"The Thackeray Club" is a fictional London gentlemen's club visited by Astaire in the film's opening moments, solely for a comic bit in which he disturbs the club's mandated silence with a brief but explosive volley of percussive, gotta-dance exuberance.

The scene is just as brief and silly in the stage version (lifted nearly verbatim from the screenplay).  So when my director said she could stage it with just three wing chairs, I was thrilled not to have to wrangle a dozen of them, or any other scenery, for just one throwaway moment whose sole purpose is to establish "Jerry"'s (the Astaire character, though I often find myself referring to him simply as Fred) mischievous, devil-may-care insouciance – along with the irrepressible penchant for tap-dancing that will later annoy his downstairs neighbor (Rogers) at a London hotel, sparking their initially hostile meet-cute.

But I had done a little research on London men's clubs of the '30s, and on London at that time more generally, and was still approaching this particular book scene in too dully realistic a manner, worrying that, with Jerry/Fred occupying one chair, there would be only two left for other gents to tsk-tsk at the rustling of his newspaper.  Surely there would need to be others standing around — the dynamic of the scene, with the fish-out-of-water American among stone-faced Brits, would appear to depend on numbers (in the movie, the room is very large, grandly-furnished, and populated by a mute army of cuff-linked and be-monocled elderly men).  I added a few standing figures, a side table, a couple of lamps, a cuspidor or two — anything to establish the stuffiness of the place and give Jerry something to play against.

Alas: it was looking so awful, so "this wants to be an extravagant Hollywood set, but we could only afford three chairs, two lamps and an ashtray" — muddy and meaningless and lacking even the slightest sense of place — that I finally deleted everything and started over, thinking there must be a way to make smallness somehow work for the scene instead of against it.  For starters, what if we really do see only two club members, plus Jerry?

I thought of the three monkeys seeing/hearing/speaking no evil — an image used by the director of the first Forum I designed (28 years ago!) as part of a three-part gag during the second-act chase scene where Pseudolus improvises his escape from the custody of two of Miles Gloriosus's soldiers.

And then, somehow, everything clicked into place.  This club isn't so much a "real" location as it is, simply, the setup for a joke.  And jokes lend themselves especially well to the storytelling Rule of Three:  one (person, object, event) establishes a context, the next leads us in some narrative direction or other, and the third upends our expectations.  In the starkest schematic terms, the scene only truly needs two other club members to make Jerry the odd man out — and the theatre-game simplicity of establishing a him-against-them relationship in such skeletally spare terms could be part of the fun.  Hence: three identical wing chairs, arranged in rigid symmetry with three identical ashtrays next to them and three identical lamps hanging above them.  Three apparently-identical men in suits hidden behind three identical newspapers — until Jerry peeks out from behind his (perhaps he has a contraband issue of Variety tucked discreetly into his obligatory copy of The Times), and we know immediately that this microcosm of staid conformity can't last.  There's a elegant simplicity to this image (below) that I'm actually really proud of, even if it did take me far too long (basically an entire day) to find my way to it: yes, sure, class and social dynamics and Anglo/American stereotypes and JerryFred's impish joie de vivre giving rarefied social spaces a salutary shakeup, all that stuff I was getting bogged down in — it's all relevant here, but for any of it to emerge (and, far more importantly: for the joke to land) requires not textured realism or sociological nuance, but rather the quick, confident strokes of a cartoon.  Blush-makingly obvious in retrospect; surprisingly elusive under the subconsciously lingering influence of the cinematic (opulently "real" and detailed) original.

My initial thought was to have all three wing chairs facing front, and I might still return to that.  But turning them slightly toward center seemed useful — along with spacing them apart just widely enough to feel awkward, as though the chairs were intended (but fail comically) to form a companionable grouping.  It gives the cartoon a tiny toehold in reality, where three chairs facing forward under three outsized chandeliers might just look bizarre.  (I experimented with the size of the lamps, and I thing it's good for them to be just a bit clumsily out of scale, but I might yet shrink them just a skosh further, or at least make them a bit less bright-gold, so they don't dominate the image.  Likewise with their spacing, which establishes a certain visual rhythm: too far apart, and you dilute the amusing redundancy of each chair having its own personal chandelier; too close, and that overkill just becomes distractingly weird).

The scene itself actually unfolds in three stages, which this rendering compresses into a single image.  First: lights up on the three chairs, their occupants buried in their newspapers: silence... silence... until Jerry peeks out and, testing the waters, clears his throat — much to his neighbors' disapproval.  Second: Jerry's producer Horace enters from the street and brags — quietly — to the club concierge (shown with him here downstage-right) about his upcoming West End hit.  Third: Horace finds Jerry and whispers to him to come back to the hotel where they can talk.  On his way out, Jerry lets loose with a few seconds of tapping, shattering the silence and scandalizing the Thackerayites (...both of them.  And the concierge too, presumably).

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The "Silence" sign, upstage, is specified in a stage direction: as in the movie, it unfussily establishes the scene's premise (and from that alone, you'd think I might have grasped sooner that subtlety isn't on the menu here).  The shushing faces projected at the upper corners of the proscenium are my own invention; having established those spots for specific projections at other points in the show, I'm now finding things to project there in almost every scene.  (These particular faces could actually use a little more work; they have a pleasing deadpan, but I'd like them to more closely caricature the real Wm. Makepeace Thackeray and to have a slightly more simplified glyph-like quality).  The Thackeray Club sign is also projected.  The London skyline upstage (which needs further development) is introduced in this scene, remains for the rest of the first act, then is replaced by a Venetian skyline in Act 2.  And the geometric pewter-and-bronze-toned Art Deco surround stays throughout; having long since decided to let minimal scenic elements (furniture, doors, etc.) float against an abstract background, it's ironic that it took me so long to figure out the Club: turns out, the "real" stuff doesn't want to feel all that much real-er than the Deco wallpaper framing it.

And even this may be too much, in pure practical terms: finding and/or reupholstering three nice wing chairs to match will be a chore, as will jigsawing the three hanging-lamp cutouts and either electrifying them or creating a projection to make them appear illuminated.  Painting and rigging them along with the narrow strip of "ceiling" from which they hang will take time and money; lacking much of either, it may simply not be justifiable for a two-minute scene that's basically an excuse for a ten-second joke.

But I assume the adaptors retained this scene partly in order to reassure audiences familiar with the film that they won't be tampering with it; and while it's preceded onstage by an opening number ("Puttin' On The Ritz") from Jerry's show, and one quick stage-door scene to whisk him from B'way to London, the Thackeray Club is still close enough to the top of the show that an argument can be made for treating it carefully: as the very first scene, about ten minutes into the stage version, that viewers will recognize from the film (where it's the first scene, period), it feels kind of important not to half-ass it.

I do love that original frame shape, but replacing its shade would presumably be some crazy custom thing.

Barring that, maybe something with a square footprint (tapered or not) to mirror the shape of the block he's sitting on (and then turn the shade so that it matches the block's 45˚angle).

It would be nice to find a slightly dulled hue that sort of matches the patina'd off-red, or -yellow, or -blue of the base (or even just a very pale grey or off-white in a coordinating tone).  Linen could be nice, but I wouldn't go too crazy with texture — and definitely no pattern or print; let the base be the star.

It's the last Monday of March!  
I spent the day at work doing odds and ends.  I don't have much scheduled for this week.  We have the first session of a Leadership Conference tomorrow so I helped set up the rooms.  I'll help out with the conference a bit tomorrow.  Not sure what I'm doing Wednesday and Thursday and Friday I will be learning more about our Cargo operations.  What an exciting week!  

It really doesn't matter what I have scheduled for this week.  It will all pale in comparison with my VACATION next week.  My friend, Dori, and I will be making our annual trek to Orlando to visit Universal Studios.  Normally, we go in January but the timing was bad this year.  We splurged and bought annual passes this year.  The extra cost will be offset by a hotel discount and not having to buy tickets next January.  Also, it might give us better access to the new park, Epic Universe, which looks amazing.  I thought I might be able to wait to visit it for a couple of years to let the crowds thin out but I am not sure I'll be able to do that.  I bet we go in January 2026.  

I am not sure what kind of shade.  I can't remember what it originally had.  Maybe a blue barrel shaped shade would look good.  Or a wide, cone shaped one.  I am open to suggestions. 

Cool lamp. What kind of shade were you thinking of for it?

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The first photo shows the original frame for the shade. 

Quote from: KathyB on Mar 29, 2025, 11:51 AMNow that you're home, you can post a picture of your lamp. 

I forgot about that.  Thank you for the reminder.  

Now that you're home, you can post a picture of your lamp. 

I was out of town all week for work.  I spent a very pleasant time in Charlotte, NC.  The weather was cooler than in Texas.  In fact, the days were beautiful.  If the hotel had not had a busy street nearby I would have sleep with the window open.  I'm sad to leave (I tried and failed to finagle another week there next week.) but am glad to be home.  The weekend should be nice and I am hoping to be motivated enough to consider cleaning my apartment a little bit.  

Thst is a very cool looking lamp!  What a story to go with it.  I also have a lamp I wish to some day get rewired and find a replacement shade.  It is not nearly as fun as your lamp.   When I get home I will post a photo of it.  (I am in Charolette, NC fir work this week.)