Fitzgerald's TN

[alice wellintown]

The studio manager opened a small door in the blank wall of stage
building and with sudden glad familiarity Rosemary followed him into
half darkness. Here and there figures spotted the twilight, turning up
ashen faces to her like souls in purgatory watching the passage of a
mortal through. There were whispers and soft voices and, apparently
from afar, the gentle tremolo of a small organ. Turning the corner
made by some flats, they came upon the white crackling glow of a
stage, where a French actor--his shirt front, collar, and cuffs tinted
a brilliant pink--and an American actress stood motionless face to
face. They stared at each other with dogged eyes, as though they had
been in the same position for hours; and still for a long time nothing
happened, no one moved. A bank of lights went off with a savage hiss,
went on again; the plaintive tap of a hammer begged admission to
nowhere in the distance; a blue face appeared among the blinding
lights above, called something unintelligible into the upper
blackness. Then the silence was broken by a voice in front of
Rosemary.

"Baby, you don't take off the stockings, you can spoil ten more pairs.
That dress is fifteen pounds."

Stepping backward the speaker ran against Rosemary, whereupon the
studio manager said, "Hey, Earl--Miss Hoyt."

They were meeting for the first time. Brady was quick and strenuous.
As he took her hand she saw him look her over from head to foot, a
gesture she recognized and that made her feel at home, but gave her
always a faint feeling of superiority to whoever made it. If her
person was property she could exercise whatever advantage was inherent
in its ownership.


On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 5:49 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Like Pynchon, Fitzgerald makes wonderful use of film and lighting.
>
> When Rosemary's point of view dominates we wonder if any of this real,
> for like Dorothy of the famous Oz film, Rosemary, though not because
> she is dreaming after a knock on the head, but because she is dreaming
> as a young beauty often does, that she is an actress and all the world
> is watching her, can not get enough of her, and, of course,  the irony
> is that she is by profession an actress who has only recently made a
> name for herself in a hollywood film.
>
> Piaget and Elklind: Adolescent egocentrism can be divided into two
> separate forms: the imaginary audience and the personal fable.
>
> The first scene on the beach, where Fitzgerald makes it known that the
> idea of a plot will be in play, as the people on the beach put on a
> plot play for Rosemary, and the scene soon after when Rosemary goes to
> a movie set, invite us to look back to that beautifully composed
> opening scene, and the clipping of Rosemary's shadow under the sun.
> Why is it clipped?
>
> Clip: an odd word for that. Later, Diver will clip the sun from
> Rosemary's shoulder with an umbrella.
>
> The light, the shade, the sun, the lights of studios, what Tanner
> (American Mystery) and Reynolds (Intro to Gatsby, The Constant
> Flicker)  discuss at some length, the pooling lights (sure that green
> one too, if we must have it), find their way into Pynchon's prose,
> and, the idea of merging the theatre with the theater, so it all
> theater, while something we might trace to Shakespeare or even to the
> Greek Dramas, is so modern in Fitzgerald; there, with the girl, her
> legs pink with sun, face fresh, bursting with beauty...bright and
> burning under the sun, under the hollywood lights...moving like ash
> before the camera, frsh from the tender-oven...