The television film depicts both Zelda Fitzgerald (Blythe Danner) and her fictionalized counterpart Ailie Calhoun (Susan Sarandon) as a Southern belle who is politically indifferent to ongoing societal events. Yet, according to Nancy Milford's award-winning biography "Zelda" (1970), Zelda Fitzgerald was politically active throughout her life. She often attended weekly meetings of the Daughters of the Confederacy. As she aged, Zelda became increasingly reactionary in her political views. According to Milford's biography, Zelda became "taken with the idea of fascism as a way of holding everything together, of ordering the masses." When an acquaintance visited Zelda in March 1947, she declared that fascism served "to keep things from falling apart and to keep the finer things from being lost or extinguished."
Although this television film is remarkably accurate in its depiction of the lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald, the film omits any reference to Ginevra King, Scott's first love. This is due to the fact that the full extent of Scott's relationship with Ginevra was not known to biographers until the 2000s. During his courtship of Zelda, Scott wrote Ginevra each day and begged her to resume their previous romantic relationship. As the affections between Zelda and Scott cooled after their marriage, Scott continued to obsess over the loss of Ginevra and, for the remainder of his life, Scott could not think of Ginevra "without tears coming to his eyes". Fitzgerald immortalized Ginevra as the character of Daisy Buchanan in his novel "The Great Gatsby" (1925).
While this movie was filming in Savannah, Georgia, in 1973, the cast and crew received a visit from Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, the only child of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. A photo of Scottie posing with Richard Chamberlain (F. Scott), Blythe Danner (Zelda), Leslie Williams (Scottie), and director George Schaeffer is in the collection of the Scottie Fitzgerald Smith Papers at the Archives and Special Collections Library at Vassar College.
Given the timing of its release, George Schaefer's F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'the Last of the Belles' (1974) was often compared by critics to Jack Clayton's The Great Gatsby (1974) released the same year. Despite the massive difference in budgets, critics considered this television film to be a more accurate and evocative of the Jazz Age than the theatrical film.
Filmed entirely on location in Savannah, Georgia.