“Moon Hoax Not”: Short Film Explains Why It Was Impossible to Fake the Moon Landing

in Film, Technology | January 24th, 2013

S.G. Collins does­n’t trust the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment. They “lie all the time, about all kinds of things,” he insists, “and if they haven’t lied to you today, maybe they haven’t had cof­fee yet.” Like some of those who express a sim­i­lar dis­trust, he claims he has no way to ver­i­fy that NASA land­ed on the moon in 1969. But unlike most of that sub­set, he does­n’t think the gov­ern­ment could have pulled off a con­vinc­ing hoax about it. In oth­er words, Amer­i­ca “did have the tech­ni­cal abil­i­ty, not to men­tion the req­ui­site mad­ness, to send three guys to the moon and back. They did not have the tech­nol­o­gy to fake it on video.” Calm­ly, method­i­cal­ly, with a dead­pan wit, Collins uses the thir­teen min­utes of Moon Hoax Not to explain exact­ly why, as improb­a­ble as the real moon land­ing sounds, a fake moon land­ing would have been down­right impos­si­ble.

“The lat­er you were born,” Collins says, “the more all-pow­er­ful movie mag­ic seems.” Hol­ly­wood could now fake dozens of moon land­ings every day, but they did­n’t always have that abil­i­ty. Mar­shal­ing knowl­edge accrued over thir­ty years as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, he address­es each of the points that moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists com­mon­ly cite as visu­al evi­dence of the sup­posed fraud. He also brings to bear facts from the his­to­ry of video tech­nol­o­gy, such as 1969’s com­plete lack of the high-speed video cam­eras, need­ed to shoot the sort of slow motion nec­es­sary to cre­ate the illu­sion of low grav­i­ty. And what if they’d shot the entire Apol­lo 11 tele­cast on film instead? Collins also knows, and names, exact­ly the prob­lems even the most ambi­tious, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced char­la­tans would have encoun­tered, even—as in moon-land­ing hoax mock­u­men­tary Dark Side of the Moon—with Stan­ley Kubrick on their side.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

Michio Kaku Schools Takes on Moon Land­ing-Con­spir­a­cy Believ­er on His Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic Pod­cast

The Moon Dis­as­ter That Wasn’t: Nixon’s Speech In Case Apol­lo 11 Failed to Return

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

R.E.M.‘s “Losing My Religion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

in Music | January 20th, 2013

Take R.E.M.‘s 1991 bal­lad “Los­ing My Reli­gion” and rework it from minor to major scale, and here’s what you get — some­thing that’s, as one Vimeo com­menter called it, “rec­og­niz­able enough to be nostalgic…unique enough to be shared!” Oth­er songs dig­i­tal­ly reworked by MajorScaled TV include “Rid­ers on the Storm” by The Doors, Metal­li­ca’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters,” and Djan­go Rein­hardt’s “Minor Swing.” Fol­low MajorScaled TV on Face­book for even­tu­al addi­tions to the col­lec­tion.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Reworked in Major Key, Becomes a Cheer­ful Pop Song

R.E.M. Reveals the Secrets Behind Their Emo­tion­al­ly-Charged Songs: “Los­ing My Reli­gion” and “Try Not to Breathe”

R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Debut on The David Let­ter­man Show (1983)

Harder Than It Looks: How to Make a Great Stop Motion Animation

in Animation, Life | January 19th, 2013

Ever find your­self watch­ing a great lit­tle stop motion ani­ma­tion and think­ing, “Hey, I could do that?”  What’s that? You made one with some friends in mid­dle school? Great! Maybe you should bang one out tomor­row morn­ing, slap it up on YouTube, and brace your­self for the onslaught of pub­lic ado­ra­tion that’s so damnably dif­fi­cult to avoid when one’s cre­ation becomes a viral sen­sa­tion overnight.

Hold your hors­es, Gum­by. Film­mak­ing has grown increas­ing­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic in the dig­i­tal age, but a real­ly elab­o­rate stop motion ani­ma­tion is still a ton of work. Care to con­sid­er all that goes into one?

Try 382 Mole­sk­ine note­books; days of painstak­ing, no doubt bor­ing, labor; a cam­era dol­ly, a green screen, and a live, albeit less-than-pro­fes­sion­al, cat and mouse team. These are the pri­ma­ry ele­ments of Dutch “graph­ic motion design­er” Rogi­er Wieland’s “A Year in Full Colour,” a cun­ning salute to old-school dai­ly plan­ners. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, this flight of fan­cy was com­mis­sioned by Mole­sk­ine, a brand whose inroads into the iPad cov­er mar­ket would like­ly not be enough to keep things in the black should jot­ting things on paper go the way of the dodo.  Per­haps instead of mak­ing a stop motion of your own, you could pour your cre­ative efforts into record­ing your upcom­ing appoint­ments in a Mole­sk­ine clas­sic.

As to which you should view first—the fin­ished prod­uct (above) or the equal­ly brief, but high­ly illu­mi­nat­ing Mak­ing Of  (below)–we leave that in your capa­ble hands.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

Going West: A Stop Motion Nov­el

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s plan­ner of choice is the Sling­shot Orga­niz­er  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Hear Ravel Play Ravel in 1922

in Music | January 17th, 2013

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured a piano-roll record­ing of the French com­pos­er Claude Debussy play­ing his “La soirée dans Grenade” in 1913. Today we bring you a lyri­cal and melan­choly work record­ed in 1922 on a sim­i­lar device by Debussy’s younger friend and rival, Mau­rice Rav­el. It’s called “Oiseaux tristes,” or “Sad Birds.”

The impe­tus for com­pos­ing the piece came in 1904, when Rav­el heard a sec­ond-hand account of some­thing Debussy had said. Accord­ing to Alex­is Roland-Manuel, Rav­el’s friend and biog­ra­ph­er, Debussy had told the pianist Ricar­do Viñes that when writ­ing his exper­i­men­tal piece, “D’un cahi­er d’esquiss­es,” he had been “dream­ing of a kind of music whose form was so free that it would sound impro­vised, of works which would seem to have been torn out of a sketch­book.”

Viñes recount­ed Debussy’s state­ment at a meet­ing of “Les Apach­es,” a group of rad­i­cal writ­ers, artists and musi­cians, of which Rav­el was a mem­ber. Rav­el respond­ed by say­ing that he was ready to put Debussy’s dream into action. He drew his inspi­ra­tion from an expe­ri­ence he had one morn­ing in the for­est at Fontain­bleau. Rav­el’s friend and for­mer music school class­mate Émile Vuiller­moz remem­bered:

He was stay­ing with friends and one morn­ing he heard a black­bird whistling a tune and was enchant­ed by its ele­gant, melan­choly arabesque. He had mere­ly to tran­scribe this tune accu­rate­ly, with­out chang­ing a note, to pro­duce the limpid, poet­ic piece which spir­i­tu­alis­es the nos­tal­gic call of this French broth­er of the For­est Bird in Siegfried.

After the meet­ing, Rav­el set to work on the E Flat Minor “Oiseaux tristes,” which he ded­i­cat­ed to Viñes and includ­ed in his five-piece suite, Miroirs. “Oiseaux tristes is the most typ­i­cal of my way of think­ing,” Rav­el wrote in his 1928 auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sketch. “It evokes birds lost in the oppres­sive­ness of a very dark for­est dur­ing the hottest hours of sum­mer.”

Rav­el record­ed “Oiseaux tristes” and four oth­er pieces in Lon­don on June 30, 1922, using a Duo-Art repro­duc­ing piano. Unlike the Welte-Mignon machine used by Debussy in 1913 (Rav­el also made a pair of record­ings on the Welte-Mignon at about the same time as Debussy) the Duo-Art sys­tem did not auto­mat­i­cal­ly record the dynam­ics of the per­for­mance. So when Rav­el played “Oiseaux tristes” at the stu­dio in Lon­don, there was an engi­neer seat­ed next to him at a con­sole, turn­ing dials to cap­ture the dynam­ic mod­u­la­tions in his play­ing. After­ward, Rav­el lis­tened to a play­back on a pianola and, sat­is­fied with the results, signed his name on the orig­i­nal roll.

Hannah Arendt’s Original Articles on “the Banality of Evil” in the New Yorker Archive

in Film, History | January 16th, 2013

We’ve all heard the phrase “the banal­i­ty of evil.” Some of us even know which polit­i­cal the­o­rist to attribute it to, and among those, a few have even read it in con­text. Han­nah Arendt most mem­o­rably employed it in both the sub­ti­tle and clos­ing words of Eich­mann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banal­i­ty of Evil, her book on the tri­al of Nazi lieu­tenant-colonel Adolf Eich­mann. To Arendt’s mind, Eich­mann will­ing­ly did his part to orga­nize the Holo­caust — and an instru­men­tal part it was — out of nei­ther anti-semi­tism nor pure mal­ice, but out of a non-ide­o­log­i­cal, entire­ly more pro­sa­ic com­bi­na­tion of careerism and obe­di­ence. Read­ers have argued ever since its pub­li­ca­tion about this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and those with a spe­cial inter­est in how Arendt arrived there can find in the New York­er’s online archives the orig­i­nal series of “Eich­mann in Jerusalem” arti­cles out of which the book grew: part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five. (Click on the images at the bot­tom of each page to see Arendt’s writ­ing up close. Then click on them again and maneu­ver your mouse around to peruse the pages.) Giv­en that Han­nah Arendt, a new biopic star­ring Bar­bara Sukowa, just gained dis­tri­b­u­tion, you may want to read these arti­cles to stay ahead of the next wave of inter­est in the thinker and her writ­ings.

In today’s mag­a­zines, one reads rather few­er five-part inter­sec­tions of tri­al reportage and moral inquiry by fig­ures like Arendt. But the New York­er has­n’t entire­ly lost its will­ing­ness to con­front these mat­ters. Short­ly after last year’s mas­sacre in Auro­ra, Col­orado, the mag­a­zine ran on its site a piece by Rol­lo Romig in touch with con­cerns, broad­ly speak­ing, sim­i­lar to Arendt’s. Romig, too, looks at the nature of evil, but in a reflec­tion suit­ed to our time — brief, star­tling­ly time­ly, and specif­i­cal­ly for the web — rather than Eich­mann in Jerusalem’s. “The dan­ger of a word like ‘evil’ is that it is absolute,” he writes. “ ‘Evil’ has become the word we apply to per­pe­tra­tors who we’re both unable and unwill­ing to do any­thing to repair, and for whom all of our mech­a­nisms of jus­tice seem unequal: it describes the lim­its of what malev­o­lence we’re able to bear. In the end, it’s a word that says more about the help­less­ness of the accuser than it does the trans­gres­sor.”

H/T to Chris­t­ian F. for flag­ging the New York­er arti­cles for us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tri­al of Adolf Eich­mann at 50

55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Many Ways to Mars: A Reality Show, a New Martian City, and Mapping Mars from Home

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | January 15th, 2013

Real­i­ty tele­vi­sion has been around since at least the late ’40s. First we had Can­did Cam­era, where hap­less, but real, peo­ple became the unwit­ting butt of Allen Funt’s jokes. But it wasn’t until fifty years lat­er that the genre explod­ed, bring­ing us Big Broth­er and, of course, Sur­vivor.

Now, make way for the unbe­liev­able and ultra-expen­sive mar­riage of real­i­ty tele­vi­sion and sci­ence fic­tion. Mars One, the brain­child of Dutch entre­pre­neur Bas Lans­dorp, plans to estab­lish a per­ma­nent human set­tle­ment on the red plan­et in 2023. First, four peo­ple would land on Mars. Every two years, anoth­er group of peo­ple would arrive. The trips would be one-way and all the set­tlers would live out the rest of their lives on Mars. Fund­ing for the first phase is esti­mat­ed at $6 bil­lion.

Mars One back­ers say rais­ing $6 bil­lion will be easy. Every four years the Sum­mer and Win­ter Olympics gen­er­ate mil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue because peo­ple all over the world want to watch. The Olympics held in 2005 and 2008 togeth­er made near­ly $5.5 bil­lion from pro­gram­ming and spon­sor­ship.

So, what if there were an event so fas­ci­nat­ing, so unprece­dent­ed and amaz­ing, that lit­er­al­ly every tele­vi­sion, com­put­er, and smart device would be tuned in to watch? What if the entire Mars mis­sion was an inter­na­tion­al real­i­ty tele­vi­sion show? That’s the plan. Every­thing from the selec­tion of the first group of astro­nauts to the launch, land­ing, and dai­ly life on the red plan­et would be tele­vised. The audi­ence even gets to vote on the final four space trav­el­ers.

Inter­est­ed? Mars One has issued its require­ments for astro­naut selec­tion. No mil­i­tary, flight, or sci­ence expe­ri­ence required. Appli­cants must be at least 18, in good men­tal and phys­i­cal health, and will­ing to devote eight years to train­ing before begin­ning the jour­ney to their new home plan­et. Find­ing this hard to believe? The first ques­tion in Mars One’s FAQ page sort of says it all. Is this for real? Yes, the plans are for real. Whether any or every­thing Mars One imag­ines actu­al­ly takes place is anybody’s guess.

What’s cer­tain is that Mars is a hot des­ti­na­tion at the moment, and not just for aspir­ing real­i­ty stars. SpaceX fun­der and bil­lion­aire Elon Musk wants to build a city for 80,000 on Mars. While accept­ing an award from the Roy­al Aero­nau­ti­cal Soci­ety, Musk out­lined his vision to charge $500,000 per per­son to trans­port peo­ple to the new Mar­t­ian city. He’s men­tioned want­i­ng to retire on Mars and is using SpaceX as a lab to devel­op new inter­plan­e­tary rock­et tech­nol­o­gy.

But you don’t need to be rich or pop­u­lar to see some of the red plan­et. There’s also plen­ty of explor­ing to do on the sur­face of Mars from home. Cit­i­zen sci­en­tists can help Plan­et Four iden­ti­fy fans and blotch­es in images of the Mar­t­ian sur­face. The pic­tures come from a cam­era aboard the Mars Recon­nais­sance Orbiter, a NASA mis­sion to orbit Mars and trans­mit images and data to Earth using a pow­er­ful radio fre­quen­cy called the “Ka-band,” which works like an inter­plan­e­tary Inter­net.

Using sim­ple mark­ing tools, users can mark the sur­face col­orations and spots that help sci­en­tists study changes in the planet’s weath­er. So-called “spi­ders” of dry ice form on the planet’s poles in the win­ter and then lead to fan-shaped mois­ture foot­prints.

It’s fun to imag­ine that the data you cre­ate could bring us clos­er to our dis­tant neigh­bor plan­et. Unless of course you’d rather suit up and start train­ing to go there your­self. In that case, good luck and start sav­ing.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

Keith Moon’s Final Performance with The Who (1978)

in Music | January 14th, 2013

Last sum­mer, we revis­it­ed a mem­o­rable moment from the annals of rock ’ n’ roll — the time when Kei­th Moon, fly­ing high on PCP, passed out at a 1973 Who con­cert in Cal­i­for­nia, giv­ing an unsus­pect­ing fan, Scot Halpin, the chance to take over on the drums. (Watch it all hap­pen here.) It was a glo­ri­ous moment for Scott. For Kei­th, it was the mid­dle of the end — anoth­er exam­ple of the out­ra­geous sub­stance abuse that would kill him five years lat­er.

Fast for­ward to 1978, and we arrive at Kei­th Moon’s final live per­for­mance with The Who. It took place when the band shot live footage for the rock­u­men­tary, The Kids Are Alright. In his recent­ly-pub­lished biog­ra­phy, Who Am I?, Pete Town­shend writes that, by 1978, Moon’s addic­tions had caught up to him. His “drum­ming was get­ting so uneven that record­ing was almost impos­si­ble, so much so that work on the Who Are You album had ground to a halt.… [The Who] had just about enough tracks for a record, with very lit­tle addi­tion­al mate­r­i­al to spare. ‘Music Must Change’ was com­plet­ed with foot­steps replac­ing drums.” When it came time to shoot live footage for The Kids Are Alright, Town­shend “was ter­ri­fied that Kei­th would­n’t be able to hide his dete­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tion,” but agreed to give it a try.

The ini­tial shoot was appalling. The band was out of prac­tice, and Kei­th could­n’t keep up. So they tried a sec­ond shoot, filmed at Shep­per­ton Stu­dios on May 25, 1978, where they played a lim­it­ed num­ber of hit songs before a small audi­ence. (Watch above and below.) “Kei­th was in a good mood but bloat­ed and unfit,” writes Town­shend, “and he found the repeat­ed takes weary­ing.” Because Moon’s ear­phones kept falling off, they taped them to his head with thick black gaffers’ tape. In the months that fol­lowed, Moon head­ed to Mal­ibu, Cal­i­for­nia where he tried to kick his alco­hol habit and then start­ed abus­ing med­ica­tions to relieve the with­draw­al symp­toms. On Sep­tem­ber 6, Moon took 32 tablets of clome­thi­a­zole, a seda­tive meant to help him cope with the with­draw­al. The next morn­ing Roger Dal­trey, The Who’s lead singer, called Pete Town­shend and sim­ply said “He’s done it.”

For more on this sto­ry, check out the audio ver­sion of Pete Town­shend’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy Who Am I?. It’s read by Town­shend him­self, which gives it a nice per­son­al touch. And you can down­load it for free if you sign up for a 30-day free tri­al with Audible.com. Find the details here. Final­ly you can also watch Town­shend dis­cussing his book and music career in a 90-minute con­ver­sa­tion with Paul Hold­en­graber here.

via Rolling Stone

The Very First Film of J.G. Ballard’s Crash, Starring Ballard Himself (1971)

in Film, Literature, Television | January 14th, 2013

The Collins Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary defines “Bal­lar­dian” as “resem­bling or sug­ges­tive of the con­di­tions described in J. G. Bal­lard’s nov­els and sto­ries, espe­cial­ly dystopi­an moder­ni­ty, bleak man-made land­scapes and the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of tech­no­log­i­cal, social or envi­ron­men­tal devel­op­ments.” You’ll find no more dis­tilled dose of the Bal­lar­dian than in Bal­lard’s book The Atroc­i­ty Exhi­bi­tion, a 1969 exper­i­men­tal nov­el, or col­lec­tion of frag­ments, or what’s been called a col­lec­tion of “con­densed nov­els.” Sub­ject to an obscen­i­ty tri­al in the Unit­ed States and the sub­se­quent pulp­ing of near­ly a whole print run, the book has earned a per­ma­nent place in the canon of con­tro­ver­sial lit­er­a­ture. Its twelfth chap­ter, “Crash!”, even pro­vid­ed the seed for a Bal­lard nov­el to come: 1973’s Crash, a sto­ry of sym­phorophil­ia which David Cro­nen­berg adapt­ed into a film 23 years lat­er. The movie, in its turn, stoked a furor in the Unit­ed King­dom, cul­mi­nat­ing in a Dai­ly Mail cam­paign to ban it. But as far as film­ing mate­r­i­al born of Bal­lard’s fas­ci­na­tion with the inter­sec­tion of auto wrecks and sex­u­al­i­ty, Cro­nen­berg did­n’t get there first.

Susan Emer­ling and Zoe Beloff drew from Crash the nov­el to make the still-unre­leased Night­mare Angel in 1986, but fif­teen years before that, Harley Coke­liss turned “Crash!” the chap­ter into Crash! the short film (also known as The Atroc­i­ty Exhi­bi­tion). Cast­ing Bal­lard him­self in the star­ring role and Gabrielle Drake (sis­ter of singer-song­writer Nick Drake) oppo­site, Coke­liss crafts a vision almost oppres­sive­ly of the sev­en­ties: the pro­tag­o­nist’s wide, striped shirt col­lar dom­i­nates his even wider jack­et col­lar below the grim vis­age he wears while ensconced in the suit of armor that is his hulk­ing Amer­i­can vehi­cle. “I think the key image of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is the man in the motor car,” Bal­lard says in voiceover. “Have we reached a point now in the sev­en­ties where we only make sense in terms of these huge tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems? I think so myself, and that it is the vital job of the writer to try to ana­lyze and under­stand the huge sig­nif­i­cance of this met­al­lized dream.” If this Bal­lar­dian vision res­onates with you, see also Simon Sel­l­ars’ thor­ough essay on the film at fan site Bal­lar­dian.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Sci-Fi Author J.G. Bal­lard Pre­dicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

Hear Five JG Bal­lard Sto­ries Pre­sent­ed as Radio Dra­mas

J.G. Ballard’s Exper­i­men­tal Text Col­lages: His 1958 For­ay into Avant-Garde Lit­er­a­ture

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Slavoj Žižek Demystifies the Gangnam Style Phenomenon

in Music, Philosophy | January 8th, 2013

Back in late Novem­ber, Psy’s “Gang­nam Style” had clocked 792 mil­lion times on YouTube, and the Chi­nese dis­si­dent artist Ai Wei Wei filmed his own Gang­nam Style par­o­dy video. Now, just five weeks lat­er, the video has logged over 1.1 bil­lion views. That’s one view for every sev­en peo­ple on the plan­et. What has made this pop song a glob­al phe­nom­e­non? Var­i­ous crit­ics have chalked it up to a fluke, or to the ran­dom­ness that belongs to many inter­net memes. Such non-answers prob­a­bly would­n’t fly with Slavoj Žižek, the nose-rub­bing, shirt-tug­ging, Sloven­ian philoso­pher who offered his own take on the Gang­nam Style Phe­nom­e­non. Speak­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont on Octo­ber 16th, 2012, Žižek attrib­uted Gang­nam’s wild pop­u­lar­i­ty to mod­ern forms of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. But I’m sure that that sum­ma­ry is over­sim­pli­fy­ing things. If you have 90 min­utes to kill (and I do mean kill), you can watch Žižek’s com­plete UVM talk below. His Gang­nam mus­ings come around the 35:10 mark.

F. Scott Fitzgerald in Drag (1916)

in Literature, Random | January 5th, 2013

It has been said that the dom­i­nant influ­ences on F. Scott Fitzger­ald were lit­er­a­ture, Zel­da, alco­hol, and Prince­ton. The pho­tos above were tak­en dur­ing the nov­el­ist’s Prince­ton days, where he played an active role in The Prince­ton Tri­an­gle Club, writ­ing scripts and lyrics for what’s now the old­est col­le­giate musi­cal-com­e­dy troupe in the US. After Fitzger­ald failed sev­er­al exams, he was barred from per­form­ing in the club’s 1916 musi­cal pro­duc­tion, The Evil Eye!. A shame, giv­en that he co-wrote the script. But F. Scott was­n’t going to be com­plete­ly denied. Yes, he posed in drag for a pub­lic­i­ty pho­to that appeared in The New York Times on Jan­u­ary 2, 1916. The news­pa­per called him “the most beau­ti­ful” girl in the show.

H/T Retro­naut

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Reads From Shakespeare’s Oth­el­lo and John Masefield’s “On Grow­ing Old” (c.1940)

Ernest Hem­ing­way to F. Scott Fitzger­ald: “Kiss My Ass”

Find major works by F. Scott Fitzger­ald in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.