Atwell suffered a stroke in 1980. She officially retired on "The Mike Walsh Show", then Australia's highest rating television variety programme, in 1981. She categorically stated that she would retire and not return as a public performer, and that she had had an excellent career. Her last TV performance was "Choo Choo Samba" followed with a medley of "Black and White Rag" and "Twelfth Street Rag". Her only non-private performances from this point were as an organist in her parish church at Narrabeen. In 1983, following an electrical fire that destroyed her Narrabeen home, she suffered a heart attack and died while staying with friends in Seaforth. She is buried beside husband Lew Levisohn in South Gundurimba Private Cemetery in northern New South Wales, just outside Lismore.