Jennifer Lawrence might be in the running to win her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her turn as a booze-addled conman’s housewife in* American Hustle*, but she got the character all wrong, apparently.
The story of a scam artist roped in by the FBI to help entrap a whole bunch of corrupted politicians and officials using a fake sheikh is based on the real-life Abscam (short for Arab Scam). And Marie Weinberg, the person who Jennifer Lawrence's character of Rosalyn Rosenfeld is based on, was hardly a ‘drunken adulteress’, but more of a tragic victim of her husband’s behaviour.
Indy Badhwar, who investigated the original story back in 1981, wrote on Philly.com to say Marie was ‘a kind, generous and friendly woman’ and that her husband, Floridian Mel Weinberg, had not only cheated on her with Evelyn Knight (the one Amy Adams plays in the film), but would call Marie telling her to keep hush about all of this, because he knew there was a film about him in the works and he wanted to appear the affable hero.
When she wouldn't play ball, he spread false allegations about her. Oh, and there was also pressure from the FBI, who wanted to know what had happened to some extra funds that Mel had pocketed. They started hounding Marie, too.
In 1982, after months of this intimidation, Marie gave a televised tell-all interview about him to set the record straight. Within five days of this interview, she hanged herself. Badhwar is also disppointed that Christian Bale played Mel (well, he played Irving Rosenfeld) in such a likeable way, ‘To celebrate Mr Weinberg at this point would not only boost the ego of a corrupt and amoral man, but would further demean a woman who was one of history’s most tragic victims.’
That said, the opening to the film, the title reads, ‘Some of this actually happened’ – and it's clearly meant to be a fictionalisation of the events. If the film was real life, the hair would be a lot less glossy, and Bradley Cooper's beyond-annoying whiney cop would have been killed within minutes of opening his mouth.
In all seriousness, though, if J-Law can bring attention to this tragic figure, surely that's something?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.