Mercedes de Acosta died on May 9, 1968, in New York City after a long illness, having outlived much of her fame and fortune.
Mercedes de Acosta died on May 9, 1968, in New York City at the age of 75, following years of declining health, including brain surgery in the mid-1960s from which she never fully financially or physically recovered. By the time of her death, she had spent much of her once-considerable inheritance and lived in comparatively reduced circumstances, having sold off treasured letters, photographs, and mementos from her famous lovers and friends to survive financially.
Her death closed the chapter on a life that had intersected with an extraordinary constellation of twentieth-century cultural figures — including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Isadora Duncan, Alla Nazimova, and Eva Le Gallienne — many of whom she had loved, corresponded with, or collaborated alongside as a writer for stage and screen. Her 1960 memoir, Here Lies the Heart, had already scandalized and fascinated readers by candidly (if selectively) alluding to her relationships with women, an audacious act at a time when open discussion of same-sex love remained taboo.
After her death, the trove of letters and papers she left behind — later housed at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia — became an invaluable historical resource, revealing the hidden emotional and romantic lives of many closeted or private queer women of the era, most notably Garbo. Her legacy as a chronicler and participant in queer Hollywood and literary history has only grown since her passing, cementing her posthumous reputation as a pivotal, if long underappreciated, figure in LGBTQ+ cultural history.