Book Lovers Club
Comments
-
Another bit of trivia. There is a mansion on Long Island that is being raised.. And it is thought to be the mansion that Fitzgerald visited and based the story on.
0 -
Oh I adored The Great Gatsby both the book and movie. I Had to read it in High school - adored it and then the movie came out - right before the test too!
thanks for all the help with the Kindle - that helps and will look more into it.
Will also look for the funny book from previous time ! always need those!
0 -
I just googled Rosecliff. It reminds me a little of the Biltmore Mansion in NC, which I toured a few years ago. Mind-boggling opulence!
0 -
The mansion on long island was in sand's point and called Land's End. Opulence? what another world!
0 -
Love The Great Gatsby! I have read it many times- The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalain draws from the story and times from Gatsby- a great read.
I would LOVE to go to Newport. It has been when of our destination places but between having 2 kids two years a part and cancer to follow we haven't made it. Maybe this fall?
0 -
Locals recall Newport nights filming with ‘Great Gatsby' stars
01:00 AM EST on Saturday, January 16, 2010By Michael Janusonis
Journal Arts Writer
Hollywood stars Mia Farrow and Robert Redford dance at Linden Place in Bristol in "The Great Gatsby." Newport's Rosecliff mansion was the setting of another scene from the 1974 movie.
Journal files
A touch of Hollywood movie glamour returned to Newport Thursday evening when the not-so-classic 1974 screen version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel "The Great Gatsby" was shown at the Rosecliff mansion, where in July 1973 the film's big party sequence was filmed with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow and about 1,000 Rhode Islanders as extras.
Some of those Rhode Islanders have fond - and not so fond - memories of several cold, damp nights when, as former Providence Journal theater critic William K. Gale recalled, the extras would arrive around 6 p.m. and then "sit there for hours in tents before they called us. Then you'd line up and the assistant director would say, ‘DON'T LOOK AT THE CAMERA!' And anyone who looked at the camera would be pulled out of the scene."
In a column he wrote upon the film's release in March 1974, Gale said that although the party looked glamorous onscreen, "much of the time in Newport it rained. In truth, the extras, dressed in gay 1922 party frocks and dress suits, were often wet, muddy, cold and tired." (Thursday's Rosecliff screening of the film was part of a three-month-long series of activities in Newport centered on a program to encourage reading that's cosponsored by the Preservation Society of Newport County, which owns Rosecliff, and the Newport Public Library.)
Mary Riggs of Newport was one of the revelers in the party sequence, which was supposed to be taking place in a mansion on Long Island in 1922. She recalled, "We wore original '20s things that they had gotten from some costume collector in California. I had a dress that had a very low back because somehow they decided that I had a lovely back.
"I never knew. I mean, who sees one's back very often?"
Gale said the party sequence was shot over "six or seven nights. We'd get there around 6, get dressed in dorms at Salve Regina [University], all in period costumes."
It all looked very glamorous onscreen, even the elaborate food displays. But Riggs recalled that because the same food was set out night after night, "it began to stink."
Nathaniel Tingley Jr., whose late father was an extra on "The Great Gatsby," also remembered his father coming home and saying "all that luxurious food started to smell after a few days."
"And we were supposed to be drinking champagne," Riggs added, "but it was ginger ale. And they never changed the glasses. So you were supposed to be drinking and having a good time, but wondering whether the night before someone had sneezed into the glass you were holding."
Gale said that although he wore a tuxedo, whose style hadn't changed all that much in a half century, the '20s-era suit "must have weighed 20 pounds. The material used was heavier in those days, all wool." But that turned out to be not such a bad thing because although it was July, the nights were very cool. It was not such a good thing, however, for the female extras who had to smile as they skittered down the steps of Rosecliff as dawn was breaking and jump into a fountain pool in below 50-degree weather to dance the Charleston with enthusiasm for the third time.
Riggs remembers "it was very cold when we were shooting at night. One night the wind blew up my ‘lovely' back. I jumped and the director had to yell, ‘Cut!' And then everybody would turn and look at you."
Yet despite the long overnight hours, the rain and the mud, Gale, who lives in North Kingstown, looks back on those nights of filming "The Great Gatsby" with Farrow and Redford as "fun, but exhausting. You'd be there sitting around for 10 hours and then they might call you and you'd work for maybe an hour." He said the crew would pass out colored tickets to the extras. Which color you were handed determined whether you were slated to stand in the background of a party scene or in the middle of it or in the foreground, up close with Farrow and Redford. But after a time, he said the extras had figured out the system and tried to jump into the foreground.
"Everybody came out of the woodwork for this one," Riggs added. "It was the thing to do." However, although 400 extras were hired (at about $20 a day) for the nighttime shooting at Rosecliff, as the filming dragged on and the extras realized the hurry-up-and-wait reality of filmmaking, they began to drop out. "Many of them were socialites," said Riggs. "They came for the first few days. But after a while, they thought, ‘I don't think so.' Many of them fell out, so they had to have a second cattle call for extras."
But not all the extras were unhappy. Maybury Fraser, widow of Nathaniel Tingley, remembers that her late husband "really enjoyed it." She recalled that she'd be getting their three children up and ready for the day just as he'd be coming in from a night on the movie set and going to bed. "I told him I could never be the wife of a movie actor," she said with a laugh, then added: "I've seen him in the movie a couple of times."
Gale's big scene came when he was standing near a heavyset man who was supposed to be causing a problem at the party and a bouncer in a tuxedo comes over and slugs the guy. Gale was directed to look on in shock and point, as if to say, "Look at this!"
"I thought they had me overact in the scene," he said ruefully. "I wanted to do it with a little more subtlety."
Riggs appeared in a scene standing behind Farrow and Redford as they talked, but she says that when she watches a video of the scene with friends, "by the time I tell people I'm in that scene, they've already missed me."
Yet one of her fondest memories was the night when the Fourth of July dawned and British director Jack Clayton had fireworks shot off into the night sky over Newport to celebrate America's Independence Day. At last, some real Hollywood glamour ... and class.
0 -
0
-
Gatsby Mansion Beaten Ceaselessly Into The Ground Monday, April 18, 2011, by Rob Bear 436
On Saturday, a Long Island developer made good on his promise to demolish Land's End, the Gold Coast estate said to have inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. CBS News was there to catch the gruesome act on camera and interviewed owner and developer Bert Brodsky, who waxed poetic about the house and its history just minutes before a metal claw tore through the fine woodwork. The grand columned mansion had certainly seen better days-as a set of old listing photos revealed last month can attest-and Brodsky says he and his son had "no choice" but to demolish the aging summer cottage. The dilapidated home languished on the market, priced at $30M, before the father-son duo decided to redevelop the 13-acre property into five luxury homes priced at $10M a piece, so their claims of poverty are a little shaky at best. Get all the history, demolition footage, and developer grandstanding in the video, after the jump.
It's not pretty. >>- The end of an era for the "Gatsby house" [CBS News]
The Great Gatsby house's storied past (VIDEO) [CBS News]
Gatsby House: Really Old Listing Photos Reveal Former Grandeur [Curbed National]
Gatsby House to Become True "Valley of the Ashes" Development [Curbed National]
All "Gatsby house" coverage [Curbed National]
0 - The end of an era for the "Gatsby house" [CBS News]
-
Being a lover of non-fiction...I always LOVE the stories behind the fiction stories...
Also want to mention...since I know we're off topic now...San Simeon. That's one "cottage, mansion, castle..." whatever you want to call it.... that is on my list of places to visit. Hopefully, one day....
0 -
Sisters....I am HYPERVENTILATING. RIGHT.THIS.SECOND!
I just opened up the Sunday Book Review section of The New York Times and I found out that GEOFF DYER IS NOW A REGULAR COLUMNIST FOR THE PAPER! His column will now be called "Reading Life."
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I didn't want to finish his last book before his next book is published because I would miss reading his works. Now I can look forward to reading something written by him EVERY.SINGLE.WEEK!
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
0 -
Thanks for the Gatsby information. Now I will have to rent the movie for sure!
0 -
Loved Secret Daughter. As usual when insomnia hits I'll watch the HGTV for awhile. I was thinking of the book again last night when a couple was looking for an apartment in Mumbai.
I agree Great Gatsby is one I like to go back and read again at times. Slaughterhouse V by Vonnegut is another one. I keep waiting for an opportunity to say in a meeting some time "listen, Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." Awesome line. Dresden is in flames and ruins and they're shooting by firing squad someone who stole a teapot. That fits situations so often that just thinking of that line and the perspective it brings can make me get rid of the impulse to bang my head against the wall during a meeting at work. Henrik Ibsen's plays I go back and read now and then. I have to say I've changed my sympathy for the major characters as I've gone through life. It has made them fascinating to re-read.
I'm currently reading The Borgia Betrayal by Sara Poole. Quick read, I'll have to go back and get the first book. It is a stand alone but is a continuation of the first which I didn't realize.
0 -
great thread and great tip on the e reader suzwes.. my eyes are all teary from these meds I'm on and change hourly as far as I can read.. My favorite time for reading is late night and that's when they are worse.
I currently am reading the Zookeeper's Wife.. by Diane Ackerman. It is superb.. really superb. It's a WWII story of this polish couple who owns a zoo and supports Jewish people. It's a true story and the author is wonderfully verbally adept.
0 -
looks like I'm going to have to read this whole thread.
0 -
Thanks for the tip Apple, I am a fanatic for literature leading up to and during WWII. I'll put an order in to the library for that right now
0 -
It always feels good to have good books on request, thanks everyone. I forgot, I also recently read Sing Me Home by Jodi Picoult. It was okay. Definitely a library loan but dont' buy in my mind. I usually love her books. This just seemed like she took an easy way out to me. From the couple I know who have gone through it, disturbingly heart achingly accurate portrayl of women dealing with infertility issues. As usual she does a great job of setting up and showing both sides of the ethical issues. Just felt like with all that build up the ending was a bit trite. It was still a worthwhile read for those of us who follow her books I think0
-
if you like WW II... and this is not a focused book but an excellent read. ... try Mark Helprin's 'Soldier of the Great War'... it is my fave book ever. His other books pale in comparison (just my opinion.. some are well acclaimed....)
I am not a big fan of his rather avant guard (sp?) novels. .. and he should not to be confused with the political pundit Mark Helperin.. altho Helprin has written plenty of political commentary.
0 -
thanks apple, I'll definitely get it to read
0 -
I've read it 3 times since '92... and I rarely rarely re read any novel.
0 -
Apple - just looked it up on Amazon. Not avail. for Kindle but I'm going to order the paperback. I have a nagging suspicion that perhaps I've already read it. If so, I'll be just like you and read it again!
0 -
I read Soldier of the Great War and loved it. Some of the writing was so beautiful that I underlined it so I could go back and read those parts again and again. I also liked his Memoir From Ant Proof Case--funny and sad all at the same time.0
-
Loved reading all the Great Gatsy background! Thanks for sharing....
Ok, here is a question any one have any particular favorite books from High School. I've been trying to think of some good ones that will still interest today's kids. Sad to say but some of the real classic just don't do it for them or well, it is harder to get them to read them for fun instead of being assigned to read them if that makes sense. My son has read Catcher in the Rye and Fairenheit 451 and has on his list to read Of Mice and Men. Thanks.
0 -
My favorite book in high school was "Forever Amber" by Kathleen Winsor. In fact thanks for making me think of that book Stanzie. I think I'll download it on my nook (now that I got it back from my hubby who stole it to read "World Without End") and reread it!
0 -
Stanzie...Here's some good books that come to mind that my adult kids enjoyed reading:
A Prayer for Owen Meany
http://www.amazon.com/Prayer-Owen-Meany-John-Irving/dp/0345361792
The World According to Garp
Portnoy's Complaint
And the SOON TO BE PUBLISHED:
The Art of Fielding
I don't know how all of these people got advanced copies of the book...but they're predicting a mega classic in the wings with The Art of Fielding...I hope it lives up to it's advance review:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10996342-the-art-of-fielding
0 -
Stanzie, Its easier for me to remember which books I didn't like from that time I think. Scarlet letter, the Crucible, and Tess of the D'urbervilles for example, What misogynist books IMHO. I had better luck getting my son stories related to sports or Harry Potter, Michael Creighton, some mysteries. If I'd have tried to get him to read more traditional literature he would have run to his ipod. Even if it was Sports Illustrated I was just happy to have him reading. He's turned into much more of a reader now that he's out of school
suzwes, was up in your neck of the woods not too long ago. Wish the nail/pedicure/spa place in that strip mall on Grand River was closer to me.
0 -
jeez.. i remember a prayer for Owen Meany.. (I have a son named Owen and I'll suggest he read this).
There are hundreds of copies of a Soldier... War available at Amazon.. now I have to find a cheap e reader.
0 -
kmmd...I never force fed reading on my children either. My oldest son's favorite reading material was MAD magazine. My younger son loves reading Maxim! My daughter loved Men's Health Magazine, go figure! She said it was so much better than Women's Health! Now she loves reading all the popular women's fiction. Definitely doesn't take after me!
Oh, they're all pretty successful now and LOVE to read. In fact, the youngest is a rocket scientist! I should have a chat with that Tiger mom!
0 -
I agree Kmmd and Voracious, I never forced my kids to read, the two girls I couldn't keep in reading material (and the library wasn't in walking distance) - they are still huge readers and both have an e book. The two boys weren't too much into reading anything other than sports magazines although the oldest (almost 30) reads a lot now and the youngest (at age 20) is in school in the sports management program. His favorite book in elementary school was "My Brother Sam is Dead". Loves historical fiction and non-fiction. Kmmd, if you're ever up here again, lets meet for lunch!
0 -
When I think back to what my kids REALLY enjoyed reading...it was NEVER something I EVER recommended! Besides reading C.S. Lewis's books, my oldest son loved the books penned by comedians. By far, he loved George Carlin's books the most. David Brenner wrote, IMHO, the funniest book ever. He had ME read it! And I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it. Rodney Dangerfield...terrific! The Wayan brothers...The Smothers Brothers...all terrific. Presently, I'm reading Paul Reiser's new book...Familyhood. I love it. Read Couplehood and adored it. I'd be remise if I didn't include Bill Cosby. My son loved his books too! What could be more fun than reading a book and laughing. I guess that's why so many of us are raving about Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You. There's so much misery in the world and when you find a book that just makes you laugh...well what can I say...it feels soooo good!
0 -
The DH read Daniel Silva's newest book, Portrait of a Spy, over the weekend! Didn't think he could top The Rembrandt Affair...He did!
0
