Latest / Ridiculous History / The Secret World Of Roald Dahl, Part One: A "Noisy" Life

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The Secret World Of Roald Dahl, Part One: A "Noisy" Life · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
0:28
Speaker 1: fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
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Speaker 1: tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man, the myth,
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Speaker 1: the legend, our very own Willy Wonka level super producer,
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Speaker 1: mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Hello, Hello, Hello. The enthusiasm is killing me.
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Speaker 1: Max. They call me Ben Bullen, our brother in arms,
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Speaker 1: our brother and podcast crime Noel is on an adventure,
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Speaker 1: but will be returning soon. In the meantime, Ridiculous Historians,
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Speaker 1: we have something incredibly special for you today. As you
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Speaker 1: may recall from some earlier episodes, we have long been
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Speaker 1: fascinated and in no small way disturbed by the life
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Speaker 1: and times of the legendary author Roald Dall. He has
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Speaker 1: written some of the most popular children's books in all
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Speaker 1: of Western canon. Excuse me. He was a strident anti semi.
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Speaker 1: He's a fighter ace, he was a legitimate spy. We
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Speaker 1: are not the only people who share this obsession with
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Speaker 1: the larger than life character. Today, folks, we are thrilled
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Speaker 1: to be joined with none other than the best selling writer, producer, podcaster,
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Speaker 1: the founder of Parallax, none other than Aaron Tracy, also
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Speaker 1: the creator of the new hit podcast The Secret World
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Speaker 1: of rold dng Eric, thank you so much for coming
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Speaker 1: on the show man.
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Speaker 3: Oh thanks for having me. I appreciate the enthusiasm of
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Speaker 3: that intro. I hope I can live up to it.
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Speaker 1: Well, we hope that we can live up to your accolades,
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Speaker 1: because in our research for this now, I know it
2:16
Speaker 1: can always be maybe a little bit embarrassing. So we're
2:20
Speaker 1: not going to fan boy too much. But you have
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Speaker 1: quite a pro You're quite prolific. You have a ton
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Speaker 1: of work under your belts. We're going to talk about
2:30
Speaker 1: some of your additional work as well. And I have
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Speaker 1: to admit, when I'm looking through your CV and your
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Speaker 1: bona fides, I thought, how does this guy do so
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Speaker 1: much stuff? And then I learned you also lecture at Yale.
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Speaker 2: Uh yeah, yeah, I've been teaching at Yale for a while.
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Speaker 2: I don't know.
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Speaker 3: I mean, if you don't have a real job, like
2:50
Speaker 3: I don't have a real job, right my job is
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Speaker 3: to sit around and write all day. You can get
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Speaker 3: a lot of writing done. I mean, it adds up
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Speaker 3: over time, so it definitely does not feel like a
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Speaker 3: lot to me. But you're sweet to say that I've
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Speaker 3: got a lot done.
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Speaker 1: Oh gosh, well, one of the one of the things
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Speaker 1: that we've got to get right into it, man. But
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Speaker 1: one of the things that amazes me so much about
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Speaker 1: your latest project is the depth of research, right, the thoroughness,
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Speaker 1: the objectivity. It's really like it's a cinematic audio documentary.
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Speaker 1: And I've got to ask, given all your previous work
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Speaker 1: and the amount of projects that you've done in the past,
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Speaker 1: across multiple genres, what drew you to Roll Dall in particular,
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Speaker 1: out of all the people that you could have done
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Speaker 1: a deep dive on.
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Speaker 3: I love writing true stories. I love writing about interesting
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Speaker 3: historical figures. I've written. I wrote a TV show about
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Speaker 3: Audrey Hepburn in the sixties. I wrote a show about Jagger.
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Speaker 3: Roll Dall is one of those figures kind of like
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Speaker 3: Hepburn and Jagger Hoover, who has, you know, a really
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Speaker 3: important place in the public consciousness. Like everybody knows him,
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Speaker 3: a lot of people have read him to go even further.
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Speaker 3: For a lot of people, he shaped their childhoods. But
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Speaker 3: nobody knows anything about the guy. I mean, he had
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Speaker 3: such a noisy life and so as I started researching
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Speaker 3: him and discovered all of these really strange chapters of
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Speaker 3: his life that I didn't know about. I just became
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Speaker 3: I became totally obsessed. I mean, the guy is most
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Speaker 3: famous for writing children's stories. Of course, he didn't start
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Speaker 3: writing them until his late forties, so he had all
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Speaker 3: these different lives before then, which all sort of informed
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Speaker 3: his later books.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that was That was something I learned from you,
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Speaker 1: the idea of that sudden switch that shape in a
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Speaker 1: profession or vocation over time. And I can't wait to
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Speaker 1: get into it. One question that all of our audience
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Speaker 1: members are going to have for you directly, Aaron, is
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Speaker 1: do you have a favorite role doll book?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? I love Matilda.
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Speaker 3: I probably came into this, came into the project with
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Speaker 3: Charlie and Chocolate Factory being my favorite. I love the
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Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one Gene Wilder movie. I used to, you know,
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Speaker 3: watch on VHS as a kid, and I still do
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Speaker 3: love that book. But Matilda rereading it for this project.
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Speaker 3: It's just such a good story. He's so good writing her.
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Speaker 3: It's such a sweet story. I mean, there's the sort
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Speaker 3: of typical doll gruesomeness that exists in all of his books,
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Speaker 3: of course, but I just I just think it's a
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Speaker 3: It's such a winner.
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Speaker 1: I love the point you're making about the gruesomeness, how
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Speaker 1: there seems to be a subtle thread of darkness that
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Speaker 1: a lot of kids don't necessarily clock on their first read.
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Speaker 1: It reminds me of another one of his books, not
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Speaker 1: not his most famous, but a book called George's Marvelous Medicine,
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Speaker 1: which is I would argue, a quintessential example of that
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Speaker 1: darkness through what is ostensibly whimsical work. I mean, folks,
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Speaker 1: if you haven't read it, go to your local bookstore
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Speaker 1: and get ready for a weird afternoon. It's a short story,
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Speaker 1: or it's a you know, it's a short work. It
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Speaker 1: is literally about an eight year old boy who tries
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Speaker 1: to kill his grandmother and accidentally makes her a giant.
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Speaker 1: Which I reread that one as as an adult several
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Speaker 1: years back, and I was kind of shocked that my
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Speaker 1: parents allowed me to have a copy of that. You know,
6:56
Speaker 1: how do you how do you feel about because your father,
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Speaker 1: how do you feel about your kids reading role Doll?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I'm a little bit torn. On the podcast,
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Speaker 3: I bring on a bunch of incredibly smart people to
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Speaker 3: have a discussion about whether or not it's okay to
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Speaker 3: allow kids, impressionable kids to read work by someone that
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Speaker 3: we now know is a bigot, is an anti semi.
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Speaker 3: I think it's a complicated thing. I can't really locate
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Speaker 3: the bigotry or the anti semitism on the page. I
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Speaker 3: think if I could, there'd be no question. Like I
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Speaker 3: just absolutely would not give him to my kids because
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Speaker 3: I can't. And some people say that they can see
7:40
Speaker 3: some antisemitic tropes in the Witches. I'm not sure I
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Speaker 3: agree with that. But because I can't see it on
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Speaker 3: the page, is it hypocritical for me to sort of
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Speaker 3: deprive my kids of Doll's work when I don't deprive
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Speaker 3: myself of a lot of filmmakers and novelists who we
7:58
Speaker 3: now know were total monsters. It's something I'm grappling with.
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Speaker 3: And I'll also say, I mean, you asked me my
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Speaker 3: favorite book, you know, I immediately went to the children's
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Speaker 3: books Charlie and Chocolate Factory in Matilda. But Dahl also
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Speaker 3: wrote a ton of stuff for adults. He wrote a
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Speaker 3: novel called My Uncle Oswald, which is you know, hard
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Speaker 3: r rated. He wrote a bunch of short stories for
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Speaker 3: places like Playboy. He wrote lots of short stories for
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Speaker 3: The New Yorker. One of my favorites of his is
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Speaker 3: the Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, which was adapted by
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Speaker 3: Netflix recently, which is absolutely for adults. So, you know,
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Speaker 3: the guy absolutely wrote things that even if you're you're
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Speaker 3: not a parent, or you're looking for, you know, something
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Speaker 3: that you can just enjoy on your own. Uh, you
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Speaker 3: know you can find something in Doll.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. That's that's amazing because I love the point you've
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Speaker 1: made in in the podcast and in several other interviews
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Speaker 1: where where you kind of establish that for the majority
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Speaker 1: of people who are aware of Roald Dahl, it's really
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Speaker 1: just two words on the cover of one of their
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Speaker 1: favorite childhood books. Right, we don't know very much about
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Speaker 1: the creator himself, and I have to applaud you for
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Speaker 1: not shying away from some of that deeply, you know, personally,
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Speaker 1: I believe deeply and profoundly disturbing stuff, those aspects of
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Speaker 1: his character that are inseparable from his identity as a
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Speaker 1: person and a writer. I also, on the point of writing,
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Speaker 1: I was astonished to learn from your research that Roald
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Speaker 1: Dahl had this entire other life as a screenwriter. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: I mean I think like you, I'm a big movie
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Speaker 3: buff and fascinated by Hollywood in the sixties and seventies
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Speaker 3: and earlier, and so I didn't I didn't know this either.
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Speaker 3: I mean Dolluh. After his time in the war, Dall
10:07
Speaker 3: went out to Los Angeles. He was flown out by
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Speaker 3: Walt Disney himself and put up at a at a
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Speaker 3: fancy Beverly Hills hotel and given a driver and given
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Speaker 3: a place to stay, all by Walt Disney because Disney
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Speaker 3: loved this story that Doll had written, called The Gremlins.
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Speaker 3: It was one of Doll's first stories, and it was
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Speaker 3: and people don't really read it today. It's sort of
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Speaker 3: it feels kind of like a you know, the reason
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Speaker 3: Doll wrote it is it's a bit of propaganda, uh,
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Speaker 3: to show American and British forces working together against Germany.
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Speaker 2: And it's it's very creative.
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Speaker 3: It has nothing whatsoever to do, by the way, with
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Speaker 3: the Steven Spielberg produced classic The Grimlins.
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Speaker 1: He knew.
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Speaker 3: That was my first question too when I when I
10:55
Speaker 3: first stumbled on it. But Disney brought Doll out to
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Speaker 3: Los Angeles because he wanted to turn the Gremlins into
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Speaker 3: a movie. And this is when Disney was absolutely on top.
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Speaker 3: I mean, Disney had just come off snow White and
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Speaker 3: Dumbo and Bambi and so many of his classics. So
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Speaker 3: here's Doll at twenty six years old, being feted by you,
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Speaker 3: unquestionably the king of Hollywood. And it didn't quite work
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Speaker 3: out for Doll. Disney sort of started a writer's room.
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Speaker 3: He brought in animators, and he brought in a director
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Speaker 3: and all these different people and started a writer's room
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Speaker 3: with Doll. But Dall was just not someone at least
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Speaker 3: at twenty six, but he could certainly argue as he
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Speaker 3: got older too. He was not someone who wanted to collaborate.
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Speaker 3: He had a very personal vision. He wanted to control
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Speaker 3: the work. And so eventually Disney dropped the project and
11:51
Speaker 3: Doll wasn't able to get it set up anywhere else.
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Speaker 3: But Doll still had the bug. He wanted to make movies,
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Speaker 3: so he continued to write. He wasn't always living in Hollywood,
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Speaker 3: but he went back to New York. He made lots
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Speaker 3: of trips to Los Angeles and he just wrote screenplay
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Speaker 3: after screenplay. Many of them just not working. He had
12:15
Speaker 3: won with the director Robert Altman called Oh Death, where
12:20
Speaker 3: is Thy Stingle Ling a Ling, which is a yeah,
12:24
Speaker 3: it's a crazy title, but it came closest to actually
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Speaker 3: getting made to becoming Doll's first credit. And they started
12:35
Speaker 3: filming in fact, and Gregory Peck was in the lead role,
12:38
Speaker 3: but as sometimes happens, the head of the studio looked
12:43
Speaker 3: at the dailies and just said this is not working
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Speaker 3: and shut down production. And so after all that, it
12:50
Speaker 3: was another sort of failed credit for Doll, but he
12:54
Speaker 3: didn't give up and he kept working and eventually he
12:58
Speaker 3: found the perfect vehicle for himself, which is the fourth
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Speaker 3: James Bond movie. Dall was a spy for I six,
13:06
Speaker 3: which we can talk about, and so yeah, that James
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Speaker 3: Bond movie was very much informed by his experiences in Washington.
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Speaker 1: As we're moving through this, I would like, if it's
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Speaker 1: okay with you, Aaron, to emulate some of the formula
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Speaker 1: of your podcast, because one thing you do that I
13:31
Speaker 1: think is superb is avoiding the straight up linear recounting
13:38
Speaker 1: of born such and such, time lives and dies. And
13:42
Speaker 1: I love how how you're jumping around in time and
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Speaker 1: theme in Oh thank you.
13:50
Speaker 3: Who needs another cradle to the grave? Right, Like, what's
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Speaker 3: more boring that? I was just watching a documentary the
13:55
Speaker 3: other day that that was just Cradles the Grave, and
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Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, there's even when you have a fantastic story,
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Speaker 3: there's just no surprises.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's I think that that is a great
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Speaker 1: advantage in the structure of your creation here, because it
14:11
Speaker 1: keeps going to sort of hook after hook with plot
14:14
Speaker 1: twist after plot twist, and you have quite a well
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Speaker 1: established past and present as a screenwriter yourself now, Max
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Speaker 1: and Noel and yours truly here we are not screenwriters
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Speaker 1: by trade, but we know a lot of people in
14:32
Speaker 1: the business, and it just seems incredibly challenging, right to
14:39
Speaker 1: have to have so many projects that end up for
14:43
Speaker 1: variables beyond our control, kind of languishing, even if it's
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Speaker 1: a really great story. I'm saying this mainly to ask
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Speaker 1: if Doll's experience in Hollywood when he was just twenty
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Speaker 1: six or so, is that something that is common to
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Speaker 1: a lot of screenwriters or did he get did he
15:05
Speaker 1: get the especially dirty end of the stick there?
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Speaker 3: No, it's incredibly common. My favorite quote about Hollywood is
15:11
Speaker 3: by the Great New Yorker critic Pauline Kale. She said,
15:14
Speaker 3: it's the only place where you can die of encouragement,
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Speaker 3: and that's just so true. People go out there, everybody
15:20
Speaker 3: tells you how talented you are, Everybody wants to meet
15:23
Speaker 3: with you, and it's like your next project is going
15:25
Speaker 3: to go forward, and you know this is a done deal,
15:28
Speaker 3: and this movie star is super interested. And there's something
15:33
Speaker 3: obviously kind of nice about a town that is that
15:36
Speaker 3: optimistic and hopeful. But it's incredibly hard when you're struggling
15:41
Speaker 3: in your career and you keep getting your hopes up
15:44
Speaker 3: and then they just get dashed. So this happens all
15:47
Speaker 3: the time. And I think what's most interesting about dol
15:51
Speaker 3: is that many of his heroes, the novelists who he
15:55
Speaker 3: was trying to emulate, did the exact same thing. They
15:58
Speaker 3: went to Hollywood and they struggled and they completely fell apart.
16:03
Speaker 3: So they're these great stories about people like f Scott Fitzgerald,
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Speaker 3: who Dahl loved, the great novelist who actually loved movies,
16:11
Speaker 3: Unlike some of the other novels who went out there
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Speaker 3: for the money. F Scott Fitzgerald loved movies and just
16:19
Speaker 3: couldn't make it happen. He just screenwriting didn't come naturally
16:23
Speaker 3: to him. He started drinking more and more. He ended
16:27
Speaker 3: up really not getting his name on scripts that he,
16:31
Speaker 3: you know, put work into, because he was completely rewritten
16:34
Speaker 3: over and over again, and he eventually drank himself to death.
16:39
Speaker 3: And the same thing is true of, you know, the
16:41
Speaker 3: sort of the failures of other great novelists. Aldis Huxley
16:44
Speaker 3: had a lot of trouble, Faulkner went out there and
16:46
Speaker 3: had a lot of trouble. You could go on and on,
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Speaker 3: and it's it's easy to imagine that Doll could have
16:52
Speaker 3: sort of fallen into the same hole after all the
16:57
Speaker 3: years of struggle that he had trying to break into Hollywood,
17:01
Speaker 3: but he refused. He had something inside of him that
17:05
Speaker 3: allowed him to keep going and push past all the
17:09
Speaker 3: failures and all the disappointments, which eventually led to the
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Speaker 3: James Bond screenplay, and then finding his perfect spiritual brother
17:20
Speaker 3: in Hollywood, who is Alfred Hitchcock. They're just so similar
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Speaker 3: in tone and sensibility, and Dall eventually wrote a bunch
17:29
Speaker 3: of stories for Hitchcock that Hitchcock turned into episodes of
17:32
Speaker 3: his TV show.
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Speaker 1: Oh Wow, that's fascinating because you know, we're often tempted
17:40
Speaker 1: in the modern era to think of historical figures as
17:45
Speaker 1: existing somehow separate from the world of which they live.
17:48
Speaker 1: You know, it's always surprising to learn that folks like
17:53
Speaker 1: Alfred Hitchcock and Rule Doll not just got along, but
17:58
Speaker 1: actually work together. That's that's something that I did not clock.
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Speaker 2: At all.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Doll has got to be I think
18:09
Speaker 3: it's an extraordinary thing. He's got to be the only
18:10
Speaker 3: guy who's ever written for both Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock,
18:14
Speaker 3: I mean, two opposite dudes. But that's that's all. He
18:18
Speaker 3: had an incredibly wide range, and Hitchcock was just so
18:24
Speaker 3: just so natural to everything that that worked about Doll,
18:27
Speaker 3: all the gruesomeness, all the darkness, all the surprising twist endings,
18:33
Speaker 3: it all was was sort of perfect for Hitchcock, and
18:36
Speaker 3: Hitchcock just fell in love with his work.
18:38
Speaker 1: And they they share a similar kind of gallows.
18:43
Speaker 2: Humor, you know, absolutely not in a wink.
18:46
Speaker 1: And there's there's something we should also get back to,
18:50
Speaker 1: just a thread in while we're talking about his time
18:53
Speaker 1: in Hollywood and working in these established systems that can
18:58
Speaker 1: be you know, quite brutal at times. I remember you
19:04
Speaker 1: mentioned You and several other sources have mentioned a specific
19:10
Speaker 1: issue he had about control in general, not just his
19:13
Speaker 1: scripts in Hollywood, but his published works. He apparently mandated
19:19
Speaker 1: that publishers treat his material as sacro sanct something like
19:25
Speaker 1: don't even touch a comma or you'll get the crocodile,
19:29
Speaker 1: whatever that means. Right. This leads us to a fairly
19:32
Speaker 1: recent controversy that might be unfamiliar to some people. After
19:37
Speaker 1: Doll passed away, his publisher, Puffin Books in twenty twenty three,
19:43
Speaker 1: started making a lot of changes to his work, Like
19:47
Speaker 1: I think censorship based on sensitivity readers who said, hey,
19:53
Speaker 1: this is you know, discriminatory, this is racist, this is insensitive,
19:57
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, or offensive just straight up defensive.
20:01
Speaker 1: I think we don't be interested in your your take
20:05
Speaker 1: on that. Did Puffin do the right thing? Or should
20:09
Speaker 1: they have left it as is?
20:11
Speaker 2: Yeah?
20:12
Speaker 3: I certainly come down on the side of hating censorship, right,
20:17
Speaker 3: Puffin should not have done this. Uh. And just to
20:20
Speaker 3: be sort of clear about what they were doing, they
20:23
Speaker 3: were they were removing words like fat and ugly. There
20:29
Speaker 3: were even instances where they took out the words black
20:31
Speaker 3: and white, regardless of what contexts they were in, because
20:35
Speaker 3: you're right, they were they were being overly sensitive. We
20:38
Speaker 3: were going through this this period in culture where everyone
20:42
Speaker 3: was being just incredibly sensitive, and so lots of other
20:47
Speaker 3: writers came to you know, doll. Doll of course had
20:52
Speaker 3: had passed away, but a lot of writers came to
20:55
Speaker 3: his defense and said, no, no, no, you cannot touch
20:58
Speaker 3: the work. He would not have wanted these changes. We
21:03
Speaker 3: see this a lot with with writers and filmmakers too.
21:07
Speaker 3: I mean, I think of someone like George Lucas going
21:09
Speaker 3: back in and changing things that happened in Star Wars
21:14
Speaker 3: to sort of, you know, work with with modern day sensibilities,
21:19
Speaker 3: and it's kind of always a bad idea. I think
21:24
Speaker 3: the much better solution is to keep the work as is,
21:28
Speaker 3: but try to provide context, right, try to have a
21:32
Speaker 3: conversation with people about why some of these words might
21:35
Speaker 3: be triggering or offensive. But just going in and taking
21:42
Speaker 3: out the word fat or changing the word ugly to
21:44
Speaker 3: something else, it just it undermines the work.
21:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think as as a writer as well,
21:52
Speaker 1: I'm severely tempted to to come down on the same
21:56
Speaker 1: side as you or be on the same page there,
21:59
Speaker 1: because when we hear things like a censorship controversy, we
22:04
Speaker 1: assume it may be similar to you know, the old
22:09
Speaker 1: Agatha Christie use of racial epithets or something very very
22:13
Speaker 1: serious stuff. But that and ugly seems like they might
22:19
Speaker 1: be fighting the wrong battle, you know what I mean.
22:22
Speaker 3: And you bring up a good point. I mean, I
22:23
Speaker 3: think that's one of the reasons that this issue, which
22:26
Speaker 3: I explore on the podcast, is just so so media
22:29
Speaker 3: and so interesting because the Agatha Christie story that you
22:31
Speaker 3: brought up, she has a racial epithet in her title,
22:35
Speaker 3: and I do think that it was a good idea
22:38
Speaker 3: to get rid of that. They did that after her death,
22:41
Speaker 3: and so she wasn't able to approve it. But if
22:44
Speaker 3: they had not done that, if her state had not
22:46
Speaker 3: done that, that book would absolutely be unreadable. You couldn't
22:49
Speaker 3: sell it, you couldn't put it on shelves, which I
22:53
Speaker 3: you know, agree with, we should not be selling it
22:55
Speaker 3: with that title. And getting rid of the title changing
22:58
Speaker 3: it does allow that extraordinary story to be you know,
23:03
Speaker 3: I think it's still her most popular story. It allows
23:06
Speaker 3: people to continue reading it, which is a great thing.
23:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well said well, said, and uh with that,
23:13
Speaker 1: with that mind, I have a little bit of an
23:17
Speaker 1: anecdote to share with you that may be familiar to
23:20
Speaker 1: a lot of our audience members.
23:22
Speaker 4: And before we do that, Ben, can I jump in
23:24
Speaker 4: with a with a weird fact I got for us,
23:27
Speaker 4: Aaron h you said that that Doll might have been
23:30
Speaker 4: the only person you know of that wrote for Disney
23:34
Speaker 4: and Hitchcock, which I found somebody else is mister four
23:40
Speaker 4: to fifty one himself, Ray Bradberry with Walt Disney and
23:44
Speaker 4: also wrote for Hitchcock Presents. It's funny because I used
23:49
Speaker 4: the Google AI to help me, like start with the bread.
23:51
Speaker 4: And they also said Robers Yeah exactly. Yeah, well, I
23:55
Speaker 4: said Robert Stevenson, which is funny because that's not true.
23:59
Speaker 4: Robert Stevenson and worked with Disney and a guy named
24:01
Speaker 4: Robert Stevens worked with Hitchcock. But to the best of
24:05
Speaker 4: my knowledge, or at least Google Ais knowledge, only Ray
24:09
Speaker 4: bat Bradberry can join Doll in that distinction.
24:12
Speaker 2: Wow, right, cool, that's I mean, that's a good company.
24:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, Max, I think you've earned it.
24:18
Speaker 2: Max.
24:18
Speaker 1: With the facts.
24:21
Speaker 3: That sneaking in the phone and peaceful in knowledge, it's
24:27
Speaker 3: just for you right now.
24:28
Speaker 2: Here with the fact.
24:34
Speaker 1: We have a sal que that plays the part where
24:38
Speaker 1: I said, okay, don't worry, we have a sod que.
24:41
Speaker 1: So uh, this is okay. So here's here's this, uh
24:45
Speaker 1: anecdote that may be familiar to a lot of us.
24:49
Speaker 1: We have we have co workers who are never stressed
24:54
Speaker 1: about anything really uh. And it's because they were actual
25:00
Speaker 1: veterans and saw war and saw colmback and so after
25:04
Speaker 1: you've lived through events like that, you're a lot less
25:08
Speaker 1: likely to worry too much about sending an email late. Right,
25:14
Speaker 1: You've got a perspective, And I'm wondering. I'm wondering if
25:20
Speaker 1: Doll's earlier experiences informed his perspective and his creative approach
25:27
Speaker 1: to writing, which is just you know, my long winded
25:31
Speaker 1: way of saying, please share the spy story, just a
25:36
Speaker 1: little bit of the spy so people can't wait to
25:38
Speaker 1: hear this.
25:45
Speaker 3: I mean, I think, like all writers, his experiences growing
25:48
Speaker 3: up and his formative experiences as a twenty something unquestionably
25:53
Speaker 3: informed the writing. It just has to for anyone that's
25:57
Speaker 3: not just writing sort of genre fiction or and completely
26:00
Speaker 3: removed from themselves, and even people who who think they
26:04
Speaker 3: are doing that. I think the life experiences always get
26:07
Speaker 3: onto the page. So for doll, Yeah, his twenties and
26:12
Speaker 3: his thirties, before he ever wrote for children, were really
26:16
Speaker 3: about a search for identity. He was trying to figure
26:19
Speaker 3: out who he was. He was trying to figure out
26:21
Speaker 3: what kind of man he was, and I think you
26:23
Speaker 3: could even argue he was trying to figure out what
26:25
Speaker 3: it meant to be a man. In his part of
26:27
Speaker 3: the century, he grew up without a father. His father
26:29
Speaker 3: died when he was three, and so that was the
26:32
Speaker 3: first sort of formative experience of his life. When he
26:34
Speaker 3: was just three years old, his father and his sister
26:38
Speaker 3: died within three weeks of each other. So just gruesome,
26:42
Speaker 3: just so incredibly sad. And then he got older and
26:45
Speaker 3: he became a businessman. That was his first sort of
26:48
Speaker 3: attempt to figure out who he was. He worked for
26:51
Speaker 3: Shell Oil and they send him to Africa, and so
26:54
Speaker 3: it was this incredible adventure. But he sort of grew
26:57
Speaker 3: tired of it after a little while, and so he
27:00
Speaker 3: decided to volunteer for the RAF, the Air Force during
27:04
Speaker 3: the war, and he flew some harrowing combat missions and
27:08
Speaker 3: that was an incredible adventure for him, but he kept
27:10
Speaker 3: getting shot down, including one time that was a really
27:14
Speaker 3: devastating crash in the Libyan desert that he barely walked
27:18
Speaker 3: away from. And so it's time to figure out what's next,
27:23
Speaker 3: his next sort of search for identity, and the powers
27:26
Speaker 3: that be noticed that he was incredibly tall. He was
27:31
Speaker 3: six foot six, incredibly handsome and dashing, a great storyteller,
27:35
Speaker 3: incredibly charming. So they had a job for him. They
27:38
Speaker 3: decided he should go work for British intelligence, so they
27:42
Speaker 3: sent him to DC, where he was ostensibly working for
27:45
Speaker 3: the British embassy, but in reality he was recruited into
27:49
Speaker 3: a group called the Irregulars, which is this group headed
27:54
Speaker 3: up by William Stevenson, who's sort of a legendary figure
27:58
Speaker 3: in spy circles. They worked out of thirty Rockefeller Center
28:02
Speaker 3: in New York where Sorry Night Live is tape now,
28:06
Speaker 3: which is a really strange place for you know, a
28:08
Speaker 3: top secret spy organization, but that's where they were, and
28:12
Speaker 3: they had agents in New York and d C. Doll
28:17
Speaker 3: started off in DC, like I said, and he was
28:21
Speaker 3: working as a spy doing whatever needed to be done.
28:23
Speaker 3: This was a time before America got into the war,
28:28
Speaker 3: and so Churchill and Britain they're in their darkest hour.
28:31
Speaker 3: Things are going horribly of course in the war, and
28:34
Speaker 3: they would do anything to get America to come to
28:37
Speaker 3: their side. So they were using outside the box ideas
28:41
Speaker 3: to try to get, you know, the America to come
28:45
Speaker 3: to their aid. And so one of those ideas was
28:48
Speaker 3: start the irregulars. And so what the irregulars were doing
28:52
Speaker 3: were you know, a lot of propaganda, a lot of
28:56
Speaker 3: sort of really strange ideas that you could imagine Doll
29:00
Speaker 3: and his fellow twenty somethings coming up with out at
29:03
Speaker 3: a bar, you know, and George Shannon late at night,
29:05
Speaker 3: like one of them was, they came up with this
29:08
Speaker 3: idea to hire a psychic named Louis de Wall to
29:13
Speaker 3: go around the country and tell everyone that he has,
29:18
Speaker 3: you know, looked at the stars and the third Reich
29:21
Speaker 3: he is determined is going to fall. And so it
29:24
Speaker 3: made Americans feel more comfortable about getting into the war
29:28
Speaker 3: because it was written in the stars that they were
29:30
Speaker 3: going to win.
29:32
Speaker 2: Stuff like that.
29:33
Speaker 3: And then sort of the most salacious, you know, arguably
29:38
Speaker 3: most interesting thing that Dahl did for the regulars was
29:41
Speaker 3: he was tasked with seducing the wives of powerful Americans
29:45
Speaker 3: who were not yet on the Allied side. So one
29:50
Speaker 3: of them was the wife of Henry Lose. Henry LuSE
29:54
Speaker 3: was the most powerful man in media. He owned Time magazine,
29:59
Speaker 3: and Life Magazine and Sports Illustrated, on and on, and
30:04
Speaker 3: these magazines were printing a lot of anti British stuff,
30:09
Speaker 3: which Churchill sort of could not allow because it was
30:12
Speaker 3: not helping their cause of getting the Americans into the war,
30:15
Speaker 3: and they couldn't really get through to Henry Loose. But
30:19
Speaker 3: his wife was a different story. His wife was a
30:22
Speaker 3: woman named Claire Booth Loose, which I love that sort
30:25
Speaker 3: of whimsical name. It sounds like a name that Doll invented.
30:29
Speaker 3: And she was incredibly formidable and influential in her own right.
30:33
Speaker 3: Besides being married to Henry, she was also a Broadway playwright.
30:38
Speaker 3: She wrote a play called The Women, which was adapted
30:40
Speaker 3: twice for the movies. She was a war correspondent for
30:43
Speaker 3: a Vanity Fair, and she worked for other magazines. She
30:46
Speaker 3: was a great journalist. And then she ran for Congress
30:49
Speaker 3: and won and became one of the few women in Congress.
30:53
Speaker 3: And this is who Doll targeted, and Doll was successful.
30:58
Speaker 3: They had a long term affair, with Doll's goal being
31:02
Speaker 3: to sort of turn down the anti British rhetoric.
31:06
Speaker 1: Wow, it's okay, So that it itself already already feels
31:14
Speaker 1: like a subplot in an amazing film, right startup spycraft
31:20
Speaker 1: with the twenty year olds who who come up with
31:25
Speaker 1: their best ideas three beers in or somebody.
31:28
Speaker 3: I haven't even told you who was in this group.
31:30
Speaker 3: I mean it was William Stephens said had an incredible
31:33
Speaker 3: eye for talent, so he had Rolled Doll. He also
31:36
Speaker 3: had Ian Fleming, who would go on to create James Bond.
31:39
Speaker 3: He had David Ogilvie, who had become the father of
31:42
Speaker 3: modern advertising and the inspiration for Don Draper. He had
31:46
Speaker 3: Noel Coward, the great playwright. So you got to picture
31:50
Speaker 3: Noel Coward, Roll Doll, James Bond, and Don Draper all
31:54
Speaker 3: just like hanging out in DC in their mid twenties,
31:58
Speaker 3: all just incredibly gorgeous and dash.
32:00
Speaker 2: That's what it was like.
32:02
Speaker 1: I'm struck by the psychic pitch, because, yeah, I think
32:08
Speaker 1: it would probably it feels like that something like that
32:12
Speaker 1: might even work to a degree here in the modern day,
32:16
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, which is both astonishing and in
32:20
Speaker 1: no small way kind of frightening. I've got to ask
32:23
Speaker 1: you this though, erin so our spy mechanism, right, the
32:29
Speaker 1: quote unquote juiciest part of this part of his noisy life,
32:33
Speaker 1: And again I love that turn of phrase of yours.
32:36
Speaker 1: Is him attempting to garner us support by seducing the
32:43
Speaker 1: spouses of VIPs. Does that not seem like it could
32:48
Speaker 1: backfire in a pretty powerful way, like if the affair
32:53
Speaker 1: is exposed.
32:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think you're You're absolutely right. It absolutely
32:57
Speaker 3: could have. But Churchill's back was against the wall. I
33:01
Speaker 3: mean is we've all seen the movies and listened to
33:05
Speaker 3: the podcast and read the books like this was their
33:07
Speaker 3: darkest hour. They were not going to survive the onslaught
33:10
Speaker 3: by the Nazis, and so he was doing anything he
33:13
Speaker 3: possibly could to try to get America into the war.
33:17
Speaker 3: And so you're absolutely right that this was a gamble,
33:19
Speaker 3: but luckily it's one that paid off.
33:21
Speaker 1: Ah, folks, hold the phone, get your everlasting gob stoppers ready.
33:29
Speaker 1: We made an audible call as we were having our
33:33
Speaker 1: conversation with Aaron Tracy, the creator of the secret world
33:36
Speaker 1: of Role Doll we realized this is a two barter
33:41
Speaker 1: max because we just have so much more stuff we
33:43
Speaker 1: want to.
33:43
Speaker 4: Get to, right, I mean, this is just a great interview,
33:46
Speaker 4: and you know, Aaron's is a fond of knowledge and
33:49
Speaker 4: he's just so great telling the story that you know,
33:52
Speaker 4: both you and me big role dollphans. So we can't
33:55
Speaker 4: get enough of this stuff, especially the spy stuff.
33:57
Speaker 1: I had to Yeah, I forget to ask you, what
34:01
Speaker 1: what is your favorite rule doll book? Obviously you can
34:04
Speaker 1: tell I love George's Marvelous Medicine.
34:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I actually looked up the list because
34:11
Speaker 4: I have to remember all of them. There's so many on there.
34:13
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go with the BFG Big Friendly Giant. I
34:15
Speaker 4: love that one as a kid. That's one of that.
34:17
Speaker 4: I had my dad read me multiple times because it
34:19
Speaker 4: was just like, this one's great, but in so many
34:22
Speaker 4: obviously James and the Giant Peach, the what is the
34:26
Speaker 4: Glass Elevator one? Oh yeah, yeah, Second, Charlie that that
34:30
Speaker 4: one's under underrated, under hit.
34:34
Speaker 1: Yes, and and again Aaron and Max and I are
34:39
Speaker 1: not joking about that. What did Aaron call it? That
34:43
Speaker 1: somewhat gruesome nature? I called it a subtle darkness in
34:48
Speaker 1: the works of Doll. With that mind, folks, we can
34:52
Speaker 1: confirm to you that whatever age you are at, honestly
34:58
Speaker 1: those books still slap. I'm just gonna say there a
35:01
Speaker 1: lot of them are great on a reread, even as
35:04
Speaker 1: an adult. Thank you for tuning in. Please check in
35:07
Speaker 1: with us this coming Thursday when we will have part
35:10
Speaker 1: two of the Secret World of World Doll with Aaron Tracy,
35:14
Speaker 1: thanks to our super producer, none other than the Willy
35:18
Speaker 1: Wonka podcasting mister Max Williams, and Max thanks to your
35:23
Speaker 1: brother Alex Williams for composing the track. Noel will be
35:27
Speaker 1: returning from his adventures very soon. In the meantime, you
35:32
Speaker 1: know the score, my friend? Who else? Who else? Who
35:35
Speaker 1: else do we think?
35:37
Speaker 4: Let's see, Let's thank Christopher Haciotis of Eves Jeffcoat here
35:40
Speaker 4: in spirit, the people over at Ridiculous Crime, They're amazing.
35:45
Speaker 4: Check them out.
35:46
Speaker 1: Aj Bahamas Jacobs. We were talking about him a little
35:50
Speaker 1: bit off air. His ears might be tingling, Doctor Rachel
35:54
Speaker 1: Big Spinach Lance and of course two point three out
36:01
Speaker 1: of five reluctant acknowledgement not quite a thank you to
36:09
Speaker 1: the one and only Max.
36:11
Speaker 2: You got it.
36:11
Speaker 1: You gotta give them the shout.
36:12
Speaker 4: Out, oh the uh, the child getting sucked up the
36:16
Speaker 4: tube or floating to the spinning ceiling. Fans of our podcast,
36:20
Speaker 4: Jonathan Strickland.
36:21
Speaker 2: Hey a A the Wizard.
36:22
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, folks, As as Noel always likes to say,
36:26
Speaker 1: we'll see you next time. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
36:35
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
36:39
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.