Just finished watching the film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.  Now, I will admit, up front, that I went into it suspecting that it was going to play fast and loose with the truth, based on a few details that I read in an article and the general nature of Hollywood (Never let the truth get in the way of a good story!).  However, regardless of the blurb "Based on a true story," it is predominantly fantasy and one that does a disservice to the real people.  Christie Marston, granddaughter of William Moulton Marston and legal wife Elizabeth has condemned the film as fantasy, based on its portrayal of Elizabeth and Olive Byrne being lovers, and the fact that the family was never contacted by the director and never consulted, in any fashion on the film.  Further, Yereth Rosen, granddaughter of Josette Frank, who is portrayed as a critic of Marston, Wonder Woman and comics in general, condemned the portrayal of her mother as some conservative Christian censor, as her grandmother was neither Christian, nor an anti-comics crusader.  So, there's two strike against it right now.

Let's dispense with the usual arguments right now:  "It's a biopic, not a documentary."  Those are semantics, pure and simple.  That is the perennial cop out of Hollywood to represent the truth in a picture based on real people or history.  It is a way of saying "We made this stuff up, but we are selling it to you as the truth, sucker."  Then, when they are caught in the lie, they respond with "it's a biopic, we took "dramatic license: to tell an entertaining story.  Hollywood needs its dramatic license revoked as it can't get through the skills test.  If the real story is interesting enough to warrant being told to others, then it can be told in both an entertaining fashion and one that is true to the real people involved and the facts in their lives.  The story is built out of the life; you don't create the story and then pick and choose life elements to fit the pre-conceived story.  That is the equivalent of pseudo-science, where theories are conceived and then evidence is cherry-picked to support the thesis and anything that refutes the premise is ignored and/or buried.  This is pseudo-documentary.

Ah, but that is the next argument; "If you want the truth, watch a documentary."  That pre-supposes there is one.  A dramatization is by definition, fictional; but, when based on real events and people, the fiction is supposed to be conversations that no one could have witnessed, or ideas from people's heads that no one else could know, unless it was articulated in some form while the person was living.  Combining several real characters into one composite, for clarity of story is another accepted practice.  This is fine, so long as the events of history aren't significantly altered.  If someone sees 5 doctors over the course of an illness, portraying them as one doctor isn't a massive alteration of facts, unless only one of those doctors made a significant contribution.  In that case, it would seem more honest to make the others into a composite, to avoid repetition and portray the significant one as their own character.

Hollywood likes to have its cake and eat it to; not be beholding to the truth yet market a film as true.  Sure, the lawyers get them a legal out by saying "based on a true story", while adding huge disclaimers at the end of the movie, buried deeper than the fine print on an insurance policy.

So, know up front this is fiction, not the true story.  So, what is their story?




Let's start with the obvious; here are the Marstons and Olive Byrne....



and the cast....



So, typical Hollywood; young, pretty and thin.  Well, fine; we'll give them a pass on that.

So, onto the film's many alterations of history.  The film opens at Radcliffe College, in 1928, where the Marstons meet Ilve Byrne, a young student taking Prof Marston's class.  Marston didn't teach at Radcliffe and Olive Byrne did not attend Radcliffe.  Elizabeth Marston earned her master's degree from Radcliffe, while William Marston attended a doctoral program at Harvard.  Olive Byrne met the Martstons in 1925, while she was a senior at Tuft's University, where Marston was teaching.  So, partial truth in that Marston was her teacher; but wrong university, because the writer director thought Radcliffe sounded better, since Elizabeth had attended there.  So, why the deception?  The director, Angela Robinson, wanted to make points about Elizabeth marston's credentials and her influence in Marston's research.  So, we bend the truth to make a political point that Elizabeth was a woman in a world where her academic contributions didn't matter.  Marston's research is blood pressure, related to the development of a version of the lie detector had other collaborators (ignored in the film) and they noted Elizabeth's many contributions.  So, we fictionalize Olive and the Marston's place of meeting, and time frame, to make points about Elizabeth.  Forgivable, to a point, though why make it 1928 instead of 1925?  Well, how about Olive's age at the time of the creation of Wonder Woman?  Olive was born in 1904, meaning she was nearly 40 when Wonder Woman was first published, not the 20-something we see in the film.  We have to make Olive young and naive, the worshiper of the Marstons.  Well, she might have been when she met them, though after 15+ years, I doubt she was so naive.

That is a minor point, but kind of sets the tone that truth is more than secondary to the story.  It takes a bit of time before the Marston's develop their polyamorous relationship with Olive, including time when she takes them to a baby party, at her sorority, where they witness and Elizabeth becomes sexually aroused, by watching Olive spank a pledge, for talking without being spoken to.  Tere is truth to the idea that Olive helped introduce the to the hazing rituals of her sorority at Tufts (Radcliffe didn't have sororities and Olive didn't attend);  However, the sexual arousal of Elizabeth is pure fantasy as there is no documentation that she ever even witnessed such an event.  Robinson is creating a sexual attraction between Olive and Elizabeth and Olive makes the first overt move by kissing Elizabeth.  Prior to that, we see Elizabeth chastising her husband for an obvious attraction  to Olive and telling Olive not to "F@#$ my husband," when she applies to be his research assistant.  According to family, Elizabeth and Olive were not lovers; but, were wives to William, who remained together to raise their children, Elizabeth working as a secretary and Olive keeping house and caring for the children.  Now we have altered the real people to fit a preconceived idea that the two women had to be lesbians because they stayed together after William's death.  We have no real idea about the Marston's sexual pairings; but, the concept of the women remaining together because they were lovers has no supporting evidence, other than preconceived ideas.  It is likely that they stayed together based on economic realities and because they were, however unconventional, a family.  Elizabeth was 11 years older than Olive and may have been as much a mother or older sister figure to her.

Olive Byrne gets altered significantly to fit within Robinson's framework.  She is shown to be naive, raised by nuns at a convent school, after her famous mother, Ethel Byrne, left her husband.  In fact, her mother left her in the care of her parents, until their death in 1914.  Then, Olive was sent to a Catholic orphanage.  However, she met her mother when she was 16 and lived, part of the time, with her and her lover, Rob Parker and her decision to attend Tufts, as a medical student, was influenced by her mother.  She had also been greatly exposed to her aunt's (Margaret Sanger) writing and she was noted at Tufts for having a short, androgynous bob hairstyle.  She also worked at her aunt's Clinical Research Bureau over Christmas vacations.  So, while she may have been young, she was hardly cloistered.  She is portrayed as such to be made the submissive member of the triangle, with Elizabeth the dominant and William the observer and object of their mutual affection.  The fact that he had children by Olive, after already having children with Elizabeth (the eldest born around 1928, when Olive had met the Marstons.  Her son Byrne was born in 1931, though the film depicts Olive having a son before Elizabeth is pregnant.  

The film next has the couple fired from Radcliffe, for their unconventional lifestyle, which is an open secret. Again, Marston never taught at Radcliffe.  After teaching at Tufts, he went to work, in Hollywood, for Universal, for a year, as Director of Public Services and taught at the University of Southern California (1929-1930).  He spent the 30s writing both academic works and marketing pieces to sell his lie detector.  Olive Byrne helped write fictional articles promoting his machine, under assumed names.  This is pretty much ignored and, instead, presents the Marston's as being fired and William hustling writing assignments and Elizabeth going to work as a secretary.  It shows Marston rejected for teaching positions, because of what happened at Radcliffe.  Olive stays at home to raise her son and the Marston's son, after his birth.  Christie Marston has said that neighbors were told that Olive was Elizabeth's widowed sister-in-law, and family were told that she was their widowed housekeeper and nanny. 

We then get into pure fiction, created to give undocumented origins for the Wonder Woman character.  Marston noted the silver bracelets that Olive wore as an inspiration for WW's amazonian bracellets of submission.  The film has him walking through Greenwich Village, in 1940, where he sees the lingerie shop of Charles Guyette, who shows William an Amazonian "burlesque costume" and fetish high heel boots.  Charles Guyette was a real person who was a pioneer in the world of fetish and who did have a lingerie and costume shop on 45th street, in New York, under several aliases.  He went to prison in 1935, for a year and a day, then began using aliases.  There is no documentation that he ever met Marston; but, he is seen giving instruction in bondage to the Marstons and Olive (and a few other couples) and then puts together a Greek-themed corset and fetish boots for Olive, while she picks up a tiara.  Elizabeth is disgusted by Olive's submissive response to bondage instruction and starts to walk off, which leads Olive to run off to a dressing area, where she finds the tiara and puts it on.  Then, Guyette laces her in the corset and she is presented, with a sunburst backdrop, as a pseudo-Wonder Woman, and Elizabeth is so awestruck that she takes the coil of rope that Olive carries and ties her up, becoming more and more dominant as she goes.  Their first trist, at Radcliffe, also features the two women tying William, with scarves, at a backstage area at the school.  They play with costumes and Elizabeth is seen in a leopard coat, while olive has a toga, at one point, and William a military hat, suggesting Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman and Cheetah.  The Guyette scene gives us the costume, as the corset has metal or gold accenting, suggesting the eagle of WW's costume.

Again, there is no documentation that Marston ever met Guyette or had a fetish costume made for Olive.  There were fetish imagery in Wonder Woman stories, though mostly of the generic variety found in pulps and comics.  One of the more direct images is an early WW story, where she is bound and hooded, in a lace up leather hood, and placed in a tank, as part of a charity performance. Most stories had rope or chain bondage, though a couple of stories, at least, featured baby party hazings by the Holiday Girls.  Wonder Woman had kinky imagery, but the film suggests more overt fetish imagery than was actually scene.  It is more the case of fetishists being drawn to Wonder Woman than Wonder Woman inspiring those ideas in their heads.

The film depicts Marston pitching Wonder Woman to Max Gaines (played by Oliver Platt), as a vehicle to promote his DISC theory.  The reality is that Olive Byrne, under a pseudonym, was writing regular pieces for Family Circle.  In 1940, she published an interview with Marston, where he remarked about the educational possibilities of comic books.  The article was shown to Gaines, who hired Marston as an educational consultant to All-American and National Publications.  marston then conceived of a new superhero who would conquer with ideas and love, rather than fists.  Elizabeth suggested it should be a woman.  Marston first called her Supremea, the Wonder Woman, then shortened it to Wonder Woman.  The film has Marston meet with Gaines, without an appointment and pitch the idea to him, which Gaines suggests reducing to just Wonder Woman and then admits to having been a school principal and Marston then talks of the educational possibilities of comics.  Gaines is shown to be cynical and profane.  Neither Sheldon Mayer, as editor, nor artist Harry G Peters is ever shown, eliminating their contributions to things, including the fact that Mayer was the one who suggested just calling her Wonder Woman.  One of Marston's granddaughters was named for Sheldon mayer.

We continue with the Marstons, as they go on with life and Olive entices Elizabeth to play hooky for some sex games, which William joins.  they pull out costumes and we soon have Olive, dressed in a nurse's cap and white blouse, Elizabeth in a slip, leather gloves and a cigarette holder, and William in cap, overcoat and leather gloves, suggesting Diana Prince's profession as a Navy nurse, Baroness Paula Von Gunther, and some hood.  Olive ties William and Elizabeth together and they are interrupted by a neighbor woman, who walks into the house without knocking, calling for them and catches them in their BDSM scene.  This then leads to one of the children getting into a fight when stories are told about his parents, leading William, Elizabeth and Olive to angrily confront the neighbor, and a fight between William and the husband of the neighbor couple.  Again, we have no record of such an event.  This leads to Elizabeth demanding that Olive leave and she departs with her children, until William becomes ill and is hospitalized.  He and Elizabeth submit themselves to Olive to entice her to return to them, prior to William's eventual death.

They film ends with a text overlay that says Marston died in 1947 and that Elizabeth and Olive continued to live together, which is true.  It also says that soon after his death Wonder Woman was stripped of her kink.  That is partially true, though that happened when Robert Kanigher became the writer, after Mayer and others had suggested they needed to cut back on the kink.  It further states she was stripped of her super powers, which weren't returned until Gloria Steinum put her on the cover of Ms Magazine, in 1972.  This is a major bending of the truth.  The powers continued until the Diana Prince, Wonder Woman storyline, in 1969, some 20 years after Marston's death.  They did return to her super powered persona in 1972, after the Ms Magazine cover.

The biggest falsehood of the film is a framing device that finds William grilled by Josette Frank, of the   Child Study Association of America.  The film shows children collecting comics and then burning them and cuts to Marston being questioned about Wonder Woman, while things are told in flashback.  the title card says it is 1945.  This is total BS.  The anti-comic witchhunts were a product of the 1950s and Marston died in 1947, well before they were in full swing.  So, he was never challenged about any impropriety in Wonder Woman, except by mayer, based on reader feedback asking for more kinky stuff.  The even bigger falsehood is the portrayal of Frank as a conservative censor with a low opinion of comics.  Josette Frank was a great friend to comics and promoted their educational value and was a member of an advisory board to national periodical Publications.  In fact,it was that relationship that led to her becoming a target for Hilde Mosse, acting physician at the Lafargue Clinic, in New York, who denounced her at a symposium in 1950.  estes Kefauver, in 1954, grilled the CSAA's president, Gunnar Dybwad, over Frank's advisory capacity to National.  The film connects her to the Catholic League of Decency, which did attack comics, in the 1950s.  Further, the attacks that singled out Wonder Woman came from Frederic Wertham, in Seduction of the Innocent, in 1954.  The film tries to push the comic witchhunts into Marston's lifetime to depict attacks that came several years after, which led to the neutering of the character, who continued to e published, until the series was ended during crisis on Infinite Earths, until the revival was launched of the Perez version.

So, does it matter?  Yes.  the film purports itself to be a true story when it is a fiction concocted around the real people and events, rather than a dramatized version of events, which fabricates conversations and compresses events.  The director was questioned about her sources by Travis Langley, at the New York Comiccon, when the film was being publicised.  langley was friends with Pete Marston, Elizabeth and William's son, and asked what her source for the information was.  he noted the film says "Based on a true story," while marketing posters said "The true story of...."  He deisclosed his friendship with the family and noted no one had knowledge of a sexual relationship between Elizabeth and Olive and that no one had contacted them.  Robinson claimed an unnamed source that described it as such, who studied them.  Langley asked what "studied" meant and Robinson turns evasive then says the story is her interpretation of the story.  She then says they tried to reach out to Christie Marston for a screening, which Christie denied ever happened.

There is no evidence of a sexual relationship between Elizabeth and Olive, apart from people's belief that there was, based on the fact that both women had children by Marston.  however, that only means that William had sex with both, not that they engaged in a sexual threesome or that Elizabeth and Olive were a lesbian couple.  Les Daniels Wonder Woman book is probably the biggest suggestion that there was a polyamorous relationship, but, the children only describe growing up together as a family, dismissing a sexual aspect to the two women or claiming no idea, as they children were never exposed to such a thing.  In the end, there is no proof to support the portrayal.  there is also no proof that the Marstons and/or Olive engaged in BDSM activities.  There is only the content of the comics and Marston's theories on the subject of DISC Theory (Dominance, Inducement, Submission, Compliance).  Some of the basis of hs theories were in the hazing rituals of the sorority baby parties; but, the bondage and dominance imagery and themes are an easy illustration of the theories.  Just because the theories have application to BDSM dynamics does not mean that Marston practiced a BDSM lifestyle.  Bondage, domination, torture and sado-masochism was a regular staple of adventure fiction of the era, from pulps, to comic strips, comic books, movie serials, and prose fiction.  Bondage creates conflict for the hero to overcome and, in the case of Wonder Woman, illustrates the metaphor of Wonder Woman liberating p herself and others through love.  There are domination themes prevalent in the work; but, just because someone a reader identifies the fetish element and possibly identifies with it or is shocked by it does not mean the author engages in it.  Crime fiction authors do not commit murder and sci-fi authors do not, usually, pilot spacecraft (Buzz Aldrin excepted).  marston may have engaged in such activities in private; but, there is no proof of that, from any source, including family.  All there is is interpretation by others.  As an be seen in bad science, projecting preconceived notions on data subverts the validity of a theory.  A theory should grow from the facts and observations, not the data rearranged to fit a theory already conceived.  Much as Bohemian Rhapsody fabricates Queen's reason for doing Live Aid, by moving Freddie Mercury's HIV diagnosis up 2 years, this film creates an origin of Wonder Woman that fabricates and rearranges facts to fit a pre-conceived story, regardless of the documented truth.

Is it a good film?  The performances are mostly good, though the story is rather slowly paced and it never really delves well into any aspect of the history of the characters, rather presenting the director's idea on liberal feminists in the late 20s and 30s, comic book publishing, fetish enthusiasts, and the relationship of the Marston family.  If the idea is just to tell a story of such characters, why not fabricate the whole thing?  Well, the simple answer is that more people are likely to see a film that purports to be the origin of a famous character, especially one that was being developed for a new movie adaptation, than a fictional story inspired by said character's creation.  What they will get is a well acted, somewhat slow drama that has no bearing on reality.  The major audience will be comic book fans, who will spot the inconsistencies and those who look at Wonder Woman as a feminist icon; not to mention, those attracted to the psycho-sexual aspects of Wonder Woman.  This has more in common with The Notorious Bettie Page, where there is some fact and a lot of fiction to sell the director's idea of a feminist story, ignoring anything that doesn't fit that story and keeping the focus to a very narrow time frame.  Meanwhile, it uses sex to sell the film to some, and claims of truth to others, with no knowledge but some curiosity.  Mostly, we get a cheap exploitation piece that seems designed to piggyback on a big budget pop culture film.