Taps at Reveille.

Taps at Reveille was published in 1935 and is a collection of 18 short stories, the final collection of short stories Fitzgerald published. He chose for inclusion in this volume what he considered his best short stories from the previous decade. The Freshest Boy, Crazy Sunday, and Babylon Revisited are the more popular short stories. Edith Walton reviewed the collection in The New York Times (1935): "Basil Duke Lee [in The Freshest Boy] is a bright, sensitive, likable boy, constantly betrayed by a fatal tendency to brag and boss. He knows his failing, especially after the minor hell of his first year at boarding school, but again and again he is impelled to ruin an initial good impression, Mr. Fitzgerald is always miraculously adept at describing adolescent love affairs and adolescent swagger." Walton considered Babylon Revisited, however, "probably the most mature and substantial story in the book. A rueful farewell to the Jazz Age, its setting is Paris and its tone one of anguish for past follies." In 1954, the short story was cinematized by MGM and starred Elizabeth Taylor and Roger Moore's as his Hollywood debut. The Oscar winning title song, by Jerome Kern, featured first in Lady Be Good (1941) but it was popularized by its play in this beloved drama. Film critic Bosley Crowther praised it when she said, "Where Fitzgerald did it in a few words-in a few subtle phrases that evoked a reckless era of golden dissipation toward the end of the Twenties' boom-Richard Brookshas done it in a nigh two-hour assembly of bistro balderdash and lush, romantic scenes" (Crowther, 1954). Consequently, Taps at Reveille both sheds light on the literary and cinematic climate of the decade and provides insight into some of Fitzgerald's final publications. Fitzgerald dedicated Taps at Reveille to his literary agent Harold Ober, who worked also for writers of Walton's status - J.D. Salinger and William Faulkner.