"Miss Television" in 1933

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Nov 29 01:34:22 UTC 2007


OK, there are cites in the OED for "television", both as an imagined
future device (dating back to a Scientific American reference in 1907
to a review of steps toward "the solution of the problem of
television") and as an actual means of broadcasting signals or the
service providing the transmission of those signals, dating back to
these two cites--

1930 N. COWARD Private Lives II. 49 Aeroplanes..and Cosmic Atoms, and
Television. 1938 Observer 26 June 12/6, I reviewed this film three
weeks ago when I saw it on television.

But it was still somewhat startling to catch this passage from
Fitzgerald's _Tender is the Night_ (1933, p. 104 of the Scribner's
paperback).  Context: Dick Diver, married to a beautiful woman but
tempted by another one, the 18-year-old ingenue movie actress
Rosemary, has just been admitted to the latter's Paris hotel room...
=======
    Dick saw her with an inevitable sense of disappointment. It took
him a moment to respond to the unguarded sweetness of her smile, her
body calculated within a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a
flower. He was conscious of the print of her wet foot on a rug
through the bathroom door.
    "Miss Television" he said with a lightness he did not feel.
=======
The allusion just struck me as anachronistic, given what I've always
assumed about the availability of television broadcasts in the
pre-WWII era, but since the book was *published* (and not just set)
in 1933, it obviously can't have been.

(I caught this passage while listening on audiotape and I had to
rewind and relisten to make sure it said what it said before checking
the print version.)

LH

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