Nearly a century after F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived there, 244 South Compo Road hosted another famous name.
Actor Sam Waterston recently toured the historic home, now owned by Jeannine Flower. He then sat for an interview with Professor Walter Raubichek, a noted Fitzgerald scholar at Pace University.
The walk-through and interview were filmed by Westporters Deej Webb and Robert Steven Williams. They’re working on a project about Fitzgerald’s time in town.
Channeling F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (from left): Robert Steven Williams, Sam Waterston, Professor Walter Raubicheck, Jeannine Flower and Deej Webb.
The filmmakers believe that Fitzgerald’s 6 months in Westport — May through October, 1920 — were pivotal to his writing.
(It was certainly pivotal to the newly married couple’s relationship. According to Webb and Williams, “their love was still in full bloom.”)
Scott wrote in his essay “100 False Starts” that a writer has 2 or 3 great life experiences, then recycles them over and over.
“We’ve set out to prove that Westport is one of those great experiences,” the filmmakers says. “We’re posing this to the international Fitzgerald community, and getting remarkable responses. That journey is what this film is all about.”
The film will premiere at the Westport Historical Society. No word on whether Sam Waterston will attend.
If you’d like to find out more about this home/property; please look at
http://www.244CompoRoadSouth.com
The late Lorna Christopherson, long time Westport resident in her family’s property on Riverside Avenue (it was the Enos house , and was a real mansion which has been torn down to make room for three McMansions) contended that Fitzgerald had been inspired to write his masterpiece The Great Gatsby by his stay in Westport. She said that the house at 244 Compo Road where Fitzgerald lived became the narrator’s cottage, and Longshore, which apparently was then an elegant private estate, was Gatsby’s estate. The Christopherson/Enos estate across the Saugatuck River, she said, was Daisy’s estate….complete with it’s green light at the end of the dock.
Of course it’s all hearsay, but yet another interesting Westport sidebar.
And of course, Waterston previously channeled Fitzgerald in his performance in The Great Gatsby film with Redford and Farrow! That’s a classic movie version. I have yet to see DiCaprio’s Gatsby – not feeling that one, just yet. Looks like a big hot mess. But, I digress …
🙂
I don’t know about Lorna Christopherson’s ideas about “Gatsby” but another Westport resident, Barbara Probst Solomon, who lived near the Saugatuck Yacht Club, also had a similar idea. She wrote a long article in the New Yorker magazine about this–I don’t remember the date of the article.
Here’s the link to that 1996 New Yorker article: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1996/09/09/1996_09_09_078_TNY_CARDS_000373984