The Secret History of Wonder Woman

by Jill Lepore

  39. Alder, Lie Detectors, 223–28.

  30. LOVE FOR ALL

  1. BHRM, interview with the author, July 14, 2013.

  2. OBR to BHRM, March 16, 1948, in the possession of BHRM.

  3. OBR to MS, January 11, 1949, MS Papers, Smith College, microfilm edition, S29: 0495.

  4. MS to OBR, January 24, 1952, MS Papers, Collected Document Series, microfilm edition, C09: 314.

  5. Audrey Marston, interview with the author, July 14, 2013.

  6. MS donated selections of her papers to the Library of Congress in multiple gifts made between 1942 and her death, in 1966. (Jeffrey M. Flannery, Library of Congress, e-mail to the author, March 7, 2014.) MS began handing her papers over to Smith College in 1946 and continued to add to the collection until her death (see the acquisition history in the collection’s finding guide). Olive Byrne boxed up many of MS’s papers. (Maida Goodwin, Smith College, e-mail to the author, March 7, 2014.)

  7. MS to Ethel Byrne, January 22, 1952, Selected Papers of MS, 3:292–93.

  8. See MS to Juliet Barrett Rublee, February 13, 1955, Selected Papers of MS, 3:386.

  9. OBR to MS, May 4, 1955, MS Papers, Smith College, microfilm edition, S47: 0273; OBR to MS, January 28, 1955, S45: 1067; MS to OBR, February 1, 1955, S46: 033; and OBR to MS, February 5, 1955, S46: 073.

  10. “I gave all my stuff to Margaret so she could give it to Smith or wherever she wanted to give it.” OBR, Van Voris interview, 27.

  11. OBR to MS, July 14, 1953, MS Papers, Library of Congress, microfilm edition, L007: 0598. MS to OBR, [January? 1954?], Selected Papers of MS, 3:353.

  12. MS to OBR, November 1, 1954, MS Papers, microfilm edition, Collected Documents Series, CO10: 605. Sanger instructs OBR to call Dr. Abraham Stone or one of his colleagues: “I doubt that the Bureau can afford your high class work, but a part time job is often available.” At the time, the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau was having considerable financial difficulties. See, e.g., MS to Abraham Stone, April 2, 1953, and MS to Katharine Dexter McCormick, March 26, 1954, in Selected Papers of MS, 3:330, 369.

  13. This is told in various places, but see MS, Selected Papers of MS, 3:272. On the progesterone tests, see MS to Katharine Dexter McCormick, February 4, 1955, in Selected Papers of MS, 3:381.

  14. The earliest secretarial correspondence from OBR for MS I can find is OBR to B. D. Danchik, August 26, 1955, MS Papers, Smith College, microfilm edition, S48: 0539, and then running through 0547–0810 there are various letters typed by OBR and signed in this way—that is, through October 17, 1955. At this time, OBR was living in Tucson, in MS’s house. See OBR to MS, September 20, 1955, S48: 0710, from 65 Sierra Vista Drive, Tucson, reporting on such matters as mail to the house, as well as OBR to MS, September 30, 1955, S48: 0742.

  15. MS to D. Kenneth Rose, August 20, 1956, in Selected Papers of MS, 3:402.

  16. MS to OBR, October 17, 1955, MS Papers, Collected Document Series, microfilm edition, C10: 965, and MS to OBR, February 2, 1959, MS Papers, Smith College, microfilm edition, S55: 0180.

  17. MS to OBR, April 30, 1956, MS Papers, Smith College, microfilm edition, S49: 0945.

  18. OBR to MS, May 2, 1956, MS Papers, Smith College, microfilm edition, S49: 0974.

  19. OBR to MS, July 19, 1956, MS Papers, Smith College, microfilm edition, S50: 303.

  20. OBR to MS, September 30, 1955, MS Papers, Smith College, microfilm edition, S48: 0742, and MS to OBR, April 8, 1957, MS Papers, Smith College, microfilm edition, S51: 0897.

  21. MS, Mike Wallace interview, September 21, 1957, transcript, in Selected Papers of MS, 3:423–37. See also Chesler, Woman of Valor, 440–42.

  22. On EHM’s retirement: Olive Ann Marston Lamott, interview with the author, July 15, 2013. On the move to Tucson: OBR to MS, February 11, 1959, MS Papers, Collected Document Series, microfilm edition, C11: 539. And see: “Barbara [Stuart Sanger’s wife] tells me that you & Betty want to rent a house,” from MS to OBR, August 10, 1959, MS Papers, Collected Document Series, microfilm edition, C11: 607. In an alumnae questionnaire dated June 15, 1960, EHM gave her address as 928 North Campbell Avenue, Tucson, Arizona. EHM, Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Biographical Questionnaire, June 13, 1960, Mount Holyoke College archives. EHM and OBR returned to New York in about 1963. BHRM, e-mail to the author, July 25, 2013.

  23. OBR to Justice William O. Douglas, June 9, 1965, in the possession of BHRM.

  24. Editorial, New York Times, September 11, 1966.

  25. “Marston-Sanger Vows Solemnized,” Tucson Daily Citizen, March 25, 1961.

  26. MSML to Byrne and Audrey Marston, February 27, 1963, in the possession of BHRM.

  27. MSML to Byrne and Audrey Marston, February 27, 1963.

  EPILOGUE: GREAT HERA! I’M BACK!

  1. JE, interview with the author, August 5, 2013; JE to EHM, May 8, 1972, Steinem Papers, Smith College, box 213, folder 5; EHM to MWH, June 12, 1972, Steinem Papers, Smith College, box 213, folder 5; and MWH to JE, May 21, 1972, Steinem Papers, Smith College, box 213, folder 5. Huntley told Edgar the story of a letter Marston once got from an eight-year-old girl. “WONDER WOMAN, are you real?” the girl asked. “Yes, she was Real!” Huntley answered.

  2. Mary Thom, Inside “Ms.”: Twenty-five Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement (New York: Holt, 1997), 1; Amy Erdman Farrell, Yours in Sisterhood: “Ms.” Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 21–22; Evans, Born for Liberty, 288; Susan Faludi, “Death of a Revolutionary,” New Yorker, April 15, 2013; and Flora Davis, Moving the Mountain: The Women’s Movement in America Since 1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 110–14.

  3. Trina Robbins et al., It Aint Me Babe (Berkeley, CA: Last Gasp Ecofunnies Publication, Conceived by the Women’s Liberation Basement Press, 1970), July 1970. The cover illustration is by Trina Robbins. “Breaking Out” is credited to the It Ain’t Me Babe Basement Collective, with artwork by Carole, whose last name, apparently, has been forgotten by everyone else involved. See Trina Robbins, A Century of Women Cartoonists (Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993), 134. In 1986, Robbins became the first woman to draw Wonder Woman (A Century of Women Cartoonists, 165).

  4. Kelly Anderson, interview with JE, July 26, 2005, Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, available at http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/ssc/vof/transcripts/Edgar.pdf; and Patricia Carbine, interview with the author, August 9, 2013.

  5. “Warner Communications Acquires Interest in New Ms. Magazine,” press release, Warner Communications, undated but spring 1972, Ms. Magazine Papers, uncataloged but in a box provisionally numbered 90A and in a folder titled Warner Communications, 1972–1977; and Patricia Carbine, interview with the author, August 9, 2013.

  6. Patricia Carbine, interview with the author, August 9, 2013; Farrell, Yours in Sisterhood, 17–18; and Evans, Born for Liberty, 291.

  7. EHM to MWH, June 12, 1972, Steinem Papers, Smith College, box 213, folder 5. This letter is in Steinem’s papers because after receiving it Huntley forwarded to the offices of Ms., and it seems to have been preserved because it was thought to carry some legal weight. On the envelope in which this letter arrived, postmarked June 14, 1972, someone has written, in pencil, “Good faith—indemnifying us vs. damages.” After JE sent EHM a copy of the final book, EHM wrote back with “nothing but praise” for it. EHM to JE, January 11, 1973, in the possession of JE.

  8. Thom, Inside “Ms.,” 31–33; Daniels, Wonder Woman, 131–32; and Farrell, Yours in Sisterhood, 28–29, 54–55. Steinem’s ties to comics have led to the charge that the arrangement to put Wonder Woman on the cover of Ms. was dictated by Warner, not by the editorial staff of the magazine. Warner was formed in 1971 by a former funeral home director named Steve Ross. Daniels claims that Steinem was friends with Ross and entertains the possibility that Steinem made a deal with Ross: Warner would fund Ms. if Ms. would help promote a Wonder Woman revival. If so, the arrangement was i
nformal and undocumented. No such deal is part of the formal legal arrangement: copies of stock purchase agreements between Ms. Magazine Corp. and Warner Communications, Inc., dated April 1972 and May 2, 1972, can be found in the Ms. Magazine Papers at Smith College, uncataloged but in a box provisionally numbered 90A and in a folder titled Warner Communications, 1972–1977. That same folder contains Ms. magazine’s financial reports, submitted to Warner, along with a record of Warner’s payments to Ms. These documents make no mention of Wonder Woman. (Steinem would not agree to be interviewed by me.)

  9. Wonder Woman: A “Ms.” Book (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), Gloria Steinem, Introduction. On Roubicek Woolfolk, see Julius Schwartz, foreword to Roy Thomas, All-Star Companion, 4, and Robbins and Yronwode, Women and the Comics, 104. In the history of comics, Roubicek Woolfolk has been at best neglected and at worst erased. In the mid-1970s, when Joe Brancatelli was writing entries for The World Encyclopedia of Comics, his editors threw away his entry on Roubicek Woolfolk: “I wrote a hundred and ninety of the two hundred comic-book entries, which was both character and creator. My job was to submit to Maurice Horn a list of both characters and creators to write about. I would say ninety-five percent of what I submitted was accepted. You know who was knocked out? Dorothy.” Brancatelli, interview with the author, November 1, 2013.

  10. Patricia Carbine, interview with the author, August 9, 2013; JE, interview with the author, August 5, 2013; Anderson, interview with JE, July 26, 2005; Thom, Inside “Ms.,” 41–22; and Anderson, interview with JE, July 26, 2005, p. 23.

  11. JE, “ ‘Wonder Woman’ Revisited,” Ms., July 1972, 52–55. A corrected typescript can be found in Steinem Papers, box 213, folder 5. Edgar received a fair bit of mail about the piece, some from fans of the original Wonder Woman and some from readers very excited to hear about the “New” Wonder Woman. See, e.g., Norma Harrison to JE, July 12, 1972, and Richard J. Kalina to JE, July 4, 1972; Heidi Michalski (chair of NOW) to JE, July 31, 1972, in Steinem Papers, box 151, folder 14.

  12. “Dorothy had given me over to Gloria Steinem, who was doing a Wonder Woman book. So I know Dorothy had very specific ideas for what she wanted to do with Wonder Woman.… The whole experience was really about Gloria being very, very quickly embracing or dismissive of certain stories that I would present to her. Again, she didn’t like the stories, obviously, where Wonder Woman was basically a guy with bracelets and long hair. She wanted me to find the stories that reflected a more contemporary viewpoint. She wasn’t around a lot. I would basically show her the bound volumes of what I found and she would say, ‘Yes,’ ‘No.’ She was very diligent about reading the stuff, word for word. She was not condescending about comic books; she saw them as a way of communicating with a more visually oriented generation. She was remarkably open-minded,” said Jeff Rovin in an interview with the author, July 25, 2013. Steinem’s selection amounted to a kind of censorship, though: she carefully steered Rovin clear of scenes of bondage. As Walowit wrote, regarding the Ms. anthology, “That the editors could have managed to find twelve stories which avoid the issues of dominance and submission (often depicted in the comics as slavery and bondage) is in itself a tour de force, but misrepresents the pervasiveness of these concepts in the original Wonder Woman.” Walowit, “Wonder Woman,” 8. Walowit adds, “Although Steinem indicates that all twelve stories were written by the original author, two of the reprints are definitively not by Marston. ‘The Girl from Yesterday’ was written by Lee Goldsmith, and ‘The Five Tasks of Thomas Tythe’ by Robert Kaniger [sic]. ‘When Treachery Wore a Green Shirt’ is probably also written by Kaniger” (p. 18).

  13. “The Return of Wonder Woman,” Ms., January 1973, display advertisement. And see the promotional copy from Holt, Rinehart and Winston, undated but mid-1972, Ms. Magazine Papers, Smith College, uncataloged but in a folder titled “Wonder Woman: A Ms. Book.” When Holloway visited the offices of Ms. in the spring of 1972, she inspected both the inaugural issue of the magazine and the galleys of the Ms.–Wonder Woman anthology. Although Holloway didn’t like the cover of the magazine (“done by a man”), she did like the cover of the book (“done by a gal”). EHM to MWH, June 12, 1972, Steinem Papers, box 213, folder 5. Holloway inscribed a copy of the book to Steinem, quoting from Fragment 57A, one of her favorite lines from Wharton’s edition of Sappho’s poems: “To Gloria, ‘Hand Maiden of Aphrodite,’ Sappho.” EHM, handwritten dedication to Wonder Woman: A “Ms.” Book, Steinem Papers, box 30, folder 1.

  14. Eric Pace, “Lovely and Wise Heroine Summoned to Help the Feminist Cause,” New York Times, October 19, 1972, and Michael Seiler, “Wonder Woman: The Movement’s Fantasy Figure,” Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1973. The story was picked up all over the country, through wire services. See also, e.g., “Searching for Wonder Woman,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 27, 1972; “Wonder Woman Lives Again!” in the Long Beach, California, Press-Telegram, October 20, 1972; Eric Pace, “Now It’s Zap! A She-Wonder for Feminists,” Toledo Times, October 20, 1972; “Ms. Features the Return of Wonder Woman, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 5, 1972; “Wonder Woman Will Aid Cause,” in the Dover, NH, Foster S. Democrat, November 6, 1972; “Wonder Woman Makes Comeback,” in the Buffalo Courier Express, November 8, 1972; and “Comic-Book Heroine Revived as Symbol of Feminist Revolt,” Dallas Morning News, November 5, 1972. Clippings can be found in the Ms. Magazine Papers, uncataloged but in a box provisionally numbered 52a, Clippings, 1968–1972, and in folders for July–December 1972.

  15. “Now, if Ms. owned the rights to Wonder Woman we would be manufacturing a Wonder Woman doll right this moment,” Patricia Carbine, Ms.’s publisher and editor in chief, wrote to Bill Sarnoff, the head of Warner. Patricia Carbine to William Sarnoff, May 17, 1973, uncataloged but in a box provisionally numbered 90A and in a folder titled Warner Communications, 1972–1977.

  16. Cover, Sister: A Monthly Publication of the Los Angeles Women’s Center, July 1973.

  17. Dorothy Woolfolk is listed as editor, and Ethan C. Mordden as assistant editor, in two issues of Wonder Woman that are filed with Gloria Steinem’s papers: Wonder Woman #197 (November–December 1971) and Wonder Woman #198 (January–February 1972). She is not listed as editor in Wonder Woman #195 (July–August 1971), also filed with Steinem’s papers, box 213, folder 5.

  18. Steinem quoted in Matsuuchi, “Wonder Woman Wears Pants,” 128.

  19. Flora Davis to Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk, June 23, 1972, Steinem Papers, box 33, folder 14. Apparently, Carmine Infantino’s idea about Wonder Woman was “OK, we can get publicity as a feminist hero but we don’t want her to become really loud about it.” Roubicek Woolfolk wanted to be really loud about it. Jeff Rovin, interview with the author, July 25, 2013.

  20. Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk to Gloria Steinem, July 8, 1972, Steinem Papers, box 33, folder 14.

  21. Samuel R. Delany, Wonder Woman #203 (December 1972).

  22. Samuel R. Delany, quoted in Ann Matsuuchi, “Wonder Woman Wears Pants: Wonder Woman, Feminism and the 1972 ‘Women’s Lib’ Issue,” Colloquy 24 (2012): 118–42; the quotation is on p. 119. One critic called the special issue “perhaps the worst travesty on feminism ever written.” Walowit, “Wonder Woman,” 35, 217–21.

  23. Robbins and Yronwode, Women and the Comics, 106.

  24. Allan Asherman (Kanigher’s assistant in 1972), interview with the author, Au-gust 12, 2013; and Paul Levitz (former head of DC Comics), e-mail to the author, August 11, 2013. Kanigher had been much disconcerted when a reporter from Ms. came to interview him, according to Asherman, a story Levitz had also heard.

  25. “New Adventures of the Original Wonder Woman,” Wonder Woman #204, January–February 1973. And see Daniels, Wonder Woman, 131–33. Kanigher didn’t last, either. In October 1973, he was replaced by Julius Schwartz (Walowit, “Wonder Woman,” 36).

  26. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown, 1991).

  27. On the culture of trashing and the fate of Shulamith Fires
tone, see Susan Faludi, “Death of a Revolutionary,” New Yorker, April 15, 2013.

  28. Anselma Dell’Olio, “Divisiveness and Self-Destruction in the Women’s Movement: A Letter of Resignation,” 1970, quoted in Faludi, “Death of a Revolutionary.” And see Vivian Gornick, “The Woman’s Movement in Crisis: Let’s Stop the Infighting!” Village Voice, November 3, 1975.

  29. Dozier’s 1967 Wonder Woman screen test for Ellie Wood Walker can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWiiXs2uU1k.

  30. “I watched the first part of the T.V. pilot show,” EHM wrote to JE, April 19, 1974, in the possession of JE. “The grownups round here were not very responsive. The children—8 to 12—thought it was marvelous and that it should go on forever.” See also Walowit, “Wonder Woman: Enigmatic Heroine of American Popular Culture,” v–vi.

  31. Wonder Woman, ABC Television, 1975, based on characters created by WMM, developed for television by Stanley Ralph Ross; the complete first season is available as a DVD distributed by Warner Communications, 2004.

  32. “Lib Leader Warns Others Not to Be ‘Superwomen,’ ” Cleveland Press, July 19, 1972. This story was picked up by the UP and the AP and reported all over the country; it involves an interview with Friedan after the publication of an essay of hers called “Beyond Women’s Liberation,” printed in McCall’s in August 1972.

  33. Carole Ann Douglas, “Redstockings Assert Steinem CIA Tie,” Off Our Backs 5 (May–June 1975), 7. Gabrielle Schang, “Gloria Steinem’s CIA Connection: Radical Feminists Won’t Be Ms.-led,” Berkeley Barb, May 30, 1975, is a reprint of the Redstockings’ statement, illustrated by a picture of Gloria Steinem as Wonder Woman; it can be found in the Steinem Papers, box 203, folder 16.