F. Scott Fitzgerald Died Here

1443 N. Hayworth Avenue/Hope Anderson Productions

Several years ago I met a man who lived at the bizarrely named Chateau Alto Nido, an old apartment building on Ivar Avenue in Hollywood. Though the Alto Nido (“High Nest” in Spanish, presumably because Le Haut Nid was too hard to pronounce) has seen better days, its fame is undiminished: it’s where the doomed screenwriter Joe Gillis lived in “Sunset Boulevard.” Its sign and Spanish Colonial enormity are immortalized in the film’s establishing shots.

When I visited the Alto Nido, hummingbirds were flying in and out of the windows, the only charming touch in a dwelling that seemed to be both an abandoned DIY renovation and the lair of a mid-level hoarder. The place was on the Franklin side and thus not Gillis’s Ivar side apartment; still, I enjoyed its proximity to hallowed cinematic ground. That is, until the man said, “Guess who died here?–the guy who wrote The Great Gatsby.”

“You’re kidding,” I said, but he was serious.

“Yeah, right here,” he insisted, pointing to an alcove.

I knew this couldn’t be true: if F. Scott Fitzgerald had keeled over at the Alto Nido, someone would have written about it, and no one had. Also, I was pretty sure the location was off the Sunset Strip. As far as the Alto Nido man’s delusions were concerned, this turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. I got out fast.

The following year I met a normal-seeming man who lived in an old building on Hayworth Avenue in West Hollywood. Much to my relief, his apartment showed no signs of chaos or hoarding; in fact, it was clean and neat. My first visit went well until he said, “You want to see where F. Scott Fitzgerald died?”

Please don’t say “in my apartment,” I thought fervently.

He pointed to a building up the street. “It’s that one.”

And people say Los Angeles isn’t literary.

He was right about the location, of course. He’d even read Fitzgerald, though not much as I had. But that’s beside the point, which is: what are the chances of my meeting two completely different men in consecutive years whose hook was Fitzgerald’s death spot?

Both men are long gone from my life, mercifully, but I still wonder about it.

Related Post:https://underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/f-scott-fitzgerald-lived-and-wrote-here/

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