Episode 53: In Montgomery, Alabama, a few streets away from the Alabama State University campus, is a museum dedicated to the most famous couple of the 1920’s, F. Scott and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. For many, the Fitzgeralds provide the lens through which we now understand, or attempt to understand, the Roaring Twenties.

The Fitzgerald Museum is housed in the last home that the couple lived in together.  Scott and Zelda never owned a home and famously never settled down.  They rented this house in 1931-32, and since 1999 it is the one place in the world that the lay person can visit to learn of Scott and Zelda’s legacy.   The Fitzgerald Museum is now the permanent home that Scott and Zelda never had during their lifetime.

Brooke talks to Willie Thompson, the Executive Director of The Fitzgerald Museum, about the troubled and turbulent life of Zelda Fitzgerald and about her career as an artist.

The Fitzgerald Museum website can be found at thefitzgeraldmuseum.org and has information on the museum’s events including a breakfast celebrating Scott’s 120th birthday on Saturday, September 24, 2016, and an annual Fitzgerald Gala which takes place in April.  The Fitzgerald Gala is a “Jazz Age” party of epic proportions, and guests from all over the southeastern United States will be in attendance, decked out in 1910s, ’20s, and ’30s costumes.

Anniversary Painting, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

Notre Dame, Paris  Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

 

Zelda Gawaine,  Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

Rhododendrons, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

Featured Image:  Candler, North Carolina, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald