The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Author:Jill Lepore [Lepore, Jill]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-35405-9
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2014-10-27T18:30:00+00:00

The family in 1946. Left to right: Huntley, Byrne, O.A., Pete, Marston, Olive Byrne, Donn, and Holloway (illustration credit 28.2)

Hedy Lamarr, Fuzzy, and Molecat were rabbits. They’d had pet rabbits at Cherry Orchard for years. “We had a domestic crisis in the family today, which is in the nature of a grave reflection on me, your niece,” Olive Byrne once reported to Margaret Sanger. “Four weeks ago we had two rabbits, three weeks ago the number was increased, via blessed event, to eight. Father rabbit was hurriedly removed from mother’s vicinity and has lived a solitary life since. However, today we were presented with ten more—father apparently made an affectionate good bye.”14

With regret, in 1944 Marston reported to his son Byrne, “I had to put poor little Limpy the paralyzed rabbit out of his misery”; he assured him that he’d done the job quickly. “The other rabbits are thriving,” he went on. “Hedy Lamarr got out yesterday and made for the garden but Pete soon recaptured her; she’s a very tame rabbit and she kept licking little Limpy’s sore parts up to the very last—a fine mother.” (Marston wrote a whole script about Wonder Woman and a rabbit; it was never published.)15

When O.A., age eleven, was at Camp Po-Ne-Mah in Connecticut, Marston drove everyone out to visit her. “Donn and Pete went (with both Mommies and poor old Dad),” he reported to Byrne, adding that O.A. had become an expert Ping-Pong player. Marston wrote to Byrne every few days and sent him care packages—including comics. “Wonder Woman is going very well—they’ve sold her to a lot of new papers including one in Honolulu and one in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Will send you more comic books if you want and the camp permits. (But you don’t have to read WW if you don’t want to—say which books you want.)” For the first time in his life, Marston was writing stuff his kids might actually want to read. He loved asking their opinions. He conducted his own informal readers’ polls. “Sometime when you think of it,” he asked Byrne, “write me what you and other boys prefer about other books as contrasted to the D-C comics (not WW but the other D-C books).”16

Marston adored his life of nonconformity, a family life with “both Mommies and poor old Dad.” The older the kids got, the more Marston wanted to tell Donn and Byrne that he wasn’t only their adoptive father but their biological father. Olive Byrne refused. She said she’d kill herself if anyone told them.17

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