The Death of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Tragic End to a Literary Genius

Fitzgerald achieved sobriety over a year before his death, and Graham described their last year together as one of the happiest times of their relationship. On the night of December 20, 1940, Fitzgerald and Graham attended the premiere of This Thing Called Love. As the couple left the Pantages Theatre, a sober Fitzgerald experienced a dizzy spell and had difficulty walking to his vehicle. Watched by onlookers, he remarked in a strained voice to Graham, "I suppose people will think I'm drunk." The following day, as Fitzgerald annotated his newly arrived Princeton Alumni Weekly, Graham saw him jump from his armchair, grab the mantelpiece, and collapse on the floor without uttering a sound. Lying flat on his back, he gasped and lapsed into unconsciousness. After failed efforts to revive him, Graham ran to fetch Harry Culver, the building's manager. Upon entering the apartment, Culver stated, "I'm afraid he's dead." Fitzgerald died of a heart attack due to occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis at 44 years old. On learning of her father's death, Scottie telephoned Graham from Vassar and asked she not attend the funeral for social propriety. In Graham's place, her friend Dorothy Parker attended the visitation held in the back room of an undertaker's parlor. Observing few other people at the visitation, Parker murmured "the poor son of a bitch"—a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in The Great Gatsby. When Fitzgerald's poorly embalmed corpse arrived in Bethesda, Maryland, only thirty people attended his funeral. Among the attendees were his only child, Scottie, his agent Harold Ober, and his lifelong editor Maxwell Perkins. Despite his literary brilliance, Fitzgerald did not live to see the resurgence of his work’s popularity. His funeral was a modest affair, with only a handful of mourners in attendance, reflecting how much his reputation had declined. However, in the decades following his death, Fitzgerald’s work was rediscovered and celebrated as some of the greatest in American literature. Today, he is recognized as one of the defining voices of the Jazz Age, and his novels are studied and revered worldwide. His tragic life and death only add to the mythos of a writer who captured both the dazzling allure and the deep disillusionment of the American Dream. #FScottFitzgerald #LiteraryLegend #TheGreatGatsby #JazzAge #LostGeneration #AmericanLiterature #MomentsOfLife #MoofLife_Moment #MoofLife