Oppenheimer's Big Adventure

 

Extras

Selecting Films for Study in "Unfaithful"

Originally, the focus of my new book Unfaithful was to be Hollywood adultery films produced between 1930 and 1960.  But the scope of the book gradually expanded.  For certain, you cannot leave the French or the Italian out of a serious discussion of adultery films.  And many important adultery films were made outside of 1930 to 1960.

The criteria that I set for selecting films was not restrictive, but I still found myself rejecting films from consideration.  Star 80 (1983), a biopic about Playboy model Dorothy Stratten, has an adultery element to its plot.  Stratten left her husband, Paul Snider, for film director Peter Bogdanovich, which incited the emotionally unstable Snider to murder her.  But the audience is shown nothing of the affair.  Stratten simply tells Snider that she is leaving him.  Snider goes berserk and shoots her.  The film ends.  The director, Bob Fosse, may have avoided dramatizing the affair because Bogdanovich threatened to sue Fosse if he portrayed him negatively.  Did it really matter?  Fosse could hardly have objected to Bogdanovich seducing a naive young bride when he, himself, had multiple affairs with young women during his 27-year marriage to Gwen Verdon.   Besides, Fosse was mostly interested in Snider.

I didn't include Notorious (1946) in the book.  Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is a post-war spy who marries a Nazi emigre, Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), to uncover a plot by Nazi survivors to build an atomic bomb.  In truth, she loves her suave handler, T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant).  This creates a love triangle with a husband, a wife, and another man.  But it is not an adultery film.  A spy and her surveillance target is not, technically, a bride and groom.   Anyone who watches the film understands Alicia's mission and has no expectation of faithfulness on her part.  Hitchcock called the film "the story of a woman sold for political purposes into sexual enslavement."

I am confident that readers of Unfaithful will agree with my choices.

https://www.amazon.com/Unfaithful-History-Adultery-Anthony-Balducci/dp/B0C8Y1L7KK

Adultery Film of the Day: Yield to the Night (1956)

Yield to the Night (1956) opens with a murder.  

A series of flashbacks explain the situation.  Mary Hilton (Diana Dors) finds love and passion outside of her dull marriage with a suave nightclub pianist, Jim Lancaster (Michael Craig).  But she becomes enraged when Jim leaves her for a high-society woman, Lucy (Mercia Shaw).  She waits outside of Lucy's home and, when the woman appears, shoots her repeatedly.  Mary is promptly arrested for Lucy's murder.  She spends her final days on death row in sad and painful contemplation.  

Read more about Yield to the Night in Unfaithful: The History of the Adultery Film.

A Couple of Thoughts on Adultery

Robert Ryan and Joan Fontaine in Born to Be Bad (1950)

Mating strategies differ for men and women.  A woman instinctively pursues a quality relationship to assure the continuance of her lineage.  She is focused on finding the best father for her children and assuring the best care for her children.  According to sociologist Joanna Wróblewska-Skrzeks, a man may forgo quality for quantity.  He can be instinctively drawn to an adulterous affair as it allows him to maximize his offspring.  But serious flaws exist in this strategy.  A man who has many children with many women is unable to properly look after his offspring.  There's no benefit in having children if the lack of fatherly attention and support leads them into a poor and dysfunctional existence.       

Ed Harris and Jessica Lange in Sweet Dreams (1985)

The cheaters are, in the end, outside of the norm.  A spouse is more likely to cheat if they are narcissistic.  The narcissist, who is selfish, impulsive and outgoing, will easily be motivated to cheat out of anger or boredom.  

Kirk Douglas and Barbara Stanwyck in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

A spouse is more likely to cheat if they are neurotic.  The neurotic will cheat out of insecurity or a desperate need for attention.

https://www.amazon.com/Unfaithful-History-Adultery-Anthony-Balducci/dp/B0C8Y1L7KK

Oppenheimer: The Atomic Adulterer

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a serial adulterer.  He had no qualms about having love affairs with married women.   He got Kitty Harrison pregnant while she was married to her third husband, Richard.  She immediately got a divorce and married Oppenheimer.  He maintained a relationship with an old girlfriend, Jean Tatlock, during his marriage.  He admitted at a security hearing, "I do not think it would be right to say our acquaintance was casual. We had been very much involved with one another, and there was still very deep feeling when we saw each other."  He said that he visited her the last time in July of 1943, at which time the couple spent the night together.  He had an affair with Ruth Tolman, who was the wife of a close friend.  The couple was deeply involved with one another.  They often corresponded to arrange secret getaways.  The correspondence was discovered by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin during research for an Oppenheimer biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy.  The Cinemaholic reports, ". . . [S]ome even allege that Richard Tolman was aware of his wife and friend's love affair and died of a broken heart."  

Reference sources

"Did Oppenheimer Cheat on His Wife?," The Cinemaholic

https://thecinemaholic.com/did-oppenheimer-cheat-on-his-wife/

Russell Murray, "Why Oppenheimer's Affair With Ruth Tolman Is More Tragic Than You Think," Looper, July 21, 2023.  https://www.looper.com/1346259/why-oppenheimers-affair-with-ruth-tolman-more-tragic-than-you-think/.

Ten Interesting Facts About Adultery

Myrna Loy and Frank Morgan in When Ladies Meet (1933)

1.) A marriage has a fifty percent chance of survival after a spouse is discovered cheating.^[1]

2.) Approximately 69% of husbands who cheated never imagined that they were capable of cheating.  Their affairs just snuck up on them.^[1]  

Walter Huston and Mary Astor in Dodsworth (1936)

3.) The murder-themed adultery films are certainly fanciful.  But most other types of adultery films have an authentic premise.  Take, for instance, the films that involve an interloper.  You might call these villains by other names.  Homewreckers.  Spouse-stealers.  Love Thieves.  Evolutionary psychologists David M. Buss and David P. Schmitt verified that these characters are a real-life threat to a marriage.  They dubbed the tawdry pastime of these shady and shameless individuals as "mate poaching."  In a 2001 survey of single American men and women, Buss and Schmitt asked, "Have you ever tried to attract someone who was already in a relationship with someone else for a short-term sexual relationship?"^[2]  The majority of the respondents (60% of men and 53% of women) admitted to engaging in mate poaching.  A greater number of respondents (93% of men and 82% of women) said that they had someone try to woo them away from a committed relationship.  It is important to note that the participants of the survey were unmarried college students.  But Buss and Schmitt insisted that married men and women are equally subject to mate-poaching efforts.  Not surprisingly, a married person is more hesitant to acquiesce to the charms of a poacher.  According to a 2017 study by Alastair P. Davies and Todd K. Shackelford, a poacher requires a greater amount of wealth or physical attractiveness to successfully seduce a married person.^[3]   

Dutch Heinemann (Lyle Bettger) represents the classic marital interloper in All I Desire (1953).  

He is undeterred by social rules as he aggressively pursues a married woman.

4.) Three authors, Chrisanna Northrup, Pepper Schwartz, and James Witte, examined happy couples in a 2013 book titled The Normal Bar.  They warned that a couple's happiness can depend on effective mate guarding.  They wrote:

Are your friends your competition? Are you attracted to your partner’s friends?  An overwhelming 86% of men and 85% of women said they don’t think they have any friends who tempt their partners. However, it appears that they are very much mistaken because, when we reversed the question, we found that nearly half (45%) of men and more than one-fourth (26%) of women in fact are attracted to friends of their partners and are tempted to act on it. This poses an uncomfortable dilemma, since most of us would like our partners to be friends with our friends.^[4]

She's Having a Baby (1988)

5.) The majority of adulterers do not want to leave their marriages.^[4]  

6.) A third of unfaithful wives cheated with an old boyfriend.  This is yet another surprising revelation of The Normal Bar.^[4]  A chapter of my new book, Unfaithful: The History of the Adultery Film, is devoted to this topic.

7.) General David Petraeus resigned as CIA director due to an adulterous affair.  He could no longer be seen as an honorable or trustworthy leader.  His mistress was a writer and former military officer named Paula Broadwell.  Petraeus had regular close contact with Broadwell while working with her on his biography.  Yet, the United States has had several Commanders in Chief who held office despite extramarital affairs.  A prime example of this is John F. Kennedy.  Kennedy's many mistresses included Hollywood actresses (Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Gene Tierney and Angie Dickinson), socialites  (Mary Pinochet Meyer and Gunilla Von Post), a Mafia moll (Judith Campbell Exnerl), a German prostitute (Ellen Rometsch), a stripper (Blaze Starr), his wife’s press secretary (Pamela Turnure), a White House intern (Mimi Alford), and at least two White House secretaries (Priscilla Wear and Jill Cowen).

8.) Adultery is illegal in 23 states.  In Michigan, adultery falls within the definition of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.  Under the law, it is possible to sentence a convicted adulterer to life in prison.  Many other states have laws that explicitly state that a person who cheats on their spouse can be imprisoned, with sentences ranging from 30 days to five years.  But these are long-standing laws that are no longer enforced.

9.) A husband is five times more likely to cheat if he earns less money than his wife.^{[5] [6]}  

Kirk Douglas and Ann Sothern in A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

10.) More than 60% of affairs start at work.^{[7] [8]} 

Reference sources

1. Scott Haltzman, M.D., The Secrets of Surviving Infidelity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (2013). 

2. David M. Buss and David P. Schmitt, "Human mate poaching: Tactics and temptations for infiltrating existing mateships," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 80, pages 894-917 (2001).    

3. Alastair P. Davies and Todd K. Shackelford, "Don't you wish your partner was hot like me?: The effectiveness of mate poaching across relationship types considering the relative mate-values of the poacher and the partner of the poached," Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 106, pages 32-35 (2017).  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886916310571.

4. Chrisanna Northrup, Pepper Schwartz, and James Witte, The Normal Bar, Harmony (2013).

5. M. Gary Neuman, The Truth about Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It.  Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2008).  

6. Christin L. Munsch, "Her Support, His Support: Money, Masculinity, and Marital Infidelity," American Sociological Review, Volume 80, pages 469–95 (June, 2018).

7. Shirley P. Glass, Not Just Friends: Protect your relationship from infidelity and heal the trauma of betrayal.  New York: Free Press (2003).  

8. Abby Chinery, "Love from Nine to Five: Office Romance Statistics," Reboot (November 24, 2020), https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/office-relations-study/.

https://www.amazon.com/Unfaithful-History-Adultery-Anthony-Balducci/dp/B0C8Y1L7KK

Oppenheimer: A Hopelessly Fragmented Study

"Oppenheimer in Las Vegas" by Proud Asparagus

Bill Goodykoontz of Arizona Republic wrote, "Oppenheimer, like most of Christopher Nolan's movies, can't get from point A to point B without going through an alphabet’s worth of time shifts and narrative changes."  I don't see how his fans haven't become bored with this by now.  It's something that I have never enjoyed.  According to the MasterClass website, character development involves "the changes a character undergoes over the course of a story as a result of their actions and experiences."  A character moves forward through a story.  He progresses from point A to point B to point C.  He changes for better or worse.  But Nolan has his protagonist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, bounce back and forth through time shifts.  We don't get to follow Oppenheimer as he gradually transforms from a cocky young physicist to the tormented, disillusioned father of the atomic bomb.  Young Oppenheimer and Old Oppenheimer are never separated by time or events.  They live forever side by side in a gimmicky blending of time and space.  This fractured story of time shifts, perspective shifts, narrative shifts and film stock shifts is at times confusing and meandering.  The film lacks a propulsive rhythm.  It's like chopping up a song sheet so that the notes can be scrambled and played out of order.  On Twitter, Dvorstone wrote, "[Oppenheimer is] edited almost entirely into mini-scenes. It darts back and forth in time. . . It never feels like a story.  It feels like a three hour trailer."

I must add, though, that Cillian Murphy's performance as Oppenheimer is brilliant.

Reference Source

"'The Beanie Bubble' bursts when the film gets too convoluted," Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic, July 26, 2023, https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/beanie-bubble-bursts-film-gets-130031325.html.