Unless his Wikipedia entry is similarly imaginary, the main facts (in the intro) match the movie plot. I'm sure the details will be fictionalized, which biopic doesn't?
It would be hard to compress decades of (in this case
three people's) lives into 90 odd minutes and not take short cuts and combine characters and events. Personally I thought it was a compelling movie.
Didn't say it was a bad movie; but, the film depicts things that did not happen, at all, relationships that are disputed by family members, and connections that flat out are incorrect or just plain ludicrous.
First, the Marstons are portrayed far younger than they actually were.
The actual 3 figures...
The cast...
That's minor, and nothing new for Hollywood; so, we will forgive that. Kirby forbid we should use middle-aged actors who are pudgy.
The film depicts the Marstons teaching at Radcliffe College, where they meet Olive Byrne. They didn't teach there and Byrne never attended that school. They met in 1925, at Tufts University. Elizabeth Marston earned her master's degree at Radcliffe. That was the only connection. The film also shows the Marstons observing a sorority hazing ritual at Radcliffe, in Olive's sorority. Radcliffe didn't even have sororities, which makes that doubly wrong. Marston's research into such rituals, which informed the Holiday Girls, in the WW comics, was conducted at Tufts.
The film also has the Marstons fired from Radcliffe, for their "unconventional" behavior. Again, they didn't teach there. Marston left Tufts of his own accord, to go work in Hollywood, for Universal and taught at USC. He wrote articles for magazine publication and Olive helped write fictional accounts to help sell his lie detector (which was not a polygraph, but the film at least gets that right). The film shows him rejected for teaching positions and hustling for writing assignments, while Elizabeth goes to work as a secretary and Olive raises her child, at home.
The film shows Marston pitching Wonder Woman to Max Gaines to promote DISC Theory. In reality, Olive wrote a fake interview with Marston for Family Circle (to whom she was regularly contributing articles), suggesting the educational possibilities of comic books, in 1940. The article was shown to Gaines and Marston was hired as an educational consultant, before ever conceiving of Wonder Woman. He developed the idea of the character, with Elizabeth suggesting making the character a woman and giving her the name Suprema, the Wonder Woman. The film has Gaines skeptical and sugegsting shortening the name. In fact, editor Sheldon Mayer was responsible for shortening the name and was instrumental in shaping the character and her background. Harry Peters is also eliminated from the film. Gaines is shown to be profane, which doesn't match accounts of him. He also wanted to create a line of educational comics, while he is depicted as being skeptical of such things in the film.
The bigger fantasy is in the depiction of the relationship with Olive Byrne and Elizabeth Marston, according to family. The director suggests is is more between the two women, while family maintain that each acted as wife to William and did not engage in a sexual relationship with each other, apart from Marston, though there is a concession that they did not know the intimate details of their parents sexual activities. There is no factual evidence that Elizabeth Marston and Olive Byrne had a sexual relationship beyond the inference of outsiders. Is it likely? Quite possibly; but, there is no proof, only supposition. Family says no, that any relations were between William and each of the women. Perhaps that is them protecting the family, perhaps they are naive, as it is hard to believe that they weren't all mixing together, sexually. But, there is no concrete evidence to prove it.
The film creates a fantasy of Marston discovering a "burlesque costume" at Charles Guyette's boutique, in New York. There is no evidence that Marston ever met Guyette, a pioneer in the fetish world, who spent time in prison, then operated under various aliases. There is no evidence that he made a costume for Marston or gave instruction in BDSM to them, as the film depicts. The film implies that the Marston's were involved in BDSM fantasy play in their sex lives, which informed the Wonder Woman comics; however, kinky though they may be, they are nowhere nearly as kinky or fetshized as the film suggests. Most of the bondage depicted in the comics was on par with similar scenes in a wide variety of adventure comics and newspaper strips, not to mention motion pictures and movie serials. The sheer number of such things suggests a far great interest by Marston; but, you could make the argument that it is as much derived by the theme of liberation prevalent in the comic as any personal kink of Marston's. Compare it to other comics of the era and it can seem quite quaint, when compared to levels of sadism in even MLJ/Archie superhero comics, let alone the "shudder" pulps that preceded comics, from publishers like Martin Goodman. Ideas like girl roping rodeos on Paradise Island suggests a certain level of kink beyond mere dramatic conflict; but, Sheldon Mayer went on record to say that some letters suggested far kinkier or nastier things. So, the question is, where does Marston's personal interest in the subject of BDSM and the cliched use in melodrama begin and end? The Guyette connection is similar to the addition of John Willie, the fetish artist (Alexander Scott-Coutts) to The Notorious Bettie Page, showing him with her and the Klaws, as well as him shooting bondage photos of Bettie, when they (Willie and Page)never met according to all who knew them.
Having researched the three people's lives as much as is publicly known and comparing to the film, it is quite clear that director Angela Robinson, rather than presenting a biopic, manipulated facts and manufactured events and interpretations to present her own themes in the film, including a lesbian relationship between Elizabeth Marston and Olive Byrne, separate from a polyamorous relationship between William and the two women. It also creates inspirations for elements of Wonder Woman, that are, in fact, manufactured by the filmmaker to match elements of the comics. Ignoring the actual costume of Wonder Woman as depicted in her debut (complete with skirt) and the suggestion of a breastplate as the origin of her top, the film concocts a corset and leather outfit, created by a historical fetishist and clothing manufacturer, to present origins for things that are completely made up. It is akin to the film Spymaker: the Secret Life of Ian Fleming, which took elements from the Bond films and concocted events in Fleming's life to inspire them, when the majority of those shown never happened (like Fleming taking part in a commando raid, using swimmer delivery vehicles).
Basically, the director created a fantasy of the Marstons and Olive Byrne, which she then manipulated the reality to fit, in order to tell a story completely fabricated in her mind, rather than dramatizing the actual lives of the three, with things condensed for time and clarity, or given more dramatic flair for entertainment. Marketing as a biopic suggests, top me, that there is at least a 60-40 ratio of fact to dramatic license; or, at least, there should be. This is more like 30-70, at best. Had the film marketed itself as a fictional suggestion of Wonder Woman's creation and the non-average relationship of the principals, I wouldn't have a problem with the historical accuracy; but, it was marketed as "the truth."
I and other shave a much more serious problem with the last act of the film, which depicts attacks on Wonder Woman by Josette Frank and the Child Study Association of America. It has William undergo tense questioning about the comics, in 1945, and depicts Frank as a Conservative out to censor comics. Frank was a member of the advisory board to National Periodical Publications (DC Comics) and the CSAA supported the educational possibilities of comics. Rather than a harsh critic of comic books, Frank was a staunch defender. In fact, that relationship led to her being denounced by Hilde Mosse, acting physician at the Lafargue Clinic, at a symposium in 1950. It also suggest the anti-comic witch hunts began in the late 40s and not the 1950s. The president of the CSAA, Gunnar Dybwad, was grilled by Estes Kefauver in 1954, over its support of comic books. The first real attack on Wonder Woman did not come until 1954, in Frederic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent. It also tries to link Frank to the Catholic League of Decency. This pretty much amounts to slander and her daughter attacked the depiction in the film vehemently.
Christie Marston has denied claims by the director and studio that they consulted with the family and a friend of Peter Marston actually questioned the director at a Q&A about this and she backpedaled.
None of this means that it is a bad film; just bad history. I liked the film, for the most part and thought the performances were good, though it had problems with pacing and is rather dull in the early parts of the first act. It makes some good points about the prejudices and barriers women faced in the first half of the 20th Century and it also makes some good points about the public perception of non-traditional, consensual relationships. That doesn't mean is is the "true story of..." as the posters claimed; but, rather, a story created with the true creators of Wonder Woman (minus Sheldon Mayer and Harry Peters, of course).
I have a longer critique of the film,
elsewhere, on the site. My critique is of the use of the terms "true story" and "biopic," vs drama "inspired by" the lives of the actual people. That is why I say fantasy, vs fiction. There is much fictionalizing of the lives, but there is as much created out of thin air. In my book, that is fantasy.