Editor’s Note: This event took place exactly one week before Hurricane Helene roared through Asheville. The Omni Grove Park Inn escaped serious damage, but the lack of potable water and power outages forced a temporary closure. Check their website for updates on current hours of operation.
For an Asheville native with both six-degree and fandom ties to Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, a night of stepping into the flair and feel of 100 years ago provided a fanciful taste of their life and times.
Courtesy Omni Grove Park Inn
Flappers sipped cocktails on the patio.
Famed writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his beloved wife, Zelda, knew how to embrace the decadent 1920s. They drank and danced and partied their way across New York City and beyond to Europe. They personified the glamour and glitz of what Fitzerald dubbed “The Jazz Age,” yet they were wreckless in love and in life.
Marla Milling dressed for the occasion.
R. Clifton Spargo, who authored “Beautiful Fools, The Last Affair of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald,” detailed some of their shenanigans in a 2013 article writing, “As a young married couple they took New York City by storm, stripping and splashing in the fountain outside the Plaza Hotel, spinning round and round in the revolving doors of the Commodore Hotel until the exasperated management asked them to leave, and riding on the hood of moving taxi cabs.”
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to attend a party with the flamboyant Fitzgeralds. Even though their lives spiraled into depression and madness and loss, the image of them laughing and stealing the show during their heyday in the Roaring ’20s has always had a pull on me.
Courtesy Omni Grove Park Inn
A friendly game of croquet on the lawn was part of the early evening.
In many ways, my fascination with the Fitzgeralds is linked with my interest in Thomas Wolfe. I grew up hearing stories about Wolfe from my grandmother, who grew up knowing Tom and other members of his family.
My great-grandmother, who died a week before I was born, also held a close friendship with the Wolfes. Asheville was a smaller place in those years and most everyone knew everyone else, which is why Wolfe’s novel, “Look Homeward, Angel,” brought him death threats. People recognized the neighbors he was writing about in his book and didn’t always appreciate his truth. My grandmother was a personal friend of Tom, and Tom was a personal friend of Fitzgerald. I love having a six-degrees type of connection to these writers.
It’s been a long-time bucket list item, of sorts, to find a portal to the past where I could “meet” the Fitzgeralds. I recently found a way to check it off my list, not by going backwards, but by stepping forward into a modern rendition of a jazz evening around 100 years later.
I recently found myself at a Gin & Jazz weekend at the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, held in honor of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday. Guests looked like they had just stepped out of a 1920s fashion magazine. The women wore colorful flapper dresses embellished with a ton of sequins, beads and fringe hemlines, fancy headbands and in some cases, long gloves. Some of the men wore top hats and spats.
Courtesy Omni Grove Park Inn
Queen Bee and the Honeylovers cranked out Jazz tunes.
Bartenders, also wearing 1920s outfits, crafted cocktails from Fitzgerald’s favorite vice—gin. A local band, Queen Bee and the Honeylovers, kept the mood lively with jazz tunes that encouraged dancing, and partygoers mingled around tables laden with charcuterie boards, salmon, oysters Rockefeller and decadent desserts.
Courtesy Omni Grove Park Inn
The barmaid and barkeep were also dressed in period attire.
With everyone in costume, it was easy to feel connected to a past time where cell phones were perhaps not even yet a figment of anyone’s imagination and face-to-face communication prevailed. It was a throwback to an era and a reminder to simply enjoy the moment.
The liquor flowed, the dancing was lively, but no one in the crowd seemed as wreckless or as attention-seeking as I imagine Scott and Zelda would have. I suppose they would have been quite the talk of the party as they remained at the center of all the activity.
As I nursed my gin concoction on the patio, I tried to imagine Fitzgerald’s time at this place in the 1930s. Zelda was in nearby Highland Hospital. Scott was holed up at the Grove Park Inn trying to write, but drinking a lot of beer instead as he tried to wean himself from his gin addiction, and was dealing with depression.
Courtesy Omni Grove Park Inn
Much of the night was danced away.
He suffered a diving accident at Beaver Lake and broke his shoulder, and then he accepted an interview with the New York Post and it brought to light all of his weaknesses. It’s said the article spiraled him deeper into oblivion, to the point of considering suicide. The heyday was over and his days in Asheville were among his most miserable.
But for this one night, I shook off the thoughts of the demons that troubled both Scott and Zelda and chose instead to think of them madly in love, fostering their creativity, laughing and living life wide open with dance shoes on and a bottle of gin nearby.
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2025 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!