Frances Kroll Ring

May 17, 1916–June 18, 2015

by JWA Staff
Our work to expand the Encyclopedia is ongoing. We are providing this brief biography for Frances Kroll Ring until we are able to commission a full entry.

Frances Kroll Ring as a young woman.

Courtesy of JoJo Jacobson.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald’s secretary and confidante in his final years, Frances Kroll Ring had a unique view of the famed author’s private self. Ring’s family moved to Los Angeles in 1938, and the following year Ring began working for F. Scott Fitzgerald, who needed a secretary who wouldn’t tell the media either about his drinking or about his writing projects. She also served as a sounding board for him, helping him on his novel The Last Tycoon. After Fitzgerald’s death in 1940, Ring worked for Paramount as a story reader. She went on to become editor of Westways, a magazine of the Auto Club of Southern California, which she envisioned as a New Yorker of the West Coast. She actively sought the best writers of her day, publishing pieces by Anais Nin and Wallace Stegner, among others. In 1985 she finally published a memoir, Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book, which was praised by Fitzgerald’s family for its honest but respectful tone, was turned into a movie, Last Call, starring Jeremy Irons and Neve Campbell. 

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Frances Kroll Ring." (Viewed on November 1, 2024) <http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ring-frances>.