Death and Legacy
In his later years, Seldes suffered from ill health, poor memory, and emotional distress, which prevented him from completing his memoirs. He relied on his Skye terrier, Bobby, and his daughter, Marian, for companionship. As he was writing his memoirs, As In My Time (1958), he became interested in the impact of scientific progress on social institutions and communications. He died of heart failure in his apartment on 29 September 1970.
Seldes' legacy was immeasurable. As author, critic, editor, producer, director and educator his impact was farther reaching than mere periodical circulation or television timeslot. Leo Mishkin, a critic for the New York Morning Telegraph best captures Seldes' impact:
He was my teacher as he was also for thousands of other just coming of age back in the mid-1920s. Not in the sense of standing up in front of a classroom and lecturing, or correcting examinations…But outside of school on of the requirements we all had was to read The Dial ... and when The Seven Lively Arts was published in 1924 we knew instinctively that a new age, a new appreciation of the arts, indeed a new horizon had opened up for us all...(His enthusiasms) will endure as long as the mass of American look for relaxation and rewards in the mass entertainment media. It was Gilbert Seldes who set the whole nation on that road. His name remains a monument to his influence.
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