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Frances Kroll Ring worked as the secretary and typist for F. Scott Fitzgerald starting in 1939, when he was living in Encino on the property of actor Edward Everett Horton. Fitzgerald was writing stories and "The Love of the Last Tycoon" at the time, and also drinking a lot to the chagrin of Horton. One of Ring's jobs was to collect Fitzgerald's empty gin bottles and dump them in Sepulveda Canyon so the landlord would not find them. Fitzgerald put a fictionalized version of Ring in his stories about a screenwriter he named Pat Hobby. Fitzgerald died in 1940 after moving into Hollywood with his girlfriend, gossip columnist Sheilah Graham.
Ring has spoken or written about her time with Fitzgerald many times, including in her 1985 memoir, "Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald." She died last Thursday at home in Benedict Canyon after a short illness. Ring's memoir was made into a Showtime movie called "Last Call" in 1992, with her role played by Neve Campbell.
From Carolyn Kellogg in the LA Times:
Ring was born May 17, 1916, in the Bronx, New York, the daughter of a furrier. Her family moved to Los Angeles with an eye toward serving Hollywood's glamorous clientele. But it was her outsider status, according to legend, that appealed to Fitzgerald when he hired her. He didn't want news of his Hollywood novel getting back to Hollywood.
"We talked a lot about books and movies and the state of the world, which was in chaos," Ring told the Times in 1993. "He never treated me as someone who was working for him. He treated me as an equal."
Ring wrote freelance book reviews for the LA Times and in 1972 became the editor of Westways, bringing literary bylines into the Auto Club magazine.
Photo of Ring during a visit to the University of Montana in 2007. The Missoulian.
