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The Authors Of Curious George Were On The Run From Nazis · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always for
0:31
Speaker 1: tuning in. What are your favorite children's books. I'm a
0:35
Speaker 1: Roll Doll scary stories to tell in the dark kind
0:38
Speaker 1: of guy myself. What about you, man? Yeah, Nol was
0:42
Speaker 1: my name, and I too, as a Roll Doll fan,
0:44
Speaker 1: I ate that stuff up and it sounds cliche, but
0:47
Speaker 1: those really were the books that kind of taught me
0:49
Speaker 1: how to love to read, because he's just such He's
0:51
Speaker 1: such a I don't know, what do you call it,
0:53
Speaker 1: like a fabulous like his stories just have so many
0:56
Speaker 1: great characters, and they always go somewhere interesting and there's
1:01
Speaker 1: like a morality tale kind of but it's not too
1:03
Speaker 1: heavy handed, and I don't know, it's a little trippy
1:06
Speaker 1: and and there's darkness and there's steaks, you know what
1:09
Speaker 1: I mean. I just I loved Roll Doll so much.
1:11
Speaker 1: Oh yep, that's right. I forgot. I'm ben Bowen that
1:14
Speaker 1: I still have a name in the times of quarantine. Uh,
1:17
Speaker 1: And I am with you. There No one thing that
1:19
Speaker 1: I thought was so interesting as a kid is that
1:21
Speaker 1: I always, for years thought Roll Doll's name was misspelled.
1:26
Speaker 1: It was a typo. I thought it was Ronald Doll
1:29
Speaker 1: uh and that was missing. But there is this great
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Speaker 1: darkness to his work. Shout out to George's Marvelous Medicine.
1:36
Speaker 1: I believe it is the title. The entire story is
1:38
Speaker 1: about this kid who has to give his grandmother medicine
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Speaker 1: while his parents are away at the market or something
1:45
Speaker 1: for a day, and the whole book is about how
1:47
Speaker 1: he plans to kill her through poison. It is fantastic.
1:51
Speaker 1: I reread it still holds up. Yeah, I mean the
1:54
Speaker 1: Witches is genuinely terrified. But we're not talking about roll
1:58
Speaker 1: Doll today. We already did that episode, remember when he
2:00
Speaker 1: was like a badass fighter pilot and possibly the real
2:04
Speaker 1: life um guy that James Bond was based on, because
2:08
Speaker 1: he definitely hung out with Ian Fleming. Uh. That's a
2:11
Speaker 1: really good one from the back catalog, folks. If you
2:13
Speaker 1: haven't heard that one, I definitely would check it out.
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Speaker 1: Today we're talking about a markedly less dark beloved piece
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Speaker 1: of children's literature about a monkey and a man in
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Speaker 1: a in a yellow hat. Yes, an inquisitive man. Uh,
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Speaker 1: an inquisitive monkey and a tolerant authoritarian. How about that
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Speaker 1: before we be getting shout out. Of course they're super producer.
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Speaker 1: Casey Pegrum's still rocking that retro windows background. How you doing,
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Speaker 1: case I'm just I'm just loving this green field and
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Speaker 1: in blue sky. You know, it's there's nothing better, So
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Speaker 1: I'm just gonna I'm just gonna roll with it. Is
2:48
Speaker 1: there like vapor wave of music playing on repeat, just
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Speaker 1: like dripping from the clouds and coming up from there
2:54
Speaker 1: the green grass. Absolutely, it's uh, it's it's it's quite
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Speaker 1: a thing. You guys have to experience it firsthand. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it looks pretty pretty trippy, my friend. Yeah, they're better
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Speaker 1: be some vape way of going on over there. Yes,
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Speaker 1: this is a story about Curious George. About the creators
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Speaker 1: of Curious George. You know, as you said, no, that's
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Speaker 1: an inquisitive little primate. Uh. Now he is famous, especially
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Speaker 1: in the West. He's known the world over. Uh. He
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Speaker 1: was the brainchild of a Jewish German couple named Hans
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Speaker 1: and Margaret Ray. That's right, um, Hans and Margaret Ray.
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Speaker 1: Hans being the illustrator and Margaret being the writer, lived
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Speaker 1: in Rio de Janeira in the nineteen thirties and there
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Speaker 1: they had two pet monkeys, um, and those pet monkeys
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Speaker 1: became the inspiration for a character they created named FIEFI,
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Speaker 1: who has described in a Lovely Mental Phloss article as
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Speaker 1: an impish, inquisitive monkey. I love impish, I also like puckish.
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Speaker 1: But they eventually moved to Paris to when the Nazis
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Speaker 1: were occupying France and they were wars to flee for
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Speaker 1: their lives, carrying with them the manuscripts for the story
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Speaker 1: that we now know and love and and we couldn't
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Speaker 1: picture a world without Curious George UM tucked under their
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Speaker 1: arms and and escaping for freedom. Uh. This is the
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Speaker 1: story of how that story Curious George came to be
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Speaker 1: and kind of morphed from their original concept, and how
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Speaker 1: the Rays made that intensely dangerous and brave escape from
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Speaker 1: Nazi occupied France. Yes, yeah, and we're we're going to
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Speaker 1: uh start with some background. Let's start in lighter times, right,
4:42
Speaker 1: less heavy hearted times. Hans Augusto Ray was born in
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Speaker 1: September in Hamburg, Germany. He grew up by the way
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Speaker 1: near the Hagenbeck Zoo and this gave him to lifelong loves.
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Speaker 1: Loved animals and he loved drawing a woman who would
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Speaker 1: become his wife. Margaret Elizabeth Waltstein was born in Hamburg
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Speaker 1: in nineteen o six. This is this is a neat
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Speaker 1: little rom com moment for them because they met just
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Speaker 1: briefly when Margaret was a young girl before she left
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Speaker 1: Hamburg to study art uh and they have one of
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Speaker 1: those beautiful relationships where they can remember all the significant moments.
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Speaker 1: So he remembers first seeing her at a party at
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Speaker 1: her dad's house in Germany. She was sliding down the banister.
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Speaker 1: So fast forward a little bit, Hans moves in ninety four.
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Speaker 1: That's that's where he ends up in Brazil and Rio
5:40
Speaker 1: de Janeiro. After he served in World War One. He
5:43
Speaker 1: was sketching, he was painting. Who was also he was
5:47
Speaker 1: a roving plumbing fixtures salesman. He was going, this is
5:51
Speaker 1: so weird. It sounds like something from a Kurt Vonnegut
5:54
Speaker 1: or Donald Barthelmey story. He was writing up and down
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Speaker 1: the Amazon, selling plumbing fixtures as part of his family business.
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Speaker 1: I missed the old days of the traveling salesman. Don't
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Speaker 1: you been? Feels like a bygone era? You know, yeah, yeah,
6:09
Speaker 1: Do you guys ever see that documentary about the globesmen. No,
6:12
Speaker 1: it's this documentary about these guys who you know. I
6:16
Speaker 1: can't remember if I'm thinking of the documentary version or
6:19
Speaker 1: the mockumentary version with Fred Armison. But there's there's some
6:23
Speaker 1: great documentaries and documentaries out there about the harrowing life
6:27
Speaker 1: of traveling salesman. It's often not a very glamorous life,
6:32
Speaker 1: even in the heyday. But check out documentary now if
6:35
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it, it's, uh, it's fantastic. Have you
6:38
Speaker 1: guys seen that? It seems like you would have. I've
6:39
Speaker 1: seen I've seen multiple episodes. I haven't seen that one.
6:42
Speaker 1: My favorite one is the one that makes fun of
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Speaker 1: Stephen Sondheim, the musical one looks like in the seventies
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Speaker 1: and they're like, you know, just feverishly smoking cigarettes like
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Speaker 1: in the in the studio and making these kind of
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Speaker 1: very baroque and um rapid fire lyric kind of like
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Speaker 1: Broadway type pieces with uh, what's his name, John Mulaney
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Speaker 1: playing like the Stephen Sondheim type character. It's yeah, so
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Speaker 1: oh yeah, so to the point he's he's living this
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Speaker 1: salesman life for about ten years, right. But then in
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Speaker 1: Rio de Janeiro, um Hans had moved there and was
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Speaker 1: selling bathtubs now and Margaret was making her first escape
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Speaker 1: from the just awful situation in Germany, UM, where she
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Speaker 1: was obviously very unsafe and needed to flee. UM. She
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Speaker 1: convinced Hans to get out of the family bathtub selling
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Speaker 1: business UM and they started to join forces on uh,
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Speaker 1: some creative projects together. They actually opened an advertising agency,
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Speaker 1: which there hadn't been one up to that point in
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Speaker 1: Rio de Janeiro, UM. And that is you know, I
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Speaker 1: always think of this era of like madmen, like those
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Speaker 1: really beautiful illustrated advertisement posters kind of you know, and
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Speaker 1: that's kind of worked that Hans did. That was very
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Speaker 1: That was how you made money as an artist in
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Speaker 1: those days, and that was kind of how he got
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Speaker 1: his start. And Margaret wrote the ad copy. So they
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Speaker 1: were kind of a dynamic duo from the start YEP
8:12
Speaker 1: and they married that same year. They reunited August of
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Speaker 1: All of the contemporary accounts of them are very kind
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Speaker 1: add a very nice, uh you know, affectionate relationship, and
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Speaker 1: people unanimously agreed that they were very well matched couple.
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Speaker 1: It's funny because you know, picture, dear listeners, the face
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Speaker 1: of Curious George in your head. There are people who
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Speaker 1: were friends with them at the time who will swear
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Speaker 1: up and down that Hans modeled the face of Curious
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Speaker 1: George after the face of his wife. Uh. Now, on
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Speaker 1: the offset, you know, that might sound a little bit insulting,
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Speaker 1: but it was. It was a cute thing. And if
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Speaker 1: that's indeed what he intend did to do, then surely
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Speaker 1: he intended it as an homage rather than some kind
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Speaker 1: of weird joke. Hey man, monkeys are cute. I I
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Speaker 1: see no problem with that, and Curious George is probably
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Speaker 1: the quintessential cute cartoon monkey. Because some of them are
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Speaker 1: like aggressive and they like throw a poop at you
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Speaker 1: or something. Curious George is an absolute sweetheart, and he
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Speaker 1: might have gotten into some mischief, sure, but he always
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Speaker 1: had the best of intentions, didn't He had a heart
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Speaker 1: of goal that Curious George. Um So, yeah, it makes
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Speaker 1: perfect sense that he he probably felt that the goodness
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Speaker 1: of the character mimic the goodness that that shown from
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Speaker 1: within his his lovely wife. Um. So they were initially
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Speaker 1: going to spend a honeymoon in Paris and Ny six uh,
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Speaker 1: and they ended up staying for four years. I heard
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Speaker 1: that story before, and they were in fact Brazilian citizens
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Speaker 1: with passports and everything. Uh. And they took up residence
9:57
Speaker 1: and they I don't know, I'm gonna get you to
9:58
Speaker 1: help me with this casey the Terra hotel double R
10:02
Speaker 1: double S. Yeah, I think it's I think it's Terras.
10:06
Speaker 1: Let's say also hotel Casey on the case uh and
10:11
Speaker 1: that would be on the rue uh yoursef de Maestra.
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Speaker 1: Let's yeah, I guys, I butchered that one M A
10:18
Speaker 1: I S T R E. Yeah. Yeah, that means the
10:23
Speaker 1: Joseph the Master. Uh. And they stayed in apartment five five.
10:26
Speaker 1: What what a romantic time period. It reminds me of
10:30
Speaker 1: that movie Midnight in Paris, that Woody Allen movie, um,
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Speaker 1: where you know, all of the Gertrude Stein and Hemingway
10:37
Speaker 1: and all the you know, the dead uh Fitzgerald exact,
10:41
Speaker 1: Scott Fitzgerald come back and they're kind of like Dolly
10:45
Speaker 1: or like haunting Paris. But that era where you could
10:48
Speaker 1: take up residents in a pretty decent hotel, you know, uh,
10:52
Speaker 1: in in Paris. That's that's it. Pre sounds like a
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Speaker 1: pretty cool adventure. So what happened next? So they they
11:03
Speaker 1: were living, um a pretty pretty bucolic, nice existence. They
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Speaker 1: wrote and illustrated children's books, but in a very lighthearted
11:13
Speaker 1: version of Heath Ledgers The Joker, it wasn't about the money,
11:17
Speaker 1: it was about sending a message. Uh. This is where
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Speaker 1: Hans publishes his first children's book, Uh, this sweet story.
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Speaker 1: He drew some newspaper cartoons of a giraffe. French publisher
11:29
Speaker 1: asked him to expand on this drawing, and that's how
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Speaker 1: we got Rafi and the Nine Monkeys. So he was
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Speaker 1: always into monkeys as a children's author, and this eventually
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Speaker 1: marks the debut of the breakout character that we know
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Speaker 1: today as Curious George. After they published Raffie in the
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Speaker 1: Nine Monkeys, they decided that George needed a book all
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Speaker 1: his own. So they started working on this and they said,
11:58
Speaker 1: you know, let's just describe him as Curious, let's make
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Speaker 1: it part of his name. But as you know historians,
12:03
Speaker 1: during the late nineteen thirties and the forties, things were
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Speaker 1: very tense in Europe and before their manuscript what would
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Speaker 1: become the Curious George Book, before it could be published,
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Speaker 1: the Rays, because they both were of German Jewish extraction,
12:19
Speaker 1: found themselves in a terrible situation. The Nazi Party was
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Speaker 1: tearing through Europe and they had a laser focus on France.
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Speaker 1: They were in fact going to take Paris as far
12:31
Speaker 1: as people at the time could tell. And they were
12:34
Speaker 1: already starting to get uncomfortable because you know, news of
12:37
Speaker 1: the war is sort of on the distant horizon and
12:40
Speaker 1: it's getting closer and closer and closer. So to be safe,
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Speaker 1: they flee their apartment in Paris and they go to
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Speaker 1: a chateau in the countryside. This is cool. It's an
12:51
Speaker 1: old castle owned by some friends of theirs. We have
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Speaker 1: a letter from Hans where he said, quote, it feels
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Speaker 1: ridiculous to be thinking about children's but life goes on.
13:01
Speaker 1: The editors edit, the artist draw, even during wartime, and
13:06
Speaker 1: then things start to go south. Yeah, it's it's that
13:10
Speaker 1: kind of situation, you see. And I think there's a
13:12
Speaker 1: there's a German film about this period called The Lives
13:17
Speaker 1: of Others. I want to say, where people are being
13:20
Speaker 1: like informed upon by you know, it's like total ninety
13:24
Speaker 1: four type material, or even like people's kids are informing
13:27
Speaker 1: on their parents and you know, horrible stuff like that,
13:29
Speaker 1: and there's like surveillance going on, um, and you know,
13:32
Speaker 1: there's just this air of suspicion um that's just like
13:36
Speaker 1: taking you know, the city by storm. And there are
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Speaker 1: some suspicious villagers that report uh, this very strange couple
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Speaker 1: with the strange German accents, gasp, living in this old castle,
13:50
Speaker 1: and they're reported to the Gestapo. Yes, this is an
13:54
Speaker 1: incredibly paranoid time. Any student of history can see how
13:59
Speaker 1: quickly people will turn on one another, especially if they
14:01
Speaker 1: feel like turning on someone will help them in their
14:05
Speaker 1: own mission of self preservation. The authorities weren't going there
14:09
Speaker 1: because they thought they were going to arrest people of
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Speaker 1: Jewish heritage. They were going there because they thought they
14:16
Speaker 1: were going to discover French resistance members, you know, people
14:21
Speaker 1: with the materials and they know how to make bombs.
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Speaker 1: Hans assured the police. Hey, me and my wife, we're
14:28
Speaker 1: just here writing children's books. Hey, check this out. I
14:32
Speaker 1: mean they sound like the nicest people, don't they. He's like, hey,
14:35
Speaker 1: look at look at these sketches. Check out look at
14:38
Speaker 1: my monkey. Did you think it looks kind of like
14:40
Speaker 1: my wife? I? Hey, it's sweet, sweet ye, And I'm
14:44
Speaker 1: sure that I'm sure the Nazis thought that too. Yeah,
14:47
Speaker 1: now they didn't. Um, but now they they definitely didn't
14:51
Speaker 1: get like executed summarily or anything. They were able to
14:55
Speaker 1: more or less convince the authorities that they were just
14:58
Speaker 1: writing these lovely works of children's fixed at the time
15:01
Speaker 1: was known as The Adventures of Fife, which detailed the
15:05
Speaker 1: adventures and misadventures of uh, you know, the in the
15:09
Speaker 1: titular inquisitive monkey. Um. And so they were like, oh,
15:14
Speaker 1: these guys are clearly idiots. They're they're not sleeper agents.
15:18
Speaker 1: And I'm kidding, I'm just I'm trying to think get
15:20
Speaker 1: inside the head of a Nazi. They're just so mean.
15:22
Speaker 1: They just think things like that about lovely people. Um.
15:25
Speaker 1: But they took off right, and the Rays were able
15:29
Speaker 1: to you know, live to sketch and write another day.
15:34
Speaker 1: But this did prove to not be the last run
15:37
Speaker 1: in that they had, and they and they realized that
15:40
Speaker 1: this was not going to be a tenable situation. Yeah exactly.
15:44
Speaker 1: They said, you know, that was kind of a close call.
15:47
Speaker 1: How how many more close calls can we expect? We
15:52
Speaker 1: have to go back to Paris. So they went back
15:54
Speaker 1: to Paris and they started trying to emigrate from France,
15:58
Speaker 1: but you can only imagine in the paperwork. It's already
16:01
Speaker 1: difficult to immigrate from a country during peacetime, so this
16:05
Speaker 1: is much more difficult. And add to this the fact
16:09
Speaker 1: that more and more refugees are mobbing into the city
16:13
Speaker 1: and all they can do is hope that they get
16:16
Speaker 1: their paperwork in line in enough time to leave before
16:20
Speaker 1: the fall of France, before the Nazis take over. And unfortunately,
16:25
Speaker 1: on May tenth, Adolf Hitler sent three million troops into France.
16:32
Speaker 1: People were fleeing by the thousands. The Germans on June fourteenth,
16:36
Speaker 1: I believe captured Paris. I can't even fathom that kind
16:40
Speaker 1: of force. It makes me think of like the Orcs
16:42
Speaker 1: and Lord of the Rings or something. I mean, it
16:44
Speaker 1: is just like an unstoppable like wall of of humans
16:49
Speaker 1: with guns and intent on doing horrible things to uh,
16:54
Speaker 1: incredibly innocent people. Um terrible time to be alive, but
16:59
Speaker 1: they were very, very lucky they were able to plot
17:04
Speaker 1: this escape. That sounds like again, like something out of
17:07
Speaker 1: a Kurt vonn and get book, or like some sort
17:10
Speaker 1: of steampunk adventure novel, or have you ever seen the
17:12
Speaker 1: movie The Triplets of Belleville, which reminds me of that
17:15
Speaker 1: kind of whimsical stuff. So good. But they were able
17:19
Speaker 1: to get some money from selling that first manuscript for
17:23
Speaker 1: for the Adventures of Fifi, and the publishers gave them
17:26
Speaker 1: enough loot to fund their escape, so they were able
17:30
Speaker 1: to really squirrel that away. And uh, they spent uh
17:35
Speaker 1: what would have equalled an entire month of rent on
17:39
Speaker 1: um a bunch of bicycle parts that they were able
17:44
Speaker 1: to get from a bicycle shop that had sold out
17:47
Speaker 1: of actual bicycles because people people were just trying to
17:51
Speaker 1: flee in any way they possibly could, and they were
17:53
Speaker 1: able to kind of, you know, ramshackle together these two
17:57
Speaker 1: sort of improvised bikes. And in their bicycle baskets uh,
18:02
Speaker 1: and true Parisian form, they carried bread like probably a
18:07
Speaker 1: giant baget I hope, cheese, and water and five of
18:11
Speaker 1: their manuscripts, including Fifi Um. And they escaped Paris in
18:17
Speaker 1: the early morning hours of June twelfth of nineteen forty,
18:21
Speaker 1: just before the Nazis captured the city, yep, just two
18:25
Speaker 1: days before. I want to emphasize that point. They did
18:28
Speaker 1: not escape with clothing. They did, you know, extra clothing.
18:31
Speaker 1: They did not escape with medical supplies. They literally had
18:35
Speaker 1: enough food to eat for some short amount of time
18:39
Speaker 1: and their books. The first day they rode thirty miles south,
18:44
Speaker 1: they hid in a farmhouse. Think about this. You go
18:46
Speaker 1: from living a relatively beautiful existence in an old castle.
18:51
Speaker 1: Now you're on the run and some mcgivered bicycles and
18:54
Speaker 1: you're sleeping in barnes. They could still from thirty miles away.
19:00
Speaker 1: Here the Germans shelling the city. The next day they
19:03
Speaker 1: made another twenty miles. They went south again and they
19:07
Speaker 1: slept in a barn. They continue, and you know, they
19:12
Speaker 1: find a train on June when they're about seventy five
19:16
Speaker 1: miles south of Paris, and they say, hey, if we
19:19
Speaker 1: hop this train, we can get to the Spanish border.
19:24
Speaker 1: And they were very very lucky. As they rode the
19:29
Speaker 1: train that night, bombs fell on more and more cities
19:33
Speaker 1: behind them. And this is interesting because okay, so Fifi,
19:39
Speaker 1: the book that we know of as the debut of
19:42
Speaker 1: Curious George, has already saved them twice, right, once uh
19:46
Speaker 1: from suspicion of the local authorities, right and then once
19:50
Speaker 1: giving them enough money to get those bike parts and escape.
19:55
Speaker 1: Fifi came through for them again, right because once again
19:58
Speaker 1: somebody thought, Hey, is this delightfully whimsical couple actually a
20:03
Speaker 1: pair of spies? Yeah? Once again mental flush for the
20:05
Speaker 1: wind and their breakdown of this, uh this incredible story.
20:09
Speaker 1: One of the officers believe that they were smuggling some
20:15
Speaker 1: kind of government secrets uh in in that dossier, you know,
20:19
Speaker 1: which obviously, as we know, just contained their manuscripts um
20:23
Speaker 1: and he insisted that they open up the folder or
20:27
Speaker 1: the briefcase I guess is what it looked like to them,
20:30
Speaker 1: and and show them what they had. And then, just
20:33
Speaker 1: like the first time monkey books, you know, that's all,
20:37
Speaker 1: that's all. They are pretty pretty innocuous. I'd love to
20:40
Speaker 1: show you my sketches. Officer, tell me, who do you
20:43
Speaker 1: think this monkey looks like? Who did Margaret? Come here?
20:45
Speaker 1: Come here? Margaret stand next to the stand next to you. Guys,
20:48
Speaker 1: don't want to see it, you can read it. I
20:51
Speaker 1: love it. This feels there's almost a um Wes Anderson
20:56
Speaker 1: vibe to this escape. You know, it's certainly sarend Opetus
21:00
Speaker 1: is all get out. They keep lucking out. They escape
21:03
Speaker 1: Paris two days before the bombing, you know, and obviously
21:06
Speaker 1: you know I'm sure, the reality of this was a
21:08
Speaker 1: lot less charming than cobbling together bicycle pieces and some
21:13
Speaker 1: jewels verne kind of like contraption or whatever is what
21:15
Speaker 1: I'm picturing. And then their bike baskets overflowing with breads
21:19
Speaker 1: and cheeses. And I mean this was like undercover of dark,
21:22
Speaker 1: you know, escaping with your lives at the last minute,
21:25
Speaker 1: you know, from the jaws of of horrible death. Uh.
21:29
Speaker 1: And every time you got stopped by one of these officers,
21:32
Speaker 1: you were narrowly you know, you you were in at
21:34
Speaker 1: risk of of being found out and being just executed
21:38
Speaker 1: or taken to one of the camps, you know, I
21:40
Speaker 1: mean just I can't even imagine the amount of pressure
21:45
Speaker 1: they must have felt. It, just the amount of like
21:47
Speaker 1: constant stress and never feeling safe and always having to
21:50
Speaker 1: keep moving. You know. One interesting thing too about that
21:59
Speaker 1: third close brush with arrest or discovery is that this time,
22:04
Speaker 1: this third time, the authorities suspected them of being German spies,
22:08
Speaker 1: because we have to remember they had German accents. Yeah,
22:11
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that they kept leaning on this notion that
22:13
Speaker 1: they were spies and not just you know, accused them
22:16
Speaker 1: of being Jews and just like, you know, be done
22:19
Speaker 1: with it, because I'm sure Nazi officers have done far,
22:24
Speaker 1: far worse. But they once again escaped. They were handed
22:28
Speaker 1: back their manuscripts and sent on their merry way. Yeah,
22:30
Speaker 1: but once against super narrow escape. And then eleven days
22:35
Speaker 1: later they arrive in Lisbon, Portugal. I always wanted to visit.
22:40
Speaker 1: They wait for months and months, they crossed the Atlantic
22:42
Speaker 1: to Brazil, and then eventually they sail for New York City,
22:47
Speaker 1: where a friend of theirs named Grace Hogarth has just
22:51
Speaker 1: been hired as a children's book editor at Houghton Mifflin,
22:54
Speaker 1: the publishing house still around today, and she loved the book,
22:58
Speaker 1: so she didn't just sign them on for you US contract.
23:01
Speaker 1: She signed them on for a four book contract, and
23:05
Speaker 1: they decided to rename Fifi to George. They felt George
23:10
Speaker 1: was a little more masculine. We we have also, you
23:16
Speaker 1: know publicity brochure from Hotan Mifflin that shows the publishers
23:23
Speaker 1: leaned into the biography of the authors, you know what
23:26
Speaker 1: I mean. They were using it as a way to
23:29
Speaker 1: sell the book. Uh. And it was all true, and
23:32
Speaker 1: I don't think it was exploitative, but it definitely helped
23:36
Speaker 1: with the debut of Curious George and the States. Yeah,
23:39
Speaker 1: and this is powerful stuff. In June and I rainy
23:42
Speaker 1: morning before dawn, a few hours before the Nazis entered,
23:45
Speaker 1: we left Paris on bicycles with nothing but warm coats
23:48
Speaker 1: and our manuscripts, Curious George among them, tied to the
23:51
Speaker 1: baggage racks and started peddling south. We finally made it
23:54
Speaker 1: to Lisbon by train, having sold our bicycles to customs
23:58
Speaker 1: officials the French Spanish border. After a brief interludeing Rio
24:01
Speaker 1: de Janeiro, our migrations came to an end one clear
24:05
Speaker 1: crisp October morning in when we saw the Statue of
24:08
Speaker 1: Liberty rise above the harbor of New York, and we
24:11
Speaker 1: landed in the USA. We took a small apartment in
24:14
Speaker 1: New York's Cranwich Village, rolled up our sleeves, and we're
24:17
Speaker 1: ready to start from scratch. That's pretty I mean, that's
24:21
Speaker 1: if that's not like an immigration success story, I don't
24:25
Speaker 1: know what is. I mean, obviously, they just they had
24:27
Speaker 1: this dream. They knew what they had, they knew how
24:29
Speaker 1: precious those manuscripts were. They protected them with their lives,
24:33
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, they they were more concerned with
24:37
Speaker 1: bringing those and and and being careful, you know, to
24:40
Speaker 1: have them not be damaged or taken. Then they were
24:42
Speaker 1: about bringing more warm clothes and things like that. So
24:45
Speaker 1: uh really really, it's it's so amazing to see when
24:49
Speaker 1: someone really knows, um that they're onto something and and
24:52
Speaker 1: of course they absolutely were. And you can confirm this
24:56
Speaker 1: first thanks to uh lit hub, where you can read
25:00
Speaker 1: German Jewish refugees who created Curious George. But you can
25:03
Speaker 1: also find the gritty, day by day meticulous notations of
25:08
Speaker 1: their of their escape in the collection at the University
25:12
Speaker 1: of Southern Mississippi. It's the h A and Margaret Ray Collection.
25:18
Speaker 1: This is the basis for a book by Louise Borden
25:21
Speaker 1: called The Journey That Saved Curious George. You can also
25:26
Speaker 1: see a documentary about this journey, which was in twenties seventeen.
25:33
Speaker 1: And now you know, we we reach um sort of
25:38
Speaker 1: the conclusion of today's episode. But of course you want
25:41
Speaker 1: to know how Curious George is doing right. Uh, this
25:46
Speaker 1: is an award winning series. They continue to write, they
25:51
Speaker 1: had a beautiful relationship. There was a little bit of
25:54
Speaker 1: misogyny for a second, though not on Hans's part. But
25:58
Speaker 1: they for a time, Uh, Margaret's name was not appearing
26:03
Speaker 1: on the first I think the first few books because
26:06
Speaker 1: publishers thought too many women were writing children's books, so
26:11
Speaker 1: a guy's name would sell better. Tut tut, yikes, no good.
26:15
Speaker 1: But now we remember both of these incredible humans for uh,
26:21
Speaker 1: not only their harrowing escape from Nazi occupied Paris, but
26:26
Speaker 1: for the amazing work that they brought into the world.
26:28
Speaker 1: I mean, it's been made into you know, every every
26:31
Speaker 1: generation grows up with Curious George. You know, I remember
26:33
Speaker 1: was I grew up in Germany, and I remember the
26:35
Speaker 1: books were huge, so I read the German language versions.
26:38
Speaker 1: Um and uh, then when I was a little older,
26:41
Speaker 1: there was a cartoon version. And then when my daughter
26:44
Speaker 1: was growing up, there were movies. Uh that brought Jack
26:47
Speaker 1: Johnson back into the public eye with his delightful Curious
26:52
Speaker 1: George soundtrack. UM. So thanks to the raise for for
26:55
Speaker 1: bringing Jack Johnson back into my life. And you'll be
26:59
Speaker 1: happy to know their legacy continues. There's seventy five million
27:02
Speaker 1: copies of Curious George out there in the world. They've
27:05
Speaker 1: been sold in over a dozen languages. Uh. And you know,
27:10
Speaker 1: Curious George went on to have many other close calls
27:13
Speaker 1: that were thankfully fictional. Thanks, as always for tuning in.
27:18
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed this episode. And we want to
27:20
Speaker 1: hear about your favorite children's stories or young adult books.
27:25
Speaker 1: Uh and you know, maybe there's an interesting story behind
27:28
Speaker 1: their evolution and origin as well. Let us know. You
27:32
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter.
27:34
Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram, not just as a show,
27:38
Speaker 1: but as individuals. That's right. You can find me in
27:41
Speaker 1: my quarantine adventures or misadventures sort of like a Curious Monkey, UM,
27:47
Speaker 1: only locked in like a three bedroom house in uh
27:50
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. UM that is at how now Noel Brown
27:54
Speaker 1: on Instagram, And you can find me at ben bullin
27:57
Speaker 1: hs W on Twitter. You can find me at Bolan
28:00
Speaker 1: on Instagram. You can you know I'm around. You can
28:05
Speaker 1: find me somewhere on the internet. And you can also
28:08
Speaker 1: find on the internet our pal slash Nemesis the Quister
28:12
Speaker 1: a k a. Jonathan Strickland, who assures us that he
28:16
Speaker 1: will be making an appearance soon. But you all longtime
28:19
Speaker 1: listeners know the game. He's not going to tell us
28:22
Speaker 1: when it happens. He's just going to show up and
28:24
Speaker 1: ruin the ending of a perfectly good episode. Yeah, it's
28:27
Speaker 1: gonna be one of those zoom bombs we keep hearing
28:29
Speaker 1: so much about. You know, he's just gonna come in
28:31
Speaker 1: and wreck the party. Hues Thanks to super producer Casey Pegram.
28:35
Speaker 1: As always, thanks to Alex Williams for composing our theme.
28:37
Speaker 1: Christopher hacionis here in zoom spirit. Thanks as always to Rule,
28:42
Speaker 1: Dull Shell Silverstein, Hans and Margaret Ray and Hey Dolt.
28:47
Speaker 1: Thanks to you and you as well, Ben. We'll see
28:49
Speaker 1: you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
29:00
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
29:03
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows,