In the classic novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby amasses a fortune, assumes an identity, and throws extravagant parties in his lavish mansion all for the purpose of winning back his lost love, Daisy. The elaborate display of wealth finally attracts Daisy's attention, and in Chapter 5, Gatsby and Daisy share some intimate time together.

In Chapter 6, Daisy, along with her husband Tom Buchanan, attends one of Gatsby's parties for the first time. Fitzgerald explains that Tom has come because he has become "perturbed at Daisy's running around alone." Gatsby has eyes only for Daisy, and he breaks with his long tradition of not becoming involved at his own parties by dancing with Daisy. Gatsby points out the famous actress and her director in an attempt to impress the Buchanans. Daisy, at least, picks up on it as she exclaims, "I've never met so many celebrities!" So Fitzgerald's first mention of the actress and director is intended to illustrate Gatsby's ongoing attempt to impress Daisy and draw her in.

The next time that Fitzgerald mentions the actress and her director, Daisy and Nick Carraway, the narrator of the novel, are standing alone observing the pair. It is a more intimate scene and not part of Gatsby's subterfuge. The director is approaching the actress in the pale moonlight, and Nick points out that "he had been very slowly bending towards her all evening to attain this proximity." While describing this almost surreal moment, Fitzgerald is making an obvious comparison between the director vying for the attention of the actress and Gatsby attempting to win Daisy. So yes, it is a reflection of Gatsby and Daisy's ephemeral relationship.

This passage offers a number of subjects for literary discussion but primarily serves to continue the exploration of the glamour theme in The Great Gatsby. Glamour is a central idea of the novel, relating to notions of perception, false perception, the magic of celebrity, and the hollowness of a culture that mistakes glitz for moral value.

In this passage, the film star and director are set apart from the rest of the party. They occupy a metaphorically fabricated space, like a film set, and perform there as the party-goers look on.

This situation directly parallels Gatsby's relationship to the parties he hosts. Gatsby is set apart and seen from a distance and can be described as performing a role.

Gatsby himself is a put-on, with his “Oggsford” accent, fine clothes, and “old boy” routine...

Another parallel offered in this passage is presented in the directors slow but steady pursuit of the affections of the actress. The moonlight here echoes the moonlight of Gatsby's great dream expressed elsewhere in the novel (the ladder dream) and the insistent and sly approach the director makes to kiss the actress can be seen as a metaphor for Gatsby's courtship of Daisy. 

Finally, the actress is a person who belongs to the medium of illusion. This, again, is the nature of glamour and mirage - to be two things at once, one real and the other false. She is a real person, obviously, yet she is not like the others at the party. In a significant way, the star belongs to the illusion of film. 

Gatsby fits the same description and this, ultimately, is his tragedy. Gatsby is destined to "fail because of his inability to separate the ideal from the real."

What are the author's intentions in mentioning the star and the producer in this excerpt from The Great Gatsby?

"Perhaps you know that lady." Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree. Tom and Daisy stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies.

It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was standing with Daisy and watching the moving picture director and his Star. They were still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree and kiss at her cheek.

One of the striking features of Fitzgerald's novel is his descriptions of the glamourous parties given by Gatsby. They seem to symbolize the Jazz Age perhaps more than anything else ever written about the period. Fitzgerald wanted to convey the sense of wealth, conspicuous consumption, dissipation, and hedonistic abandon in this microcosm which represented the same qualities in most American big cities. One aspect of Gatsby's parties that Fitzgerald emphasized was the fact that they attracted such an unusual mixture of strangers from all walks of life. There were gangsters and politicians and entertainers and aristocrats all thrown together. Describing the movie producer with the beautiful movie star was only another way of showing the eclecticism of Gatsby's wild parties and suggesting the hypnotic magnetism of Gatsby himself, a man who had the wealth and power to attract nearly everybody to his mansion. Movies were becoming more and more important in the 1920s, and Fitzgerald must have felt a need to include a couple of film celebrities in his mixture of exotic characters. Fitzgerald himself was intrigued by Hollywood because of the big money they paid writers. In time he became a Hollywood writer himself.