The Omni Grove Park Inn to Celebrate Fitzgerald Weekend with Gin & Jazz Social

Press Release

In celebration of F. Scott Fitzgerald during his birthday month, The Omni Grove Park Inn, a luxury resort nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Asheville, NC, will be hosting a roaring 20s themed Fitzgerald weekend in September.

The Gatsby-era themed event, Gin + Jazz Social will feature small plates paired with gin cocktails made in partnership with Chemist Spirits, party games, and live music from Firecracker Jazz Band, with 1920’s attire fully encouraged!

For guests looking to stay the weekend they can book the F. Scott Fitzgerald Weekend Package. The package is available to book from September 20 – September 26 and includes the following:

• Brunch on Sunday, September 24^th (GIN & JAZZ MENU)
• Parking for one vehicle per night
• One ticket per registered adult to the Gin & Jazz Social, ages 21+ only
• Guided tours of Fitzgerald’s guest rooms
• One themed keepsake bundle

Additionally, F. Scott Fitzgerald tours will be available with the resort’s resident F. Scott Fitzgerald expert, Dr. Railsback.

Dr. Railsback’s F. Scott Fitzgerald Fun Facts

• F. Scott Fitzgerald, already familiar with the Asheville area, stayed at the Grove Park Inn in the summer of 1935; as his finances allowed, he returned to the Inn in the summer and into the fall of 1936.
• He came to the Grove Park Inn to escape his troubles in Baltimore, where his TB was resurging, his alcoholism was taking over, he was indebted to his agent and publisher, where his wife, Zelda, was institutionalized, and where he was quarreling with his teenage daughter, Scottie.
• He also came to the Grove Park Inn to find some peace and the discipline needed to write; the Inn was his kind of place, an elegant locale that invited the wealthy set that Fitzgerald tended to write about. He was looking for inspiration, if not a little drama.
• Fitzgerald’s plans for discipline did not work at the Grove Park; he thought he could wean himself off gin by drinking beer instead—the plan backfired, and Scott simply drank more beer than gin anyway.
• He chose rooms 441 and 443 so he could watch and eavesdrop on people arriving at the Inn. He tended to dine in his room, eating very little and relying on a steady diet of Coca-Cola, chocolate bars, cigarettes, beer, and gin. He often greeted visitors while wearing his bathrobe.
• In 1936, while at the Inn, he went for a high dive and broke his shoulder. The staff at the Grove Park rigged up a special desk so he could work more easily with a cast, but he produced very little work (instead writing many letters). He completed one short story while in his rooms, “Thumbs Up,” a tale from the Civil War that was not one of his best efforts.
• In 1936, he had Zelda brought to the Highland Hospital for treatment; the two rarely dined together at the Grove Park. She tended to make him nervous, and when he was nervous, he drank. And when he drank, he upset her. They acknowledged in letters that they had a great love affair, while at the same time they were terrible for each other.
• At the low point of Scott’s stay at the Grove Park, he fell in the bathroom down the hall, unable to get up due to his shoulder cast. From this event he developed what he called a mild form of arthritis so that he was largely immobilized for five weeks.
• When he left the Grove Park Inn in 1936, his situation was so bad (among other things, his books were not selling), that he might have been forgotten altogether.
• Suffering his first heart attack in November 1940, he knew completing the book was a race against time. He lost, however, and died of a heart attack in Sheilah’s apartment on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44.
• The uncompleted novel, The Last Tycoon, was published posthumously and the work was well-received—it was the beginning of his turnaround. Scribner’s began reissuing his works and by the 1950s Fitzgerald became an industry among high school teachers, critics, and college professors.

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