The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Page 37
14. BHRM, interview with the author, July 14, 2013.
15. MS, Happiness in Marriage (1926; repr., New York: Brentano’s, 1928), chapter 7, pp. 123, 112.
16. EHM to BHRM and Donn Marston, March 14, 1963, in the possession of BHRM.
17. EHM to BHRM and Donn Marston, March 15, 1963, in the possession of BHRM. The tradition, in the Sanger family, of calling MS “Mimi” came from the grandchildren, to whom she used to say, “Come to me, come to me” (Chesler, Woman of Valor, 403).
18. Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 181.
19. Eastman is quoted in a collection of Nation autobiographies called These Modern Women: Autobiographical Essays from the Twenties, edited and with an introduction by Elaine Showalter (Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1978), 5.
20. Helen Glynn Tyson, “The Professional Woman’s Baby,” New Republic, April 7, 1926, pp. 190–92.
21. Alice Beal Parsons, Woman’s Dilemma (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1926), iv, 247.
22. Suzanne La Follette, Concerning Women (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1926), quotation on p. 305. And see Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 191–92.
23. Virginia MacMakin Collier, Marriage and Careers: A Study of One Hundred Women Who Are Wives, Mothers, Homemakers and Professional Workers (New York: Channel Bookshop, 1926), 9–10, 113. For an analysis of Collier’s findings, with remarks about the strangeness of her sample, see Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 196–97.
24. On the division of labor, see MSML, interview with the author, July 9, 2013.
16. THE EMOTIONS OF NORMAL PEOPLE
1. “I had the work all done for the Ph.D. but I never got the thesis written.” OBR, Van Voris interview, p. 29.
2. OBR to J. Noah Slee, September 18, 1926, MS Papers, Smith College, box 33, folder 4.
3. OBR, “The Evolution of the Theory and Research on Emotions,” MA Thesis, Columbia University, 1927, Columbia University Archives.
4. WMM’s appointment as a lecturer in psychology began on July 1, 1927; he was appointed to teach at the university extension on November 7, 1927. His term expired on June 30, 1928. According to WMM, Appointment Record, box 38. A separate document, WMM, Nomination for Appointment, is dated July 26, 1927. Marston is listed as succeeding Harold E. Jones, at an annual salary of $2,000. His address is noted as 88 Morningside Drive. A. T. Poffenberger is named as hiring him, in his capacity as “Executive Officer of Department.”
5. Robert S. Woodworth, The Columbia University Psychological Laboratory: A Fifty-Year Retrospective (New York: Columbia University, 1942), in Historical Subject Files, box 46, folder 7, Department of Psychology, Columbia University Archives.
6. Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 219.
7. Emilie Hutchinson, Women and the Ph.D. (Greensboro, NC: Institute of Professional Relations, 1929), 101, as quoted in Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 227. For an assessment of the situation today, see Mary Ann Mason et al., Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013).
8. Olive Byrne completed thirty-one credits in 1926–27 and twenty more in 1927–28, for a total of fifty-one. The PhD required sixty credits. Olive Byrne, Transcript, 1926–28, Registrar’s Office, Columbia University. My thanks to Byrne Marston for permission to view his mother’s transcript.
9. EHM, “Tiddly Bits.”
10. The best brief account of the fourteenth edition is Harvey Einbinder, The Myth of the Britannica (New York: Grove, 1964), 52–53: “The Encyclopaedia lost much of its British character, since the fourteenth edition was freed of the restraining influence of the Times. This change was accentuated when separate editorial offices were established in London and New York. The new American influence was evident: nearly half of its 3,500 contributors were Americans—in contrast to the eleventh edition, whose 1,500 contributors had included only 123 Americans.” See also Herman Kogan, The Great EB: The Story of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), chapter 18.
11. P. W. Wilson, “This Era of Change,” in The New Britannica, 14th Edition (New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1929), 5–6, and back page. Wilson was a critic for the New York Times Book Review.
12. EHM, “Tiddly Bits.”
13. Molly Rhodes, “Wonder Women and Her Disciplinary Powers: The Queer Intersection of Scientific Authority and Mass Culture,” in Doing Science + Culture, ed. Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek (New York: Routledge, 2000), 102.
14. WMM, Emotions of Normal People, 389–91; emphasis mine.
15. OBR, review of Emotions of Normal People, by WMM, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 24 (April 1929): 135–38.
16. WMM, C. Daly King, and EHM, Integrative Psychology: A Study of Unit Response (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner; New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1931).
17. E.g., WMM to Boring, April 2, 1928. EHM had her own secretary, as per “EHM/DIG,” in, e.g., EHM to Boring, April 3, 1928, Edward Garrigues Boring Papers, Harvard University Archives, Correspondence, 1919–1969, box 39, folder 845, HUG 4229.5.
18. WMM to Edwin G. Boring, March 18, 1928, Boring Papers.
19. EHM’s correspondence with Boring, which begins on November 30, 1927, and ends on September 22, 1928, is considerable. They exchanged dozens of letters; all of it can be found in the Boring Papers. EHM often mentions Pitkin in the correspondence. Boring contributed dozens of entries, but he also helped EHM identify possible contributors—e.g.: “I am stumped on two points. Who can I get to write the article on the PSYCHOLOGY OF SALESMANSHIP, and who should write SEX DIFFERENCES?” EHM to Edwin G. Boring, January 19, 1928. Only a very small part of the correspondence mentions WMM, and then only jokingly—e.g.: “P.S. Is your husband going to put the blond and brunette follies into the Britannica?” Edwin G. Boring to EHM, February 2, 1928, Boring Papers. Marston’s experiments with blondes and brunettes were conducted in January 1928, at the Embassy Theatre in New York, as described in the next chapter.
20. EHM to Boring, June 20, 1928, this letter from Darien, CT, Boring Papers.
21. WMM, “Emotions, Analysis of,” Encyclopaedia Britannica (New York, 1929), 8:399–400. This entry on the analysis of emotions remained in the Encyclopaedia Britannica into the 1950s. Marston’s name also appears as the author of the entries for Anger, Antipathy, Blood Pressure, Defence Mechanisms, and Synapse. EHM contributed the entry for Conditioned Reflex (6:221–22). Britannica.com Customer Service, e-mail to the author, June 18, 2013.
22. Boring also recommended Marston for a position teaching at the New Jersey School of Law (now Rutgers School of Law) in Newark. Marston did not get the job. Edwin G. Boring to WMM, March 22, 1928; WMM to Boring, April 2, 1928; and Boring to WMM, April 3, 1928, Boring Papers.
23. WMM, New York (Columbia) to the Harvard Appointments Bureau, April 2, 1928. WMM, Registration Form, April 14, 1928, Harvard Appointments Bureau, WMM Undergraduate File, Harvard University Archives, UAIII 15.88.10. On his registration form he says that he is a “university and consulting psychologist,” that he smokes but doesn’t drink often, that he is six feet tall and weighs 220 pounds, and that he plays tennis and football and swims. As far as college work, he also lists “Personality clinics for emotional readjustment of students.” His list of references includes E. G. Boring, R. B. Perry, and L. T. Troland. For his vitae he lists “Psychology Assistant, Radcliffe, 1915; Professor of Legal Psychology, American University 1922–23; Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Psychology (in charge of psychology), Tufts College, 1925–26; Lecturer, Columbia University and N.Y. University, in Psychology, 1927 to date.” For non-Harvard references he lists Professor A. T. Poffenberger, Columbia; Professor Sidney Langfeld, Princeton; and Professor E. S. Thorndike, Columbia.
24. A. T. Poffenberger (Columbia) to the Harvard Appointments Bureau, April 23, 1928.
25. Troland graduated from Malden High School in 1907, four years before Marston. Leonard T. Troland, Application for Admission to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Un
iversity, January 14, 1913, Harvard University Archives, UAV 161.201.10, box 107, HA0WK0. “Troland agrees to do his shorts on condition that he does the long article on psychophysiological opticks.” From Boring to EHM, February 16, 1928; on the entry for the color black, see Boring to EHM, April 16, 1928, Boring Papers.
26. L. T. Troland (Harvard, Emerson Hall) to the Harvard Appointments Bureau, April 23, 1928.
27. E. G. Boring (Harvard, Emerson Hall) to the Harvard Appointments Bureau, April 23, 1928.
28. E. S. Thorndike (Columbia) to the Harvard Appointments Bureau, April 23, 1928.
29. Herbert S. Langfeld (Princeton) to the Harvard Appointments Bureau, April 23, 1928.
30. That MWH brought EHM to the hospital is recorded in a caption under a photograph in an album owned by MM. EHM wrote, “The rose covered cottage in Darien Conn where Pete was almost born but Zaz got me to New York on time.”
31. “I quit on Tuesday,” Holloway later wrote. “The baby was born on Friday at the Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. I was thirty-five years old.” EHM, “Tiddly Bits.” See also Edwin G. Boring to EHM, September 22, 1928: “I write to congratulate you on the advent of young Moulton, and to say that you are quite a sport to keep on with your job as you did and then run off to New York to meet him.” Boring Papers.
32. “I am commuting to New York and expect to keep on the job until the first of August when I’ll take a month off,” she wrote to Boring from Darien on June 20, 1928. EHM’s last letter to Boring from the New York office is dated August 21, 1928. In it, she directs him to send his remaining articles directly to her boss, Walter Pitkin.
33. EHM, Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Biographical Questionnaire, June 13, 1960, Mount Holyoke College Archives.
34. OBR to J. Noah Slee, November 27, 1928, MS Papers, Smith College, box 33, folder 4.
17. THE CHARLATAN
1. [Carl Laemmle], “Watch This Column,” Saturday Evening Post, July 21, 1928.
2. On Laemmle, see John Drinkwater, The Life and Adventures of Carl Laemmle (London: Windmill, 1931), and “Carl Laemmle Sr., Film Pioneer, Dies,” New York Times, September 25, 1939.
3. “Carl Laemmle Digs the ‘Doc,’ ” Variety, December 26, 1928.
4. “Brunettes More Emotional Than Blondes, Movie Experiments Prove,” Daily Boston Globe, January 31, 1928.
5. “Proves Brunettes More Emotional Than Blondes,” Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, January 31, 1928.
6. A sample of the papers in which the story appeared: the Kingsport (TN) Times, January 27, 1928; the Danville, Virginia, Bee, January 28, 1928; the Helena, Montana, Independent, January 28, 1928; the Newark (OH) Advocate, January 31, 1928; the Oelwein (IA) Daily Register, January 31, 1928; the Iowa (KS) Daily Register, Janu-ary 31, 1928; the Olean (NY) Times, January 31, 1928; the Lowell (MA) Sun, Janu-ary 31, 1928; the Lancaster (OH) Daily Eagle, January 31, 1928; the Ironwood, Michigan, Daily Globe, January 31, 1928; the Tipton (IN) Tribune, January 31, 1928; the Lebanon (PA) Daily News, February 1, 1928; the Edwardsville (IL) Intelligencer, February 2, 1928; the Port Arthur (TX) News, February 4, 1928; the Oakland (CA) Tribune, February 6, 1928; the Billings (MT) Gazette, February 9, 1928; and the Hamburg (IA) Reporter, February 9, 1928. “Measure for Love,” newsreel, 1928. A similar experiment was featured in another newsreel, “Preferred by Gentlemen,” in 1931. Both newsreels are available at F.I.L.M. Archives, Inc., New York.
7. A useful biographical treatment is “Man Who Wrote ‘Life Begins at 40’ Dies at 74,” New York Herald Tribune, January 26, 1953. Also useful is a profile of Pitkin written by Marston: WMM, “Energizer of the Aged,” Esquire, August 1936, 66, 158, 161.
8. Byrne Marston believes Pitkin may have attended the meetings at Carolyn Marston Keatley’s apartment in Boston. BHRM, interview with the author, July 14, 2013.
9. Walter B. Pitkin, On My Own (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944), 505.
10. Dorothy E. Deitsch, “Age and Sex Differences in Immediate and Delayed Recall for Motion Pictures,” MA thesis, Columbia University, 1927.
11. Nicholas Murray Butler to Robert S. Woodworth, September 25, 1929: “I am forwarding a self-explanatory letter from Mr. Will H. Hays.” Central Files, 1895–1971, Office of the President, Columbia University, box 341, folder 17, Robert Sessions Woodworth.
12. John N. Howard, “Profile in Optics: Leonard Thompson Troland,” Optics Info Base, June 2008, 20–21.
13. Carl Laemmle, “Watch This Column,” Saturday Evening Post, February 9, 1929. “Possibly you will recall that several months ago I appealed, through this column, for America’s most practical psychologist to assist UNIVERSAL in choosing the stories most apt to appeal to the general public. After months of patient search and the reading of hundreds of letters, I have at last found the man. He is no less than Dr. W. M. Marston, the eminent Doctor of Psychology of both Columbia and New York Universities, who is now under an indefinite contract to Universal with the title of Director of Public Service. His coming to our California Studios will mark a new and greater era in Universal Pictures and I hope you will watch them from now on.” And see “Carl Laemmle Digs the Doc,” Variety, December 26, 1928.
14. “Movie Psychology Dooms Cave Man: It’s Jung Woman’s Fancy That Turns to Love, Dr. Marston Avers,” New York Evening Post, December 28, 1928.
15. Although WMM always listed NYU as a place where he had taught, his teaching there was quite limited; he appears to have been an adjunct, listed in the 1927–28 course catalog as an “instructor.” Erin Shaw, NYU Archives, e-mail to the author, March 20, 2013.
16. Henry W. Levy, “Professor to Cure Scenarios with Wrong Emotional Content: Dabbled in Movies While at Harvard; Now Sought by Hollywood with Offer of Favorable Contract,” New York University Daily News, January 8, 1929.
17. EHM, “Tiddly Bits.”
18. Ibid.
19. “Noted Psychologist Employed to Improve Moving Pictures,” Universal Weekly, January 5, 1929. “Carl Laemmle Digs the ‘Doc,’ ” Variety, December 26, 1928.
20. Display ad for The Man Who Laughs, Universal Pictures, Variety, January 16, 1929; display ad for The Man Who Laughs, Variety, January 2, 1929; “Film Psychology,” Times of India, February 22, 1929.
21. WMM relates this experiment in Walter B. Pitkin and WMM, The Art of Sound Pictures, with an introduction by Jesse L. Lasky (New York: D. Appleton, 1930), 154–55.
22. Esther L. Cottingham, “Dr. Marston Applies Psychology of Human Emotion to Films,” Hollywood Daily Screen World, March 2, 1929.
23. Pitkin, On My Own, 504.
24. WMM, “Energizer of the Aged,” Esquire, August 1936, 161.
25. Pitkin and WMM, Art of Sound Pictures. Although 1930 is given as the imprint date, the book was released in November 1929.
26. Pitkin and WMM, Art of Sound Pictures, vi.
27. Ibid., 127, 160–61.
28. Pitkin wrote a long chapter called “Your Story”—a reprise of his earlier book, How to Write Stories, adapted for sound pictures; Marston wrote a long chapter called “Feelings and Emotions,” a reprise of his theory of domination, submission, inducement, and captivation, largely taken from Emotions of Normal People. Pitkin and WMM, Art of Sound Pictures, 53, 72–73, 79.
29. “New Books,” New York Times, January 26, 1930; “Books and Authors,” New York Times, November 3, 1929. “Hollywood was dizzy,” Pitkin explained. “We did publish the first book on talkie technique. But we would have gained much by having deferred it a full year.” Pitkin, On My Own, 509.
30. Photographs of WMM testing audiences watching the rushes of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are in the possession of MM.
31. Pitkin, On My Own, 506.
32. The Charlatan is the film Marston is on the set of, in the publicity shots I found in the Marston family photo albums. Many thanks to Josh Siegel for identifying this film from the still photograph. Regarding Show Boat: WMM himself said, “I went to Hollywood as personal adviser to the late Carl Laemmle in the production of mo
tion pictures and was called upon to do everything I knew nothing about, from raising three million dollars to putting new music in ‘Show Boat.’ But I did have some congenial duties also, buying and supervising adaptation of stories for picture production, trying to out-guess the state censors as representative of the Hays organization in cutting pictures on the Universal lot and some work with color photography.” Harvard College, Class of 1915 25th Anniversary Report, 481.
33. The work of Larson and Keeler is excellently chronicled and analyzed in Alder, Lie Detectors.
34. WMM, “Energizer of the Aged,” Esquire, August 1936, 158.
35. Walter B. Pitkin, undated memo, c. 1929, in the possession of John Pitkin, Walter B. Pitkin’s grandson. Many thanks to John Pitkin for sharing this and other material with me.
36. George W. Stuart to Walter B. Pitkin, October 10, 1929, in the possession of John Pitkin. Quite when the company folded I have been unable to determine. It appears to have still been in business in December 1929, at least according to a press release plainly written by Marston, “Dr. William Marston Becomes Vice President of Equitable,” Exhibitors Daily Review and Motion Pictures Today, December 18, 1929:
George W. Stuart, president of the Equitable Pictures Corporation, newly formed production organization which will make pictures for distribution by the Motion Picture Congress of America, Inc., announces the selection of Dr. William M. Marston, eminent expert on emotions and the country’s leading authority on “what the public wants,” as vice-president of Equitable.… Dr. Marston is the best known psychologist in the country. For the past several years, he has applied his analytical prowess to motion pictures and to the reactions, likes and dislikes of motion picture audiences. His production and studio experience include long terms with M-G-M and Universal. During his stay at the Universal studios, he was general consultant on stories, casts and picture values. Among his outstanding achievements while with M-G-M was the celebrated “blonde-brunette” love emotions test held at the Embassy Theatre in New York and which was a newspaper sensation. Dr. Marston gave up the post of lecturer on psychology at Columbia and New York Universities to devote his time to motion pictures. Prior to his lecture work at these two universities, he put in a number of years in government and academic psychoanalysis. He attracted country wide attention as the originator and developer of the now famous “lie detector,” a systolic blood pressure deceptive test which he evolved in the Harvard Psychological Laboratory while working together with Dr. Hugo Munsterberg.