The real story behind Florence Pugh's 'Oppenheimer' character
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Spoiler alert: Important plot points for the movie “Oppenheimer” revealed.
Much of the new biopic “Oppenheimer” — the story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer creating the atomic bomb — is based in reality. But at least one scene stokes conspiracy theories that have existed for decades.
In director Christopher Nolan’s narrative, viewers see a mysterious black-gloved hand pushing down on the head of Jean Tatlock, portrayed by Florence Pugh, while in the bathroom of her San Francisco apartment on Jan. 4, 1944.
Nolan’s dramatic conclusion to the three-hour film is a nod to speculation that Tatlock may have been killed by US intelligence operatives for knowing too much about the secret Manhattan Project during World War II.
Oppenheimer, then 32, met Tatlock, a 22-year-old aspiring psychiatrist, while teaching at the University of California-Berkeley, where her father taught English, the nuclear physicist told the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1954.
That fall, Oppenheimer started to court Tatlock and the pair “grew close,” he recalled.
“We were at least twice close enough to marriage to think of ourselves as engaged,” Oppenheimer said.
The couple dated for three years, ending their relationship in 1939, but continued to see each other. Their last meeting was in the spring of 1943, just months before Tatlock died of suicide.
“I do not think it would be right to say that our acquaintance was casual,” Oppenheimer continued. “We had been very much involved with one another and there was still very deep feeling when we saw each other.”
Tatlock, a 29-year-old Michigan native who was affiliated with the Communist Party, had been “extremely unhappy” and battled depression, Oppenheimer acknowledged during the 1954 security hearing.
The father of the atomic bomb would later marry Katherine “Kitty” Puening in 1940, but still saw his younger paramour at her father’s home in Berkeley or a “hospital” (he couldn’t recall).
The pair also had a torrid final meeting in June or July of 1943.
“She had indicated a great desire to see me before we left,” Oppenheimer said. “At that time, I couldn’t go. For one thing, I wasn’t supposed to say where we were going or anything. I felt that she had to see me. She was undergoing psychiatric treatment. She was extremely unhappy.”
Tatlock also visited Oppenheimer on multiple occasions at the Berkeley home he shared with his wife, he testified.
“Because she was still in love with me,” Oppenheimer said when asked why Tatlock needed to see him one last time. “She took me to the airport and I never saw her again.”
Oppenheimer then acknowledged spending the night with Tatlock while he working on a secret war project, admitting it was “not good practice” — but he didn’t believe the woman he had twice intended to marry was a “dedicated Communist,” he testified.
“I almost had to,” Oppenheimer testified of seeing Tatlock again. “She was not much of a Communist, but she was certainly a member of the party. There was nothing dangerous about that.”
Ten years earlier, in January 1944, Tatlock was found dead by her father in her San Francisco apartment, where an unsigned note was discovered, according to “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography that inspired Christopher Nolan’s smash thriller.
“I am disgusted with everything,” Tatlock’s note read. “I am disgusted with everything … To those who loved me and helped me, all love and courage. I wanted to live and to give and I got paralyzed somehow. I tried like hell to understand and I couldn’t … I think I would huge liability all my life — at least I could take away the burden of a paralyzed soul from a fighting world.”
An autopsy determined Tatlock, whose head was submerged in a bathtub, died of asphyxiation by drowning. A coroner also found a “faint trace” of chloral hydrate in her system, a sedative capable of knocking someone unconscious when combined with alcohol.
No alcohol was detected in Tatlock’s blood, although the Stanford Medical School-educated psychiatrist had been a heavy drinker. At the time, some investigators and at least one physician had doubts, speculating she may have been drugged and forcibly drowned, according to American Prometheus.
“If you were clever and wanted to kill someone, this is the way to do it,” one doctor said.
That led to speculation by some historians, as well as Tatlock’s brother Hugh, that she may have been killed by US intelligence agents for her Communist Party ties and access to Oppenheimer during the race to build an atomic bomb, experts told The Post.
The loss of Tatlock deeply impacted Oppenheimer, who said he saw Tatlock about 10 times from 1939 to 1944 following their breakup.
“I do not believe that her interests were really political,” Oppenheimer testified when asked about Tatlock’s affiliation with the Communist Party. “She was a person of deep religious feeling. She loved this country, its people and its life.”
Tatlock was already an active member in the Bay Area’s Communist circles when she met Oppenheimer, ultimately connecting him to its larger radical coterie. The link later led to the revocation of his security clearance, effectively ending the Los Alamos Laboratory director’s career.
“They came very close to marriage a couple of times,” the Atomic Heritage Foundation’s president and founder, Cynthia Kelly, told The Post Tuesday of Oppenheimer and Tatlock. “As I understand it, she broke it off. She was very troubled.”
Oppenheimer tried to help counsel his younger lover as she was mired in the “depths of despair,” but couldn’t save Tatlock, Kelly said.
“He tried to help her and not be so desperately depressed,” Kelly said. “He tried to save her many times.”
The monumental loss left Oppenheimer desolate and deeply saddened, despite his gruff exterior.
“He was a very sensitive person, but that didn’t always come across,” Kelly continued. “He was not always empathetic with so-called fools, or students in his classroom who asked dumb questions. You had to be pretty sharp to keep up with him. He did not suffer fools.”
But no hard evidence supports conspiracy theories that US intelligence agents played a role in Tatlock’s death — like her brother Hugh had previously speculated, Kelly said.
“That seems really bizarre to me,” Kelly said Tuesday. “Why would the government want to kill her? I guess one could theorize the government didn’t want Oppenheimer distracted, but that seems off.”
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