Obituary: Author and artist Eve Babitz, 78

Her sister Mirandi Babitz said the cause of death was complications from Huntington’s disease, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Babitz was born on May 13, 1943, in Los Angeles. Her father, Sol Babitz, a violinist employed by 20th Century Fox, was of Russian Jewish descent. Her mother, Mae, was an artist of Cajun ancestry. Babitz attended Hollywood High School.

In the late 1960s, Babitz designed album covers for Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield. She wrote articles and short stories that appeared in Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Vogue.

She burst onto the pop culture radar with “Eve’s Hollywood” (1974), a blurring of fiction and memoir. In that work and her subsequent books including “Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.” and “Black Swans,” she name drops famous artists, musicians, writers and actors of the day. Much of the media coverage of her focused on her romances with famous men, including artist Ed Ruscha, The Doors frontman Jim Morrison, comedian Steve Martin, actor Harrison Ford and others.

Babitz was severely injured in 1997 after she dropped a lit match onto her skirt, resulting in life-threatening burns. Friends donated cash and art to pay for her medical bills and recovery.

Much of Babitz’s work gradually fell out of print, but after a reissue of some of her older works, she experienced somewhat of a renaissance among younger fans. In 2019, “I Used to Be Charming,” a collection of nearly 50 of her works, was published, as was a biography, “Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.,” written by Lili Anolik.