March 10 | Zelda Fitzgerald

July 24, 1900 – March 10, 1948: Age 47

Zelda Sayre was a writer who grew up in Alabama in a prominent southern family. She was a wild kid; she danced, messed up her studies at school, drank, smoked, and hung out with boys -- not the sweet accommodating southern belle ideal of the time. Her meeting at age 18 with Scott Fitzgerald sparked one of the century's most famous romances.

Their relationship was one of like-meets-like: they were both romantic, passionate, egotistical. They fought often, but loved one another deeply; unfortunately they both drank a lot and tended to become physically violent with one another when drunk. Their daughter, Scottie, was brought up by nannies. When a magazine asked Zelda to contribute a recipe to their "Favorite Recipes of Famous Women" section, she wrote:

"See if there is any bacon, and if there is ask the cook which pan to fry it in. Then ask if there are any eggs, and if so try and persuade the cook to poach two of them. It is better not to attempt toast, as it burns very easily. Also, in the case of bacon do not turn the fire too high, or you will have to get out of the house for a week. Serve preferably on china plates, though gold or wood will do if handy."

My kinda gal. She was Scott's kinda gal too, and many of his heroines were thinly disguised versions of her, even copying portions of her diary entries into his books.

"It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald — I believe that is how he spells his name — seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home."

At the age of 30 she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, although it seems more likely she had bipolar disorder -- schizophrenia was a kind of catch-all diagnosis in the early days of psychiatry. While being treated in a residential clinic, she wrote a novel, Save Me the Waltz. When her husband read it, he was furious, as it was an autobiographical account of their marriage and, worse, contained material he planned to use in Tender Is the Night. His contempt (he called her a plagiarist and a third-rate writer) and its failure to sell well was humiliating, and it was the only novel she ever wrote.

Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, by which time Zelda was living full-time in a sanatorium. In March 1948, the hospital caught fire, and she died, along with eight other inmates.

Here's a fragment of a documentary about their meeting, including interviews with people who knew her personally as a girl.

Source: Wikipedia

January 23 | Anna Pavlova

February 12, 1881 - January 23, 1931: Age 50

Anna Pavlova was arguably the greatest dancer of her time. "Arguably" only because she was a contemporary of Nijinsky and Duncan, both also contenders. But where Nijinsky favoured the avant-garde and Duncan invented her own unique style of dance, Pavlova stuck with the classics.

She trained in Russia under the greatest teachers of the day, and rose quickly to become a soloist in the Imperial Ballet. She went on to form her own company and tour the world, becoming indisputably the world's first ballet superstar. Her most famous role was that of the Dying Swan, choreographed to Saint-Saëns' "The Swan". Although she hated film as an art form, regarding it as toxic to all "true" art, she did allow herself to be filmed dancing this famous role, and today you can see it here, on YouTube.

While touring in the Netherlands her train had a slight accident, derailing and being delayed for 12 hours. She went outside dressed only in pyjamas and a light scarf to see what was happening. As a result of this she caught a cold, which developed into pneumonia. She died three weeks later. At the end, she asked to hold her Dying Swan costume. Her last words were, "Play that last measure very softly."

Sources: Wikipedia, New York Times

September 14 | Isadora Duncan

May 27, 1877 - September 14, 1927: Age 50

Isadora Duncan was one of the greatest dancers in history. Her individualism and free style changed cultural history. Born in America, she lived most of her life in France.
I say that she changed cultural history – not just the history of dance, but much more. Here is what she wrote in 1903: "I shall not teach the children to imitate my movements, but to make their own, I shall not force them to study certain movements, I shall help them to develop those movements which are natural to them.

There will always be movements which are the perfect expression of that individual body and that individual soul: so we must not force it to make movements which are not natural to it but which belong to a school.

The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body.”

In 1927 while touring in Europe, she was visiting friends in Nice, France. As she was being driven off in a sports car in Nice, France, by a young Italian mechanic, her last words were, “Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à l’amour.” (Originally her friend, Mary Desti, reported that she had said "Je vais à la gloire" in order to avoid the embarrassment of the implication that she was on her way to a date with the handsome mechanic. What she actually said was revealed later.) Her scarf, long enough to wind around her neck and trail dramatically out of the car, got caught in one of the car’s wheels. Duncan was dragged out of the car, hit the pavement, and died.

Sources: Wikipedia, Women in History