in a lifetime.” The Post’s editors liked his work and published six of his stories in 1920 alone.

Any writer published in the Post during the 1920s would have felt that he or she had ‘arrived.’ No other magazine offered such a large audience—2.5 million readers—or such large payments. Even though he was still an unproven author, Fitzgerald received $400 for his first story. Within a year, the editors had increased his fee to $500. By 1929, they were paying him $4,000 for every story, which would be, roughly, $54,000 today. He began to live extravagantly, spending money as if it would always come as quickly and as easily.

He never again enjoyed the success with a novel as he did with his first. For the rest of his 20-year career, the majority of his income came from short stories—168 of them. And most of this money came from the Post, which published 65 of his stories between 1920 and 1937.

Fitzgerald knew that writing would win him the recognition and success he needed. It would enable him to live like the wealthy students he’d met at Princeton: young men with carefree, careless manners and a natural assumption of privilege and preference. His new wealth also helped convince that charming Southern belle, Zelda Sayre, to marry him. And so, with the Post’s money burning a hole in the pocket of his raccoon coat, Fitzgerald and his free-spending wife began a spree of lavish living that continued through the decade.

His earnings introduced him to the world of Gatsby. He entered a nonstop party, surrounded by the sounds of hot jazz and an ocean of bootleg liquor that extended from nightclubs to exclusive New York hotels. He moved into an exclusive area on Long Island, New York, and eventually relocated to France, where he spent his time among wealthy American émigrés in Paris and the French Riviera.

This new life brought him into close contact with the wealthy, including aimless young people with inherited fortunes. He began to see the emptiness that often lay at the heart of success and the dark edges of the Great American Dream.

In “How to Live on $36,000 a Year,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that three months after marrying Zelda, “I found one day to my horror that I didn’t have a dollar in the world. … This particular crisis passed the next morning when the discovery that publishers sometimes advance royalties sent me hurriedly to mine.”

Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald entertained lavishly and continually, spending money on a scale that’s hard to imagine. In 1924, he wrote an article for the Post entitled “How To Live on $36,000 a Year.” It is a humorous piece describing the ineffectual attempts he and his wife made to live within a budget. He wrote it after he realized that, in a single year, he’d burned through the 2013 equivalent of half a million dollars. A few months later, the Post published “How To Live On Practically Nothing A Year,” which told how he moved to Europe where he could live comfortably for far less money. But even with a favorable exchange rate, he had trouble keeping ahead of his spending.

He completed The Great Gatsby while living in France. It is perhaps his greatest work: concise, intriguing, and peopled with memorable characters. Like all his works, it is beautifully written, created by a great writer at the height of his powers. Fitzgerald built his stories with the precision and care of a master jeweler. There is not one wasted or poorly chosen word, or one flabby sentence in its 200 pages.

He wanted to write more novels, but he never escaped money problems. As long as the Post continued to pay him so well, he continued writing stories for its pages. Though they weren’t novels, Fitzgerald was proud of his talent for producing these “commercial” pieces. He knew writing magazine fiction was far more difficult than it looked, and he was good at it. His Post stories contain some of his finest, most readable works: “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” “The Last Belle,” “Babylon Revisited,” “The Ice Palace,” and all the Basil and Josephine stories.

His work for the Post didn’t give him the satisfaction he got from writing The Great Gatsby, which he told a friend was “about the best American novel ever written.” But without the support of the Post, Gatsby would never have been born.

Read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories in Gatsby Girls, a collection of his first eight short stories originally published in The Saturday Evening Post and accompanied by original illustrations and beautiful cover images. Available to purchase in both print and digital editions.

For more information, visit shopthepost.com.

How The Saturday Evening Post Helped Create Gatsby The Saturday Evening Post

Award Winners

© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Lassie Come Home (1943)

You’ll be surprised at which cast member earned the biggest bucks on this set.
Read more >>

2. Red River (1948)

Two of this film’s principal stars almost weren’t cast due to fears they wouldn’t get along—which turned out to be true!
Read more >>

3. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

One of the most popular Westerns ever made—and it could have happened without John Wayne!
Read more >>

4. The Quiet Man (1952)

A famous actress broke her hand while slapping away her co-star’s advances during the production of this film.
Read more >>

5. Lili (1953)

Though it predates the age of email, this movie is credited with the first use of a popular emoticon.
Read more >>

6. The Sand Pebbles (1966)

You’ll never guess what famous movie this director was working on at the same time he made Sand Pebbles.
Read more >>

7. Death on the Nile (1978)

Sometimes filming on location is a treat … and sometimes, it’s a cramped, sweltering ordeal.
Read more >>

8. Fail Safe (1964, 2000)

This movie might have been more successful if it hadn’t been for a poorly timed satire with a strikingly similar plot.
Read more >>

9. True Grit (1969, 2010)

Two famous actresses turned down the role of Mattie Ross in the 1969 adaptation.
Read more >>

Popular Films

1. Call of the Wild (1935)

You’d never know this story was supposed to be about the dog, thanks to this wildly popular debonair male lead.
Read more >>

2. And Then There Were None (1945)

Perhaps one of the most copied plot lines of all time, you’d be surprised at which popular TV shows have retold the tale.
Read more >>

Oscar Winners Inspired by the Post The Saturday Evening Post

© RKO

“Command” by James Warner Bellah was fist published by the Post in June of 1948 and tells the story of Capt. Nathan Brittles, who is forced to evacuate the commanding officer’s wife and their niece, Olivia Dandridge, from the fort after the fall of Custer and the 7th Cavalry. Olivia catches the eyes of two young officers, and when she starts to wear a yellow ribbon in her hair—a sign that she has a beau in the Cavalry—but refuses to reveal who she’s wearing it for, trouble ensues.

The story was adapted for the big screen in 1949 under the name She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Directed by John Ford, the film starred Joanne Dru, John Agar, Harry Carey Jr., and John Wayne as Captain Nathan Brittles. It has become one of the most popular westerns ever made, and on a $1.6 million budget, one of the most expensive. TCM’s Leonard Maltin rated it 3 and a half out of four stars.

It’s also one of Wayne’s most popular westerns, although ironically, Ford only cast John Wayne in the lead after seeing his performance in another western—and another Post original—1948’s Red River. Ribbon won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1950.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) The Saturday Evening Post

© Paramount Pictures

Written by author Charles Portis, “True Grit” appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in 1968 as a three-part serial, was published as a novel in 1969, and then adapted to film in the same year. Starring John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, Robert Duvall as “Lucky” Ned Pepper, Glen Campbell as La Boeuf, and Kim Darby as heroine Mattie Ross, the film garnered a Golden Globe win for Best Motion Picture, two Oscar noms, and one Best Actor win for John Wayne—his only Academy Award.

Sallie Field and Mia Farrow were both considered for the role of Mattie Ross but turned it down, a decision Farrow later called the worst mistake she ever made.

In 2010, the Cohen brothers’ remake, starring Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, Matt Damon, and newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, grossed more than $100 million and earned ten Academy Award nominations, but failed to take home an Oscar.

True Grit (1969, 2010) The Saturday Evening Post

© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Widely considered one of Agatha Christie’s best who-dunnits, “The Ten Little Indians” first appeared in the Post on May 20, 1939, and ran as a six-part serial before it was published in book form in 1940.

The murder-mystery tale featuring ten strangers who are slowly picked off, one by one, by a mysterious killer made a gripping story for the big screen. Starring Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, and Louis Hayward, the film adheres to the ending of the Ten Little Indians play rather than the novel, which had a considerably darker ending that audiences disliked, and which Christie re-wrote herself to include a romance and a happier resolution. In fact, only the 1987 Soviet film version kept the novel’s original ending.

The 1945 incarnation is the most true to the book, however, and is typically the most popular film adaptation, earning a four-star rating from Leonard Maltin and Turner Classic Movies.

While none of the seven film versions has ever attracted Academy attention, the story’s plotline has been referenced more than fifteen times in popular media, including episodes of Gilligan’s Island, Golden Girls, Supernatural, and in horror flick Friday the 13th.

And Then There Were None (1945) The Saturday Evening Post

© Distributed by Paramount Pictures

The Post first ran Agatha Christie’s “Death on the Nile” on May 13, 1937, and completed the series in eight parts. In 1978, John Guillermin directed the highly successful film adaptation starring Mia Farrow, Lois Chiles, Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith, and Peter Ustinov in the first of his six appearances as the deductive hero, Hercule Poirot. Cybill Shepherd was originally offered the role of the ill-fated Linnet Ridgeway but she turned it down.

To ensue the film’s authenticity and adherence to Christie’s storyline, it was shot on location in Egypt for seven weeks, four weeks entirely on a riverboat steamer. The mid-day heat often rose to more than 130 degrees, halting production until temperatures cooled off. Due to the size of the boat, no one was allowed to have their own dressing room, so all five leading actresses had to share a single room (how that went over, one can only speculate.)

The film was nominated for several awards, including a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film (England), one BAFTA for Best Actor (Ustinov) and two for Best Supporting Actress (Lansbury and Smith), and it won an Oscar and a BAFTA for Best Costume Design.

Death on the Nile (1978) The Saturday Evening Post

© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Drawing on his own experience aboard a Yangtze gunboat in the 1960s, author Richard McKenna set the time of his oriental tale a decade earlier, during the Northern Expedition in China. The three-part story first appeared in the Post in November 1962 and made its film debut in 1966.

Pat Boone had campaigned hard for the role of protagonist Jake Holman, but director Robert Wise’s first choice was Paul Newman. In the end, the role went to Steve McQueen.

Initially slotted for nine weeks of filming, the production took seven months to complete thanks to a series of unfortunate delays, including a capsized camera boat which ruined the soundboard, monsoons in Taipei, an abscessed molar that caused McQueen to fall ill, and rumored “hostage taking” of several cast member passports by the Chinese government until additional taxes were paid from filming. At the studio’s insistence, Wise reluctantly occupied the downtime with a “fill in” project he had originally rejected for being “too saccharine”—1965’s The Sound of Music.

For its troubles, Sand Pebbles was nominated for eight Golden Globes, including a win for Richard Attenborough for Best Supporting Actor, and eight Oscar nods, including Best Supporting Actor, Best Picture, and Best Actor—the only Academy Award nomination of Steve McQueen’s career. Wise was said to be so proud of the film that he held annual parties with surviving cast members to commemorate its completion.

The Sand Pebbles (1966) The Saturday Evening Post

© Columbia Pictures

The first film adaptation of Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s “Fail-Safe,” which was serialized in the Post in October 1962, was released in 1964 and starred Walter Matthau, Frits Weaver, and Henry Fonda as the American president. While it failed to gain much critical acclaim, the 2000 made-for-TV remake lured several award nominations, including a Golden Globe for Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV, three Emmy nods, and two Emmy wins.

Set during the Cold War, the remake stared Walter Cronkite, Noah Wyle, Brian Dennehy, George Clooney, and Richard Dreyfuss as the president scrambling to avert World War III when the United States accidentally drops a nuclear bomb on Moscow. Filmed in black and white, the mini series was actually broadcast live to television audiences, a feat since the set took up two sound stages on the Warner Brothers lot. Harvey Keitel was often running between the two stages just to make his cue.

Despite its positive critical reception, the mini series didn’t do so well with audiences, who had seen Columbia Pictures’ Cold War satire, Dr. Strangelove, earlier the same year. With its strikingly similar plot, audiences assumed Fail Safe was equally ridiculous and stayed away.

Fail Safe (1964, 2000) The Saturday Evening Post

© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

Hailed as “one of the all-time great family films” by Turner Classic Movie’s Leonard Maltin, Lassie Come Home was the first film adaptation of Eric Knight’s story by the same name, which ran in the Post on December 17, 1938.

The first of seven Lassie movies produced by MGM, the film starred Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Dame May Whitty, and a young Elizabeth Taylor, who replaced Maria Flynn in the role of Priscilla. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1944, though it failed to win a statue.

Fans may know that while the Lassie of Knight’s stories was in fact female, the dogs who played her on screen were always male, the first being Pal. For his debut film, Pal earned a salary of $250 a week—more than any of his two-legged cast mates. Every collie that has since been used in a Lassie movie has been a direct descendant of Pal.

Lassie Come Home (1943) The Saturday Evening Post

Starring Mel Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jean-Pierre Aumont, and Leslie Caron as “Lili,” this admittedly strange musical—about a man who can only express himself through his puppets and a runaway French girl who sees nothing abnormal about talking to them as if they’re real people—was based on Paul Gallico’s short story “The Man Who Hated People,” published by the Post on October 28, 1950.

The movie was nominated for a Golden Globe, two BAFTAs, and six Oscars, including an Academy win for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. It earned a four-star rating from TCM’s Leonard Maltin, and in 2004 The New York Times included Lili in their Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.

Perhaps more accomplished is the fact that the first known appearance of the “smiley” emoticon occurred on March 10, 1953 in an ad for the movie that was placed in the New York Herald Tribune. It read: “Today You’ll laugh :-) You’ll cry :-( You’ll love <3 ‘Lili’.”

Lili (1953) The Saturday Evening Post

© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

Bordon Chase’s “The Chislom Trail” was a six part series that first ran in the Post in December 1946. Brought to the silver screen in 1948 under the name Red River, the movie starred John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, and Harry Carey. Director Howard Hawks had initially offered the role of Thomas Dunson to Gary Cooper, who turned it down for fear that the character’s ruthless nature would damage his screen image.

The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Writing, and was officially preserved by the National Film Registry and the Library of Congress in 1990 for its cultural, historical, and aesthetical significance. In 2008, it ranked fifth on the American Film Institute’s list of the 10 greatest films in the “Western” genre.

Despite its moderate success, fans might never guess at the behind-the-scenes tension between Wayne and Clift that almost prevented the actors from being cast together. The two were polar opposites politically, and despite a rumored pact to avoid all discussion of politics on set, the actors eventually disliked each other so much that they avoided one another when not filming. Co-star Walter Brennan didn’t mesh well with Clift either—so much so that Clift later turned down the role of “Dude” in Rio Bravo to avoid the two actors. The role eventually went to Dean Martin.

Red River (1948) The Saturday Evening Post

©Republic Pictures

“The Quiet Man” originally appeared in the Post on February 11, 1933, and was written by Maurice Walsh.

Director John Ford tapped “River” castmate John Wayne to play Sean Thornton, an Irishman returned home to escape his past who falls in love with Mary Kate Danaher, played by Maureen O’Hara, earning the ire of her ill-tempered brother Will, whose antics to keep the lovers apart form the main plot.

Earning four stars from Leonard Maltin and TCM, it’s a fan favorite for its sweeping shots of the Irish countryside and an intense—although comical—fist fight between two principal characters. Little known is that O’Hara filmed most of the movie with a broken hand. During the wind-swept cottage scene, an indignant Mary Kate slaps Thornton for a brazen kiss, but O’Hara’s hand landed incorrectly against Wayne’s open palm, breaking a bone. Unlike most movies today, Quiet Man was being filmed in sequential order, and O’Hara was unable to wear a cast until after filming had finished.

The film grossed $3.8 million in its first year, and garnered two Golden Globe nominations and seven Oscar nods, including two Academy wins for Best Cinematography and Best Director. It’s even referenced in the 1982 movie E.T., when the eponymous alien discovers the television.

The Quiet Man (1952) The Saturday Evening Post

© United Artists

Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” was first serialized in the Post in 1908. Later published as a novel, it’s now an American classic that has been adapted to film no less than seven times since 1908.

The 1935 adaptation, starring Clark Gable as Jack Thornton, Loretta Young, and Frank Conroy, is widely considered the best adaptation thus far, despite its broad interpretation of London’s original story, and earns a 3.5 out of 4 stars from Turner Classic Movie’s Leonard Maltin. Gable is portrayed as the story’s protagonist, relegating Buck, the sled-dog-turned-St. Bernard, to a minor character who does little more than help Jack win a lucrative bet and serve as the catalyst for a romance between Gable and Young’s characters. Despite its popularity, the movie was never nominated for a single award.

In an ironic twist of life imitating art, Gable and Young had an affair on set, resulting in a hidden pregnancy and the birth of their much-speculated about love child, Judy Lewis, who confirmed the long-standing rumor in a 2004 memoir.

Call of the Wild (1935) The Saturday Evening Post

From September 30 to October 6, writer and editor Corey Michael Dalton will live 24/7 in the front window of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in downtown Indianapolis. His week-long stay, “Locked Up with Vonnegut,” is timed to coincide with Banned Books Week. To get the scoop on this unusual event, KVML Blog Editor Shannon Bahler sat down with Corey for a chat.

Shannon: So. You. Living in a window. For a week. What’s this all about?

Corey: It’s about bringing attention to Banned Books Week, which has been observed the last week of September every year since 1982. Many people are surprised to learn that books are still actively being challenged and/or banned in the U.S., but it’s true. In 2011, for example, To Kill a Mockingbird, Brave New World, and The Hunger Games trilogy were all in the list of top 10 most challenged books.

S: Why did the Vonnegut Library get involved with Banned Books Week?

C: Obviously the Vonnegut Library is opposed to censorship as a general principal, but I think the incident that really got their attention was last year’s banning of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five in Missouri. The school board in the town of Republic voted unanimously to ban the book from their high school’s library for supposedly espousing beliefs that run contrary to the Bible. The complaint was made by just one man—a man whose kids don’t even go to the public school because he chooses to homeschool them. Thankfully, the outright banning of classic works of literature is fairly rare, so the incident was reported in the media and came to the Vonnegut Library’s attention. That’s when the organization offered to send any student from that high school a free copy of Slaughterhouse-Five at the student’s request. At last count, the library had sent out around 80 free copies of the novel.

S: Is the book still banned in Republic, Missouri?

C: The book is now locked up in a secure location, only accessible by students who bring in written permission from their parents to let them check it out.

S: Ah—so that’s why the KVML’s event is called “Locked Up With Vonnegut.”

C: Exactly. I’m going to be locked up and kept from the public, just like Slaughterhouse-Five in Republic.

S: You’re going to be in the library for an entire week. How in the world did they persuade you to do this?

C: They asked. Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to convince me! Julia Whitehead, the executive director, and I have been friends for years, so she knows I’m always game for standing up for what I think is right, even if it causes me some minor discomfort. And I figure it’s only for seven days! I can get back to my normal workday life the next week.

S: Why did she ask you, specifically?

C: Aside from the fact that she knew I’d say yes, I like to think that I have some qualifications. First, I’m a writer. I just graduated from Butler University with my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and I have a couple of completed book manuscripts that I’m shopping around. So, as a writer, it really burns my britches to think of small-minded individuals trying to tell other folks what is and is not appropriate for their families to read. I can’t let that go unopposed! Second, as the editor of Jack and Jill magazine for kids, encouraging young people to read is kind of a mandate of my day job! Also, before I edited Jack and Jill, I worked as the associate editor of The Saturday Evening Post, the same magazine that first published 11 of Vonnegut’s short stories, so there’s a historic connection there between Vonnegut and me as well.

S: Don’t you think you’ll get lonely?

C: Nah! We’ve got lots of programming scheduled. For one thing, the library will be open every day that week (it’s usually closed on Wednesdays) and it will have extended hours, from noon to 7:00 p.m. Every evening at 6:00 we’ll have special “Corey’s Bedtime Stories,” where folks like Michael Moore, Dan Wakefield (Going All the Way), Ben H. Winters (Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, The Last Policeman), Michael Dahlie (A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living), and former first lady of Indiana Judy O’Bannon will read to me (and anyone else who wants to attend) from banned books such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby. There will also be a couple of movie events and a First Friday spectacular. All of these events are open to the public, of course. [See a complete schedule.]

S: Will you be doing anything while you’re in the library? Or will you just be lounging on your cot behind your wall of books?

C: I’m sure there will be plenty of lounging in my cell (although the cot isn’t that comfy), but I’ll be working as well. My employers at the nonprofit Saturday Evening Post Society have graciously agreed to let me work on Jack and Jill from the library for the week. So, I’m sure I’ll be typing on my laptop, having meetings with my staff, and making lots of phone calls in between lounging sessions. I have also agreed to blog about my experiences for this website. And Tweet. I’ll be Tweeting from @CoreyMDalton. Oh, and I’m going to write a short story, too, which we plan to post on the site at the end of the week. Whew!

S: It sounds like you’re a busy guy! I better let you go.

C: Well, before I go, I just want to let people know that they should feel free to stop in the library and say hi while I’m living there. Folks are welcome to come visit me in my cell. Or they can peep at me through a live, 24/7 webcam to make sure I’m staying true to my word. The only times I won’t be visible is if I have to run to the bathroom or take a quick shower in the library’s basement. Too much info?

S: Maybe just a bit. Thanks for talking about all this, though—and have fun!

C: I’m sure I will. Later!

Locked Up with Vonnegut The Saturday Evening Post

Ray Bradbury published his first story in the Post 62 years ago. “The World The Children Made” was followed by 12 other stories, the last being “Juggernaut,” which we printed in 2009.

Mr. Bradbury, who was 91, had been a member of the Post’s fiction board for the past few years. He wrote like nobody else, and he influenced countless other American authors. He was, and will be, imitated, but very few have been able to recreate his balance of magic, realism, humor and mystery.

Just before his last story appeared in the Post, he agreed to an interview, which you can read here.

The Post Mourns Ray Bradbury The Saturday Evening Post