Diary

20 June 2009

Barry Humphries opens his diary

An Australian woman told me I must see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, though I could hardly believe that Fitzgerald’s whimsical tale could ever be fattened out into a movie. ‘Look, you’ll love it,’ she said, ‘and it’s a true story!’ F. Scott Fitzgerald’s secretary Frances is an old friend of mine, now 93, and she is still very pretty, funny and lively. She was the author’s PA, before the initials were invented, during the last two years of his life, for she did his shopping, dumped his gin bottles in Sepulveda Canyon and even made his funeral arrangements. Frances once told Scott that in the afterlife he might be required to make little ships to put in all the bottles he had ever emptied. Delighted, Fitzgerald used this line in one of his last ‘Pat Hobby’ stories. I hear my extravagant countryman Baz Luhrman is planning to make another Great Gatsby movie. If he does it will be number six and none of them have been any good. In my copy of the book Fitzgerald has written to someone, ‘You might have seen the movie, but I think the book stands by itself.’ I think I might show this to Baz.

© Barry Humphries