Was the Grinch Based on Dr. Seuss?

Spoiler alert: Yep, Dr. Seuss modeled the Grinch on himself. Learn how the generally joyful writer created such an infamous sourpuss in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Bogobam. Here know someone who doesn't get
into the holiday spirit? Why they must be a Grinch
with his green fur, scowling face and heart that was
two sizes too small. The fictional figure of the Grine
leapt into the American consciousness from his miserly home a
top Mount Crumpet in seven with the publication of How

(00:25):
the Grinch Stole Christmas. He's lived on in vintage cartoons,
full length motion pictures, and merchandise ever since. But did
the Grinch have a real life doppelganger? Surprisingly yes, and
more surprisingly it was probably his creator, Dr SEUs Theodore
SEUs Geisel, under the pseudonym Dr Seuss, wrote an illustrated

(00:45):
dozens of books, including How the Grin Stole Christmas. His
creative works for children were initially met with lukewarm commercial success,
but Dr Seus's exploration and refinement of his craft coincided
with the mid twentieth century educational evolution of children's reading material.
Imagine being a learning to read student pro offered a
time worn Dick and Jane series and then suddenly encountering

(01:07):
a colorful page turner. Like Seus's Cat in the Hat
with its inventive illustrations and lyrical rhymes. This is exactly
what occurred for nearly an entire generation of students who
were learning to read, rather than learning whole words from repetition,
which was the Dick and Jane approach. Dr Seus's Cat
in the Hat book helped lay the foundation for an
approach that was based on phonics and emphasized making reading

(01:29):
more fun. The Cat in the Hat became Dr Seus's
first commercial hit, and the book sold more than a
quarter of a million copies by Christmas of nineteen fifty seven.
Before long, it was joined by another Christmas miracle. Over
the course of a few short weeks, the story of
the Grinch practically poured from Dr Seus's pen. It was,
he said in a nineteen seven interview with Red Book magazine,

(01:50):
the easiest book of my career to write. And he
said it was so easy because he only needed to
look in the mirror for inspiration. He told Red Book quote,
I was brushing my teeth on the morning of the
last December when I noted a very grinch ish countenance
in the mirror. It was SEUs something had gone wrong
with Christmas, I realized, or more likely with me. So

(02:12):
I wrote the story about my sour friend the Grinch,
to see if I could rediscover something about Christmas that
obviously I had lost. If that wasn't proof enough, On
the occasion of unveiling Dr. Seuss commemorative and posthumous US
Postal Service stamp in two thousand three, his stepdaughter Lark
Gray Diamond Kates remarked that quote Grinch was ted on

(02:33):
his bad days, and the author and his wife drove
a vehicle with the vanity license plate showcasing just one
word Grinch. By the way, science has been thinking about
the Grinch's heart. You know how it started off two
sizes too small and then grew three sizes in a
single day, Pretty unusual for most beings. But cardiologist Dr

(02:53):
David Cass theorized on All Things Considered that perhaps grinches
are related to the Burmese python. Burmese pythons grow an
additional of the muscle mass of their hearts in the
two days following a big meal so that they can
pump more blood through their bodies, thus enabling digestion. Afterwards,
their hearts shrink back down with no harm to the snake,
and the Grinch is certainly slithery. Today's episode was written

(03:21):
by Laureal Dove and produced by Tyler clag. Brain Stuff
is a production of iHeart Radio's Has Stuff Works. For
more on this and lots of other topics that are
at least as charming as an eel, visit our home
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