BELOVED INFIDEL

US, 1959, 123 minutes, Colour.
Gregory Peck, Deborah Kerr, Eddie Albert.
Directed by Henry King.

Beloved Infidel was a critical contradiction when it was released. Perhaps, many in Hollywood remembered F. Scott Fitzgerald and his life and career at first hand as well as his relationship with columnist Sheila Graham. As the decades have passed, audiences not familiar with the characters may be able to accept the interpretations of Gregory Peck and Deborah Kerr more favourably. However, Gregory Peck does not seem to be the first choice for the mercurial F. Scott Fitzgerald, the famous writer, the man down on his luck in Hollywood and becoming alcoholic. Deborah Kerr, despite From Here to Eternity and The Arrangement, was very much the ladylike person in Hollywood.

F. Scott Fitzgerald made an impact with The Great Gatsby in the 1920s, went to Hollywood and wrote a number of screenplays as well as his final novel, The Last Tycoon. His wife Zelda, with whom he lived the full socialite life of the 20s and 30s, was committed to an institution. There have been a number of telemovies about the Fitzgeralds including F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Last of the Hollywood Belles. His companion in later life (though he died at the age of forty) was Sheila Graham. This film is based on her memoirs – and so looking favourably at the relationship.

The film is a glimpse of Hollywood and its high lifestyle, the pressure on its writers, the notion of celebrity, the role of journalists and the media in perpetuating the myths of Hollywood.

The film was directed by Henry King, a veteran of the silent era as well as many significant films of the 30s and 40s including The Song of Bernadette and his final film, Tender is the Night (1962 also with Jennifer Jones). During the 1950s he made a number of adaptations of Hemingway stories including The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Sun Also Rises. He also made the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Carousel.

1. The significance of the title - indication of theme?

2. How successful was the film as biography: interesting characters, a real world, a slice of history and of life, insight into characters in their times?

2. Comment on the treatment of the film, the glossy women's magazine look, the use of colour, Cinemascope, heavy musical score, romantic and sentimental atmosphere, beaches? Were these of value or did they militate against the film and its impact?

4. The appropriateness of using Gregory Peck and Deborah Kerr in these roles?

5. How well did the film focus on Sheila Graham in order to understand F.Scott Fitzgerald? Was this a helpful structure for the film?

6. What insight into the character of F. Scott Fitzgerald did the film give, his behaviour at the party, attractiveness toward Sheila, their dancing? The area of his talent? insight into human nature? at a low peak of his
Career, bound to Hollywood (the incident of signing books in the bookshop), getting money for Zelda? Fitzgerald's life at the Hollywood studios, rewriting his screenplays? the importance of his love for Sheila, her inspiration for him to write again, his zest in writing, the idyllic sequences on the beach? What had happened to him through Sheila’s influence?

7. The weakness of his character, his reaction to the rejection of the manuscript, his drinking, not changing for Sheila’s sake, his egotism on the plane, his behaviour at the radio station? What was the central weakness of his character - his low self-worth etc.?

8. The insight into his character when he became violent and desperate, his shooting of Sheila, his wish to reconcile, the note and the telephone calls? The fact that he could reconcile with Sheila? The melodrama of his attendance at the preview? The reality of his death?

9. What were the main achievements of F. Scott Fitzgerald? What were his main failures?

10. How interesting a character was Sheila Graham? her arrival in New York, her manufactured reputation, her acid tone, her relationship with Wheeler and the New York paper world?

11. Why was she sent to Hollywood, as a gossip writer, her malice against the stars, the sequences in the studio and the clash with the star, the details of her work, her radio program?

12. Why did she fall in love with Fitzgerald and what effect did it have? Her caring for him, inspiring him?

13. The significance of the beach scene, its happiness, change of mood? The humiliation of her telling the truth about herself, as a liberation for her, as relating well to Fitzgerald and trusting him?

14. What insight into her character in her nervousness, in her radio broadcasts, her wanting to continue the broadcasts,, her fear for Fitzgerald's drinking, the humiliation on the plane, in the radio studio?

15. Why was she so frightened by his violence, refused to see him again? What motivated her reconciliation? The quality of her sorrow at his death?

16. If the film were not about historical celebrities, what impact would it have made?

17. The film as a piece of Americana, about typical Hollywood people of the 1930s?