The 1940s Heroine Who Saw the Future ... and Laughed

She fought gender roles - and a Hollywood mogul - and won.

I have a new feminist hero. I want to tell you about her, because she has not received the credit she deserves. Her name is Teresa Wright, and she first rose to film prominence in the 1940s after playing a breakout stage role on Broadway. Wright’s first three film appearances resulted in three Academy Award nominations. She won for one of them.

Wright often played the supportive wife of a suffering man. She was the love interest of a veteran recovering from PTSD in The Best Years of Our Lives, for example. She starred with Marlon Brando in The Men, playing the wife of a paraplegic, and with Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees, playing the wife of a dying Lou Gehrig. Wright radiated an inner strength which, combined with her open and kind face, made her perfect for these roles. It also served her well as the niece who learns that her uncle (Joseph Cotton) is a serial killer in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt.

But that’s not why she’s my feminist hero. And I suppose it’s confession time: when I saw reruns of her movies on TV as a young boy I had, well … (scuffs his foot in the dirt and looks down at the ground) … I had kind of a crush on her. Things were kind of rough back then, and she seemed so nice.

But that’s not why she’s my feminist hero, either. This is: Teresa Wright demanded and received an extraordinary contract provision from one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, and she did it when she was no more than 22 years old. That’s when she was hired to play Bette Davis’ daughter in The Little Foxes and offered a five-year contract from studio mogul Samuel Goldwyn.

A contract like that paid extremely well and guaranteed some measure of fame. It would have been hard to say no. But there were certain expectations for young women who acted in films, especially those who became contract players. So-called ‘cheesecake’ photos were meant to enhance their feminine charms. That often meant putting them in some awkward, artificial situations:

It was part of the job, even for women who came to Hollywood with some clout. Carol Bruce (above left) was a well-known jazz singer before making movies. Doris Day (above right) was already a famous big-band star. Hedy Lamarr (lower left) was brilliant (she later became an inventor) and was already an international star when she came to the US. (She had found notoriety, too, for one particular role.) Mary Martin was already a star of the musical theater.

Pictures like these call for poses no human being would assume of their own accord. (Doris Day is munching a piece of hay while smiling. Martin and Bruce are in such poor orthopedic alignment they may have required chiropractic care after the shoot. Lamarr, to her credit, looks miserable about the whole enterprise.)

Each of these women was successful and highly talented, but each of them played along with the system, at least for a while. That’s understandable. And yet, Teresa Wright wouldn’t play along. She rejected the gender-based expectations of her profession, winning an extraordinary concession from the shark-like Mr. Goldwyn when she was barely out of her teens. And she did it with humor.

Wright had the following paragraph inserted into her contract, which Goldwyn signed:

“The aforementioned Teresa Wright shall not be required to pose for photographs in a bathing suit unless she is in the water. Neither may she be photographed running on the beach with her hair flying in the wind. Nor may she pose in any of the following situations: In shorts, playing with a cocker spaniel; digging in a garden; whipping up a meal; attired in firecrackers and holding skyrockets for the Fourth of July; looking insinuatingly at a turkey for Thanksgiving; wearing a bunny cap with long ears for Easter; twinkling on prop snow in a skiing outfit while a fan blows her scarf; assuming an athletic stance while pretending to hit something with a bow and arrow.^”

This is hilarious. It is … greatness. There were other provisions in that contract, too, according to the New York Times: “"There would be no leg art, no whispered romances for the columnists, no orchid and ermine setting for her background.”

Goldwyn was no fool, of course, and he quickly milked the contract for publicity. But Wright’s artistic struggle would become much less lighthearted in the years to come. Goldwyn terminated her contract seven years later, claiming she had violated its terms. She denied that but said,

“The type of contract between players and producers is, I feel, antiquated in form and abstract in concept. ... We have no privacies which producers cannot invade, they trade us like cattle, boss us like children.”

She acted in The Men for far less than her usual fee, which only served to sharply reduce her income. "I was going to be Joan of Arc," she said later, "and all I proved was that I was an actress who would work for less money.”

Things didn’t end too well for Joan of Arc, either. But Wright’s decision to set money concerns aside for the sake of art was brave and even heroic. And, while she didn’t meet as grim a fate as Joan, she did pay a price. While she continued to play character parts, she would never again have the kind of big-picture starring roles she had known in the 1940s.

Artistic integrity and anti-materialism: if young me had only known, that crush would have gone into overdrive.

I don’t mean to get preachy or read too much into it, but here’s what I believe: that our collective awareness often changes one small step at a time. Every public stand against oppressive norms — whether of identity, economics, or politics — advances human progress.

Teresa Wright prefigured a change in consciousness. World War II was about to start when she negotiated that 1941 contract. With it came the “Rosie the Riveter” phenomenon, as millions of women entered the workforce to replace the men who went off to fight. That, in turn, laid the groundwork for decades of feminism. Millions of women, from flight attendants to executives, are still fighting gendered expectations in their chosen careers.

That’s why she’s my new feminist hero.

Every person who sees beyond our limited social perception — that is, beyond the stupid things our society teaches us to accept — is a window into a better future. If they speak about what they see, a light shines through that window. And if they do it with nerve, with flair, with humor and style, it makes the glass sparkle. That contract still sparkles. And it makes people laugh, something that’s always in short supply.

You might say that’s the crush talking but, to be honest, I’d forgotten about it until I downloaded her picture. No, there’s no denying it: The stand Wright took in 1941 was brave and funny and smart. There are things we believe today that, in the decades to come, will seem as absurd and silly as an ingenue wearing a bunny hat or “attired in firecrackers.” The next Teresa Wright is waiting to tell us about it.