Susan

Hello and welcome to the show. Happy Summer. This week, Beckett and I are both spending time with our families. So when we were thinking about what to do for this week's show, we thought back. We wanted something kind of patriotic since we're in July, and we wanted something fun and we both knew exactly what subject we wanted to revisit. So we have taken part one and part two of Wonder Woman and remastered them and and put them together for you today. This is one of our favorite subjects we ever covered and we covered her back in 2020, in November of 2020. So we were knee deep in pandemic at that point and funny behind the curtain story. When the pandemic hit and podcasters could no longer go into studios to record, there was a lot of scrambling going out there in the podcast world. But Beckett and I had already been recording separately for years. So we just kept doing what we've been doing since 2011. And without further chatter, on with the show. Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

Beckett

And here's your 32nd summary. She was forged in the fires of the suffragist movement, and beneath her abbreviated costume beats the heart of a lion fighting for truth, equality and justice. By the spear of Athena and the thunderbolts of Jove, it's Wonder Woman. The end.

Susan

This episode does have a little ears warning. You know how Cartoon Network has the Adult Swim cartoons. Let's consider this episode the History Chicks version of Adult Swim. Yes, we are talking about a character who was created for kids, and of course we don't get really explicit on anything. But there are some more mature themes that are present in the Wonder Woman story that you need to determine if your children are ready to hear. Those include discussions of suicide, alternative lifestyles, and adult let's call it play.

Beckett

When Wonder Woman first appeared on the surface, she might have been seen as simply the feminine answer to the patriotism found in the new Captain America comic strip during the dark days of World War II. But she was inspired by a feminist movement that goes back almost a century before her birth. And she serves as a bridge between the battle for women's suffrage in the mid-1800s and the feminist movements of the 1960s and the 1970s that swept all over the world. Two big famous things. What was happening between the 1920s and the 1960s? Well, Wonder Woman kept the light on. Have you seen A Chorus Line during intermission? How they will come out with a light on a stand and set it on the stage. It's called a ghost light. And Wonder Woman is basically the ghost light between those two feminist movements.

Susan

Oh, that's very good.

Beckett

Well, and I am going to argue that Wonder Woman, the comics may well have shaped the minds of the generation that became adults in the 60s and 70s. And so therefore Wonder Woman changed the direction of women's history. But in order to get there, we have to go back in time. And similar to the way that we went into the lives of L. Frank Bomb and Lewis Carroll during our wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland episodes. We will begin with the story of Wonder Woman's creator.

Susan

Here was a man named William Moulton Marsden. He was born on May 9, 1893 in the Cliftondale village of Saugus, Massachusetts. It's outside of Boston. His father Frederick, was a fabric merchant who, at least according to his wife's family, married above his station. When he married Annie Dalton Moulton in 1887, at that point he was 24, she was nearly 30. She had been a teacher. And it's her family that's going to really influence the life of William Marston.

Beckett

Mama's only brother had died young and she was one of five sisters. So her child, her late in life, only child, was the only one to carry forward a family name and a reputation that went back to the signing of the Magna Carta. I mean, that's a lot of pressure. I think he was an extremely clever boy who I think had a lot of pressure to make something of himself.

Susan

He did do a lot of his growing up time. He didn't live there, but at Molton Castle, which was a 22 room castle built by William's grandfather on their ancestral property in Newburyport, Massachusetts. I just think it's funny. Ancestral property in the United States is kind of funny to me.

Beckett

And it's been demolished so you can't visit it.

Susan

Yeah. And it sounded like something really wild. There's some pictures and we'll put them in the show notes. But it was made of wood to look like stone. That alone is pretty intriguing. The people that bought it next that demolished it said that the house looked good from a distance, but up close it didn't. But it wasn't that old. So I don't know how true that is or if they just wanted something that they thought was nicer on the hill. Marsden was a very precocious child. He collected stuffed birds, he wrote poems and stories and plays, and he loved

Beckett

to read as the prince in the castle. And for his entire childhood, it was as if a spotlight of Good luck shone upon him. Schoolwork came easy to him. He was handsome. He was popular. He was elected class president multiple times. Played football on his championship winning high school team. All hail the conquering hero. He had never, never, ever faced an obstacle. Family, money and his family smoothed the way for him. William decided he's going to go to Harvard. Therefore, they admitted him. This is the way the world works. Correct. Excellent. Pack my trunks. I'm going to sail through this period of my life too. Brb.

Susan

Finally, he's at Harvard, his goal. But life wasn't as easy as it had been. School wasn't as easy for him. He said, quote, I had to take a lot of courses that I hated. Why did he hate them? Well, probably because he wasn't writing, which is what he really wanted to do. History one specifically was a big trouble spot for him because he had to memorize things. He just wanted to write whatever he wanted to write. But he would fail when he tried.

Beckett

So this big fish in a small pond having his booty kicked by freshman year because of ennui. I mean, I'm placing the back of my hand on my forehead right now. He had no tools, though, to overcome adversity. No one had prepared him for hard work or failing at all. And brace yourselves for this. He went to a chemist friend and bought a vial of hydrocyanic acid with which to kill himself, which in the narrative sort of came out of nowhere. Seems extreme. You know, you read it and you think he, what, bought poison.

Susan

But this actually goes back to his childhood. He had a neighbor who had committed suicide. And when he heard about it, he said, huh, well, life is easy, but if it gets difficult, I'll just end it. Simple as that. And life was getting difficult for him. So I guess he's true to his word.

Beckett

He had some kind of thing percolating in the back of his mind. It's best for everybody if you just check yourself out, if you start being a burden or a drag. So as extreme as that seems to him, it made perfect sense. I, however, am sort of bewildered by the casualness, honestly, with which this is written about.

Susan

Right, I agree.

Beckett

So freshman year is overwhelming. I mean, I was overwhelmed in freshman year. In college, it's a whole new world. There's a lot more responsibilities. And I got through it with Pizza shuttle and listening to the Smiths. But what saved my reason, honestly, put me on a different path is getting involved in something bigger than myself. In my case, it was the theater department. But Marsden had a different path.

Susan

His path was a class called Philosophy A. It was ancient philosophy. And the professor began the class by explaining that philosophy had three influences. Freedom, leisure and wonder. What a coincidence. Marston has three influences. Freedom, leisure and wonder. This might. This whole college thing might work out after all. The professor went on to say that when he was going to use the word man, he meant men and women, because the Harvard class was full of men. Harvard didn't enroll women yet.

Beckett

Yeah, the professor used to yell, girls are human beings, gentlemen. Which is a point often overlooked in this world. His professor was the widower of the late Alice Palmer, who had been the president of Wellesley College, a suffragist, an advocate for women's rights and education, and then he himself was a strong believer in the equality of women, both as a way to honor his wife, who he never stopped mourning, and as a component of his own life's work. And he was the faculty sponsor of the Harvard Men's League for Women's Suffrage.

Susan

And that was the group that invited women speakers to campus. One of their speakers was Florence Kelly. We had talked about her in the Jane Adams podcast.

Beckett

She's an alumna of Hull House, one of the workers there who went on to change the world. And her views were one thing. An eight hour workday, abolition of child labor, having a minimum wage at all all sounds pretty familiar. But it was her insistence that nothing would change for the working poor until women got the vote that turned Harvard into an argument factory. About half the students were all for it, and the other half were stuck in that time honored feeling that women should be educated enough to produce quality citizens in the next generation and be decorative and be useful, but more than that, not so much. And then they upped the stakes for

Susan

their next speaker, the next in the series, Emmeline Pankhurst. She was a British suffragette. And these were the radical suffragettes, not the suffragists that we often talk about here in the United States who did peaceful marches. The British suffragettes were chaining themselves to railings, were getting arrested, were going on hunger strikes, and Emmeline Pankhurst was ahead of them.

Beckett

They were setting things on fire, they were breaking windows, they were assaulting policemen who had no way to deal with lady persons hitting them. They're like, you know, cannot compute. So admired by a certain radical element of the suffragist movement, but also feared. And Harvard itself was afraid, I'll tell you that, and banned her from speaking.

Susan

So she spoke off campus at a dance hall. It held 500 people and students from Harvard And Radcliffe, which is the sister school to Harvard, came that dance hall that only held 500 people, 1500 people crammed into it, around it, on it, wherever they could find a space to listen to her talk. And Marston was one of them.

Beckett

The debate and the energy and the distraction brought Marsden back from the brink of ending it all. He was saved by a powerful woman who broke the chains that bound her to bring justice to the world. And I would like to leave Marsden here in this dance hall a moment with his open mouth and the fire in his heart and. And time travel to the year of his birth again. And space travel, plain old travel, whatever

Susan

you call it, this is Wonder Woman. We can timeline travel as much as we want. It's very. With the theme.

Beckett

Well, let's go to the Isle of Man. I swear to you, the irony of Marsden's future wife coming from the Isle of Man, given Wonder Woman's origin, does not escape me. Where Marston's future wife was born the same year he was. Sarah Elizabeth Holloway was the oldest of the two children of Daisy Goss Holloway and William Holloway. Her mama was the daughter of Queen Victoria's yacht captain who once saved the king of Spain from drowning and was therefore knighted.

Susan

Nice.

Beckett

I love that. I don't know what he did. Did he get him by the belt loop? I really don't know any more than that. I just think that's a great story. Her papa was an American who worked at a bank. And so at 5, following some work opportunities, she and her family moved to America.

Susan

By eighth grade, she and Marston were in the same class. And that's when they met. They met in eighth grade. He was the class president, she was the class secretary. He was very smart. She was probably smarter.

Beckett

Yes. So in eighth grade, at the age of 14, Sadie, as she was known, hit Marsden between the eyes with the thunderbolt of love. Even though, by their own account, they spent the whole year arguing, you know, hate, in love, opposite sides of the same coin. She said later that they both liked the battle. She was a tomboy who took no one's crap, even though she was a teeny, tiny person. She had a very, very large personality. And although they stayed paired up in the way that you might in high school, they went to different high schools, which I think was good for her, actually.

Susan

I do, too.

Beckett

And she excelled in high school in subjects that many people thought were a male prerogative. Math, philosophy, and Greek in particular. Her parents believed in educating their children the same, even though one was a boy and One was a girl. Her mother, in particular, made sure she had empowering reading material. And from our podcast, we know that a lot of higher education, education depends on the father. Quote, allowing his daughter to learn things.

Susan

He would have preferred her to stay at home and get married and settle down after high school. But Sadie was very smart and she loved school. There's no way she was going to stay at home. So she enrolled in Mount Holyoke College. It was the first women's college in the United States, also in Massachusetts, but about 100 miles west of Boston, which is where Harvard is and so is Marston.

Beckett

She became part of the second generation of young women to head off to college. I will tell you, we're still in numbers. Only around 2% of total high school graduates for women went to college, so it's pretty rare. And she studied her beloved Greek and math and English and history and philosophy, a subject she shared with Marsden. She was on the debate team. She wrote for the college newspaper. She played field hop hockey. That's brave.

Susan

She was in the choir and the philosophy club, and she was in a club called the Boston Baked Bean Club, which I have no idea what that is. I actually contacted Mount Holyoke to see if they could tell me, and nobody got back to me, so I'm so sad. I think it's a social club.

Beckett

It might be like Skull and Bones, you know, or the Masons, you know.

Susan

Oh, yeah, the girls. Yeah.

Beckett

So I guess the short version is that Sadie took life by the throat and shook it, you know, she was a force. And these new women, as they were called, always in quotes, new women were sort of terrifying to the men in power. I think Marsden was shaped, not warped, pleasingly shaped by his early exposure to one of these pioneers. You know, one of the new women got a hold of him in eighth grade.

Susan

Right, right.

Beckett

So, okay. So now, knowing what that influence is and then washing him back to Harvard to our timeline, Marston is getting exposed to something else. A questionably behaved German psychologist professor of his. So this man named Dr. Munsterberg taught at Radcliffe, the sister school to Harvard, despite being completely against higher education for women. Riddle me that. He performed experiments measuring emotion and sensation. We are skating close to the edge. And liked to use his students, his feet, female students, as test subjects, as was happening all over the country, and in fact, all over the world, the department of Philosophy was sort of morphing and changing and splitting off into the Department of Philosophy and Psychology. Psychology, Sort of a brand new concept. Marsden had begun studying with the good professor and was soon invited to be his lab assistant, securing Radcliffe girls into their restraints for experiments in deception detection. They tested temperature and perspiration and reaction time and heart rate. In an era in which women did not like to see a doctor for lady problems because of embarrassment, a handsome man tied them to a chair in the interest of science. Well.

Susan

Well, it probably helped because they were Radcliffe students, you know, mostly these new women, you know, they were a little more open minded than the general population of women at the time.

Beckett

Well, this may be another formative episode, but Dr. Munsterberg actually does appear later in the Wonder Woman comics as a man named Dr. Psycho. So Marston knew even back then that this was a little Susan. But William got some bad news from home. His father's business was failing, and there might not be money to keep him in Harvard for sophomore year. Then, as now, the name Harvard had some cachet, and it was very important for William that he stay and complete his education.

Susan

Sadie and William did date, still through college. He would either go down to Mount Holyoke or she would go up to Boston. And she was such a radical, she broke the rule of no riding unchaperoned on a streetcar with a boy.

Beckett

My surprise level is pretty low.

Susan

Yeah, no kidding. I can just see her going, that is the stupidest rule ever. When they would have their weekend dates and she would go to Cambridge, they often went to the movies. And William said, oh, look at these movies. They sort of have a script. Maybe I should write these. There might be some money in it.

Beckett

So he went and bought a book. He'd watch YouTube now. Not available to him.

Susan

I know, right?

Beckett

He bought a book called how to write a photoplay. And he began, during the dates, maybe irritatingly, to take notes as to structure. What happens, what are the elements? Who are the characters? How important is camera angle, blah, blah, blah. And then he began to churn out scripts, if you can call them that, with no dialogue. They actually called them scenarios or photoplays for the burgeoning motion picture industry. I encourage you to listen back to our Mary Pickford episode to kind of understand that there were so many infant movie companies and all of them needed material. So it's not like you had a giant high bar to meet during the early days, as we talked about during Mary Pickford a lot of times, if you were a lady person and said, can I be in your movies? They pretty much said, are you breathing? Please come in. You know, there wasn't a lot of discrimination there at the beginning.

Susan

No, no, there was not. But he Put a little bit more thought into it, I think, than a lot of the people who are writing these scenarios.

Beckett

So even though he was getting $25 a pop, quite a lot of money in those days, it wasn't quite enough to maintain him. He had to kind of go tail between his legs and apply for a scholarship. And so luckily he did get one and was able to return to the lab where he started to explore yet another avenue. Blood pressure, he theorized, could be used to detect when someone was lying. Now this idea may have actually come straight from the mouth and head of Sadie herself, because she said to him, I feel like my blood pressure goes up whenever I'm upset at you, like all the time. I can feel it go up whenever I'm feeling uneasy about something. And that might be the germ of the idea. She did help him by writing some stories for the test subjects to read, all about a friend of theirs who'd been accused of a crime. Just so Marsden wouldn't have any idea what the subjects were reading, he put

Susan

together a simulated jury to try these cases that Sadie was writing, these fake stories. His job was to determine when people were lying.

Beckett

So Marston had no idea what the subjects were reading when it came time to examine them. The subjects could choose for themselves whether to lie or to tell the truth about what they had read. It was completely up to them. And Marsden didn't know what they were going to pick. In fact, he didn't even know what they had read. So the jury based their decision on what they had heard and what they had seen to determine whether or not the subject was lying. And Marsden had his theoretical blood pressure machine.

Susan

With his system. He was accurate 103 out of 107 times. But the jury just hearing the words was accurate half of the time, so 50%.

Beckett

So Marston had just pioneered the lie detector test. He was very excited. Won't this be useful in my law career?

Susan

You know how kids shop at their parents house?

Beckett

Oh, do I ever. The amount of paper towels and toilet paper that have just vanished out of this house along with every Cheez it I've ever bought. Yes, I know.

Susan

Well, my son Noah was home last weekend and he was walking around the laundry room because he was doing laundry. Cause that's what they do too. And he saw a box of laundry sauce, the Italian bergamot, and he grabbed it and he's like, it smells so good. Can I please. So that's what he walked away with. But you know what, it does smell really good, which is why I had it in the first place.

Beckett

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Susan

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Beckett

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Susan

that's 20% off your order@laundrysauce.com with promo code Chicks. Please support our show and tell them that we sent you.

Beckett

It's time to make laundry Day the best day of the week.

Susan

In 1915, several things happened in really quick succession. First, William had entered one of his screenplays into a contest and it won. He won this contest and his screenplay was turned into a movie. So William's movie opened. But two days later, the Lusitania, which was a cruise liner sailing in the Celtic Sea, was sunk by German submarines. All the attention of anybody is certainly not on the movies. It's on this event. Germany and England were already at war. But on the Lusitania, hundreds of the people that died of the 1200 were Americans. So now America was involved in this war. Also in the spring of 1915, Sadie graduated from Mount Holyoke. And a month later, William graduated from Harvard. And what he did was take the prize money from that scenario Mario writing contest and bought her an engagement ring.

Beckett

I also want to mention the second, the second mention of Jane Addams in this podcast. During Sadie's graduation from Mount Holyoke, Jane Addams was actually presented with an Honorary degree at that same ceremony.

Susan

Love that.

Beckett

Everybody's in the room.

Susan

I know. Well, typically only 50% of Mount Holyoke graduates ever married, but in her class, Sadie was the first one to get married. She's the very first one. That just surprises me because she's so progressive and forward thinking. She did grudgingly take his name. She said, quote, we're stuck with either our father's name or our husband's, so choose the one you like the best.

Beckett

The thing she didn't appreciate, however, was that even though she loved her first name, or at least her nickname, Sadie, she'd gone by it her whole life. She said it was reminiscent of Zadie, the earth mother, and she loved it. It fit her. It fit her personality. The end. Marston said he didn't like it and he wouldn't call her that. And he also hated her middle name, which was Elizabeth, so he decided he was going to call her Betty. So in the space of one day, Sadie went from Sadie Holloway. And that name does fit her. So peppy and fiery and this and that. She is now known by the world as Betty Marsden. That's not her name.

Susan

I'm gonna keep calling her Sadie because I like it so much.

Beckett

Well, and I think I am, too.

Susan

Okay, good.

Beckett

And most books actually proceed with Holloway, her maiden name. So we might as well just follow our own instincts, follow her advice, and choose the name we like the best and go ahead with that.

Susan

Excellent.

Beckett

So Marson decided to go to law school. And so Sadie decided she'd go to law school too, though not at Harvard, which those dumb bunnies, she said, still

Susan

don't admit women, and they wouldn't until 1950. Oh, we're in 1915 right now. We got a long time to go.

Beckett

You know what, what is that movie with Julia Roberts in it where there's those girls. Maggie Gyllenhaal is in it. And the. The Julia Stiles character says that Harvard reserves three spaces or something for women. Yeah, and that was in the 50s. It's not like they opened the gates wide and said, come along in. They, like, had a quota of a very small quota of women students. Anyway, that's Harvard. But she enrolled at Boston University, and I have to say she did great. She loved the academic exercise of it. She loved the sheer volume of information, the arguing, the debate. She was one of only three female students in her class, speaking of small quotas or whatever. So she was knocking it out of the park in her studies, and William was sort of pulling a gentleman's C over at Harvard.

Susan

Well, he did also have a side hustle of teaching psychology at Radcliffe. I'm not going to defend him. She's a brilliant woman. But he had his attentions drawn in other directions. I think he probably had a problem doing that anyway, you know, focusing on one thing.

Beckett

Well, what he was interested in more than anything else, it seems like at this point was bringing his lie detector research into the public eye. He tried and tried, and as war approached, he, like, brought his technology to the government. He was rejected by the War Department, the Department of justice, the Office of Military Intelligence, and the New York Police Department, kind of for good reasons. I mean, his shtick was good. They all let him have a hearing, but he ultimately ended up accusing an innocent man. And then rather than admitting he was wrong or needed recalibration or something, he doubled down and said, well, I might not have caught him now, but he is a guilty man. We need to dig and figure out what he's guilty of. And they're like, we are not going down that road, Cucamonga. Like, you know, confidence in his technique was low because it didn't seem to be able to be replicated by others. That's a fundamental principle of science. You know, your experiment must be able to be also performed by people that aren't you, you know, following a series of instructions. And that did not seem to be happening.

Susan

No, but there was an organization that accepted him, the US Army. Just a few months after both Marston and Sadie finished law school and passed the bar. Side note, they took the exam at the same time. She finished so much faster than him. She was waiting out in the hallway for him to finish up. That's how smart Sadie was. But Marston was commissioned as a second lieutenant, and he was sent to Georgia to teach mil. Military Psychology, specifically, Military Problems of Testimony. So he's in his field, sort of.

Beckett

There in Georgia, far away from home, Marsden met a woman named Marjorie Huntley, who happened to be the camp librarian, a militant suffragist who had gotten married because she didn't like her original last name. And then she divorced her husband, having gotten her last name out of him. Goodbye. This is the last chance to take the children out of earshot. By the way, if you're planning to do that or hit stop or pause or something. Marjorie Huntley practiced the art of, and I quote, love binding. Ms. Huntley, for half a year, educated our Marsden in the art of bondage.

Susan

Deep silence. She was a very colorful woman. Overall. She kind of reminded me a lot of Victoria Woodhull at this point because she was a spiritualist who believed in reincarnation. She believed in out of body experiences and free love. We talked about that in Victoria Woodhull's episode.

Beckett

Free Love doesn't mean like Woodstock. At least it doesn't have to mean that. But what it means is that ladies should be as free as men not to tie themselves to the bonds of marriage and, you know.

Susan

Right, the bonds of marriage. No, but the bonds of leather, yes.

Beckett

Yikes. Well, let's just say if we're keeping score, that this six month episode and beyond will end up featuring in the Wonder Woman comic book. So you can kind of see elements as they appear. The lie detector test, the lasso of truth. You know, like if you know his biography, a lot of the random elements of Wonder Woman's like, scenario become clearer as to where he got them.

Susan

Right.

Beckett

I was going to ask you. I was going to. When I was reading if. If you thought that Sadie knew about this affair. And then I read another, like five pages and realized that was a dumb question. Because reading a little further into any one of the books that cover it, some don't. It seems that both Marjorie Huntley and Mr. Marsden came home from the army and there was a polyamorous situation on deck. I am not trying to be too precious here, given what happens later, but I am just really feeling like I'm not going to canvas everything in depth, you know?

Susan

No, I, I agree. I think it's kind of sad at this point because William was off in the army with Marjorie having their, you know, education, whatever. But Sadie is still back in Boston with a law degree. But of course she can't get a job as a lawyer. The best she could do is, for a while selling Lifebuoy soap door to door. And then she got a position as a law clerk in a law firm. But even then she was faced with sexism. She was filing papers in court, something you needed a law degree to do. When a judge scolded her and said, young lady, please tell your employer not to send his secretary to file papers, what she said was, quote, I didn't spit it in his eye, but I wanted to.

Beckett

So Marston's back. And Marston and Sadie enrolled in graduate school, where Marston would end up with a PhD, a professorship at American University in D.C. and three failed businesses. And Sadie, quote, only ended up with a master's degree, though she did sometimes allude to his PhD thesis being partially her work. The fate of spouses from the original Mrs. Einstein to Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald, I am going to tell you.

Susan

They took a lot of the same classes. She was going to Radcliffe, he was going to Harvard. Graduate level classes had women and men in them and they were in class together. So you would think that she would have something, but no.

Beckett

She actually taught his classes sometimes at American University when he couldn't be bothered to do it under duress. She didn't want to, but that's where the money came from. And she was very angry about it. You know, she would even yell at the students, like, get out of this room. Get out of my face. You're not going to be laughing like that when I flunk you. You know, that kind of thing. It was difficult for a woman, despite advanced degrees, to get a good job. The world was just not ready to place educated women anywhere. That was actually the fundamental reason that whole house had been invented. The settlement house movement provided a place for educated women to use their education. Education. So we talked about that during the Jane Addams podcast. So she is having a hard time. I think. Marston was trying desperately still to win legitimacy for his lie detector, while Marston

Susan

was trying to gain legitimacy for his device. Across the country in California, there was a police officer who just happened to have a PhD in physiology like you do. He had read some articles written by Marston about lie detector tests and he thought, oh, I can improve on this. And he did. He was getting a lot more traction with his machine because he actually had a police captain who was helping him run tests on it. A police captain who was really into stats and new police techniques. It was just a perfect marriage for this device to get a lot more traction than Marsden was getting trying to sell his.

Beckett

Across the country right now, Marston did get involved in a famous murder trial and the judge kind of put the kibosh on the lie detector, deeming the technology of Marsden's lie detector quote, insufficiently established to admit as evidence. That's a bummer. As a side note, Sadie and Marston were doing some really good work that kind of petered out.

Susan

They.

Beckett

They came up with a really great premise and sort of proved it and then just dropped it. And I'm not sure why, but they were testing whether or not female jurors were better evaluators evidence than men were. And their initial reports seem to indicate that female jurors were more diligent, even though in most states, ladies could not serve on juries at this time. That he was trying to open that up for them. And then it just went away. It's just came to nothing.

Susan

Yeah, I'm gonna guess it's because life got in the way. You know, about this time is when he's being sued because of his failed businesses. He didn't disclose some income on his paperwork when he filed for bankruptcy for one of those businesses that failed. So he was actually arrested. So I think that might have played into it. Sadie herself was working while they were there in Washington. She took a job researching answers for an information service. People would write in and ask questions, kind of like if Google was run by squirrels or something. They'd ask the question, why is the sky blue? And she would research the answer, but she was so good at it that she could dictate 40 letters before lunchtime.

Beckett

That is, like, my ideal job.

Susan

I know. Wouldn't that be fun for someone who likes research?

Beckett

Without Google, that would be fun. I could see me flying down the aisles of the library, you know.

Susan

Yeah.

Beckett

Getting the dusty books out and smelling them and then looking at the answers. I would really like that. Well, back at the ranch, Mr. Marsden lost his job at the university. Universities are very, very wary of bad public relations. And the fact that their professor of philosophy, slash psychology, is being dragged through the newspapers for fraud is not looking good. He lost his job. He lost the research lab they had been building for him. His next teaching gig, way, way down the academic ladder. Reputation cracked as it was, was as an assistant professor of philosophy at Tufts University. Relationship with one of his students would change his life.

Susan

And to satisfy all of you that are yelling at your ipods right now, iPods? What am I, 1992 Mona Lisa Smile? Is that Julia Roberts movie?

Beckett

Yes. I just don't know why I couldn't bring that. You know, I also want a paint by number. I'm going to search that out today.

Susan

Yes. Oh, my gosh, thank you. I like, look at those. And I'm like, well, that's kind of not my thing. It's childish, but I'm so excited that you said that. Yeah.

Beckett

I might hereby give us all permission to regress back to second grade on the paint by water kits we used to have in the car.

Susan

I love those. Well, I love going to those, you know, wine and painting parties. My friends and I have gone to several. So I have several fine masterpieces from them around my house. Two of them are on my over my bed. I liked them so much.

Beckett

You're an expert. Not really. Anyway, so back to our subject at hand for the third and I think final time. We need to go back in time Just a little bit and cover a mini bio of a real person to get the full picture. And so here we go for number three. Mary Olive Byrne was born in February 1904 in Corning, New York, the oldest of the two children of Jack Byrne and Ethel Higginsburn. Hours after her birth, her father Jack, staggered home from the bar and was irritated at the noise the baby was making. And so he grabbed the new baby and threw her out the door into a snow drift, which we can all agree is not a propitious beginning.

Susan

No, neither did the baby's Aunt Margaret, who was there and had helped deliver the baby because she was a nurse. So she raced out, grabbed the baby, got her back inside and warmed up. And whatever happened to Jack from then on, I'd really not like to talk about because he doesn't even deserve the name Papa.

Beckett

No. So Aunt Margaret is most famous for being Margaret Sanger, advocate for birth control in America, who we have not yet covered but still plan to. So I'm kind of sorry that we keep referring to her work through this show without any of the background, but just know she's definitely on our list and we will be covering her. But what an illustrious relation to have. Yes, life in the Burn House was violent, I have to say. And Olive's mother sort of lived in fear of her husband's wrath and kept the baby. And then later, her son dosed heavily to keep them quiet with a medicine that we've talked about before, Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup. Now, unbeknownst to parents and not listed on the label, this medicine was full of morphine to the point where adult addicts bought bottles of it just to get by. It led to children's deaths for an unbelievable 80 years. It was a trusted household brand, you know what I mean? Like, like, why would you think it would kill you? Like Bayer aspirin was or Robitussin, like it was just a common thing to go to the pharmacy and buy. It was eventually banned, but not until 1930. It killed children for almost 100 years. And so she spent her very early life dosed to the eyebrows with this medicine. It was not, not healthy. Something had to be done. You can't live like this.

Susan

Ethel's choice. She took Olive and her brother and dropped them off at their paternal grandparents house and left and never came back. She moved to New York City, pretended that she didn't have children, pretended that she wasn't married, and pursued her dream of becoming a nurse.

Beckett

Olive was told that her mother had died. Untrue. Whenever we cover Margaret Sanger, we can go into more detail of what happened to Ethel Byrne when she left, but she didn't die. She only came back once, when the child was six. And all that Olive remembers of that visit is when she got a hug, a brooch that was on her mother's chest, cut her cheek open, and that's all she remembers. That's not a very good maternal memory. That's all she had.

Susan

Yep. Her grandparents did adopt her and raised her until she was about 10. But at that point, her birth father had died. She thought the birth mother was dead. The last grandparent died, and Olive and her brother were both sent off to orphanages, different orphanages. They were split up.

Beckett

Well, it was boys and girls, and the girls were in a convent. And so, you know, no boys allowed there. But that's all she had. That's her brother. And there she lived with the nuns and all the other girls until one day, many years later, When Olive was 16 years of age, when she heard that she had a visitor, a visitor like no one had ever visited her before. And who could it be? Well, it was her aunt, Margaret Sanger, bringing news that her mother loved her and always had, and not due to the presence of nuns in the room who knew very well who Margaret Sanger was and were afraid of what was going to come out of her mouth, I think. Not of her mother's activism, not of her mother's famous headline grabbing hunger strike, having been militant in the course of, you know, justice for women, not about her mother's life among the elite bohemians of New York. This was just basically a hey, we exist, welcome back, now that you're fully grown, why don't you come into the family circle type of thing. So from one extreme to the other, during the summers, she went off and sang in the chorus of her uncle's female impersonator act on the vaudeville stage. How's that for the deep end? And then also to her mother's apartment in New York, steeped in the rebellious, I guess they'd say, views of those radicals who were fighting for the likes of free love, contraception, equal rights, and the breaking of the chains of bondage from enforced motherhood, societal expectations. Her mother and aunt were deep into the suffrage movement, and suffragists and the proponents of birth control used the imagery of being chained up quite a bit. Chains, shackles, break those chains of love, you know. Simultaneously, Olive, through the intellectuals that her mother was friends with, began to be exposed to feminist utopian literature. What a calm and perfect society might be if men were absent. You know, going back almost to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, they were talking about it and it almost became sort of reality. Like the mythology of the Amazons who didn't have to deal with all of this violence and stink and attitude and strength and all that because they were able to make life more perfect by only having lady persons there.

Susan

Well, for a young woman who is coming from a girl's orphanage run by nuns, so essentially an all female society. It's not a huge leap.

Beckett

No, not at all. Not at all. And the concept of the Amazons just was bubbling up independently all over society. And sometimes things just do that. Like. Like, I'm not making too light of this, but like Bug's Life and ants were arrived at independently.

Susan

Right.

Beckett

And they came out at the same time. Or all of those assorted fairy tales as real people shows all came out at the same time. Something just is in the zeitgeist, I think. And like independently people make works of creative art. And it's kind of surprised, like they didn't copy each other. They're just using the same influences. And that's what is happening with the Amazon sense, you know, that. That once we had power and. I don't know.

Susan

No, it makes sense.

Beckett

And it's all kind of encapsulated in some of Margaret Sanger's writings. Force and fear have failed from the beginning of time. When love defeats force, the moral force of women's nature will be unchained. It's just very exciting and very radical and. And it's honestly the first time Olive's even been a part of anything big like this.

Susan

And it's connected to family something that she hadn't known, you know what I mean? This connect to her mom and her aunt. So there's a familial bond within a greater movement.

Beckett

Almost asking to herself, oh, is this who I am?

Susan

Yes. Yeah. Well, she was at that age. She was getting ready to go to college, something that her mother wasn't able to do because of financial reasons. But Aunt Margaret had married well and she decided to fund Olive's education. And Olive attended Tufts University.

Beckett

The intent was, and I think this is her aunt and mother speaking with their hand on her back. The intent was that she was to go to school to be a doctor.

Susan

And during college she did go and work with Aunt Margaret's research bureau. So she's not only planning a career in medicine, but on her breaks she's working within an organization that's studying contraception and Telling people about contraception. So Olive brought that information back to Tufts University and kind of became the black market contraceptive educator for the women at Tufts.

Beckett

Yes. In addition to that, she became quite the popular girl independently of that fact. She joined a sorority. She joined a literary society. The danger and cachet of her activities in New York made her kind of an exciting figure on campus.

Susan

Oh, sure. Well, she played basketball. She was in a school operetta. That's cool. And she began the Tufts Liberal Club. Not a surprise. She proclaimed that she was a free thinker and even bobbed her hair.

Beckett

You know, I've told that story of my maternal grandmother bobbing her hair.

Susan

Well, I bobbed my hair. I don't know if you remember, a few years back, I was at a changing point in my life and we talked about your grandmother and Lucille Ball, and so I went and had my hair bobbed.

Beckett

That is a movie trope, isn't it? Like something change is a coming and you'll get a new haircut.

Susan

Yep. And Olive, speaking of haircuts, she took that bob even shorter and got what was called an Eton cut. Just think, boys hairstyle. She dressed in as many male clothes as possible that she could get away with socially. She was very edgy.

Beckett

They called flappers like that Boyettes, which I thought is kind of cute.

Susan

That is kind of cute. I don't know if it's a bad thing to call, but that's cute.

Beckett

No, I think it was very affectionate.

Susan

No, I mean, like saying it now. You wouldn't want to. It's not like one of those words like, oh, I'm gonna start using this word.

Beckett

Yeah, well, a lot of things from the twenties don't translate. No, let's just put it that way. Well, Olive began to work with her psychology professor. Here we go. Our old friend Dr. Marsden. Here's where the worlds collide. As his research assistant now, what was the subject of his latest experiment? Sex and submission. Did word of this leak out? Was there an affair with a student? Je ne sais pas.

Susan

You know.

Beckett

But after this academic year, Dr. Marsden found himself curiously and increasingly unwelcome in academic circles. Even worse, a rival lie detector entrepreneur was making waves with his new polygraph and getting respect. His dream was dying more and more with regard to that. So he was having a bad time. Sadie was having no such trouble. She hadn't even been in the same state as her husband for months because she was working at a new magazine devoted to the scientific approach to parenting.

Susan

She was in New York City. She went to Work as a managing editor for Child Study, a journal of parent education, which later becomes Parents magazine.

Beckett

Now that ladies had fewer children, they had more time to be interested in their upbringing. I find that like, looking back, I find that so sad, kind of. Do you know what I mean? Like, when there were 11 of them, nobody had time to understand that they were people. We talk about some very damaged people like Henry VIII and all these people and I just don't know. Like, had more attention been paid to them as they were growing up, would they have turned out differently?

Susan

That's something for someone to study very deeply.

Beckett

Well, and I'm sure that's what they were studying at this magazine. You know, the scientific approach to parenting. And that's what Maria Montessori's whole philosophy was, that children are people, the same as any other people and have different needs and, and should be treated differently. Seems radical. So hooray for Sadie. Later she became an editor at Encyclopedia Britannica. Sadie was parlaying her education into a respectable set of careers. At last she even lectured in psychology at nyu. She's busy. She's fine. She's got a pathway, you know.

Susan

Yeah.

Beckett

So no, she was not available to witness things that were happening in the research lab. But nor do I think that is in their relationship to have jealousy and eyeballs. We've already been through Marjorie Huntley.

Susan

Well, we aren't through Marjorie Huntley quite yet.

Beckett

Well, okay, let's just say Marjorie Huntley exists as a concept. So I don't know that Olive as a concept would have been shocking. Do you know what I mean?

Susan

Right, right, right.

Beckett

Okay, It is time to eat. Like we are operating in summer. The temperature outside is getting hot, hot, hot. And you just don't want to dig into the stews and soups and roasts of the fall and winter. As cozy as they might be, my body at least fully rejects eating like that. When the weather gets warmer, same.

Susan

And I don't like cooking like that. And quite honestly, I'm not a fan of planning and shopping, which is why Hungry Ro root is perfect for me. I'm able to go to Hungryroot. I'm able to get either groceries, pre made meals, meal kits, all there on Hungryroot. And the more I use it, the better. Hungryroot knows me and it makes suggestions of things that I might like. Like now it knows that I'm looking for high protein, low fat meals and so it will present those to me. One that I'm really excited to try. It was General Chow's Chicken and veggie skillet. Now I do have to cook it. There's actually heat involved. But it looks so good. And the vegetables I know from Hungryroot are always so fresh. So I'm really excited for that one.

Beckett

Hungryroot screens out over 200 additives like high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners and preservatives. And important, all their meat and seafood is high quality with no hormones or antibiotics. Hungry Root has an extraordinarily high standard of quality.

Susan

They do. And an extraordinarily high variety from grocery items of salad kits or fruits and vegetables. I've gotten their cuties before. Delicious.

Beckett

Hungry Root combines the convenience of meal kits with the variety of a grocery store. I tend to get ingredients and Susan likes to get the meal kit. It is good for all sorts of cooks, chefs and dilettantes. That is a 10 point word that I expect you to use in a sentence today.

Susan

Well, this dilettante thinks you're going to love Hungryroot as much as we do. For a limited time, get 40% off your first order. Plus get a free item in every box for life.

Beckett

Go to hungryroot.com chicks and use code chicks.

Susan

That's hungryroot.com chicks code chicks. To get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life.

Beckett

Well, now, Olive did graduate. In fact, she even went on to get her master's degree. But much to the dismay of her mother and aunt Margaret, Olive never did make it to medical school.

Susan

At her graduation from Tufts, just to prove that perhaps, perhaps Sadie knew all about this, there is a photograph of Olive Marston, her mother, Ethel and Sadie, all four of them in the same photograph. So whatever the relationship was, I really think Sadie knew about it. I mean, she had to have. They had a very open relationship. Just honest, as far as I can tell.

Beckett

Yeah. Well, Olive moved in with the Marsden's and ultimately became their life partner. Both of them.

Susan

Them.

Beckett

And as a talisman of these vows and bonds, whatever they might have been, lost to history, she began wearing these very distinctive bracelets on both wrists. Since, I mean, wearing wedding rings, I guess were out of the question. Who else wears two bracelets that we know of? That's Wonder Woman. Yes, even today the Marsden's arrangements would raise eyebrows. Thus our little ears warning from before. But in the 20s, wah. I mean, that's unthinkable. Well, Sadie is moving on with her professional career. And when the children came, two to each woman, Olive was there to take charge of them at home. And I'm sad that Olive's medical career was cut short, but maybe that was never her goal anyway, just her mother's, you know, pressurizing her. She had, since her earliest memory, wanted to be part of. Of quote, a real family. She even felt like when she joined the sorority, like, at last I finally have a family. So just imagine, now maybe the dearest wish of her heart is satisfied, you know? So I. I do think Olive was getting exactly what she wanted.

Susan

I do, too. And I think that the Marston Byrne family was a very happy polyamorous relationship. They did take a vow of secrecy because nobody knew.

Beckett

Well, society was not going to be kind.

Susan

Oh, no. But Olive did drop out of college to. As she said, I got sidetracked by marriage and motherhood.

Beckett

Not necessarily her own motherhood.

Susan

Right.

Beckett

Because the first child was actually born to Sadie, and Olive left to take care of the child. So Olive lived under a polite fiction that her husband, one Mr. Richard, had died, leaving her a widow with two children. That is a nod to society, I think. I mean, how else was she going to explain herself? They told Marsden's mother that she was their housekeeper who had been widowed, and the housekeeper and her children were going to live in. In time. Sadie and Marsden legally adopted Olive's kids when they were preschool age for. For security, for their future, to keep them in the family with their half siblings. But what must that have been like for Olive to just. She gave up all legal parental rights. I mean, she's still in the house.

Susan

Right.

Beckett

And everyone in the house knows who's. Who's. You know, but there was a level of trust that maybe made this just a formality, but to me, that's a little bit of a heartbreak knowing that was the best way, though, to keep her kids safe.

Susan

Right. How do you get kids not to talk about that?

Beckett

That I don't know. But, you know, did you ever see that show that used to be on. See, I. I'm blanking on all this stuff because I didn't write it down. The guy that was in Twister, not Bill Pullman, but the other Bill Paxton, was in that show called Big Love.

Susan

Oh, yes.

Beckett

And it was the same kind of premise that they had what looked like from the front three houses, but were all connected in the back. And all of these children were related to each other, and it just seemed so natural for the littler ones. But the older ones had kind of giant conflicts because they had to keep things secret.

Susan

Right, Right. And there are many probably even listening right now. Polyamorous families. But these are different kind of relationships than the ones where young girls are forced to marry. Those type of relationships. That's not what we're talking about.

Beckett

Well, not in this particular one. Like, you can't even speak to anybody else's, even during this time period. But in this particular one, everybody was okay. All the adults were okay. Anyway. I really don't know how the kids felt. They didn't really talk about it a lot.

Susan

They seemed like they had a very happy childhood, though. And how can you not? There's three people in your home that love you.

Beckett

Sadie is bringing home the bacon, and Olive is frying it up in a pan. But what is Marston doing? What is he doing besides sitting in his underwear upstairs reading books, which he did a lot of the time, evidently. What else is he doing?

Susan

Well, he's not working in universities. He couldn't get another job. He had. The last one he had was at Columbia as an assistant professor. But something got put in his record that other universities weren't hiring him. So he turned to researching. Researching and writing books. And Olive, since she was home all the time, was kind of still his research assistant and helped him with all of the. These books that he was writing and articles. The first one that he wrote was called Emotions of Normal People. It was all about homosexuality, transvestitism. Is that how you pronounce that? Other fetishisms, sadomasochism. And his premise was that it was all very normal in a loving relationship.

Beckett

Now, for a while, he went out to Hollywood with family in tow to advise the motion picture industry just how far they could push content before they ran afoul of the censors, which is completely on brand for him.

Susan

Yeah, well, he wrote those scenarios back in college. Yeah.

Beckett

But the movie industry started to be strictly legally regulated. There was a. A list of regulations called the Hays Code that came into play that everyone had to abide by. So his particular skill set of here's how you float close to the wind was no longer really necessary. Bummer. Bummer. He served as a pitch man, slash expert for Gillette Razors in a nationwide campaign. I am not fully understanding how this worked, but basically, he applied the principles of self deception and lie detection to the choice of razor. And evidently, the majority of men truly chose the Gillette razor. Now, an ad like this sent a claim like this from a man who was kind of in the public consciousness. He'd been, quote, the man of record, you know, pop psychologist. For a while. The FBI decided to take a look at this ad and to try to verify it, they came and investigated his claims. And when the experiment could not be replicated, day J. Edgar Hoover said, I

Susan

always thought this fellow Marston was a phony. And this proves it. Yeah, I know.

Beckett

Not good. You know, when J. Edgar Hoover says you're a phony and the FBI says you're full of do do, your credibility is therefore shot. Yeah, completely. Something else. Phony. Speaking of phoniness, Olive had begun to write for a magazine called Family Circle. My mother used to get that magazine. I think it's still in existence. She wrote articles about him or referencing him in a way that implied she had just met him.

Susan

She would go to Dr. Marston's house in these articles, investigating a question about parenting and get his response. It was always exciting to meet Dr. Marston, this renowned man.

Beckett

Yeah. The house she visited wasn't one she lived in. His kids in the yard that she referenced weren't. Weren't children that had emerged from her own body. Interesting. So it was written in a very deceptive way, I think. Well, years passed, and another entertainment industry was facing some regulation and image issues. The comic book industry was brand new for a few years, under the radar, maybe, of mainstream society. But the big kahuna that began America's love affair with comic books was 1938 Action Comics number one. Oh, look in your attic if you have one. You're a kajillionaire. The debut appearance of. I, you know, give me a moment to guess who we're about to see. Superman. Yes. Batman came out the next year. Captain Marvel, who I know as Shazam. After that.

Susan

Wait, I thought Captain Marvel was Brie Larson in the movie. Isn't that not Captain Marvel?

Beckett

That's what I'm saying. Je ne sais pas. Definitely not a lady. And Captain Marvel, from what I read, says Shazam and has gotten his powers exactly the way that I saw Shazam get them in that movie. I am confused. But that said, protectors of morality were. Were horrified by what they saw their kids reading. 90% of both boys and girls had been, quote, exposed. And that's three exclamation points to what some saw as a corrupting influence. Trouble with a capital T. And that rhymes with C. And that stands for comic book, which doesn't rhyme. And that's bumping me out right here in River City. Sex and violence ruining the delicate nervous systems. The lurid covers wrecking their eyeballs for the appreciation of, quote, real art that's out of control. The action shortening their attention spans. For quality literature. That might be true. Did you know, Susan, that there was so much going on with comic books? I have to tell you, I do not spare too many thoughts for comic books.

Susan

No, I did not. Comic book history is actually broken into ages. And we are, in our story right now in the beginning of the golden age of comic books. Honestly, going into this, I didn't even know that Detective comics, which was kind of the biggie in the comic book industry at this time, became dc. Like, I didn't know what DC stood for when I went in and I'm reading and I'm like, detective Comics number one. Wait, Detective Comics? Yeah, it was a big moment for me.

Beckett

And of course, everybody who is into comic books is, like, rolling their eyes, like, really? Another.

Susan

Oh, yeah. Oh, I know, but now I do. Isn't that. Don't you want people to learn about your thing?

Beckett

Correct. That's why we're here, Susan. That's why we're here. Well, let's just say in. In the short term, there was pressure from church groups and family groups to crack down. I mean, a government crackdown of the industry. So. By the way, Olive's brother, remember him, is actually a comic book publisher. Isn't that interesting?

Susan

He is. He is running a company called Fiction House, and he employs 20 female artists. Most other comic book publishers had none. His comics introduce female characters, and we're talking about an audience of 40 to 50 million readers at this point. So he's got part of the market share and a lot of the market share for women centered comics creation and characters.

Beckett

Well, following the buzz, the family interest in comic books, and her habit of featuring Marsden in her work for Family Circle, Olive wrote a piece in October 1940 called Don't Laugh at the comics, in which she expresses worry as a mother that the comic books she's been buying for her kids for a bit of peace in the house. House, that's. The iPads of yesteryear were poisoning their minds, and she needed to relieve that stress. And she would go out and ask Family circle's noted psychologist, Dr. Marsden and see what he thought of the comics.

Susan

She would make the big pilgrimage to his house, when in reality, she kind of peeked her head around the corner and said, hey, I just pitched Family Circle a piece about. Are comic books good for kids? Kids? What do you think, Dr. Marston?

Beckett

Well, he said that he saw great educational value in the comics. They gratify the strongest human desires in life, the wish for strength, for power, and the wish to benefit other people. Can we Say it's harmful to see children wanting to benefit other people with their strength. Why should we say that? And then he spent a long time waxing poetic about Superman.

Susan

He claimed that he had been doing a deep dive into the comic books for over a year to come to these conclusions. But he thought that Superman was helping to develop national pride and that, yes, there is a threat of violence in the comics, but the kids know that the hero's gonna come in and save the day. The kids know that chaining someone up isn't necessarily a bad thing. Torturing them, sure, that would be bad. But chaining them up, no, no, the hero's gonna save the day. And that's, you know, satisfaction for the kids.

Beckett

So this is a long, long article. We have it in its entirety in its original form. We'll provide you with a link so you can read the whole article for yourself. But this article, which is just page after page after page, it's just a tiny little blurb, brought him to the attention of one Charles Gaines, who ran a sister company to Superman's DC Comics. And the two men started up a correspondence, which ended up Dr. Marsden was hired as a consultant. Legitimately, they could say. The Family Circle psychologist says we're not the devil. You know, like, look, he's overseeing our whole operation over here. Your children are safe. You know, my work, it's the original Common Sense Media. Although he's not as reliable as Common Sense Media.

Susan

No. And he wasn't working alone either. It was a board of of experts who said that comic books are good for kids and came up with a litany of reasons why.

Beckett

But just, you know, him being on the board and then been able to point to him really helped them a lot. And so now there are assorted stories about how the next thing happened, exactly whose idea it was, whose pitch it really was. Was it Sadie who had the idea? We, you know, I don't know. But all of this war, all of this crazy, quote, blood curdling masculinity in the comic books started to bother Marsden. And what you need, wherever this idea came from, it's in the air. What you need is a superhero based on love instead of brute force. What you need is a woman hero, a heroine. Do you have any information as to whose idea that was exactly? Because it really seems to be like both of the women in Marston's life were like, well, it wasn't me. It wasn't. It was just kind of. Was it a zeitgeisty thing just in the air of Their house.

Susan

I could not tell you because sources vary so much. The comic that they were talking about, Jack Burns, was already publishing it, where

Beckett

there was an island of Amazons and a shipwrecked man came and hijinks ensued. I mean, literally, that was before this comic came. So I don't know if he was mad about that heisting.

Susan

But, yeah, I'm not sure either. But, yeah, the women both get credit. Charlie Gaines gets credit sometimes. Hey, we need to make a comic book with a woman hero. And at that point, Marston jumped in with all of his pro female opinions and said, yes, let's make her a woman. Make it about love, and we'll call

Beckett

her suprema, the Wonder Woman. Ah, he loved it. He loved, loved it. And Marston had been swimming in the waters of, quote, radical feminism, at least back to Emmaline Pankhurst at Harvard, and probably back to battling it out with Sadie in eighth grade, easily, and certainly since meeting Olive, who brought with her the love of all those feminist utopias and the groundbreaking philosophies of her mother. And Margaret Sanger, who once wrote in a book called Women and the New Race, and I quote, quote, love is the greatest force in the universe. When love defeats force, the moral force of women's nature will be unchained. And her land, which is another feminist utopia, has the same concept, though they don't go off into the world like the.

Susan

The.

Beckett

There's a shipwreck or a plane crash. I can't remember. I think it's a plane crash. And men discover, basically, the Amazon society, and the Amazon society has to decide whether or not to let them stay. Like, are they valuable enough? Can they overcome their mascul tendencies enough to integrate into this peaceful world? Or do they have to get out? And that's the whole concept of Hurley and. But, you know, like I said, in the air, the concept is not new. Exactly. And she's even not the first female protagonist. We have Mrs. Ms. Fury. We have Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, but it's the execution and distribution. It's the right place. It's the perfect timing that made this work. So what was his pitch? Because Gaines was like, dude, every single one of these comic book heroines eventually fails. We just can't sustain it. But then Marston said, but they weren't super women. You know, your child's ideal might be Superman, who uses power to help the weak. That's fine. But the most important ingredient in happiness is missing. It's love. So Marsden said to him, the only Hope for civilization is the greater freedom, development and equality of women in all fields of human activity. Wonder Woman should set up a standard among children and young people of strong, free, courageous womanhood. And to combat the idea that women are inferior to men and to inspire girls to self confidence and achievement in athletics occupations and professions monopolized by men. And the guy's like, okay, I can see you've thought this through and said, all right, I tell you what, I'm going to give you six months. You got to write it, you know, and produce it. And at the end of this six months, we're going to put it to a vote of the readership. And if they vote against it, she's gone. But if they accept it, we can keep going. Is that a deal? And Marston said it's a deal.

Susan

It only took him a few months to produce his first script about Suprema, which is the first thing the editor crossed off. And Marston said, that's fine, I don't care about that. But there's some point points I need to keep in here. This needs to be here. The rest of it is fair game. Now, he did write a directive. It's a little lengthy, but it does explain from his perspective how he saw Wonder Woman. These were his directions in his first script. Quote, men, the Greeks were captured by predatory love seeking females until they got sick of it and made the women captivated by force. But they were afraid of them, which is a masculine inferiority complex. And they kept the women heavily chained, lest one woman put one over as they always had before. The goddess of love comes along and helps women break their chains by giving them the greater force of real altruism. Whereupon men turned about face and actually helped the women get away from domestic slavery, as men are doing now. The new woman, that's capitalized, underlined. Thus, freed and strengthened by supporting themselves on paradise island, they developed enormous physical and mental power. But they have to use it for other people's benefit or they go back to chains and weakness.

Beckett

Well, there you go. There is the underlying philosophy. And what would she look like? Just as in Marsden's work in Hollywood, the goal was to skate as close to the sensors as possible, which is sort of unnerving, I think, from the stated goal of Wonder Woman being, quote, the new type of modern woman who should rule the world. Marston actually asked the illustrator to make her look like the famous Varga girl pin apps from Esquire magazine that the United States Postal Service had deemed obscene and lascivious material real. So we're already like, we're already on the edge of not making it past the gatekeepers anyway. But she was supposed to be as powerful as Superman, as patriotic as Captain America. So we've got red, white and blue situation. Sexy like Ms. Fury was, who as I recall was in a black cat suit. I can't really remember. And with the philosophy of Martin Margaret Sanger. Okie. Oke. That is a very high bar. That's Wonder Woman.

Susan

In the end, after many back and forths with the artist who was a man, Marston chose a man for this book that was supposed to show what a female utopian society looked like to little boys so that when America turned into one, they would be ready for it. But let's have a man write it and a man illustrated. In the end, our Wonder Woman wore a red bustier with a giant golden eagle on it. She had a royal blue skirt, shin high red boots with white trim. She did have her cuff bracelets. She didn't have the golden lasso in her first appearance, but she did have very Varga girl, dark wavy hair pulled back with her golden tiara with a red star.

Beckett

Nice, nice. Some of that remains.

Susan

Yes, it changes a lot. We're not gonna go into all the changes of her outfit, but I thought the most interesting one was just six months after she appears. They turn her skirt into like culottes, like a tap shorts. So it looked like a skirt, but it was shorts. Which makes more sense for the kind of superhero moves that she was pulling.

Beckett

Well, so All Star Comics number eight, introducing Wonder Woman came out and had the following tagline. At last, in a world torn by the hatred and wars of men, appears a woman to whom the problems and feats of men are mere child's play. A woman whose identity is known to none, but whose sensational feats are outstanding in a fast moving world. With a hundred times the agility and strength of our best male athletes and strongest warriors. She appears as though from nowhere to avenge an injustice or right a wrong. As lovely as Aphrodite, as wise as Athena, with the speed of Mercury and the strength of Hercules, she's known only as Wonder Woman. But who she is or where she came from, nobody knows. Dun dun, dun.

Susan

And nobody knew who the actual writer was because William Moulton Marsden used the pen name Charles Moulton. It's all mystery. And Wonder Woman's original origin story is basically this. Wonder Woman is raised on an island paradise, island that's inhabited by Amazon women and no one else. Until one day a plane Crashes on the island. And the pilot, Captain Steve Trevor, disrupts the all female demographic of the island.

Beckett

He tells them about World War II and what's happening. And they're like, we obviously need to mobilize or send someone back to help

Susan

him to help fight the forces of hate and oppression. Yeah. So they hold a tournament. And Diana, the princess, daughter of the queen, wins the tournament, and she is sent off with Captain Steve Trevor back to the United States.

Beckett

Simple enough.

Susan

Basic premise.

Beckett

Well, the reign of women will usher in an era of peace. That was the philosophy Marsden had been advocating for a woman president. President for years. You and me both, man.

Susan

Add me to that list.

Beckett

Yeah. It was an immediate hit with the readership, though only Superman and Batman were selling more comic books. But get this. This is the thing that blew my mind. I did not know this ahead of time. And I was like, so happy to read about this that I didn't know what to do with myself included in every issue of Wonder Woman Woman, a four page mini comic book called I Just can't even Wait to say this. Wonder Women of History. The History chicks approved biography of a woman from history in graphic novel form. You know, it was radical, both in the novelty sense and. And the 1980s sense. It was radical, man. Wonder Women of History number one was Florence Nightingale. Number two was Clara Barton. Susan B. Anthony's in there. Jane Addams, Joan of ARC. There's over 70 of them of the original ones. We'll link you to actual screen caps of them.

Susan

There were lots of former subjects. This episode, Wonder Woman ties not only the suffragists to the modern feminist movement, as well as another group of people that we're gonna talk about in a little bit. But it also ties the history chicks into Wonder Woman because Sojourner, True Truth, Marie Curie, Abigail Adams, Jane Adams, Dolly Madison, Nellie Bly, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc. That's like a who's who of history chick subjects.

Beckett

So I loved that. And that was the Marsden idea. Although it was drawn and written by a woman named Alice Marble. Everyone has such good names. So that was exciting and cool and went absolutely together with his philosophy that women and their power should be equal to men's. And he just wanted little girls and little boys, frankly, to read these stories and be inspired with what they could do in the world. So that's amazing.

Susan

There is actually a new Wonder Women of History coming out. DC Comics is bringing it back as a graphic novel anthology. You can pre order it like I did, but it'll be available on December first of this year. And they will cover modern women. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elizabeth Warren, Beyonce, Marsha P. Johnson, Serena Williams, Janelle Monae. There's a whole all star lineup of Wonder Women of history that's coming to us soon. I'm so excited for that.

Beckett

You know, I'm just thinking one of my son's favorite books was a graphic novel rendition of Swiss Family Robinson. Like, we checked it out. Like, I would check it in and then immediately just check it back out. I think we must have kept that book.

Susan

Why didn't you just buy him one?

Beckett

I don't know, because I thought we were done. And every time he would see it and go, ooh, I want this. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. So I think graphic novels get in in a way that other books might not. And Wonder Woman aside, you know, with all her power and might and all that, imagine being a little girl in the 1940s coming across that same centerfold catalog, those real stories for the first time. Think how valuable that is. It's presented so casually, as in. And of course, real Wonder Women exist, as evidenced in these four pages. You. You could be one when you grow up, even without super strength and a golden lasso. And then you just move on with the rest of your Wonder Woman story. It was just, like, so matter of factly presented in the middle of a Wonder Woman comic.

Susan

And not only in the comics. This feature was printed as a standalone to send to schools. So there's little girls in classrooms looking at this thing that they had read in their comic books in a school setting. If that doesn't, you know, help bring home the point, I don't know what does.

Beckett

Yeah, yeah. So after six months, it was kind of a given, but they went ahead and had the poll. Should Wonder Woman join the Justice Society? And it was an overwhelming yes. Six little girls voted no.

Susan

Like what?

Beckett

But anyway, she was installed firmly in the pantheon of. Of superheroes there. Although I have to say, during the meetings, Wonder Woman was the secretary. I don't like that.

Susan

No, I don't either. I don't either. I have a bonus kid. And she is moving into a new apartment. She's done with school, but it's a basement apartment and the floor is made of cement. So she was looking for rugs and saw the one in my house and just loved it. The tumble rug that I have at my front door. So now Ariel has one of her own in her new apartment. She's so excited. The pad is so good. But she's really happy because she has two cats and if they make messes on it, it's just easy to clean

Beckett

up with these washable rugs before tumble rugs. You know, I live in the house of wood. If there was a spill on the rug, your initial instinct is to hurry and take it up. Oh yeah, right. Otherwise you are going to be faced with a water stain. But with tumble, you don't have to. Tumble rugs feature a proprietary spill proof surface that causes liquids to bead up on top of the rugs. So instead of soaking into the fibers like every other rug that I've ever had, you can literally wipe spills away in minutes. It's basically magic. It's good for your psyche and it's really good for your ancient wooden floors. Also, I gave hilariously that we're giving these rugs, we obviously were standing behind them because we're giving them to the, the young people in our life. My son and his friends just moved into a new house and they are some popular people and there's people running in and out all the time. These are some heavily, I don't know, heavily employed rugs, let's just say. And the fact that they could just be taken up and thrown in right before the parents come to visit is such a big thing to them. They have the Lisa Midnight which is lovely. Suitable for both a punk rock household and the house of wood. So you know, it is very, very flexible in styling.

Susan

The rugs are also made of non toxic materials. We can feel good that our kids would be safe on these rugs. Pets, aerials and your son's cats, they're all safe.

Beckett

Hundreds of thousands of homes have already switched to tumble rugs and they have over 30,000 five star reviews. Here's the thing, they don't look temporary. They don't look cheap at all. They feature hand illustrated designs that are perfect for any place in your home where life tends to get a little messy.

Susan

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Beckett

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Susan

Well.

Beckett

There were so many elements in the Wonder Woman comics drawn from Marston's history. You know, the golden lasso is a direct line back to his lie detector that he never managed to get off the ground. He used it several times to great effect to actually revenge himself on Judges that never thought his lie detector was awesome. They had other names that were kind of obvious. And the golden lasso prevailed with the lie detector hadn't kind of thing. The bullet deflecting bracelets are definitely Olive's wedding bracelets. But another element, and one that raised eyebrows was the bondage. Someone with way more time than Susan or I have calculated that Wonder Woman is in chains or tied up or otherwise confined in fully 25% of the pan panels in the series.

Susan

And they actually, they made it so that she had to be tied up in that the only way to take away her power was for a man to solder her cuffs together, to put them together so she couldn't escape. What's she gonna do? That's like the whole plot of the stories now.

Beckett

Images of women in chains is a very classic suffragist concept. Illustrations of women bound by the chains of patriarch. Patriarchy. Even during the most famous marches, women from states where women couldn't vote posed in chains on the steps in the pictures, along with their freed sisters who could vote. Suffragists chained themselves to fences. Margaret Sanger herself was once on stage, gagged and bound, just standing there after she was prohibited from giving a speech and a male proxy delivered her message. So. So the bondage itself comes from an honest place in his imagery, I think. I mean that's, that's its foundation.

Susan

Yeah, he had studied it with Olive in college and learned it from Marjorie.

Beckett

No, I mean the fundamental like principle,

Susan

not the actual I'm just being naughty.

Beckett

Yeah, well. And Marsden would explain it like this. He said he would say one must submit to truth to find free freedom. But then there's comics that literally say this is actually in a comic strip. On paradise island where we play many binding games, this is considered the safest method of tying a girl's arms. And there's references to. It's important to submit to loving authorities. Yeah, so there's that. I can see why it was questionable. But Wonder Woman came under intense scrutiny by self appointed morality groups. Her costume didn't help, of course. Course, there were even some book burnings that involved Wonder Woman comics. But Wonder Woman was a powerful female role model in an era in which American women were being asked to leave their traditional sphere in large numbers to help the war effort. Children saw women working. Children saw women taking care of vital functions in the country and their own mothers in many cases. And Wonder Woman was sharing the stage stage with Superman and his like she was fighting Nazis and other enemies in the fictional universe, saving the world from peril in the way that soldiers were. While at home, little girls learned that it was great to be strong, to stand up for yourself and for the weak, to be smart, to work, to participate in sports. Their universe expanded. And honestly, just like in kids movies, I think a lot of the eyebrow raising stuff just went over their heads. Do you think?

Susan

I do. But things like all the women's groups that were in Wonder Woman, for instance, the holiday girls. Wonder Woman gets involved with this group of reoccurring characters that are in a sorority at a college and they go on adventures. But that's a group of women working together. And all the stories of the Amazons back on Paradise Island, a group of women working together. The actual, you know, details of the bondage and all that would have gone over their heads. But I don't think they would have missed the fact that when women work together they can get stuff done.

Beckett

Yeah, there was undeniable positive effect on girls self confidence. Now behind the scenes and not known to the public, Mr. Marsden contracted polio very soon into the run of, of the comic book. And the person that wrote many of the scripts starting in 1945 was a 19 year old girl that used to be a student of his and her name is Joy Hummel. And she actually ghost wrote most of the comics starting in that year. Although the deal was that she had to keep it a secret and she had to write under his name name and that she kind of had to keep the same philosophy. Although he joked around that hers were a lot more innocent than his and often passed the sensors more easily. So that was a benefit to have her perspective. But he laid this out in a brief to her what the philosophy was that he hoped that she could perpetuate. It had to be something women could read and get to feeling they could go out into the world and be listened to. So courage, the ability to nurture others and brain. Get that in every single storyline. Don't put down men, don't put down women. Just put both sides up in equal measure. Good and evil women have a long way to go, he said. And women should be heard in the world. And that's the philosophy I want you to take forward and I trust you with my creation. That was amazing.

Susan

Because Wonder Woman was a family project. Olive and Sadie were involved in the creation. All Olive did for Joyce Hummel was to give her a copy of Margaret Sanger's book book Women in the New Race and told Joy that was all she would need.

Beckett

So I think everyone prepped her appropriately and she must have done a great job because everyone was very pleased. Then a series of events. Mr. Marsden died of complications of his illness. And someone wrote skin cancer also.

Susan

I, yeah, I think it was a, one of those situations where he was already compromised. And then I. There was an aggressive cancer that I think is what ultimately.

Beckett

Okay, so Marston died. And then not too many months later, the publisher died in a freak boating accident. And then the editor resigned. And then the ghost writer, Joy Hummel, got married and quit. But I will say I read an interview with her and she said, actually, I was fine. I, I was going to continue. My husband didn't mind. I married a man who was a widower and had a four and a half year old little daughter who was now my little daughter. And when I got on the train to go to work, she started crying and said, mommy, are you ever coming back? Are you coming back home? And she started panicking and crying, worried that yet another mother was going to disappear from her life. And Joy Hummel said she cried all the way into the office and she wasn't sure what to do. But one thing was clear. She needed to walk into the office and explain to her boss that she was going to have to leave. And she explained that she left one Wonder Woman to raise another one. So it's not that anyone made her quit. It's that she felt her responsibilities lay in a different direction. And it, and it was the 40s, and that was just what she chose to do. So everyone who had been a part of Wonder Woman's original team was gone. And even though Wonder Woman stood with the powerhouses of Superman and Batman as the world's most popular superheroes, it looked to many like Wonder Woman's era had maybe come to an end.

Susan

We would like to thank skillshare for supporting this episode. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people at a time when there's so many important conversations happening everywhere in the world. Our voices. Your voice is more essential than ever. And to that end, this week I started taking find you'd Style five exercises to unlock your creative identity. It's taught by illustrator and designer Andy Petz. I've already taken 3 of the classes in less than 10 minutes. You can take this entire class in the amount of time it would take you to watch about three episodes of Schitt's Creek. And what do you get at the end? Well, what I'm hoping to get is to add another dimension to my writing. I thought it was getting kind of blah. And so I'm taking this class to help kind of unclog that. In the introduction, Andy said this thinking outside of the box means creating your own box. I'm going to create my own box. Technically, I'm doing is creating my own personal style guide. And you can do the same thing. Skillshare is a great way to refresh your creativity and explore beyond your areas of focus. I've taken classes in things that I had never tried before. Explore your creativity@skillshare.com historychicks the first thousand people to use our list link will get a free trial of skillshare Premium membership. Receive free access to thousands of classes for a limited time. Be one of the first thousand to sign up at skillshare.com historychicks.

Beckett

So Mr. Marsden is gone. Everyone is gone. What was going to happen to Wonder Woman and her legacy? Well, Sadie went to the offices and pitched herself as his replacement. I have the background, certainly I have the philosophy. There's really no other choice. Remember, the original publisher had died, the one who had seen Marston's vision and the new one disagreed strongly and instead assigned Wonder Woman to a man who did not not have a feminist viewpoint, to say it mildly. Ladies helping out during the war. This one thing. The milk must be delivered and someone had to drive the buses after all. But the war is over and women were expected to make way, to go back home and let the men take it from here. Little lady, evidently, even if you're made of ink. We talked about that in our 1950s Housewives episode, how it was a great source of depression and, not to put too fine a point on it, drug addiction. Because they had experienced the wider world, they'd been useful, they'd been able to use their minds. And now society is telling them to go back in the box. We don't want you out here. And during this era, Wonder Woman's strength and agency were greatly diluted. Sadie did try hard to stay involved.

Susan

She kept harassing them, quite honestly, until she was no longer allowed into the DC offices. But she gave the new writer a dossier on everything he needed to know about Wonder Woman, including, like her cusses of suffering Sappho and Aphrodite. Aid me. He didn't look at it.

Beckett

He put it in file 13. I know that round file that sits on the floor. He did not regard anything she said at all. By the mid-1950s, the women of History center inserts were just gone. They used up what they had. Dad rolled him out and then started over with something called curious courtships or marriage a la mode, more feminine. And I put that in quotes with like a angry face after it. Elements. So one of the most vital elements of the Wonder Woman comic books disappeared. There was more of a romance with Steve Trevor, the pilot who had crashed on the island. Wonder Woman even worked as a Lonely harbor columnist as part of her secret identity. So Wonder Woman was changing, becoming very diluted from her original concept.

Susan

It's about this time that we're gonna have to say goodbye to the golden age of comics. We are now entering the silver age. And what was the thing that propelled us over into this new time? It was a comics code. We're in the late 40s, early 50s right now, and society is getting very conservative. They're taking a look at comic books. A certain psychologist wrote another book about comic books. Only his perspective was that they were the cornerstone of everything that was wrong with children. And he was so persuasive that it went to the government. There was a Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency who focused only on comic books. And because of this, the comic book industry said, okay, we'll just self govern ourselves. We'll write a code, a comic code based on the hays codes in Hollywood comic book distributors said, we won't touch comics that don't meet this comic code. This started the same year as the McCarthy hearings. So this is all going on. We don't want things in our society or in our media that's going to affect our national pride and this conservative movement that was happening. If any crime was committed in comic books, the villain had to be punished in that episode. There could be no dying police people. There could be no concealed weapons or kidnapping or unsavory and lurid illustrations.

Beckett

Uh oh, I know we's in trouble.

Susan

Y' all really in trouble here. Because scenes dealing with or instruments associated with the walking dead, torture, vampires, ghouls, cannibalism and werewolfism were prohibited. So, like, basically everything that's on Netflix right now.

Beckett

That is very specific feature.

Susan

Here it is this. I will link you up to a. The actual list. But it goes on and on. Even the code even had to be applied to the advertising in the comic book. So there was no liquor, no tobacco, no pinups, no knives, no weapons. Even fake weapons weren't allowed. Obviously. No nudity, no medical or health or toiletry products.

Beckett

Man, what's left? Like, I guess chocolate sea monkeys.

Susan

Over the years, there were several writers for Wonder Woman. And each time a writer took her on as their baby, they changed things. They changed her outfits or they changed her origin story. So those changes almost always coincide with a new writer. It's not like one writer went, oh, I think we're gonna change this up. No, they came in, they did things the way that they wanted to do it them.

Beckett

Well, Wonder Woman lost her powers entirely in the 1960s. She transformed into a kind of super spy secret agent. That was something that was going forward on tv. Specifically an actress named Diana Rigg. And the Avengers. Not the Avengers like Captain America, etc, but the OG Avengers. And unfortunately, audios to her lasso of true truth. That's fundamental to her origin story, by the way, and her bracelets, which I bet that just killed Olive Byrne. And you know what, Sadie, too. What Wonder Woman had become was a betrayal of Marston's ideas of female equality and empowerment. I mean, it is nice that she knew martial arts and. Etc, but she wasn't the same Wonder Woman. She was a different character. And luckily, someone powerful thought so too. A woman by the name of Gloria steinem.

Susan

It was 1972, and a new magazine was about to publish its very first standalone issue. It had before been a supplement to the New York magazine, but it sold out so quickly that Gloria Steinem was able to convince the publishers that this was a viable magazine. That women in this country wanted to read about more than fashion and cooking and other womanly things. They wanted to learn about the feminist movement. They wanted to learn about career opportunities. They wanted the pages of a magazine to reflect their actual life, not a fantasy life. And that's what Ms. Magazine was going to do.

Beckett

And doesn't that sound like it is? Right up one of our old friends, Alley, frequent visitor to the Ms. Offices, Sadie.

Susan

They actually reached out to Sadie and said, hey, we are interested in doing a story about Wonder Woman. Can you tell us about her? And Sadie grabbed that portfolio of information that DC Comics never wanted to see and brought it down to Ms. Magazine offices. And the women there were enthralled by it. They wanted to talk to her about Wonder Woman and what the original vision of Wonder Woman was.

Beckett

So I'm glad to see that the information regarding Wonder Woman went full circle and ended up in the hands of people who actually appreciated where Wonder Woman had come from. And it's at this time that we are going to say a fond goodbye to Sadie and to Olive.

Susan

They did continue to live together for the rest of their lives, with occasional appearances by our friend Marjorie Huntley. They lived all over the country. They were together for the Rest of their lives. Lives. And Marjorie would continue to pop in and pop out. The kids called them the Ladies. They went by Dots and Betty. But their confession of their polyamorous relationship didn't come out until Olive's son Don married Margaret Sanger's granddaughter. And the granddaughter's like, wait, this story isn't adding up. There's some weird things. And she kept pestering Sadie until Sadie told her her everything and said, that's the last we're going to discuss it. But the two of them. I know, but the two of them did live together for the rest of their lives, and those lives were really long. Sadie made it to age 100. When she died in 1993. She was 100.

Beckett

Nice.

Susan

They lived together for 64 years.

Beckett

So it was real. And I, Olive and Sadie, I'm glad I met you.

Susan

Me too. I like them quite a bit.

Beckett

It so goodbye to them. I mean, they don't leave the Earth at this point in our timeline, but we're not going to return to them. So we ourselves, Susan and Beckett and the listeners are waving goodbye to them. So Gloria Steinem decided to put some pressure on DC Comics to return Wonder Woman to her original motif, her original power. And her initial salvo, if I am just talking and not Gloria, was to put Wonder Woman on the COVID of that first independent Ms. Mag magazine with the title Wonder Woman for President. How about that? She also made sure to republish some of the older stories so that younger women who weren't around during the first go round would be able to see where Gloria Steinem was coming from, insisting on getting her back the way she was. Then she started getting after the guy in charge of DC Comics on the back channels, like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. And finally he called her one day at the magazine and said, okay, look, we heard you, whatever, okay? She's got the magic lasso back to make people tell the truth. She's got her bracelets back to repel bullets. We put her back on paradise island as her origin story. And she now has a black sister named Nubia. Now please, oh, please leave us alone. Please leave us alone. Gloria Steinem said that she hoped that all of this insistence and all of her calls might have changed the culture over at DC Comics because the next head of that division was in fact, a woman.

Susan

But I think D.C. did try. Now, whether they were trying to get Gloria Steinem and friends to be quiet or they were trying to move up in the modern age, they did at one point plan a six part storyline A six part storyline where Diana Prince would face modern issues like battling extreme Remus and battling chauvinists. That six part issue unfortunately was dropped down to just one quote special women's lib issue. And the story in it was a do over from one that Marston had done very early in the comics. So that's kind of like not even a half Alec attempt, if anything.

Beckett

Well, I think the publisher was jumpy about what they saw as kind of extremes of politics. It was a very tumultuous time and they didn't want to come down in print on the wrong side of history. I think they were playing it very safe. Yeah, I think. But she was again the focus of controversy even within the feminist movement. Is she in fact a role model for modern womanhood like Gloria Steinem said? Or is she nothing more than a male bondage fantasy? Same controversies that swirled around her in the 1940s. Honestly, that, that classic thing that seems to happen to feminist movements. We've talked about this before, even as far back as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. A division that almost injured their friendship and did for a while, disagreements about who was a feminist, what was the goal of the movement, who qualified to even speak, and what feminism means. And that's still happening. And Wonder Woman got kind of caught in that crossfire.

Susan

But now Wonder Woman was back in the forefront of everyone's mind. And if that happens, TV's gonna come a calling. In 1974, Kathy Lee Crosby starred in a TV movie about wonder Woman that was set in modern times. So one TV movie in 74.

Beckett

It was a giant miscast. I know you guys have not seen Likely if you're younger than me, because I barely saw her, Kathie Lee Crosby. But she is a blonde lady reminiscent of Farrah Fawcett. And if you don't know who Farrah Fawcett it is, you're gonna have to Google speaking of Varga girls and pinups. I mean, so. And also they followed the the like 60s storyline where she was not a superhero necessarily, but was a super spy. She had a. A track suit that was red, white and blue. I. You know what, whatever. The pilot of the show didn't go, as they say, like it didn't get picked up to series. It's just a standalone movie, but they recast it.

Susan

Not the same producers, obviously. A 24 year old former beauty contestant, a singer slash actress. Lynda Carter, who got to put on the boots and the bustier and did get superpowers. She's all over the place. She was on lunchboxes. She was fighting for wall space with Farrah Fawcett's poster in Boys Bedrooms.

Beckett

She was, as the theme song said, fighting for her rights in her satin tights. Though just between you and me, she seems to have actually been fighting for her rights in suntan color legs, sandalfoot pantyhose. Do you remember that display?

Susan

I know, her legs were like all shiny.

Beckett

Pantyhose used to be sold in these egg shaped packages on a, like a stand in the grocery store. It was revolutionary. It actually stole the pantyhose business right out of department stores pretty much forever. Honestly, I don't think I've worn pantyhose since. Since it has to be a year in the 80s, I'm telling you right now. Tights, sure. But pantyhose, no. Also Three's Company. Do you remember Three's Company, Janet? That actress refused to be seen in bare legs. So even when she was wearing her pajama shirt, she had pantyhose on. Thumbs down pantyhose. Anyway, this version of Wonder Woman began with the original inspiration. So the pilot episode, which is the first one they show to see if there's interest, introduce the characters, etc, was set in World War II. She was fighting the Nazis for the glory of America. And the pilot went, you know, okay. But the original network, ABC balked a little about the cost, the sheer effort required to produce a period piece week after week. And they hemmed and hawed and they just weren't sure what they were going to do. And whatever period they had to decide elapsed. And CBS like was vulturing like hovering in the wings. And the second they could, they scooped it up and just moved it to the modern day. Hey presto, look how easy that was. That is to say the 70s. And kind of cementing Wonder Woman and the 70s together in the public consciousness. Gloria Steinem brought her out of the shadows. And then cbs, you know, shone the bright light of primetime TV on her. And Wonder Woman's looks and her outfits made people feel away. Just like the comic books a lot of 70s kids got. Actually their first exposure to Wonder Woman because a lot of parents didn't want them to see Lynda Carter and her outfits on Super Friends cartoons on Saturday morning. So I have a deep association with the taste of Super Sugar Crisp children. Yes, that is what it used to be called. Not super, super golden crisis crisp anyway. And Wonder Woman. So that I think was my first. And then babysitters letting me watch the Live action Wonder Woman. When my parents weren't home was my second.

Susan

That's cute.

Beckett

That's a great memory, though. So people used to approach Linda Carter and still do, frankly. I just read an interview. People still do it, and they come up to her and say, oh, I had a poster review on my wall. And she is like a happy face with a straight line. What am I supposed to do with that information? But she is very, very gratified when ladies come up and say she was an inspiration for them. Because here's what happened to the small lady persons of my generation. We had two role models, two heroes that we looked up to. One was, of course, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Yes, I had a sunbonnet. Yes, I had a calico prairie dress, you know, But I also had a Wonder Woman lunchbox, didn't I? You know, what unbreathable mask inflammable costume did fully half of us wear for Hallo. Every year during elementary school parades. You know, Wonder Woman, honestly, that's the first case, the first known case of the Halloween costume being less sexy than the original, I assure you. We'll show you a picture. The face is alarming. Alarming. That mask, those masks.

Susan

I didn't. My mother never let us have them because she was a costume designer. So our costumes were always a big product production. But I've tried them on. They're really hot.

Beckett

Not breathable. Yeah. Every child of the 80s now wearing a mask is like, yeah, amateurs.

Susan

That's right. We had to put it on the top of our head by the end of the night or we were gonna pass out.

Beckett

Also, they smelled so bad, it was probably our breath. Anyway, what Wonder Woman showed me and all of us little ones was a figure of power and of confidence. Linda Carter said, wonder Woman is fighting for truth and justice. Justice and the secret self that exists in all women and girls. And I joked about the theme song. I did. And the satin tights. But part of the end of that song is now the world is ready for you and the wonders you can do. Make a hawk a dove Stop a war with love Make a liar tell the truth. So there was more substance to it. It wasn't about brawn, it was about brains. And it showcased. We're soft and we're tough. We're sweet and we have the grit. We have inner strength and we have outer strength. And I'm not sure that a modern little girl or teen would get the same sense of empowerment from the 70s. Wonder Woman. It's a little lost in translation. If you go back with modern sensibilities. There's clumsy special effects. There's clumsy music. I showed my son the skateboarding scene, and I swear he probably broke the button off his pants laughing. It is funny. Her helmet is fabulous. But like, oh, oh, dear. Production value. So that is why I'm actually so into the new adaptation with Gal Gadot.

Susan

Mm. Yeah. When we decided to do this, that was the first thing I watched. Again, just to keep those of you who were following comic book history up, that 1970, 72 era, when Gloria Steinem brought Wonder Woman back from the pages of domesticity, is when the Bronze Age of comics happened. That brings us all the way up to 1987, when DC Comics decided to do over all of their characters, all of their superheroes. There's another origin story for Wonder Woman as well as everything. Everything got rewritten. It's called in the comic circles post Crisis.

Beckett

What's that Crisis?

Susan

The crisis. I think it's that they were too bogged into storylines backtracking. They were going from one Earth to another, different parallel universes. It was just getting really complicated. So they dropped everything back to issue number one and started all over again. And Wonder Woman did get a new backstory, but it was very much like her very original one, more so than I think any of them had been up to this point. And it was actually co written by a woman that first redo. In their redo, they also redid her costume and they changed her logo to two W's, like, nestled in each other, which looked an awful lot like the Whataburger logo. So there was. Okay, yeah, well, they had Whataburger, had been using it since, like, 1972. And Warner Brothers, which is now the owner of DC Comics, in our. In our storyline, was trying to get that logo copyrighted for food so that they could do, you know, cereals and giveaways at fast food restaurants. And so Whataburger kind of popped their head up and handled it with much kind of grace.

Beckett

We're getting Whataburgers in Kansas City. I've never had one.

Susan

We are.

Beckett

Yeah. Mahomes either bought or insisted. I don't know. But there's. Mahomes is the quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs. I say it like everyone just knows, like, who I frankly hardly know. Except for he's in every single commercial on our tv. And he's a nice man. I'm saying if we're looking at role models. If I had a little boy that was really into football, I would not feel in Any way, way leery of him idolizing this guy as a man because he is really nice and good.

Susan

So.

Beckett

So there you go. Role models Mahomes. But, yeah, he brought Whataburger to Kansas City. I don't know when they're going to open. I guess we'll report back.

Susan

What happened with the rebranding of Wonder Woman was that she was now also recognized as an icon of the LGBTQ community, because, remember, she grew up on an island that was all Wonder Woman women. For her, being in a relationship with a man was actually going beyond the norm. So that was recognized around this time. So now she's a. She's such an icon for all these different eras. I love it.

Beckett

So that's good. Well, now the path of an icon is not always a smooth one. In 2016, post the first Gal Gadot movie, Wonder Woman, the fictional character was named an honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and girls by the United Nations. And the blowback was almost instantly bad. 45,000 people signed a petition against the decision, saying it was insulting. And I think the timing was bad, too, because it. I mean, yes, it was the character's 75th birthday, but the movie was about to come out, and it looked a lot like pr, kind of. And also, the UN had been under pressure for upwards of a year to choose its first female leader. Okay, so this is, like, months and months of campaigning by feminist organizations around the world for the United nations to finally select a woman to run the organization. There were seven women. Women in the running, like, all very, very qualified, all perfectly able to be chosen. But ultimately, the Security Council went with a man. And then right after this, they selected Wonder Woman to represent women's issues for the United Nations. I mean, come on.

Susan

No.

Beckett

Can you see that timing is very poor? You know, even though they said, well, we altered the costumes, we. We only showed her from the waist up. We gave her a cap tape to cover the scenarios. You know, it's like, it's not about that. And they tried to pull it back, like, this is all about her origin. But you know, what? People didn't know about the origins kind of. I mean, the United nations is like, she's the first female superhero. She always fought for justice. She always fought for peace, and. And. Oh, you know.

Susan

Yeah.

Beckett

Just. They didn't think this whole scenario through, and so they withdrew her as honorary ambassador. And that is not a surprise.

Susan

No. I don't even understand what went on behind the scenes to get her in that position in the first place.

Beckett

Yeah.

Susan

In 2017. The new Wonder Woman, redone yet again, came out as a movie. It was a huge hit. I loved it so much.

Beckett

Yeah, me too.

Susan

The origin story on that one is very close to Marston's original.

Beckett

So Wonder Woman did go back to her roots, although the setting changed in the movie. Instead of being focused upon World War II, the way OG ink and paper Wonder Woman was this new live action. Wonder Woman moved the action to World War I, to the year 1918. And the director did that on purpose. And I think her reasoning is very interesting. She thought that it would be more relevant to today to place her in the middle of a conflict that didn't. Not exactly have one clear bad guy. You know, it's a very confusing time, and it was very tumultuous. And to add another layer on that, it was a time when women were just beginning to have agency in the society at large. So it kind of tied well. Like, why do we keep ending up in the period between 1880 and 1920? Why do you think? Because that's when women's stories start to become, like, more powerful. And I think setting it in during that war has a lot more impact. It's a lot more shocking for the. For the public. I mean, the public, as in of her time in the movie.

Susan

You know, as far as going back to Wonder Woman's roots, the villain in the first Wonder Woman movie was Ares, who was a character from Marsden's time. They brought him back to be the villain in that story. And I didn't catch this the first time I watched the movie. Etta Candy, who was one of the holiday girls, she was a sidekick to Wonder Woman and a lot of her adventures, she is the secretary to Steve Trevor that goes on the shopping trip. Totally missed that the first time.

Beckett

She goes through a lot of different transitions. When she was initially drawn, she was kind of a devil may care. She reminds me of Rebel Wilson. You know what I mean? In. In the comic books.

Susan

Like, what have.

Beckett

I don't have to listen to what you say. I'm powerful. And she has this catchphrase, like, for the love of chocolate, which is probably as close as she could get to cursing. But my favorite part of her in that movie was she said, because she is Steve Trevor's secretary, she said something like, I do all the things. I do whatever he tells me to do. And then Wonder Woman says, where I come from, we call that slavery Avery. And then Etta Candy looks at Steve Trevor and goes, I like her.

Susan

I really love the Etta Candy character because it showed body positivity before body positivity was a thing, you know, she.

Beckett

Yes.

Susan

Yeah. Along the way, she learned some, you know, martial arts moves. And she always had a quip, and she never was apologetic about her size or anything. And Diana and her had a really cool dynamic. So I love that about her. I love the whole movie. Even on my small TV screen, I loved it.

Beckett

You know, Lynda Carter is my Wonder Woman. I, you know, just in my heart or whatever. But what the new actress has brought to this is the innocence with strength that I think the original Wonder Woman had. She reminds me a lot of. I don't know if you've seen a movie called the film Fifth Element. There is a character who has a very long name, but we know her as Lilou. And Lilou is the supreme being. She has been sent to Earth to save humanity from destruction, but first she has to learn about them. So is. She is the most powerful being on Earth, but she doesn't know how it is. And she watches a history of humans, and she gets to the W's and she gets to walk war. And she sees pictures of war and what humans have done to each other. And she starts to cry. And I have. And the humans are bewildered, like, well, it's, you know, it's war. It's what happens. But she starts to cry and it upsets her. And like, if you think about it, that's the correct response to be upset, to be horrified at what humans do to each other. And that is the energy with which this new actress brings to Wonder Woman. I think, like. Like what we should be thinking about it is totally different than what our blase nature is, you know.

Susan

Right. Yeah, she's got everything. She's crazy smart, but she's sort naive to the ways of humans in the world. And she plays it great in this. I think the only controversy that I've really heard about the Wonder Woman movies is that they don't explore her lesbian background. They don't touch on it at all. It's all a heterosexual relationship with Steve Jobs. Trevor.

Beckett

She left there. She left that life. She left her background. She left her whole childhood. And as far as the movie canon, although, you know, they can change it in the next movie, she cannot go back. So I don't know how much screen time they could have devoted to that, given that she's not going to be there. So I, you know, I see the. The point, I guess, is that she can't.

Susan

Yeah, no, I. I agree. Although in the movie, she immerses herself in. In London, 19, whatever it is, and learns everything about it. Then does it her own way, like she's wearing the normal clothes. And then she says, forget that. I'm going back to myself, because it makes sense. And she's back in her Wonder Woman garb. So I would think that somehow, I don't know, this is. Maybe this is just me wanting it. They could touch on it, that she, you know, goes back to her roots somehow. Maybe they do it in 1984, which is the next Wonder Woman movie, which was supposed to come out early in October and has now been pushed back to Christmas. I don't know whether it's going to be in the theaters. I don't even think if they know where it's going to be. So hopefully it'll appear on a screen of some size around Christmas of this year. 2020. 1984 also goes back to Wonder Woman's roots with a couple of characters. The villain in this movie is Cheetah. The Cheetah character goes back to the early days of Wonder Woman. She was a character that Marston himself created way back in Wonder woman number six in 1943. And they're bringing her back. I think that's cool.

Beckett

But I'm interested to know if her background is the same. I think it is interesting that Cheetah started out as a person called Priscilla Rich. Kind of like how Etta Candy. Candy is her last name and Candy is kind of her game. Well, this person's name, Priscilla Rich, kind of exemplifies her background. She's a like a debutante, blonde, cool. Also with a giant secret inferiority complex. She's kind of a blowhard, which is interesting to me. So she's a blowhard, and she's very. Not very confident in herself. So she overcompensates by being kind of.

Susan

And that was the Gold era Cheetah. In the Silver Era Cheetah, she was an entirely different person. Her name was Deborah Domain. So I think it's really cool that this character goes with the eras of the comic. There was actually one time when Cheetah, who was a female, was actually a man. It was a very short part of one storyline. But finally she was called Barbara Ann Minerva. And that's the version that's in 1984.

Beckett

For. I think that comic book fans must have a very flexible concept of time and people's backgrounds. It. I'm kind of amazed. Like, when you get the new issue and Wonder Woman, you know, has no powers and she. Her friend is Different. And instead of being powerful, Etta Candy is now like a damsel in distress. And then Cheetah is a man. Like what? Like, how do you file these in your boxes? I mean, I just don't know know.

Susan

You accept what's being presented to you. You're open minded. You're not saying this is not what this person's done all the time. They're not. We've always done it this way, people.

Beckett

Very cool. I love. Yeah, they just basically throw spaghetti at the wall, kind of. It's like. It's like all the comics are just a giant brainstorming session. They're like, yeah, that's good. Get that posted. Yeah, sounds good. Yeah.

Susan

There could be plot holes and no continuity. It's kind of like doing NaNoWriMo, you know, national Novel Writing Month. You're just supposed to open up your brain and vomit words onto the page, you know, in an order. But it doesn't have to be like a specific order. You can just do it however you want. And the same thing with comic books. The best pieces in my summer wardrobe are the ones that I can just wear on repeat. I know they're comfortable. I know they'll help keep me cool in the summer. I know that they look nice. That's important. And Quince is really, really helping me with that.

Beckett

They use premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, and washable silk, elevated essentials without the traditional retail markup. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% than similar brands.

Susan

Just by sheer coincidence, I am right now wearing 100% European linen pants. They're in a vintage pink chambray, which reads like almost a purple in certain lights and almost a tan in others. Extremely comfortable, extremely cool. We're having a pretty hot day today. And just an easy piece. That's. That's what I was looking for in my wardrobe. Wardrobe things that are just easy and I can wear on repeat. And I did get the other day, I got a 100 organic cotton gauze shirt. It's short sleeves, a button up. Kind of looks like a camp shirt almost with a collar. It's really soft, very comfortable, very flowy. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to be wearing that a lot on our upcoming trip.

Beckett

And it's not just clothes. I myself have invested in two kinds of toiletry bags. One for my husband in Napa leather that he loves, loves. It was a good present. And then mine is an Italian leather duo set that's good for all the traveling that we are doing this summer.

Susan

And like your toiletry bag, Quince offers all kinds of elevated essentials for your home. I've got a table runner. I've got a tablecloth. You can also find bedding jewelry. They have 14 karat gold jewelry. Check it out. They have so much. It's not just apparel.

Beckett

They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So what you're paying for is exceptional qual quality and not markup.

Susan

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Beckett

Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N c e.com chicks for free shipping and 365 day returns.

Susan

Quince.com chicken chicks. Another character that they're Bringing back for 1984 is Max Lord, who actually began in the Justice League way back in the early days. He's another character created by Mars Kirsten, only he got some super strength and mind control abilities and turned evil. So he's in this. I know. Isn't that cool? So I'm not going to miss these characters this time. Like I missed Head of Candy, but

Beckett

we don't have a Lynda Carter cameo. And I'm actually like, we missed the boat on that deal. I wonder if she was asked and turned it down or if it's pandemic related or. Or is it something people just didn't want to mess with. I just thought that would be the most amazing fan service. Like, oh, even like Linda Carter as like a CEO of some company with no mention. Just there she is.

Susan

Right?

Beckett

No comment. You know, would have been epic. I would have loved that.

Susan

Like a Stan Lee in a Marvel Universe movie.

Beckett

Yeah, like she's the barista in the coffee store or something. We don't have to. It shouldn't even have to be part of the plot anyway. I don't think they did it.

Susan

No. That's too bad. And to bring the comics back up to our 2020 year, as of this year, the newest WR who's taken over Wonder Woman is a woman named Mariko Tamaki. She is a graphic novelist. She is a former Marvel writer. Now, we're talking about the DC universe here, so that's kind of, you know, crossing lines. She has a master's degree in women's studies and she has her own book imprint that works with only LGBTQIA creators. So what she is going to bring Ring to Wonder Woman should be very exciting. Her first issue was number 759 and I bought that issue as well as 758 to see the difference between the last writer and this one. And it's. It's pronounced. So I'm very excited. I'm like a fan of comic books now. This was my favorite, like, research because I got all these comic books and picture books and stuff, and I was just sitting on my porch and reading comic books.

Beckett

It was crazy classic. Well, that will cover the history of Wonder Woman. And unlike many of our other subjects, obviously with the new movie coming out, the Wonder Woman's history is not yet over. So who's to say we might not reissue a little update after we see the movie 1984, or at least we'll talk about it on our social media. So stay tuned for that. And now it is time for media. And as usual, we will start with books.

Susan

I think the main book that we both used was the Secret history of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore. It's very recent. 2014, I think is when it was published. But she had access to source documents and the Byrne Holloway kids air quotes. This is a very thorough telling of the Wonder Woman story, mostly from the Marston Burns side. The way she discovered this tie in. She's a staff writer at the New Yorker and she was working on an article about Margaret Sanger, in her research, discovered Olive and then somehow connected Olive to William Moulton Marsden and then kind of had a holy crap moment.

Beckett

I love that. And I am so worried about future history. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, we're not going to discover somebody's job journal right Anymore, because it'll all be a blog. I mean, like, where is all that stuff? I'm. I mean, I'll probably be gone when, you know, But I'm concerned, kids, that we are cutting off the progress of history right now.

Susan

I agree with all the digital. Yes, I completely agree because I have

Beckett

lots of these, like, photo SD cards. I don't have a device that puts those into photo format anymore. What's on those little chips? I know. Don't. I don't know. You know, am I going to go and mess with it? Probably not. Is it going to degrade over time? Probably. I don't know. Well, there's my soapbox. I have officially stepped off. Well, another book I liked was Wonder Woman Unbound the curious history of the world's most famous heroine by a man named Tim Hanley.

Susan

And I think that tracked the characters that looked at Wonder Woman, the character comparing and contrasting and bringing up common themes. Themes more than it covered the Marston clan. So if you want a book about Wonder Woman, the character, and it does talk a lot about the kinky stuff in there. So actually, that was the first book I picked up and I was reading and I was like, oh, my gosh, we can't cover this. How are we going to do this?

Beckett

Oh, my gosh.

Susan

And then I started reading the other one by Jill Lepore, and I was like, okay, we can do this.

Beckett

We can totally do this. But if that is something you would like to fall down that rabbit hole, there is a book called Wonder Woman Bondage and Feminism in the Marston Peter Comics by Noah Berlatsk. There's a rabbit hole for you. But if you'd rather be more cerebral about it and follow the philosophy of Wonder Woman, a book called Wonder Woman and Philosophy, the Amazonian Mystique by Jacob Held.

Susan

And if you like picture books, the Ultimate Guide to Amazon Warrior by Landry Q. Walker. It's a DK book. We've talked about these before. Lots of pictures. This book does a really good job of laying out the timeline of Wonder Woman, which is really hard to do since she's, like, backtracking and going to parallel universes and, you know, all over the timelines of real world and fictional worlds. So I thought it did a great job of laying all that out and telling you about all the villains and all of her companions. I really liked it and I'm glad that I had to buy it because I couldn't get it at my library. It was 20, 25 bucks. It's a heavy book. It's going to take up a lot of real estate on the bookshelf.

Beckett

You're making some investments.

Susan

I know I buy a lot of books because I. I have to get them fast now, right?

Beckett

Well, there is a book of essays, speaking of library books, called the Ages of Wonder Woman, Essays of the American Princess in Changing Times. There are many essays in there, but notable for one essay by one glorious Steinem. So that is something worth checking out.

Susan

Also, speaking of essays By Gloria Steinem, Ms. Actually came out with a book early on when they had her on the COVID a miz book. And it's just essays and original comics in there. And it's just talking about the origin stories and the sisterhood and politics and romance, and it's a good one.

Beckett

Susan referred to the book earlier that DC Comics is coming out with that references modern women. What was the name of that book?

Susan

Wonder Women of History. And it's on pre sale now on Amazon. I can link Yep.

Beckett

So as to videos, I was able to get this at the time of taping on Prime Video. Also, I could find it on Kanopy, which is affiliated with your library system. There is a video documentary called Wonder Women the Untold Story of American Superheroine. And then on dailymotion. And I always tell you that I think it's sketchy. So don't watch this on your laptop, only on a phone. Probably an iPhone will keep you safe. There is a documentary called Secret the Story of DC Comics.

Susan

Nice.

Beckett

So referred to earlier, there is a podcast called Craft Lit. And the hook of Craft lit is is someone reads you chapter by chapter, a book that is in the public domain and then annotates it, digs deep into the references and the history and et cetera. And one of the books they chose to cover was Her Land. And that is how I was exposed to that book. It's kind of a random book to have read. So that made me happy. When I opened that. It's like Harley Gilman's Herland. And I laughed like, oh, I already know. So please listen to that. They also did the Count of Monte Cristo. They did the original north and South South. So anyway, there's. There's a lot to explore there. And it's also good to be read to while you're doing something else. I find that podcast delightful. I would like to add a YouTube video where the actress that played Etta Candy explains Amazon's to you. And she's like sitting by the fire in her full Edwardian outfit and talking about Amazon. So I think it's pretty cute.

Susan

I'm sitting here making a little heart with my hands.

Beckett

She's like the exact same personality. I kind of wonder if it's evil. Is that what the actress is just

Susan

like, as far as websites go, you're gonna need to go to our show notes. Cause we're gonna link you up to a lot of them, including comic history at illustrationhistory.org, which is part of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. But this part is all online, so it's kind of fun to go through. We're gonna link you up to the Ms. Magazine covers. Wonder Woman was actually on the COVID of Ms. Magazine five times since 1972. Do. That's a lot. We've got the comic code for you to read. You can read all those rules and wonder if they would survive today. And the answer is no.

Beckett

2 of the links that I would like to call out, and there will be others that I'm not going to mention here. They'll be on the website. We found screen caps of the entire run of Wonder Women of history, so you can read them for yourself atWonder Woman fandom.com It's like a wiki. So that is amazing. And you can read them all there. And then in addition, at ComicsDetective.com you can read the entire lengthy text of Olive's comic book article in which she travels to Dr. Marston's house to interview him about how comic books are affecting the minds of the young. So those two, I definitely wanted you to be able to follow down those rabbit holes because they're kind of critical to parts of the the story.

Susan

If you're still looking for more rabbit holes. Pete Marston, one of the Marston kids, had started a website called the Wonder Women Network. It centers on the Museum of Wonder Woman, which is in Bethel, Connecticut. It is private. You can't go to it, but his website will link you up to all kinds of things everywhere, whatever you want to explore about Wonder Woman. And I will link you to a sci fi wire tour of the Wonder Woman Museum in Connecticut that you can't visit. So this is the only way you can see it.

Beckett

And I was going to say that I was going to go out on ebay and try to find a Wonder Woman lunchbox, but I think if I

Susan

say it well, I will tell you this. I am so afraid of the deep pockets of Warner Brothers that owns DC Comics that I paid for two images to use as editorial only for the website, and one of them was the lunchbox.

Beckett

So maybe I, instead of bringing more stuff into the house, I should simply blow that picture up on my screensaver and just regard it.

Susan

There you go.

Beckett

And not buy another thing. I mean, I am thanked out.

Susan

I also bought two Funko Pops because I thought, okay, what am I going to use for the link that we put on Facebook and Twitter? There has to be an image on it. Is that advertising? I wasn't sure, but I knew that if I owned something, something with Wonder Woman on it and took a picture, I could use that. So I bought two Funko Pops. But then I learned that I could use one of the Shutterstock ones. So that's what I'm gonna do. Unless I get a letter, a cease and desist, and then I'll slap one of my clever Funko Pops. Okay, as far as movies go, we've already talked about the current the 2017 and the 2021. But there's also another movie that's streaming on Hulu. It's called Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. And while the production value is very high. High. It earns all of that R rating it has.

Beckett

In addition, entertainment value aside, a la the Tudors, if you know what I mean, I would take your thumb and forefinger and reach into the salt cellar and fling a bit over your left shoulder. With regard to accuracy, there are, you know, some leaps there in this story that make for good cinema. I see why you do it or whatever. But, yeah, I think if I had

Susan

to describe this movie in one word, I would say it was sexy. Remember back in the first episode when we were wondering what the Boston Baked Bean Club was? A listener Nancy got ahold of me and said, I know what it is. I used to go to Mount Holyoke. It is a social club based on hometowns. So because Sadie was from the Boston area, she was in the Boston Baked Bean Club. Oh, I know. Yeah. And the Ms. Marvel vs. Captain Marvel vs. Shazam thing, Ms. Marvel, the Brie Larson. That's Marvel Universe. That's not the DC Universe. So they're just using the same name in different comics.

Beckett

I think there was a buyout. Like, honestly, I think my initial response that Captain Marvel was equaled Shazam. Was correct. But if you think about it, if you are a company called Marvel. Com Comics and you're like looking around like, wait, why don't we have that name? Because, you know, I think there was some kind of financial arrangement where they were able to take that name and then move forward with that. And that is how we ended up with the current Captain Marvel. But I was not wrong to say it was Shazam. Because that's who the original one was. Shazam.

Susan

Shazam. Sorry, I was. That was a TV show too. Shazam. And that's all I have.

Beckett

So in closing, having learned a lot, I would like to just end with a statement from the United nations in that ill fated but well intentioned nomination for Wonder Woman to become an honorary ambassador. Wonder Woman first appeared in a comic book in 1940 and has since been depicted as a global citizen and is universally recognized for her commitment to justice, peace and equality and is seen as a model of strength, fairness, and compassion. She has become a symbol of empowerment for women and girls in much of the world. Thanks for listening.

Susan

Bye.

Beckett

If you liked what you heard today, you know the drill. Tell a few friends or leave a review for us on itunes or your favorite podcaster. You can banter with Ms. Susan over on Twitter hestorychicks and definitely go check out the website thehistorychicks.com that is where we've got all the links to the resources that we listed. Take special note of the website that we link you to that Women from History inserts that used to be in the original comic books. I found those quite fascinating and I didn't know they existed until we did the research for this show. They're very valuable and way ahead of their time. The interim song has been provided by our friend James Harper, working as Harper Active, and the end song is as close as I could get to the original Wonder Woman theme. I am just imagining a chase scene or she's like getting ready with her skateboard and helmet to go catch the bad guys. It just made me laugh when I heard it. It's just an instrumental, like, short piece and I just wanted to share it with you. It's called Fantasy by a band called the Old Recruits. See you next time.

Susan

Sa. Are they the most important men in American history?

Beckett

I am Tom Holland.

Susan

And I I am Dominic Sambrook. And we are the hosts of the Rest Is History. And we've just released a series on four of the Founding Fathers.

Beckett

One of them is Benjamin Franklin, the

Susan

elder statesman of the Revolution. And another is Thomas Jefferson, the man who loved liberty but who also kept

Beckett

slaves and slept with one of them.

Susan

And we're looking at George Washington at Valley Forge and the famous duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. So here the full series and the Rest Is History.