The Death of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The foremost chronicler of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald died on this day in 1940, as suddenly as had the era he so deftly recorded; an alcoholic - some said from the age of 16 - and a heavy smoker as well as having twice been afflicted with tuberculosis, his heart gave out before either his liver or his lungs. Fitzgerald was dealt his fatal blow, at the age of 44, in the apartment of his girlfriend Sheilah Graham, ironically while awaiting a doctor's visit; their affair was later translated into a 1958 book which was itself later made into a 1959 film called Beloved Infidel, starring Gregory Peck and Deborah Kerr.

Following a service in Hollywood at which Dorothy Parker was among the mourners - and on the way to which the novelist Nathanael West and his wife Eileen McKenney (the real-life My Sister Eileen) died in a car crash - Fitzgerald was buried in Maryland's Rockville Union Cemetery, where following her tragic death in March 1948, he was joined by his wife Zelda; in 1975, thanks to the efforts of their daughter Frances 'Scottie' Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith and the local Women's Club, Scott and Zelda's remains were moved across town to Saint Mary's Cemetery.
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