Catherine Littlefield

Born in Philadelphia in 1905, Catherine Littlefield first learns dancing from her mother, Caroline (called Mommie), who was an expert pianist, and from a local dancing master, C. Ellwood Carpenter. As a teenager, Catherine becomes a Ziegfeld dancer and takes lessons from Luigi Albertieri in New York. She returns home in 1925 to help Mommie teach at the Littlefield School (among her students is Zelda Fitzgerald) and stage dances for women’s musical clubs and opera companies. William Goldman hires Catherine to produce routines in commercial theaters throughout Philadelphia and becomes her boyfriend. Catherine, Mommie, and Catherine’s sister, Dorothie, travel to Paris so the sisters can study ballet with Lubov Egorova. They become friendly with George Balanchine in Paris and help him establish his first American school and company when he comes to the United States in 1933. Catherine marries wealthy Philadelphia attorney Philip Leidy and founds her Philadelphia Ballet Company in 1935. She choreographs—and her company presents—the first full-length, full-scale production of Sleeping Beauty in the United States as well as popular ballet Americana works such as Barn Dance and Terminal. Her company’s European tour in 1937 is the first ever by an American classical ballet troupe. Catherine loses some of her protégées to the newly formed Ballet Theatre and disbands her company after the United States enters World War II; she then choreographs Broadway musicals, Sonja Henie’s Hollywood Ice Revues, and Jimmy Durante’s NBC television show before dying in 1951 at age forty-six.

“What a lugubrious tale!”

Catherine attends a party at the Ellerslie mansion near Wilmington, Delaware, hosted by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in May 1927. Zelda and her daughter, Scottie, begin taking lessons at the Littlefield School. Mommie becomes ballet mistress and Catherine the première danseuse for the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company and then the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company. Catherine begins to choreograph opera divertissements and stand-alone ballets. Her first stand-alone ballet is a one-act Russian folklore ballet entitled L’Hiver. Zelda and Scottie appear in Philadelphia Grand Opera Company productions and Scott visits Catherine’s studio. William Hughes and Paul Mathis are the first men to join Catherine’s ensemble. Zelda writes a short story about Catherine.

“A Beaker Full of the Warm South”

According to early-twentieth-century raciologists, the Mediterranean race, which could be found all over Europe, especially in the South, had disturbing ties to Africa and Asia and, moreover, with their vitality and appeal, could win over white women and dilute Nordic bloodlines. In their fiction, the Fitzgeralds depict the Mediterranean as a fluid site of intermixture. For F. Scott Fitzgerald, the networks that connect regional Souths to global Souths compromise the purity of the white woman and addict the white man to substances that sap his vitality. For Zelda Fitzgerald, syrupy, soggy southern climes and dishes provide a medium for white women to reject purity in favor of the stickiness that connects them to abject racialized bodies and reject mind–body dualism.

Fitzgerald, Zelda Sayre (1900–1948)

On 24 July 1900, Zelda Sayre was born into a prominent Southern family in Montgomery, Alabama, the youngest of six children. Her father had a distinguished career in Alabama politics and jurisprudence, eventually serving on the Supreme Court of Alabama. Much younger than her siblings, Zelda was independent, headstrong, and it was claimed, enjoyed being the centre of attention. She studied ballet during adolescence, but the demands of her social calendar overtook dance lessons in 1916. At the time, Montgomery was home to Camp Sheridan, a training facility preparing American soldiers for the First World War. Among Zelda’s many admirers was Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. The couple first met at a dance in July 1918. After a tumultuous long-distance courtship and a broken engagement, they married on 3 April 1920, and Zelda moved north to New York City. The early years of their marriage saw the Fitzgeralds as the embodiment of the riotous ‘Jazz Age.’ With her bobbed hair, fondness for dancing and jazz, and rebellious sense of style, Zelda Fitzgerald was one of the original American flappers. The Fitzgeralds’ only child, a daughter named Frances Scott (Scottie), was born in October 1921.