Following Fitzgerald's adaptation of his short story "The Vegetable" into a play, he and Zelda moved to Great Neck, Long Island to be near Broadway. Although he hoped that this was the beginning of a lucrative career in theater, the play's November 1923 premiere was a critical and commercial disaster. In a letter, Zelda claimed that the audience were “so obviously bored” and that some even walked out during the second act. Fitzgerald himself wrote that "I wanted to stop the show and say it was all a mistake but the actors struggled heroically on." During the second intermission, Fitzgerald and Lardner asked the lead actor, Ernest Truex, "Are you going to stay and do the last act?" The actor replied that he was, at which the pair of writers declared that they were leaving for the nearest bar. Fitzgerald turned to short stories to pay the debt he had incurred in developing his play. He despised his short stories, saying they were "all trash and it nearly broke my heart."