Oppenheimer Vanderford moves into spotlight

Dorothy Vanderford spent her whole life working behind the scenes.

The 25-year Boulder City resident has been a student, a stay-at-home mom and, since her two children finished high school, a technical writer who translates highly complex issues involving emergency communications networks for the Nevada National Security Site. It’s work she can’t really talk about because much of it is classified.

The closest she really came to a public-facing role was working as a volunteer serving food at the Las Vegas Mission. And even there, a more public undertaking was not her cup of tea.

“I tried working in the thrift store once,” she said with a chuckle sitting in the living room of her home in the area known as Golf Course Estates. “It was not for me.”

But that largely anonymous life came to an abrupt end recently.

You see, Vanderford’s maiden name was Dorothy Oppenheimer and the really famous Oppenheimer, J. Robert, the one with the title of the Father of the Atomic Bomb, was her grandfather.

That might have stayed nothing more than great icebreaker info for (classified) office Christmas parties or for when meeting new neighbors except for a little thing known as a Hollywood blockbuster.

The life of a theoretical physicist —“Big Bang Theory” notwithstanding —would not be high up on the “that sounds like great entertainment” scale for much of anyone except Sheldon Cooper who has the handicap of being a fictional character. But in the hands of Christopher Nolan (best known for things like Batman movies and films that mess with time —and the minds of audiences — including “Memento” and “Inception”) directing Cillian Murphy in the title role and Robert Downey, Jr. in a supporting role that might well earn him an Oscar nod, it’s become not just critically acclaimed but an unexpected commercial juggernaut. At the time of this writing, it was number seven on the list of 2023 box-office receipts. It’s ahead of Ant-Man. It’s ahead of John Wick. It’s ahead of Indiana Jones. It is the only movie in the Top 10 that’s not part of a franchise or associated with a toy or a comic book or a video game.

When she was asked by Rob McCoy, the director of the Atomic Testing Museum, to maybe emphasize her maiden name a little and do a few interviews with local media she agreed.

“What I didn’t know is that they had hired a PR firm. So all of a sudden the interview requests just came pouring in,” she said. When the word “inundated” was used to describe the last month, she does not disagree.

Vanderford arrived in Boulder City after a short stay in Las Vegas for the oldest reason there is.

“I came here for love,” she said. “While studying as an undergrad in Eugene, Ore., I met the man who is now my husband and he was born in Boulder City, he was born at the hospital here.”

They bought their first home in BC, one of the historic bungalows on Birch Street, in 1998 and moved into the larger home across from Veterans Memorial Park when her two sons were almost teenagers and they needed more space.

“We lived on Birch Street and I just absolutely loved that place. It was on the corner of Birch and Arizona. It was wonderful but we just needed a bigger place. But I really loved that whole area,” she recalled.

While her sons were in school, she was also continuing her education, adding to the undergrad degree in English with both a masters and a doctorate (also in English) from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“I’ve always been someone who kept a pretty low profile,” she explained. “First, I never thought a film about my grandfather would ever happen at all. And then when it did, I still didn’t expect to have much to do with it.”

She explains that she never actually knew her famous grandfather, who died in 1967, years before she was even born. She did know her great uncle Frank, the title character’s brother who is depicted in the film and who she calls a “great person.”

“We (the family) were not involved in the making of the movie,” she said. That may be a bit of an understatement. Not only was the family not asked to consult on the film, when the book “American Prometheus” on which the film is based was being researched, historian Martin Sherwin is reported to have interviewed more than 100 people but Vanderford’s father, Peter, the son of the famous physicist, refused a formal interview.

“My brother, he invited himself onto the set. He met Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy. So he had that experience. But I had no involvement,” she explained.

“But if someone asks me to do something, I’m generally going to say ‘yes’. So Rob asked me and I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’ It was pretty crazy for a little while but it has largely died down now.”

She says she has no regrets about getting involved and calls that fact that a movie was even made with such a notable director, “remarkable.”

She said the family has two quibbles with the final cut of the film. The first, which has been discussed in other interviews was a scene at the beginning of the movie that flashed back to her grandfather’s time in college and insinuated that he had at least considered poisoning one of his instructors. “We don’t think that actually happened,” she said.

The second is all about a more recent event involving her grandfather’s security clearance which is a major plot line in the film.

“In December of 2022, the Department of Energy vacated the decision to rescind his security clearance. They recognized that it was unethically done, that it was illegal and they vacated that decision,” she said. Nothing else can be done posthumously to recognize that the original decision was wrong. Still, it took 68 years for someone in the U.S. government to officially acknowledge that.

“I would just like to say thank you to all of the people who spearheaded that effort.”