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Fact #79284

When:

Short story:

Rezso Seress, composer of Gloomy Sunday, a song with a reputation for causing listeners to commit suicide, kills himself in Budapest, Hungary, Europe.

Full article:

Rezsoe Seress, whose dirge-like song hit, Gloomy Sunday was blamed for touching off a wave of suicides during the nineteen-thirties, has ended his own life as a suicide it was learned today. Authorities disclosed today that Mr. Seress jumped from a window of his small apartment here last Sunday, shortly after his 69th birthday.

The decade of the nineteen-thirties was marked by severe economic depression and the political upheaval that was to lead to World War II. The melancholy song written by Mr. Seress, with words by his friend, Ladislas Javor, a poet, declares at its climax, "My heart and I have decided to end it all." It was blamed for a sharp increase in suicides, and Hungarian officials finally prohibited it.

In America, where Paul Robeson introduced an English version, some radio stations and nightclubs forbade its performance. Mr. Seress complained that the success of Gloomy Sunday actually increased his unhappiness, because he knew he would never be able to write a second hit.
(Source :  The New York Times, January 13, 1968)