Monday, November 17, 2014

Comics: Marjorie Wilkes Huntley


In Wonder Woman: The Complete History (Chronicle Books, 2000), from chapter two, “The Amazon”, Les Daniels wrote:
The youngest of the [Marston] children, Olive, remembers Harry Peter’s kindness. “I was small. Harry was a very gentle man. He would put me on a stool and ask me to be quiet, and I could watch him draw,” she said. “I was a very good kid because I was so amazed. It was very impressive.” Olive was taken to the office by another member of “this Wonder Woman network,” Marjorie Wilkes. “She was one of Mom’s dearest friends, and she lost her husband to the influenza, and so she came to live with us also,” Olive explained. “I think that the gut work was done between Marjorie and Dad, because she was the one who helped name her Wonder Woman. She used to do a lot of the lettering, and when he wrote the scripts she would be the one to type them up. She was a good lady.”
In The Secret History of Wonder Woman (Knopf, 2014), from chapter seven, “Machine Detects Liars, Traps Crooks”, Jill Lepore wrote:
“No one knows more about the production of Wonder Woman than Marjorie W. Huntley,” Holloway liked to say. In the 1940s, Huntley helped out with the inking and lettering of Wonder Woman, including panel after panel depicting women shackled, hands and feet. “How can she run with that ball and chains?” one of Wonder Woman’s captors cries out. Huntley was schooled in suffrage, but she believed, too, in what she called “love binding”; the importance of being tied and chained. She also believed in extra-body consciousness, vibrations, reincarnation, and the psychic nature of orgasm.
A Leroy lettering guide was used for the lettering*.

 Below is some biographical information about Marjorie Wilkes who was born December 29, 1889, in Atlanta, Georgia.

 1900 United States Census
Parents: Samuel (Railroad Agent) and Georgia Wilkes
Home: 300 Lee Street, Atlanta, Georgia

 1910 United States Census
Parents: Samuel (Assistant Freight Agent/Georgia Railroad) and Georgia Wilkes
Home: 500 Spring Street, Atlanta, Georgia

 War Library Bulletin
June 1918
Camp Gordon, Ga., Marjorie Wilkes, Hospital librarian.

 The Library Journal
July 1918
Camp Gordon, Atlanta, Ga…..Marjorie Wilkes, hospital librarian

 Bulletin of the American Library Association
September 1918
The librarian at Red Cross house, Camp Gordon, Miss Marjorie Wilkes, paid a call recently at the bedside of a man who was perfectly certain that he did not want to read anything. His was an orthopedic case and he was peevish and almost contemptuous. But it transpired that Miss Wilkes discovered in him a latent sense of humor and soon after her call she sent him a copy of “Penrod” with the message that if ever he had been a boy she was sure he would enjoy the book. The next time she visited the ward this man instead of being almost rude and wholly unresponsive was all smiles. Never had he enjoyed a book like that one. Would she send him another? Greatest thing he’d ever read.

 To satisfy the needs of sick soldiers it is necessary not only to take the book to the man but to get acquainted with him. After this has been done the librarian and her orderly have the supremest satisfaction that can come to such workers, namely that of seeing every man in the ward with a book, a scrapbook, or a magazine in his hand. As Miss Wilkes’ orderly said after getting back from one of his rounds, “Well, I left everybody a-readin’.”

 Bulletin of the American Library Association
November 1918
Upton Camp, N.Y.
Base Hospital.....Marjorie Wilkes, Hospital Librarian

 New York, New York, Marriage Index
Name: Marjorie “Wilker” [transcription error]
Spouse: Laurence M. Huntley
Marriage Date: January 3, 1920
Marriage Place: Manhattan, New York
Certificate Number: 7254
The certificate information is at Ancestry.com. The certificate transcription says Laurence with a “u”. In the American Library Association Handbook and Who’s Who in Library Service (farther down) the spelling is “Lawrence”. In her book, Lepore did not state Huntley’s first name and date of the marriage. She also said Marjorie left her husband in 1914. In Daniel’s book, Olive Marston said Marjorie’s husband died of influenza, and Who’s Who said he was deceased.

 1920 United States Census
not found

 Board of Elections of the City of New York
List of Enrolled Voters
First Assembly District
Borough of Richmond
December 31, 1921
Fifteenth Election District
Huntley, Marjorie W., 68 Davis ave…..Socialist

 Educational Directory 1922–1923
Department of the Interior
Bureau of Education
Bulletin, 1922, No. 50
XVII.—Librarians of Public and Society Libraries
New Jersey
Edgewater…..Free Libary…..Mrs. Marjorie W. Huntley

 Child Study
Volumes 1-6
Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1923
Marjorie W. Huntley, Librarian

 1930 United States Census
Household: William M. Marston, his wife, Elizabeth, and son Moulton; widow and librarian Marjorie Huntley was a roomer
Home: 460 Riverside Drive, Manhattan, New York, New York

 Special Libraries
February 1930
Marjorie W. Huntley is now with the Cleanliness Institute in charge of the classified files.

 Bulletin of the American Library Association, Handbook 1931
Cleanliness Inst. L., 45 E. 17th St., N. Y. City. (Mrs. Marjorie W. Huntley, In.) 18959.

 The Booklist
American Library Association
Volume 34, No. 8 and 20, 1937
A.L.A. Committee on Hospital Libraries
Mrs. Marjorie W. Huntley

 Bulletin of the American Library Association
Volume 32, Issues 10-13, 1938
Mrs. Marjorie W. Huntley

 1939 Waltham, Massachusetts, City Directory
Name: Mrs Marjorie W Huntley
Street address: 475 Trapelo rd
Occupation: Senior Library Asst

 1940 United States Census
Household: William M. Marston, his wife, Elizabeth, and children, Moulton, Bryne, Donn and Olive Ann; Olive B. Richard identified as William’s sister-in-law; widow and librarian Marjorie Huntley was a lodger

 American Library Association Conference
1941
Mrs. Huntley’s Paper
Mrs. Marjorie W. Huntley, Metropolitan Hospital, New York City, spoke on “Mental Patients and the Hospital Library.”

 American Library Association Handbook
1941
Huntley, Marjorie Wilkes, (Mrs. Lawrence Malcolm) ln. Metropolitan Hospital L., Welfare Island, New York, N.Y. 32471.

 Manual of the New York Library Association
1941
Mrs. Marjorie W. Huntley, Metropolitan Hospital, Welfare Island, New York City.

 Who’s Who in Library Service
Issue 2
H.W. Wilson Co., 1943
Huntley, Marjorie Wilkes, (Mrs. Lawrence M. Huntley), Librarian, Metropolitan Hospital, Welfare Island, New York, N.Y. Home: 81 Oakland Beach Av., Rye, N.Y. b. Atlanta, Ga., Dec. 29, 1889; d. Samuel W. and Georgiana (Brewster) Wilkes; m. Lawrence Malcolm Huntley (deceased). Lucy Cobb Inst., Athens, Ga., 1906–7; train, class, N.Y. pub. lib., 1916–7. Investigator, East Side house settlement, 1913, family case worker, Charity org. soc., 1914, (New York); A.L.A. hosp. librn.. Camp Gordon, Ga., Camp Upton, N.Y., and Camp Merritt, N.J., 1918–9; librn. Wynekoop, Hallenbeck & Crawford (printers), New York, 1920–2. Child study assn., New York, 1926–9, Metropolitan state hosp., Waltham, Mass., 1935–9; head librn. Edgewater (N.J.) free pub. lib., 1922–6; ref. librn. Cleanliness Inst., New York, 1929–32. Mem. A.L.A., N.Y. lib. club, Bergen and Passaic со. lib. club (pres., 1925 ), S.L.A., Instn. libs, group (Mass.) (pres., 1936). Protestant.

Standing left to right. Byrne Marston, Moulton (Pete) Marston, Olive Byrne Richard. Seated left to right: Marjorie Wilkes, Olive Ann Marston. William Moulton Marston, Donn Marston, Elizabeth Holloway Marston. 1947 photograph from Wonder Woman: The Complete History.










1957 Manhattan, New York City, Telephone Directory
Name: Mrs Marjorie W Huntley
Street address: 440 E 23 SPrng 7-1076

 Massachusetts Death Index
Name: Marjorie Wilkes
Death Date: December 30, 1986
Death Place: Marlborough
Certificate: 058069
Related Posts
Harry G. Peter, Illustrator and First Wonder Woman Artist
Joye Hummel, Wonder Woman Ghostwriter


Further Reading
 The New Yorker

* Wonder Woman, The Complete History
page 47: …The kids made frequent visits to the Marston Art Studio, located at Madison Avenue and Forty-third Street in New York. According to Elizabeth Marston, her husband, William, “personally handled every aspect of the production up to the point of sending to the printer. Harry Peter worked there plus several young commercial artists who drifted in and out. These were usually women.” Bryne spent time at the studio as a boy and remembers “young girls, like Helen Schepens, who were very attractive. It was a nice atmosphere.” The assistants would handle aspects like backgrounds and lettering, but Peter “would do most of the Wonder Woman figures,” according to Bryne. At one point the lettering was being done by Louise Marston, Moulton’s wife.

 Jake Oster email
“The husband-and-wife team of Jim and Margaret Wroten did the Leroy Lettering for Wonder Woman beginning in 1945”

 (Next post on Monday: Holiday Greetings 1922)
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