Romain Gary - Personal Life and Final Years

Personal Life and Final Years

Gary's first wife was the British writer, journalist, and Vogue editor Lesley Blanch (author of The Wilder Shores of Love). They married in 1944 and divorced in 1961. From 1962 to 1970, Gary was married to American actress Jean Seberg, with whom he had a son, Alexandre Diego Gary. According to Diego Gary, he was a distant presence as a father; "Even when he was around, my father wasn't there. Obsessed with his work, he used to greet me, but he was elsewhere."

Gary died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 2 December 1980 in Paris, France. He left a note which said specifically that his death had no relation to Seberg's suicide. He also stated in his note that Émile Ajar was himself.

Gary was cremated in Père Lachaise Cemetery and his ashes were scattered in the Mediterranean Sea near Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

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