Introduction
Can an attractive girl, brought up in a small town, ever adjust to the sophisticated life of the big city? This is a frequently asked question, and one that should be explored on many separate levels-intellectual, emotional, moral, and others including the sexual level. Let us ask, then, can an attractive girl from a small town ever adjust sexually to the sophisticated, swinging life of the big city? Perhaps. But it takes quite an adjustment and quite a girl. All the years of moral upbringing have to be tossed to the wind and a new set of values, much less stringent, adopted.
Some girls make it and some don't. They usually have one thing in common at the outset: the desire to find fame, fortune, and/or a husband. Sometimes they accomplish all three, but most likely the dream explodes when this quest is not fulfilled. The final pages of stories about such girls will often mention suicide, mental breakdown, or retreat back to the small town. It takes a totally unique personality to "make it" in the big city.
Dr. Frank Tribur, Ph.D., in his book Today's Morals in Urban Life, states: "The young woman sets out for the top of the mountain. She wants fame and money and the right man. She is looking to find the realization of a dream, perhaps one she has been dreaming all her life long. She finds a job 'to tide her over' which is usually nondescript work in a dreary office, filled with dreary types who also arrived in the city to see their fortunes. And this is where she stays, unable to get any further, unable to adjust, unable to relate to anyone. The tears and frustrations of her moral upbringing on the farm or in the small city are constantly gnawing in the back of her head. Should she respond to the sexual advances of men (and even women), she will nevertheless feel guilty and it is the exceptional young woman who can find peace in such an atmosphere. She is suddenly in the midst of what she had been taught to be perversion and sin. How does one make such an abrupt change without guilt? And, we all know, guilt destroys."
Dr. Tribur notes that the "young girl coming to the big city in search of fame and fortune" is a cliche, but he also makes the point that cliches are often the most basic truth of all.
Anybody's Plaything by Mildred Thompson is based on that same cliche. Marvie Martin was voted the girl most likely to succeed as a model. She hated life in the small town as she attended high school, and she fled when she graduated. She remains very close to her parents, who love her enough to allow her to seek whatever it is she thinks she wants.
Marvie wants to be a top model, she wants her prince charming to come and sweep her off her feet, and she wants to make a lot of money. She goes for the jackpot, aims for the top of the mountain. And she comes crashing down.
What happens to Marvie Martin? She's shocked into the realization that sex is something everyone shares. After a terrifying experience in which she watches a sex act between two men-which could be enough to destroy a small town girl's mind all by itself-she is brutally raped. Her landlady throws her out, and she is befriended by Jean King, an older woman who works with Marvie. Jean seems to be a perfect roommate, loyal and loving, until Marvie realizes Jean is a swinger and sex is her life.
Marvie tries to adjust and conform to Jean's kind of life, realizing it is the only way to get near a modelling career. She undergoes mental torture as she tries everything-once-and then attempts to make it all work in her head, trying desperately to erase the guilt. Finally, she is driven to such a point in her relationships with various people-Jean; Phillip, the young photographer whom she loves; and Mark, Jean's sometimes lover-that she must make a decision about the rest of her life. Seeing all these people for what they are, she adds things up and comes up with an answer. And she acts on it.
In this book we have the cliche of the small town girl. We have the cliche of the big city and all its swinging people. We have the cliche of the casting couch. But anyone who has known a girl in this position or has been one, anyone who has lived in the sophisticated strata of the big urban centers, anyone who has tried to make it in the field of modelling or show business knows that these things are the reality of life. What we have here, taking a deeper look is a book based on simple reality and not on overused cliches.
Anybody's Plaything is an interesting study of a girl the reader will immediately know. She is a universal, someone seen every day on the streets of every city in the country. Marvie Martin is the girl next door, and we not only see her on the street, we get a deep look at what goes on behind her locked door at night.
And, as Dr. Tribur says, "Perhaps there is a little of this girl, this type of girl, in all of us."
Perhaps there is a little of Marvie Martin in all of us.
The Publishers