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A Stuga On the Cusp of the Orust Riviera, tucked away next to a hobbit hole in the woods.

The Pat Hobby Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Pat Hobby Stories - F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arnold Gingrich
bookshelves: shortstory-shortstories-novellas, under-1000-ratings, published-1940, lit-richer-jan-2016, lit-richer, silver-screen, teh-demon-booze, radio-4, north-americas, us-los-angeles
Recommended to Bettie☯ by: Laura
Recommended for: BBC Radio Listeners
Read from January 11 to 12, 2016

 



Description: Alfred Molina reads F. Scott Fitzgerald's brilliant stories of late 1930s Hollywood, directed by Martin Jarvis.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013q20y

Episode 1/3: Pat Hobby's Secret: Since the advent of the talkies, hack screen writer Pat Hobby has fallen on hard times and hard liquor. Now, desperately in need of a studio writing job, he pursues a drunken movie director and obtains some secret information about a crucial film script idea. Producer Banizon is prepared to buy the idea from Pat, because the knowledge could save his next movie. So can Pat Hobby, at last, hold the studio up to ransom before spilling the beans? Maybe. But death and desperation make things even more problematic than usual for Pat.

Episode 2/3: Teamed with Genius: Studio head Jack Berners calls hack writer Pat Hobby into his office. Surprisingly he has a writing job for him. Pat seems ready for it. Berners teams him with British writer, Rene Wilcox. It's ballet picture. As Pat leaves the office Berners calls him back and puts some dollars in his hand. 'Get a new hat,' he says, 'You used to be quite a boy around the secretaries in the old days. Don't give up at forty-nine!' But over in the Writers' Building Pat discovers that Wilcox has never written for the cinema before, and doesn't want to collaborate. Can Hobby survive? Will he have to do some proper writing at last?

Episode 3/3: Pat Hobby Does His Bit: It is a difficult business, in Hollywood, to borrow money from an actor on a set during the shooting of a moving picture. But Pat Hobby is desperate. It's the stiffest chore Pat has ever undertaken but he's doing it to save his car. His old jalopy might not seem worth saving but, because of Hollywood's great distances, it's an indispensable tool of the writer's trade. But what Pat doesn't foresee is that, because of this financial arrangement, his whole life in pictures is about to change.