A Hollywood hack who has fallen on hard times since the end of the Silent Era, Pat Hobby spends his time hanging out in the studio lot attempting to devise schemes – such as pressing his secretary for blackmail material against a studio executive – to get more work and earn on-screen credits. Oblivious to his own shortcomings and filled with feelings of self-importance, he embarks on a course towards ever-increasing humiliation, suffering setbacks on both the professional and romantic fronts.
A vivid account of Hollywood and its politics and hierarchies, these stories – which draw from Fitzgerald’s own travails as a screenwriter – were first printed in Esquire, although they were written with a view to being published as a cohesive volume.