The Secret History of Wonder Woman

This chapter details Marston’s work in Hollywood, starting in 1929. He answered an ad placed in the Saturday Evening Post by the head of Universal Studios, Carl Laemmle, who was looking for a psychologist to help analyze movie plots. Based on his earlier work on scenarios while at Harvard and his research into emotions, Marston was hired. The job entailed examining scripts for emotions he considered authentic and helping with casting, among other things.

In January 1929, Marston, Holloway, baby Moulton (called “Pete”), and Olive Byrne moved to a house in the hills of Los Angeles. Holloway continued her work for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, sending in her material by mail, and Byrne took care of Pete. Marston began his job with a publicity stunt disguised as a contest to promote the film The Man Who Laughs, based on a Victor Hugo love story. The woman in the story is blind, and the man’s facial injury makes it appear like he always has an extreme smile. Marston’s idea was to quiz moviegoers with the question “Why do alluring women love homely men?” while giving away a total of $2,000 in prizes—all to drum up interest in the film.

Marston also conducted experiments related to movies and together with his close friend Walter Pitkin wrote a book titled The Art of Sound Pictures. The book covered tips for screenwriters and how to avoid censorship, the latter being another thing he was tasked with at Universal. The Hays Code was introduced in 1930, which banned certain subjects from the movies, and studios needed someone to help them navigate these new rules. Marston was hired for an initial probationary period with the prospect of a five-year contract beyond that—which he did not get. He and his family returned to New York, where he and Pitkin decided to open their own movie company called Equitable Pictures in October 1929. It failed after the stock market crashed days later. 

Chapter 18 describes the family arrangement of Marston, Holloway, and Byrne in more detail. Byrne and Marston held some kind of ceremony in November 1928 that signified a wedding of sorts. Being married, Marston could not legally take Byrne as his wife, but they considered themselves married and celebrated their anniversary each November 21. Instead of a ring to symbolize their union, Byrne wore a bracelet with a wide band on each wrist, the same as Wonder Woman later would in the comic strip.

From then on, Olive Byrne maintained a fiction to outsiders—and even her children—that her husband had been a William K. Richard of Los Angeles, who died in the early 1930s from complications of being gassed during World War I. In truth, the father of Byrne’s two sons was Marston. Byrne Holloway Richard was born in 1931 and Donn Richard the following year. Olive even kept up the pretense in her private diary, using the initials “W.M.M.” when referring to Marston as Holloway’s husband and “R” or “Ri” as the father of her children.

Byrne took care of all the children, which allowed Holloway to continue her professional work and earn money for the household. It was needed since Marston’s employment status was on again, off again. He taught psychology now and again—at Katharine Gibbs School, Long Island University, and the New School—but for long stretches in the 1930s he was unemployed. In 1932, he wrote a novel called Venus with Us, which is set in ancient Rome. The two main characters mirror himself and Byrne: Julius Caesar and Florentia, a young woman with whom he falls in love. Much about their love story involves dominance, submission, and chains—Lepore calls it “an autobiographical erotic fantasy” (149)—in an attempt to promote his notion that “love binds.” 

The title of this chapter—the name of a publisher—alludes to both the Marston household and the way its inhabitants lived their lives. Two more children joined the family in the early 1930s, Byrne’s son Donn in 1932 and Holloway’s daughter Olive Ann in early 1933. Holloway returned to work shortly afterward, and Byrne now had four children to take care of. Holloway had a new job in New York as assistant to a vice president of an insurance company. Thus, she needed to keep her apartment in the city, but because money was tight, Marston, Byrne, and the children moved in with Marston’s widowed mother in Cliftondale, Massachusetts. He told his mother that Byrne was their housekeeper.

During the summers, they spent time on Cape Cod, staying near Byrne’s mother but not in her home. This was partly because the mother didn’t trust or get along with Marston and partly because Byrne’s brother Jack and his family also came to stay with her. Jack was a writer and the editor of a publishing company called Fiction House, which produced pulp fiction magazines. He also cast a wary eye on Marston.

In 1935, Marston and Holloway legally adopted Byrne’s two sons, a move Byrne made for their future security. It also gave more legitimacy to the story they told about their family. That same year, with the help of Holloway’s parents, they all moved to a new house in Rye, New York, close enough to the city that Holloway could give up her apartment and commute from there. They called it Cherry Orchard, as it was surrounded by cherry trees and farmland. Two of the bedrooms were connected by a bathroom in between. These were Byrne’s and the Marstons’ quarters; Marston himself spent different nights in each.

Byrne soon got a job writing for Family Circle magazine. Her first article was a profile of Marston titled “Lie Detector,” and many of her future articles also included his advice as “the world’s most famous consulting psychologist” (157). Lepore writes that her articles were a mix of truth and lies—or at the very least deceptions. Never does Byrne write about her relationship with Marston; in fact, she writes her profile as if meeting him for the first time. She lets him explain his method of detecting lies and then submits to a test herself. Likewise, she interviews her brother Jack without disclosing they were siblings. As Lepore puts it, she was writing pulp herself, “full of fictions, and full of ambition” (160).

Marston’s interest in lie detector testing was revived in 1935 with the trial of Bruno Hauptmann, who was accused of kidnapping and killing aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son. Marston claimed that Hauptmann’s lawyer had contacted him to request that Marston give Hauptmann a lie detector test. However, the lawyer told the press he’d never heard of Marston.

Marston decided he would write a book on the subject to capitalize on the publicity. The book appeared in early 1938 and was titled The Lie Detector Test. A substantial part of it consisted of Marston asserting himself as the creator of such a test. A rival named Leonarde Keeler had used Marston’s principles to make and patent a machine he called the polygraph. Many police departments had started to use it, though it was still not accepted as evidence in court. Marston tried to downplay the effectiveness of any “machine,” arguing that lie detection was a method and had to be applied by a skilled practitioner, such as himself. Marston sent a copy of his book to the FBI seeking the endorsement of its director, J. Edgar Hoover. He got none—but he did get a file opened in his name.

As part of his promotion for the book, Marston engaged in a number of stunts in which lie detection figured prominently. He continued earlier studies on the difference between blonde and brunette women, opened a booth at the 1939 World’s Fair, and appeared in an ad for Gillette razor blades. He had contacted Gillette himself about the idea in which men shaved while hooked up to blood pressure machines. Marston read the data while they discussed the use of Gillette blades compared to rival brands without knowing which was which. The ad stated that 90% preferred Gillette blades. The Detroit Police Department, investigating the claim, had him replicate the test at their headquarters. They also had someone connected with Keeler conduct a polygraph test. Neither came close to the 90% mark. When a report was sent to FBI headquarters, Hoover wrote on it, “I always thought this fellow Marston was a phony & this proves it” (168).

In this final chapter of the book’s second section, Lepore characterizes the Marston household at the end of the 1930s. She describes the children’s relationship with their father and with Byrne and Holloway, who served as dual mothers. She begins indirectly with a press conference Marston held in 1937, in which he declared that women would rule the world in the future. This press conference got a fair amount of attention and reflected the rise of high-profile women, such as first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Sanger. Some even predicted a woman president in the United States in the near future. In this milieu, Marston predicted a coming matriarchy, as women could better deal with social issues plaguing the country.

As the author notes, however, Marston’s household was far from a matriarchy. His press conference was part of the promotion for his new book called Try Living, which he had written and Olive Byrne had typed for him. Holloway was supporting the entire family on her income, eight people if one includes Marjorie Huntley (who lived most of the time with them). Marston himself earned little money, sporadically, and was largely indulged.

At home, the official line continued to be that Olive’s husband and father of her sons had died, but some of the children questioned that. They knew who their biological mother was but also that Holloway was mother to all, having adopted Byrne and Donn, which was a bit confusing to outsiders. They were not supposed to discuss the family with others and were instructed to change the subject, but if need be they were to say that Olive was the housekeeper.

Marston worked in his study on the second floor and demanded quiet when doing so, but he was also a doting father. His diary entries show that he was involved in their lives to a strong degree. On Sundays, he held something he called the Sunday Five Club. It was a kind of philosophical meeting for the children where they debated the existence of God and the meaning of life. The kids all hated it, as it mostly amounted to Marston’s imparting his wisdom and theories to them. He also gave each child an IQ test, the scores of which were known to all, which caused some discord.

In the summer of 1939, the children decided to start a family newspaper called the Marston Chronicle. In it, Donn included a comic strip called “The Adventures of Bobby Doone.” Lepore explains that this was the “golden age” of comic books. Comic strips had been around for a while in newspapers, but entire books of them didn’t appear until the 1930s. They were cheap and fun and wildly popular with children. Olive counted 84 of them in the house at one point. Her brother Jack’s publishing company even got into the act, putting out several comic books, including one that featured “Amazona, the Mighty Woman.” The plot paralleled in some ways what Wonder Woman would later become.