The Fountainhead - Background

Background

In 1928 Rand was charged by Cecil B. DeMille with writing a script for what would become the film Skyscraper. The original story, by Dudley Murphy, was about two construction workers involved in building a New York skyscraper who are rivals for a woman's love. Rand rewrote the story, transforming the rivals into architects. One of them, Howard Kane, was an idealist dedicated to his mission and erecting the skyscraper despite enormous obstacles. The film would have ended with Kane throwing back his head in victory, standing atop the completed skyscraper. In the end DeMille rejected Rand's script, and the actual film followed Murphy's original idea, but Rand's version contained elements that she would later use in The Fountainhead.

Rand began The Fountainhead (originally titled Second-Hand Lives) following the completion in 1934 of her first novel, We the Living. While that earlier novel had been based partly on people and events from Rand's experiences, the new novel was to focus on the less-familiar world of architecture. Therefore, she did extensive research to develop plot and character ideas. This included reading numerous biographies and books about architecture, and working as an unpaid typist in the office of architect Ely Jacques Kahn.

Rand's intention was to write a novel that was less overtly political than We the Living, to avoid being "considered a 'one-theme' author". As she developed the story, she began to see more political meaning in the novel's ideas about individualism. Rand also initially planned to introduce each chapter with a quote from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose ideas had influenced her own intellectual development. However, she eventually decided that Nietzsche's ideas were too different from her own. The quotes were not placed in the published novel, and she edited the final manuscript to remove other allusions to him.

Rand's work on The Fountainhead was repeatedly interrupted. In 1937 she took a break from it to write a novella called Anthem. She also completed a stage adaptation of We the Living that ran briefly in early 1940. That same year she also became actively involved in politics, first working as a volunteer in the presidential campaign of Wendell Willkie, then attempting to form a group for conservative intellectuals. As her royalties from earlier projects ran out, she began doing freelance work as a script reader for movie studios. When Rand finally found a publisher, the novel was only one-third complete.