[1] In the original publication of The Vegetable, or From President to Postman (1923), F. Scott Fitzgerald included the following quotation on the title page: “Any man who doesn’t want to get on in the world, to make a million dollars, and maybe even park his toothbrush in the White House, hasn’t got as much to him as a good dog has—he’s nothing more or less than a vegetable.” Fitzgerald used this quotation, which he claimed came “from a current magazine,” as a springboard for his only published play.

This comic romp satirizes the ambitions of an ordinary man who wants to be President of the United States—that is, if he cannot make it as a postman.

The Captured Shadow [5]), and his work was generally recognized for qualities that should have translated to the stage: "he wrote commercially successful stories; he knew how to frame a scene; and his dialogue, at least in his best fiction, was smart, sophisticated, evocative.

[7] Its premiere, in a single preview (Nov. 19, 1923) at Nixon's Apollo Theatre in Atlantic City, New Jersey,[8] was widely regarded as a disaster.

[9] While Fitzgerald claimed to be proud of the work, and had hoped it would succeed, the critical and public reaction to the first and only performance left the author in a deep depression, followed by a drinking binge.