Sensational Stories in Manhattan Transfer
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/vBmKXTpu_Ns" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
This is a clip from the film, The Red Velvet Swing” (1955). It recreates the moment when the Harry K. Shaw (a jealous husband) murders New York architect Stanford White in 1906. White had an affair with the model and showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, who was Shaw’s wife. The sensational murder trials that followed were referred to as “The Trial of the Century” in the Hearst newspaper, The New York Journal. Manhattan Transfer refers to this moment in the opening section, “Nine Days’ Wonder.” White, the designer of the Washington Square Arch, the New York Public Library and the American Academy in Rome, among others, famously kept a red velvet swing in his loft apartment. He invited women (in various stages of undress) to ride it. In the novel, Phil Sandbourne declares, “A man’s moral’s aren’t anybody’s business. It’s his work that counts” (167). How do you think this detail and Sandbourne’s declaration informs your understanding of New York in Dos Passos’s novel?
No responses yet