You wouldn’t guess that Stephen Hawking’s inspiring and dramatic life would need embellishment by withholding pertinent information and distorting facts, yet that is precisely what occurs in the film “The Theory of Everything.” Based on his first wife’s book (”Travelling to Infinity”), Jane Hawking is portrayed as a fresh-faced, forever young martyr who manages to take care of a completely paralyzed man and three children while working on her Ph.D and vacuuming the house – all unassisted. Since we have already witnessed that once Stephen required a wheelchair, he needed to be lifted and carried to his next location, we know that it just isn’t possible that they lived without additional help yet we don’t see a nurse enter until the children are fairly grown. In truth, as of 1974, a student always lived and traveled with the Hawkings to help with Stephen’s extraordinary health care needs.
For unexplained reasons, we are never told that after Stephen’s tracheotomy, he was cared for by three shifts of nurses, including Elaine Mason, the woman who caused the breakup in his marriage and whom he eventually married in 1995. Also not revealed is that those two divorced 11 years later after nasty rumors that she had been abusing him. Did the filmmaker think that the brilliant and helpless Hawking would be less sympathetic with some character flaws? Would his wife Jane appear less noble if the nurses who helped to care for him were acknowledged for their help? And why the omission of the fact that all of his care was paid for by a private American foundation since the National Health Service would only pay for him in a nursing home.