In August of 1965, former news editor of The Sophian, Marsha Cohen ’68 was escorted off the set of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” Then a junior at Smith, she walked right up to the chair labeled “Elizabeth Taylor” and took a seat.
She wasn’t the only one. In a long report by Smith’s former PR manager, Herbert Heston, the film world was actually cautioned against filming with Smithies nearby; the shoot was riddled with media leaks, gawkers and preppy protestors who feared the movie would tarnish the college’s squeaky and prestigious image in the public imagination. In fact, under the terms of the contract Warner Brothers drew up, Smith would not be identified in any film credits, nor featured in advertisements. Filming would even take place only at night, outside Seelye, Dewey, Tyler Annex and the botanic gardens.
Despite the best preparations of the film crew, it was a total washout. The New York Times and Life came to campus, prompting Smith staff to verbally berate Richard Burton (the film’s co-star and then-husband to Elizabeth Taylor) who hadn’t been informed of the agreement to secrecy and had no idea what was going on.
Meanwhile, alumni were irate, sending scathing messages to the president of the college with bold statements like, “Why should we help support a college that entertains such an unsavory female?” “I am not very happy about this,” read another. To host the production of a film about bitter, quarreling alcoholics, not even to mention the use of Elizabeth Taylor, whose four marriages, for the forward-thinking Smith girl, reeked of whoredom, was totally deplorable. “Is Smith Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” ran the headline of a Berkeley Gazette op-ed that summer. Heston’s report ends with a frazzled warning to other colleges considering hosting a Hollywood movie, saying that the incident proved the “impossibility” of maintaining a secrecy that would prevent such spiraling conflagrations of complaint. Luckily, though, in the end, the college PR concluded the filming “did not injure Smith’s role,” its image or teaching mission. Smith remained savory. Thank God.
I don’t need to put too fine a point on contemporary re-expressions of Smith’s relationship with the American press; suffice it to say that, in times of great scrutiny, our PR department and alumni alike always set out, armed with declamatory statements to reiterate what kind of school we are. In broad terms, we are a prestigious institution of higher education, a cultural signpost, a hotbed of racial reckoning, a proud exerciser of more-than-silly traditions, a “women’s Ivy,” a microcosmic cesspool of the liberal wasteland or a lesbianified, man-hating, festering pit.
Why do so many feel entitled to curate our image? There are easy answers: the then-president wanted alumni donations. That remains the same, and now, certain massively-public news articles trouble the PR pamphleteers who want to make sure “race and gender-conscious” makes it convincingly into the pile of buzzwords in the prospective student mail-outs.
I am proposing that as Smith inevitably continues to meet public scrutiny, we all need to get over our egos and focus on our personal scholarly investments in this institution, rather than adhere to some arbitrary, aesthetically specific version of ‘who we are.’ In all likelihood, another eager Sophian editor will wander onto another proverbial film set and make a hilarious social statement; it will probably have happened before I finish writing this article.
