March 19, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, from Green Eggs and Ham to How the Grinch Stole Christmas, we’re all familiar with the work of Dr. Seuss. But the story of how he actually became the author we know and love is far from short and simple. Brain Jay Jones, author of “Becoming Dr. Seuss”, is here with the full story of the man behind this pen name.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
And to search for the All American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.
From Green Eggs and Ham to How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
We're all familiar with the work of Doctor Seuss, but
the story of how we actually became the author we
(00:30):
know and love is far from short and simple.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Brian J.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Jones, author of Becoming Doctor Seuss, is here with the
full story of.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
The man behind his pen name.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Doctor Seuss was born Theodore Geisel, Theodore Seuss Geisel in
fact in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is the son of a
very successful brewing family. They're German immigrants who his grandfather
had come to the United States and set up a
brewing company that was very successful. And so SEUs was
(01:07):
around German brewers. Loved listening to his German ancestors, you know,
his family members talking Germany. Would sit at the top
of the stairs and listen to the conversation dowstairs. He
loved the sound of that language. And how if you
have a German word and you want to qualify something,
you just keep adding on to the word and he
gets longer and more interesting. At one point, he talks
(01:28):
about going to school during World War One and having
children chasing him and throwing coal at him, saying, kill
the Kaiser. They knew he was a German immigrant that
always sort of stayed with SEUs a lot of his life.
I think that's where he gets sort of his you know,
love for the underdog and for the oppressed. And I
think a book like The Sneeches is probably sort of
born out of that sheer feeling of being the outsider,
(01:50):
of being the other that he experienced, even as a
child when people threw coal at him for being German.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
His mother is.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Henrietta Seuss or soys is actually the correct way of
pronouncing the name, says, is his mother's maiden name.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
That's where he gets the name SU's from.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Sus always said that, you know, it rhymed with mother
goose or somebody pointed that out to him, so he
was always okay with people pronouncing it Sus. His mother,
he often said, is the one who inspired his love
of rhyme. She had worked in a bakery and she would,
you know, chant little poems on the flavors of pie
they had available that day, which always cracked him up.
So Susan's father inherited the brewing company right about the
(02:26):
time that prohibition kicked in, and so Susan's father never
ended up running the company, and in fact, they were
in danger of losing everything. Susan's father then, of course,
ended up in a job as superintendent of parks for Springfield,
which is your job. He had most of his life
after that, and Ted, as everybody always called sus as
(02:46):
a kid, you know, grew up around the parks and
going to the zoo there in Springfield, and he often
joked about how, you know, his father would put him
in the cages and let the animals chew on him
and things like that, and none of which happened.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
You know, sus never lets the truth get in away
of a fantastic story.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Sus you know, had this sort of just this creative,
regular kid's life in Massachusetts at the turn of the century.
It's really interesting. Springfield is a really interesting town. It's
almost like this imaginative hub up there hit that part
of New England, you know, like Milton Bradley is from there,
and Nay Smith created basketball at the YMCA there in Springfield.
(03:21):
I mean, it's like all these weird little you know,
American industries and icons came out of there. I think
I think Smith and Wesson came out of there. It's just,
you know, there's all sorts of really fascinating people that
were in and around Springfield. So Sus comes out of
Dartmouth University as a fairly mediocre student, but manages to
(03:43):
get a scholarship.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
To go to Oxford.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
He told his father in fact that he had applied
for our scholarship and won it, and that actually turned
out to not be true, but his father had bragged
all over town that his son was going to going
to Oxford, so once he found out it wasn't true,
he paid to send the sun dogs for it. Anyway,
So Sus is going to oxtra it on his father's
dime at this point and quickly finds out he'd rather do.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Anything but study English.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
He initially went to go be an English professor, quickly
loses interest in it. But he meets a woman who
would eventually become his wife, a woman in Helen, and
she is sitting at him in class one days. He's
doodling and says, you know somebody who draws the way
you do should do that for a living, and so
sus who ends up marrying Helen. Then they end up
living together. Back in the United States, he sets up
shop and this is in the sort of the Gilded
(04:30):
Age of the United States, you know, the mid to
late twenties, and he embarks on this very successful career.
And it's hard to believe now that you can set
up a career doing something like this, but he's very
He has a very successful careat rejectory as.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
A cartoonist for the magazines.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
You know, it's like almost like today's New Yorker cartoons,
but there's you know, he's doing cartoons for Liberty Magazine
and Judge Magazine and all these all these magazines with
these massive circulations and Earninge's living doing that. But he
also manages to get an incredibly lucky fortuitous moment where
he does this cartoon that has a night laying in bed.
(05:04):
There's a dragon sticking its head through the window and
the knight says.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Another dragon, and here I just had the entire.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Castle sprayed with flint. Flint was a bug repellent very
popular in the era. Well, the woman.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Who was married to the man who ran the ad
campaign for Flint. I mean, this is none of those
crazy stories.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Saw that cartoon in the magazine, went to her husband
and said, this is the greatest advertisement for Flint you
could ever ask where you need to hire this young
man to be a Flit adman. So sus ends up
in advertising through this, and he's a very successful ad man.
He's the Don Draper of you know, of nineteen twenty five.
He ends up running the Flint campaign for I think
something like seventeen years, just full page ads and color billboards,
(05:48):
and it became sort of a running joke like you know,
where's the beef or something like that. You know, quick
Henry the Flit was the tagline, and it was used
in songs and it was in punch like comedians was say,
quick Henry the Flint.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Everyone would laugh. They all got the joke.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
So Sue's had this very successful careers and advertising man
for years before he ever got into children's books. What
finally happened was he had done some illustrations for a
book that was sort of like kids Say the Darnest Thing.
It was like this book of kids saying funny things
that were true, and then he would put the illustrations
in it, and Sue's thought, you know, under my contract
(06:23):
with Flitt, I have a non compete clause, so I
can't draw for a.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Book like this.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
But there was nothing in his contract that said he
couldn't do children's books. So because there was a loophole
in his contract, there was essentially money on the table
still there for children's books. So Sue's decides to write
a children's book purely basically because he had a clause
in his contract that said he could or that didn't
(06:50):
say that he couldn't. It wasn't any great calling at
least at that time, you know, to provide great books
for kids, or because he felt some compelling urge to
write them for kids. So he went ahead then started
to write a children's book. And that's where the book,
and to think that I saw it on Mulbray Street
came from his work on children's books for part of
his career, didn't pay his bills, and children's books was
(07:11):
a side hustle for him for quite a long time.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And we're listening to author Brian J. Jones his book
Becoming Doctor Seuss. Well, you need to pick it up,
go to Amazon or the usual suspects to buy the book.
When we return, the story of doctor Seuss continues here
on our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories
we tell about this great country, and especially the stories
(07:36):
of America's rich past, know that all of our stories
about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith,
are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
a place where students study all the things that are
beautiful in life and all the things that are good
in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Go to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
And we're back with our American Stories and with Brian J.
Jones sharing the story of how Theodore at Geisel became
Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So the first book that Seuss publishes when he realizes
that his contract again with Flint does not prohibit him
from doing children's books, is He's on a cruise with
his wife Helen. He's sitting in the bar, and two
sits in bars a lot in the fact that you
can never take the Brewers get completely out of the kid.
He's sitting in a bar on a boat in the
middle of the ocean in kind of a storm, and
(08:45):
he's listening to the engines turning over in this regular rhythm,
and he starts trying to come up with words to
fit that rhythm. It's essentially the rhythm of twas the
Night before Christmas. I think it's called something like canapestic
tetrameter or something like that. But the engines are rolling
in this very regular rhythm, and Sue starts trying to
put together a poem, a really bouncing poem to fit
(09:07):
that rhythm, and goes through several different iterations.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
But that's the book that becomes.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street,
following that rhythm of the vote engines. Sus writes and
illustrates this book, and it's, you know, and it's a
very fitting first book for Suss because it's about a
little boy who sees a man with a horse and
a cart on Mulberry Street and starts turning minnows into wales,
as he says in the book, telling bigger and bigger
tales of what's happening, and spinning this gigantic story and
(09:32):
bringing in all these characters, and then at the very end,
when his father finally asks him what he saw, he says,
I just.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Saw a horse and carriage on Mulberry Street.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
It goes back to the turf for that boy. But
it's a fantastic story. It's a great debut. But it's
one of those books that su when he gets done
with it, can't find anybody who wants to publish it.
But Sus walked it all over New York City. This
is still He's doing his advertising work and he's hauling
his manuscript around and as he's walking down one of
the streets in New York, he runs into a friend
of his from Dartmouth who works for a publisher, and
(10:02):
his friend says to him, what are you carrying around here? Ted,
And Sue says.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Well, I've got this kid's book that no one will publish.
I was going to take it.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Home and burn it. And his friend says, you know,
come inside with me. Let me take you up to
the editor in charge of children's books and let me
see what we can do. And Sus gets his book
published through this connection with the Dartmouth friend of his.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
Sue, so he said later.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Had I've been walking down the other side of the street,
I might be in dry cleaning today. So it was
a very fortuitous moment in his life. And you have
to be in the right place at the right time.
And met an old friend of his who shepherds that
book into publication. That's the beginning of his publishing with
children's books. But he's not doing them because he feels
some great moral obligation to children to give them great
(10:44):
books that they deserve. This happens later and Sue's talked
about that. He almost has this epiphany at one point
about it.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
So Sue had a brief career.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
As an editorial cartoonist, you know, doing these cartoons of
taking on America First and anti Semitism. He's really progressive cartoons.
And he ends up enlisting in the Army. He's too
I think he's thirty nine years old. He's a little
too old. He's not going to see any active active service.
He's not going to be on the front lines or anything.
But they station him out in California near where he lived,
(11:15):
and he is in the Signal Corps and his division
is run by Commanding Officer Frank Capra. The director and
Capra had recruited sus They knew from his work that
he was a smart guy. Because of his ad work.
They knew that he was great at message, that he
could get a message through quickly and funny and succinctly,
and that he could draw well. And so they put
(11:35):
sus in charge of doing military training films.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
A lot of the soldiers at that.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Time couldn't read, so they really wanted to do some
animated cartoons that would teach soldiers the basics. And I
mean when I talk basics, it's like how not to
get killed basically, you know. And it's like, this is
how you protect yourself from malaria by you know, putting
on your repellent and sleeping in your nets and lessons
like that. Soon creates this character with Kaepra called Private Snaffoo,
(12:03):
and Snafu teaches soldiers how to be great soldiers by
doing everything wrong. So you get to see Snafu reap
the consequences of his actions the entire time in a
very funny way. But Capra does two things that are
really important in Susan's career. First, Capra, as a film director,
sits down with Seuss and goes through his scripts and says,
(12:23):
I'm going to underline in blue everything in this script
that advances your story. And when I give this back
to you, if there's no blue on your page, you
have a problem. Because you don't have a lot of
time in these cartoons.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
You need to move.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
And so he taught Sus conciseness, which again informs the
way he worked later on making every single word count,
making sure every beat matters.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
That's one of the big lessons that Capra teaches Sus.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
The other thing he does is capra and again this
is a film director's perspective that Sue s grabbed.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
A hold of and ran with for the rest of
his life.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Capra would storyboard everything, would show you how to storyboard.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
And he does.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Something really brilliant in that for the private Snafoo cartoons,
he recognizes a fellow crazy somebody who fits Sus like
a glove in a young animator at that time named
Chuck Jones who's over at Warner Brothers.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Now, Jones is not in the military.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
He's the civilian who's paired up with Sus and they
create these private Snapho cartoons together. And Chuck Jones, as
we know, is the one who any Bugs Money cartoon
that you know and love, and remember, Chuck Jones was
behind as either a writer or director.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
You know, all the classes are Chuck Joes.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
So Chuck is working with doctor Sustu, and he's showing
him the art of storyboarding, taking the story and breaking
it down into basic components, pinning it up on the
wall and staring at it and moving pages around to
see where it works better. This is a practice that
Seuss would use the rest of his life with his
own books. He would put his pages up on the
(13:53):
wall of his office and stare at them and realize,
this doesn't work here, this is funnier over here.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
So these are the skills he learns from Capra and.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
From Chuck Jones that then informed the way he would
do his art for the rest of his life. Later on,
of course, he would be paired up again with Chuck
Jones to do how the Grim Stole Christmas, and Jones
was the perfect one to do that. And Sus was
very skeptical about letting anybody adapt his work to the screen.
But with Chuck Jones, he knew he had a good
friend in an ally and that so Jones comes back
into his story later on. But two really key relationships
(14:25):
that Sus gets into in World War two, Capra and
Chuck Jones. In nineteen forty nine, after he's been he's
come out of the Signal Corps, he's still making a
career in ads. He's dabbled in Hollywood's screen fixing and screenwriting.
He doesn't like it. It's writing by Committee's a little
bit miserable. But he still really wants to do children's books,
(14:46):
and he's just successful enough at it as a sort
of second job that he's actually asked to lead a
writer's workshop on writing children's books for the University of.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Utah in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
And it is a pivotal moment in children's literature because
Sus sits down and writes down by hand on paper
what he thinks makes great writing for children. And he's
taking lessons that he's learned from Capper. You can clearly
see him processing and talking about you've got to make
(15:18):
the words count, you have to keep the action moving forward.
You will lose children. He was selling students in his class.
You know, your biggest competitor right now is comic books.
Whether you like comics or not, they are entertaining kids,
and they are fast paced, and they are fun and
they are colorful. That is your competition. That is who
you are up against. That's what you've got to remember
(15:39):
when you're writing for kids. And so what Sue's really
putting down on paper what children need to, you know,
have their interests sustained, and how you don't want to
write down to them, and how you don't want to
be deliberately saccherind you know, kids don't kids don't like
being talked down to. Sus inherently gets this. If you're
(16:00):
trying to impress a kid, or you're trying to write
fancy for some kid, they will see right through.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
You would tell.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
These students in his class that a child is the
toughest audience you will ever write for, because they will
see you comming. You cannot fool a kid, so don't try.
Sue's sort of having this I don't want to say
eureka moment necessarily, but he's sort of taken everything he's
learned from having written children's books and having worked with Kappra,
(16:29):
with Chuck Jones, and what's funny and what makes things
work and pacing of a book and understanding that that's
the key to keeping a kid interested in reading again.
It's a really, really important moment in not just SUS's life,
but in the history of writing for children.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
And you're listening to Brian J.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Jones telling the story of Doctor Seuss his book Becoming
Doctor Seuss. Well, you've got to pick it up, go
to Amazon or the usual suspects. At first book, Well,
he gets the idea of the rhythm of his poetry
by the rhythm of the cruise ship's engine, and so
much of what he does has to do with rhythm.
And then, of course he joins the army, and by
(17:11):
sheer happenstance, his boss is the great Frank kaeper who,
by the way, won Oscars for the Why We Fight series.
Messaging and message mattered in World War Two. We were
continually selling the American public on our need to stay
in this fight and win. He also came across Chuck
Jones while he was there too, And then he leaves
the military, and that seminar about writing children's books at
(17:32):
the University of Utah changed everything for him. Don't talk
down to kids, keep the plot moving, and by the way,
remember children of the toughest audience you will ever write for.
And if you've ever performed for them, you know they're
even tougher. When we come back more of the remarkable
story of Doctor Seuss here on our American Stories. And
(18:08):
we returned to our American Stories and to Brian J. Jones,
and he's sharing the story of how a man named
Theodor Geisel became Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Back to Brian with more of the story.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
So in nineteen fifty four in Life magazine, the novelist
John Hersey is writing a piece about doing what we
tend to do as a society about every five years
we write these long, agonized pieces about what's wrong with
kids today? You know, why aren't they as reading? Why
are theys sassing their parents? Who's to blame for this? Well,
(18:45):
you know, at that time, whether it was comic books
at one point, or today it's video games or you know,
the Internet or whatever. In nineteen fifty four, John Herssey said, well,
one of the reasons kids don't read, it's not they
can't read, it's that they don't because books a children
are awful. Dick and Jane lead these lives of terrible desperation.
(19:09):
The art is uninspiring, it's a world that doesn't exist
for kids. Couldn't they at least get doctor Seuss or
Walt Disney or somebody to at least illustrate Dick and
Jane to make it more interesting. Well, somebody who knows
Seuss reads this article and goes to Sus and doesn't
ask Seuss to illustrate Dick and Jane. What he does
is he goes to Sus and he says, I want
(19:30):
you to write and draw me a children's book, a
book that they can't put down. But the catch with this,
and this is what makes Sus so important moving forward.
The catch on this is because this is supposed to
be a reading primer, as people say, it's a book
that can be used in the classroom. That means it
(19:52):
has to have an educator approved reading list behind it.
It has to have age appropriate words for a reading level.
And you can can I diverge from this list. If
you want to make a word plural, for example, and
it's not on the list as a plural, you can't
use it. So it's putting a straight jacket on before
you even start writing the book, at least as far
(20:13):
as your vocabulary goes. So Seuss given this list of
vocabulary where don't want to say, it's something around three
hundred vocabulary words. And again it says you cannot deviate
from this list, but come up with a story using
only these words. Well, Sus looks at this list and
stares at this list for a year at least and
can't come up with the story. You know, at one
point he says something like, you know, what if I
(20:35):
want to do a story about a queen tiger, Well,
the word queen wasn't on the list, and the word
tiger isn't on the list. And I wanted to do
something about scaling a mountain, Well the word mountains not
on the list, and scaling is not on the list.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
And you know, it was a real problem.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
And so Sus Away said later that he went through
the list until he found words that rhymed, and two
of the first words that rhyme were.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Cat and hat.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
So SEUs knew he had something of a.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Story or a character at least in A Cat with
a Hat. And he takes another year from there to
actually finish the book and agonizes over every single page
doing this. But if you go through A Cat on
the Hat, you can see him working with that word list.
There's one page, for example, where the cat stands on
(21:22):
a ball, which is where on the list, and starts juggling,
and Sue's downloading everything on that list. He's juggling a
take a rake, a plate, demand a boat, a car,
He's juggling. It's like Sue's taking everything on that listing
trying to get it on the page there. So that
book sells lights out. I mean, that is the moment
that Sue's can be a children's writer full time because
(21:44):
this book. Teachers love it because it's got the educator
proved wordless. Parents love it because, unlike most children's books,
it's fun for adults to read. And kids love it
because they don't even realize that they're learning their vocabulary
words with it. It's a fun book to read. It rhymes,
the pictures great, and it ain't Dick and Jane. This
is the big moment in Susan's career when he truly
(22:06):
becomes doctor Sue's. So Captin Had comes out in the
spring of nineteen fifty seven, The Grinch comes out in
the fall of nineteen fifty seven, So you talk about
hitting twice in one year.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Now, the Grinch is not one of those books that's
written with a word list.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Sue's had what he called his big books that he
was not inhibited by the word list. But The Grinch,
I think is such a fascinating book because Sus often
said throughout his life that his favorite character was the Grinch.
In fact, his car the license plate of his car
that he drove in California said Grinch on the license plate.
What I love about the Grinch is that, you know, remember,
(22:42):
part of the message behind the Grinch is that Christmas
doesn't come from a store. And I love that this
book was written by somebody who spent the first part
of his career probably telling you.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
That Christmas did come from a store. I mean, the
the guy was in advertising was very good at it.
So I think there's a little bit of Seus's reckoning with.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Himself in this story, which is one of the reasons
why I think he took it so personally and could
really sympathize with the Grinch and the Grinch coming around.
But it's a great example of Seuss's really working on
an ending. Because Seuss didn't like his books to be
overtly preachy or messaging, he often said, you know again,
consistent with what he said in the nineteen forty nine lectures.
(23:23):
If you're trying to be preachy again, kids are going
to see you coming. They're going to recognize immediately what
you're up to you. They're going to fold up shop,
they're going to walk away, like no kid wants to
be preached too. So when he got to the end
of The Grinch and was trying to figure out what
happens after the Grinch has kind of redeemed himself, what
do you end it with?
Speaker 4 (23:40):
He was trying to keep it from being a little too.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Religious if he could, and which is why it ultimately
ends with sort of the Brotherhood of Man where you
see you know and the cartoon They do it brilliantly
when the.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Star comes up, but he's serving the roast beast at dinner.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
So it's more of a family type ending than than
a Christmas y ending per se. But that was Seuss
working really hard.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
With an ending.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
One of my favorite stories about one of his later
books is Green Eggs and Ham, because Green Eggs and
Ham comes about as a result of a bet between
Seuss and his editor at Random House, Bennett Surf and
Bennett Surf loves the Kat and the Hat. I mean
the kat and hat is printing money, just doing great,
and Surf who adores Sue's Bennett Surf often talked about
(24:22):
how there was only one real genius who worked for
him at Random House, and he says that was doctor Seuss,
a high praise because he was publishing a fault.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Ter ave time too.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Bennett Surr says to doctor Seuss, Okay, smart guy, Kat
and the Hat used about two hundred unique words from
your word list. I'll bet you fifty bucks you can't
write a book that uses less than fifty.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Of those words. And Sue says, you're on.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
And that book becomes green eggs and Ham. And look
at the way green eggs and ham is put together.
It is repetition. You don't even realize that the vocabulary
is so limit because you are just constantly seeing the
same words over and over again in different orders. I am, Sam, Sam,
I am. Do you like green eggs and ham? Would
you like him with the fox? Would you like him
(25:09):
in a box? I would not like them with a fox.
I would not like him in a box. It's just
it's repetition, using those same words over and over in
a really interesting way.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Seuss gets it in under the Wire. I think he's
got forty eight.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Unique words in that book ultimately when he does it,
And he later on said that Bennett Surf didn't.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
Pay him his fifty bucks either.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
But Green Eggs and Ham is written on a bet
to really hamstring Seuss with a very narrow educator approved
word list, and Sus kills it with green eggs and Ham,
which is still to this day the best selling Doctor
Seus's book of all time.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
And why not.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
It's punchy, it's fun again, educator approved word list, but
you don't even realize that you're only seeing less than
fifty unique words, because what Seuss does with so little
in that is brilliant keeps that book moving again. That's
suits that Seus's worrying about the plot propelling things for it.
It's tormenting this poor guy into eating green eggs and ham.
(26:07):
That is what's driving that plot forward. And as a student,
as a reader, as a kid, you can't turn those
pages fast enough to see if they're going to get
him to try.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Green eggs and ham, which he ultimately does.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
It is everything Seuss does well compressed down into that
one single book.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
And what a story you're hearing.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
He's first challenged to write a book kids can't put down,
but limited to three hundred educator approved words. And from
that constriction came creativity that happens all the time, folks.
The less we have to choose from, sometimes the better
we choose. And of course he finds these two words
cat and hat. He's looking for a rhyme, and the
(26:46):
rest is history. Then comes the Grinch, and then comes
the biggest challenge of all. His pal at his publishing
company says, let's see if he can do it in
fifty words rather than three hundred. And of course, the
best seller of all time Green Eggs and ham Well,
it was conceived as a result of a bet. When
we come back more of this remarkable story of how
(27:09):
Theodore Geisel became Doctor Seuss. Here on our American Stories,
(27:37):
and we're back with our American stories and with Brian J.
Jones sharing the story of Theodore Geisel aka Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Back to Brian with a final part of this story.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
So Seuss is one of these creatives who took his
work very seriously. There's a great quote from his wife
Helen that I think every writer can relate.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
To, or anybody he does anything creative. I think every
day too.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
And she often said, he's miserable when he's writing a book,
and even more miserable when he's not. There's nothing casual
in a Seue's book. Sus would often start books, realized
they were going nowhere, and then throw them at what
he called his bone pile. But Suss had this really
tough work ethic. Sat down at the desk every single
(28:26):
morning and sat there all day, whether anything.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
Happened or not.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Some days, you know, the ideas came and the workflow.
At other days nothing happened. But he was going to
sit in that office every single day of his life
work and Sus would, you know, do the rough sketches
of his page, and he would type out the rhymes
and the narrative and glue it to the page and
put it up on the wall, and then he would
stand back and stare at it. And people told me
who knew him, would tell these great stories about it.
(28:51):
He always had a cigarette burning, and he would put
his hands in his back pockets with his palms in
and he would lean way forward with that cigare are
out in his mouth and just stare at the pages
on the wall. He would step back, and then he
would walk over and he would move a page and
he wouldn't even say anything. Sus would sweat the way
everything rhyme to make sure it scanned perfectly. And you
(29:12):
didn't have to read a word weird, like you didn't
have to put the stress if you had a three
syllable word, you didn't have to put the stress in
the wrong place to make the rhyme scheme work. That
he didn't want you, you know, taking a word like
refrigerator and having to say refrigerator to make the rhyme work.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
He wanted it to be you know, you would.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Say the word refrigerator and it would still scan properly.
So Sus was very fussy about the way the words
themselves worked. Now, having said that, even if the rhyme
scanned perfectly, if Sus stepped back and one of those
lines on the page was significantly longer than the other,
Sus just didn't like the way that looked, so he
would start over. He would rewrite the page. But that's
(29:50):
the way he worked on these books, and sometimes it
could take months and sometimes years to get it until
he was perfectly happy with the book book.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
So SUS's artistic style is definitely unique.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Suss often said that that was him trying to draw
realistically and it all came out wrong.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
I mean, he basically says he's doing the best he
can with what he's got, and that's what comes out
at the other end. Now, of course that's him being modest,
I think, but it's definitely an inimitable style.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
And it is one of those styles that when you
see it, you immediately know Seuss. You immediately know Sue's word.
You know, it's very subtle, but you know, you notice
a lot of Susan's characters have eyelashes, for example, it's
one of these weird little touches you see that makes
it look Soussian. So his artistic style is him, as
he always said, just doing the best he could with
the way he knew how to draw. But that love
(30:40):
of language and that real fun sense of workplay again,
I think a lot of that came from listening to
his German relatives talking and just listening to the way
those German words came tumbling out and how funny they
could be. And again, if you wanted to make a
German word, make it explain something even more.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
You didn't add words to a sentence.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
You just added more letters to a word, and you
got these long, drawn out, ridiculous looking words. I think
Susse really got a kick out of that. You know,
sus is so funny and a little frustrating when throughout
his life people would ask him, you know where do
you come up with? You know where'd you come up with?
Something like the loras, for example, is a perfect example.
He said, well, I drew him and he was clearly
a lorax, the most unhelpful answer possible. But you know,
(31:22):
Suss didn't really have a hard time coming up with
these crazy words.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
His made up names sound organic, They sound like they're
real words. They don't sound like he's trying too hard.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
I don't know where he gets that ability from, And
again it could come from that love of language, of
listening to German words qualifying themselves over and over again.
But sus is really really great at just coming up
with a word like grinch or sneech or lorax or
something that sounds like it already.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
Existed before Seuss made it up. Susan's wife, Helen, is
one of the most important people in his story.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Sort of the unsung here, although he in his lifetime,
in her lifetime, he sung her praises gave her plenty
of credit on it.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
She was a brilliant editor, a brilliant writer in her
own right.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
She was one of the few people who could read
his work in its rough form and walk back to
him and just hold it in his face and say
this doesn't work, which is a tough place.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
For a spouse to be in at times.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
But Helen was the one person who could be absolutely
blunt with him, who didn't bother sitting around and saying, yes,
you're brilliant.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
Everything you do is wonderful. She's the one who there's
a great moment in one.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Of the magazine interview that he does, for example, where
the journalist actually reports the moment when he's sitting by
the pool and Helen walks out and hands some pages
from I Think the Grinch and says, you're making the
who's look like bugs, and Sue says something like, well,
they are bugs, and she says, no, the Who's are people.
She says, not going to have it with him, and
(32:51):
so he might complain about it. But he goes back
and fixes it. So she was the one, you know,
his first and best reader. She was the one who
would go through it and you know, help him keep
on course and tell him the things didn't work, and
tell him if she thought a rhyme was not quite
right or if a drawing looked weird, and he took
her word seriously. Whatever she said he took to heart.
(33:13):
So she was one of his really important you know,
in his career, one of his really important first editors.
And Helen, again, like Seuss, was a great recruiter, was
great at going out identifying talent, great at finding great
writers and you know who could turn in these amazing
manuscripts that she helped edit.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
So she was really really important to his story in
that regard, on the professional side of it.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
On the personal side, Helen couldn't have children, so so
doctor Seuss and Helen never had any kids of their own.
And as Sus always said throughout his life, you have
them all, entertain them. It's rare when an artist gets
to say goodbye to their readers on their own terms,
and Sus does that with Oh the Places You'll Go.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
Sus knew this was likely his last one. Is his
health had been declining.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Sus was a smoker his entire life, and it gave
him cancer of the tongue and then his jaw, and
he was in constant pain. His teeth were coming lucid times.
And so Sus, by the time he's working out other places,
knows that this is likely his last one, and it's
an opportunity for him to say goodbye to his readers,
which again not every artist gets that opportunity.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
You can see Sus putting everything he's got into that book.
There are pages, there are big spreads inside that book
where you've.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Got characters that look like they stepped out of Judge
magazine from nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
There's men, you know, with boulder hats on who look
out of time and out of place, and something from
the nineteen twenties. He's got little black cats.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
That you should show up, and his cartoons in there
before you ever created the cat, and mate, you've got
little cats reacting in some of his books. You know,
there's little homages to some of his other books going
on in some of these other pages. There's just there's
a lot going on in the a lot of what
people today would call easter eggs, clues, little little hat
tips to some of his earlier work, and it's Sue's
sort of putting everything into this book as he's telling
(35:06):
his reader, you're amazing, You're going to succeed in life.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
But it's him saying goodbye.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
It sells every graduation, it's, you know, twice a year
for a spring graduation and fall graduation. That book's constantly selling.
Everybody gets promoted, they get that book. But it was Sue's,
it was his valedictory message. It was him telling everyone
to get bye. You're great, you're brilliant, go have fun.
And that was him turning the lights out as he
said that not every artist gets to do that. I mean,
what a great way for sus to go out on
(35:34):
a book that again became that big and is really
that beautiful, Really a fantastic piece of Susian work. So
I think part of the reason sus is timeless is
because all of his really great books sort of speak
to something eternal in all of us and something we
can all relate to.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
I mean, every one of us in our.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Life at some point has been sitting inside on a
rainy day with nothing to do, and just wishing something
interesting would happen, and you know, and that's that's where
the Cat.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
And Hat comes are.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
He comes in on the rainy day and causes chaos,
which he cleans up. As Sus always points out, there's
something eternal about that. There's something eternal about scratching your
head and wondering about the holiday and what is this
all about? And this about more than just giving people things.
I mean, that's an internal question. There's so much in
Sus that just touches something inside all of us, no
matter where we are, where we're sitting, what part of
(36:25):
the world we're in. Susa's books don't look like anything else.
They don't look like they're taking place in a certain
time period. Even something like The Cat in the Hat
that was written in the fifties and actually has you know,
human children in it. There's something about the way it's
dram that doesn't look like it's nineteen fifty seven, you know.
I mean, there's something still timeless in that artistic style.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
That he's got. SUS's books are fun.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Sus just feels like he's existing on his own plane
the entire time. It's like the Susian universe, you know,
it's got his own rules. That you seem to get
inherently when you visit.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
Madison Derricott. And a special thanks to Brian J. Jones,
author of Becoming Doctor Seuss, Theodore Geisel and the Making
of an American Imagination. Go to Amazon or the usual
Suspects and buy this book. We learned that his bride
was a real unsung hero, a brilliant editor and writer,
(37:22):
one of the few people who could be blunt with
her husband this doesn't work, she would say.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
She was Zeus's first and best reader.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
We learned from Helen that he's miserable when he's writing,
but more miserable when he's not.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
And then a story about all the places you will go.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
I never knew this, I never knew it was his
farewell book, and he did it in classic Susian style.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Go have fun, kids, You're wonderful, goodbye? So simple?
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Was it the German language and his love of it,
his love of rhythm, his love of drawing? Was it
Frank Kapper? Was it Chuck Jones? Was it all of
the above? And of of course that God given talent,
that imagination. Well, you be the judge. The story of
Theodore Geisel, known as Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
And to search for the All American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.
From Green Eggs and Ham to How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
We're all familiar with the work of Doctor Seuss, but
the story of how we actually became the author we
(00:30):
know and love is far from short and simple.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Brian J.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Jones, author of Becoming Doctor Seuss, is here with the
full story of.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
The man behind his pen name.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Doctor Seuss was born Theodore Geisel, Theodore Seuss Geisel in
fact in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is the son of a
very successful brewing family. They're German immigrants who his grandfather
had come to the United States and set up a
brewing company that was very successful. And so SEUs was
(01:07):
around German brewers. Loved listening to his German ancestors, you know,
his family members talking Germany. Would sit at the top
of the stairs and listen to the conversation dowstairs. He
loved the sound of that language. And how if you
have a German word and you want to qualify something,
you just keep adding on to the word and he
gets longer and more interesting. At one point, he talks
(01:28):
about going to school during World War One and having
children chasing him and throwing coal at him, saying, kill
the Kaiser. They knew he was a German immigrant that
always sort of stayed with SEUs a lot of his life.
I think that's where he gets sort of his you know,
love for the underdog and for the oppressed. And I
think a book like The Sneeches is probably sort of
born out of that sheer feeling of being the outsider,
(01:50):
of being the other that he experienced, even as a
child when people threw coal at him for being German.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
His mother is.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Henrietta Seuss or soys is actually the correct way of
pronouncing the name, says, is his mother's maiden name.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
That's where he gets the name SU's from.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Sus always said that, you know, it rhymed with mother
goose or somebody pointed that out to him, so he
was always okay with people pronouncing it Sus. His mother,
he often said, is the one who inspired his love
of rhyme. She had worked in a bakery and she would,
you know, chant little poems on the flavors of pie
they had available that day, which always cracked him up.
So Susan's father inherited the brewing company right about the
(02:26):
time that prohibition kicked in, and so Susan's father never
ended up running the company, and in fact, they were
in danger of losing everything. Susan's father then, of course,
ended up in a job as superintendent of parks for Springfield,
which is your job. He had most of his life
after that, and Ted, as everybody always called sus as
(02:46):
a kid, you know, grew up around the parks and
going to the zoo there in Springfield, and he often
joked about how, you know, his father would put him
in the cages and let the animals chew on him
and things like that, and none of which happened.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
You know, sus never lets the truth get in away
of a fantastic story.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Sus you know, had this sort of just this creative,
regular kid's life in Massachusetts at the turn of the century.
It's really interesting. Springfield is a really interesting town. It's
almost like this imaginative hub up there hit that part
of New England, you know, like Milton Bradley is from there,
and Nay Smith created basketball at the YMCA there in Springfield.
(03:21):
I mean, it's like all these weird little you know,
American industries and icons came out of there. I think
I think Smith and Wesson came out of there. It's just,
you know, there's all sorts of really fascinating people that
were in and around Springfield. So Sus comes out of
Dartmouth University as a fairly mediocre student, but manages to
(03:43):
get a scholarship.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
To go to Oxford.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
He told his father in fact that he had applied
for our scholarship and won it, and that actually turned
out to not be true, but his father had bragged
all over town that his son was going to going
to Oxford, so once he found out it wasn't true,
he paid to send the sun dogs for it. Anyway,
So Sus is going to oxtra it on his father's
dime at this point and quickly finds out he'd rather do.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Anything but study English.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
He initially went to go be an English professor, quickly
loses interest in it. But he meets a woman who
would eventually become his wife, a woman in Helen, and
she is sitting at him in class one days. He's
doodling and says, you know somebody who draws the way
you do should do that for a living, and so
sus who ends up marrying Helen. Then they end up
living together. Back in the United States, he sets up
shop and this is in the sort of the Gilded
(04:30):
Age of the United States, you know, the mid to
late twenties, and he embarks on this very successful career.
And it's hard to believe now that you can set
up a career doing something like this, but he's very
He has a very successful careat rejectory as.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
A cartoonist for the magazines.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
You know, it's like almost like today's New Yorker cartoons,
but there's you know, he's doing cartoons for Liberty Magazine
and Judge Magazine and all these all these magazines with
these massive circulations and Earninge's living doing that. But he
also manages to get an incredibly lucky fortuitous moment where
he does this cartoon that has a night laying in bed.
(05:04):
There's a dragon sticking its head through the window and
the knight says.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Another dragon, and here I just had the entire.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Castle sprayed with flint. Flint was a bug repellent very
popular in the era. Well, the woman.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Who was married to the man who ran the ad
campaign for Flint. I mean, this is none of those
crazy stories.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Saw that cartoon in the magazine, went to her husband
and said, this is the greatest advertisement for Flint you
could ever ask where you need to hire this young
man to be a Flit adman. So sus ends up
in advertising through this, and he's a very successful ad man.
He's the Don Draper of you know, of nineteen twenty five.
He ends up running the Flint campaign for I think
something like seventeen years, just full page ads and color billboards,
(05:48):
and it became sort of a running joke like you know,
where's the beef or something like that. You know, quick
Henry the Flit was the tagline, and it was used
in songs and it was in punch like comedians was say,
quick Henry the Flint.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Everyone would laugh. They all got the joke.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
So Sue's had this very successful careers and advertising man
for years before he ever got into children's books. What
finally happened was he had done some illustrations for a
book that was sort of like kids Say the Darnest Thing.
It was like this book of kids saying funny things
that were true, and then he would put the illustrations
in it, and Sue's thought, you know, under my contract
(06:23):
with Flitt, I have a non compete clause, so I
can't draw for a.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Book like this.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
But there was nothing in his contract that said he
couldn't do children's books. So because there was a loophole
in his contract, there was essentially money on the table
still there for children's books. So Sue's decides to write
a children's book purely basically because he had a clause
in his contract that said he could or that didn't
(06:50):
say that he couldn't. It wasn't any great calling at
least at that time, you know, to provide great books
for kids, or because he felt some compelling urge to
write them for kids. So he went ahead then started
to write a children's book. And that's where the book,
and to think that I saw it on Mulbray Street
came from his work on children's books for part of
his career, didn't pay his bills, and children's books was
(07:11):
a side hustle for him for quite a long time.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And we're listening to author Brian J. Jones his book
Becoming Doctor Seuss. Well, you need to pick it up,
go to Amazon or the usual suspects to buy the book.
When we return, the story of doctor Seuss continues here
on our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories
we tell about this great country, and especially the stories
(07:36):
of America's rich past, know that all of our stories
about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith,
are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
a place where students study all the things that are
beautiful in life and all the things that are good
in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Go to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
And we're back with our American Stories and with Brian J.
Jones sharing the story of how Theodore at Geisel became
Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So the first book that Seuss publishes when he realizes
that his contract again with Flint does not prohibit him
from doing children's books, is He's on a cruise with
his wife Helen. He's sitting in the bar, and two
sits in bars a lot in the fact that you
can never take the Brewers get completely out of the kid.
He's sitting in a bar on a boat in the
middle of the ocean in kind of a storm, and
(08:45):
he's listening to the engines turning over in this regular rhythm,
and he starts trying to come up with words to
fit that rhythm. It's essentially the rhythm of twas the
Night before Christmas. I think it's called something like canapestic
tetrameter or something like that. But the engines are rolling
in this very regular rhythm, and Sue starts trying to
put together a poem, a really bouncing poem to fit
(09:07):
that rhythm, and goes through several different iterations.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
But that's the book that becomes.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street,
following that rhythm of the vote engines. Sus writes and
illustrates this book, and it's, you know, and it's a
very fitting first book for Suss because it's about a
little boy who sees a man with a horse and
a cart on Mulberry Street and starts turning minnows into wales,
as he says in the book, telling bigger and bigger
tales of what's happening, and spinning this gigantic story and
(09:32):
bringing in all these characters, and then at the very end,
when his father finally asks him what he saw, he says,
I just.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Saw a horse and carriage on Mulberry Street.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
It goes back to the turf for that boy. But
it's a fantastic story. It's a great debut. But it's
one of those books that su when he gets done
with it, can't find anybody who wants to publish it.
But Sus walked it all over New York City. This
is still He's doing his advertising work and he's hauling
his manuscript around and as he's walking down one of
the streets in New York, he runs into a friend
of his from Dartmouth who works for a publisher, and
(10:02):
his friend says to him, what are you carrying around here? Ted,
And Sue says.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Well, I've got this kid's book that no one will publish.
I was going to take it.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Home and burn it. And his friend says, you know,
come inside with me. Let me take you up to
the editor in charge of children's books and let me
see what we can do. And Sus gets his book
published through this connection with the Dartmouth friend of his.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
Sue, so he said later.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Had I've been walking down the other side of the street,
I might be in dry cleaning today. So it was
a very fortuitous moment in his life. And you have
to be in the right place at the right time.
And met an old friend of his who shepherds that
book into publication. That's the beginning of his publishing with
children's books. But he's not doing them because he feels
some great moral obligation to children to give them great
(10:44):
books that they deserve. This happens later and Sue's talked
about that. He almost has this epiphany at one point
about it.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
So Sue had a brief career.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
As an editorial cartoonist, you know, doing these cartoons of
taking on America First and anti Semitism. He's really progressive cartoons.
And he ends up enlisting in the Army. He's too
I think he's thirty nine years old. He's a little
too old. He's not going to see any active active service.
He's not going to be on the front lines or anything.
But they station him out in California near where he lived,
(11:15):
and he is in the Signal Corps and his division
is run by Commanding Officer Frank Capra. The director and
Capra had recruited sus They knew from his work that
he was a smart guy. Because of his ad work.
They knew that he was great at message, that he
could get a message through quickly and funny and succinctly,
and that he could draw well. And so they put
(11:35):
sus in charge of doing military training films.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
A lot of the soldiers at that.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Time couldn't read, so they really wanted to do some
animated cartoons that would teach soldiers the basics. And I
mean when I talk basics, it's like how not to
get killed basically, you know. And it's like, this is
how you protect yourself from malaria by you know, putting
on your repellent and sleeping in your nets and lessons
like that. Soon creates this character with Kaepra called Private Snaffoo,
(12:03):
and Snafu teaches soldiers how to be great soldiers by
doing everything wrong. So you get to see Snafu reap
the consequences of his actions the entire time in a
very funny way. But Capra does two things that are
really important in Susan's career. First, Capra, as a film director,
sits down with Seuss and goes through his scripts and says,
(12:23):
I'm going to underline in blue everything in this script
that advances your story. And when I give this back
to you, if there's no blue on your page, you
have a problem. Because you don't have a lot of
time in these cartoons.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
You need to move.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
And so he taught Sus conciseness, which again informs the
way he worked later on making every single word count,
making sure every beat matters.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
That's one of the big lessons that Capra teaches Sus.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
The other thing he does is capra and again this
is a film director's perspective that Sue s grabbed.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
A hold of and ran with for the rest of
his life.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Capra would storyboard everything, would show you how to storyboard.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
And he does.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Something really brilliant in that for the private Snafoo cartoons,
he recognizes a fellow crazy somebody who fits Sus like
a glove in a young animator at that time named
Chuck Jones who's over at Warner Brothers.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Now, Jones is not in the military.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
He's the civilian who's paired up with Sus and they
create these private Snapho cartoons together. And Chuck Jones, as
we know, is the one who any Bugs Money cartoon
that you know and love, and remember, Chuck Jones was
behind as either a writer or director.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
You know, all the classes are Chuck Joes.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
So Chuck is working with doctor Sustu, and he's showing
him the art of storyboarding, taking the story and breaking
it down into basic components, pinning it up on the
wall and staring at it and moving pages around to
see where it works better. This is a practice that
Seuss would use the rest of his life with his
own books. He would put his pages up on the
(13:53):
wall of his office and stare at them and realize,
this doesn't work here, this is funnier over here.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
So these are the skills he learns from Capra and.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
From Chuck Jones that then informed the way he would
do his art for the rest of his life. Later on,
of course, he would be paired up again with Chuck
Jones to do how the Grim Stole Christmas, and Jones
was the perfect one to do that. And Sus was
very skeptical about letting anybody adapt his work to the screen.
But with Chuck Jones, he knew he had a good
friend in an ally and that so Jones comes back
into his story later on. But two really key relationships
(14:25):
that Sus gets into in World War two, Capra and
Chuck Jones. In nineteen forty nine, after he's been he's
come out of the Signal Corps, he's still making a
career in ads. He's dabbled in Hollywood's screen fixing and screenwriting.
He doesn't like it. It's writing by Committee's a little
bit miserable. But he still really wants to do children's books,
(14:46):
and he's just successful enough at it as a sort
of second job that he's actually asked to lead a
writer's workshop on writing children's books for the University of.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Utah in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
And it is a pivotal moment in children's literature because
Sus sits down and writes down by hand on paper
what he thinks makes great writing for children. And he's
taking lessons that he's learned from Capper. You can clearly
see him processing and talking about you've got to make
(15:18):
the words count, you have to keep the action moving forward.
You will lose children. He was selling students in his class.
You know, your biggest competitor right now is comic books.
Whether you like comics or not, they are entertaining kids,
and they are fast paced, and they are fun and
they are colorful. That is your competition. That is who
you are up against. That's what you've got to remember
(15:39):
when you're writing for kids. And so what Sue's really
putting down on paper what children need to, you know,
have their interests sustained, and how you don't want to
write down to them, and how you don't want to
be deliberately saccherind you know, kids don't kids don't like
being talked down to. Sus inherently gets this. If you're
(16:00):
trying to impress a kid, or you're trying to write
fancy for some kid, they will see right through.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
You would tell.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
These students in his class that a child is the
toughest audience you will ever write for, because they will
see you comming. You cannot fool a kid, so don't try.
Sue's sort of having this I don't want to say
eureka moment necessarily, but he's sort of taken everything he's
learned from having written children's books and having worked with Kappra,
(16:29):
with Chuck Jones, and what's funny and what makes things
work and pacing of a book and understanding that that's
the key to keeping a kid interested in reading again.
It's a really, really important moment in not just SUS's life,
but in the history of writing for children.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
And you're listening to Brian J.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Jones telling the story of Doctor Seuss his book Becoming
Doctor Seuss. Well, you've got to pick it up, go
to Amazon or the usual suspects. At first book, Well,
he gets the idea of the rhythm of his poetry
by the rhythm of the cruise ship's engine, and so
much of what he does has to do with rhythm.
And then, of course he joins the army, and by
(17:11):
sheer happenstance, his boss is the great Frank kaeper who,
by the way, won Oscars for the Why We Fight series.
Messaging and message mattered in World War Two. We were
continually selling the American public on our need to stay
in this fight and win. He also came across Chuck
Jones while he was there too, And then he leaves
the military, and that seminar about writing children's books at
(17:32):
the University of Utah changed everything for him. Don't talk
down to kids, keep the plot moving, and by the way,
remember children of the toughest audience you will ever write for.
And if you've ever performed for them, you know they're
even tougher. When we come back more of the remarkable
story of Doctor Seuss here on our American Stories. And
(18:08):
we returned to our American Stories and to Brian J. Jones,
and he's sharing the story of how a man named
Theodor Geisel became Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Back to Brian with more of the story.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
So in nineteen fifty four in Life magazine, the novelist
John Hersey is writing a piece about doing what we
tend to do as a society about every five years
we write these long, agonized pieces about what's wrong with
kids today? You know, why aren't they as reading? Why
are theys sassing their parents? Who's to blame for this? Well,
(18:45):
you know, at that time, whether it was comic books
at one point, or today it's video games or you know,
the Internet or whatever. In nineteen fifty four, John Herssey said, well,
one of the reasons kids don't read, it's not they
can't read, it's that they don't because books a children
are awful. Dick and Jane lead these lives of terrible desperation.
(19:09):
The art is uninspiring, it's a world that doesn't exist
for kids. Couldn't they at least get doctor Seuss or
Walt Disney or somebody to at least illustrate Dick and
Jane to make it more interesting. Well, somebody who knows
Seuss reads this article and goes to Sus and doesn't
ask Seuss to illustrate Dick and Jane. What he does
is he goes to Sus and he says, I want
(19:30):
you to write and draw me a children's book, a
book that they can't put down. But the catch with this,
and this is what makes Sus so important moving forward.
The catch on this is because this is supposed to
be a reading primer, as people say, it's a book
that can be used in the classroom. That means it
(19:52):
has to have an educator approved reading list behind it.
It has to have age appropriate words for a reading level.
And you can can I diverge from this list. If
you want to make a word plural, for example, and
it's not on the list as a plural, you can't
use it. So it's putting a straight jacket on before
you even start writing the book, at least as far
(20:13):
as your vocabulary goes. So Seuss given this list of
vocabulary where don't want to say, it's something around three
hundred vocabulary words. And again it says you cannot deviate
from this list, but come up with a story using
only these words. Well, Sus looks at this list and
stares at this list for a year at least and
can't come up with the story. You know, at one
point he says something like, you know, what if I
(20:35):
want to do a story about a queen tiger, Well,
the word queen wasn't on the list, and the word
tiger isn't on the list. And I wanted to do
something about scaling a mountain, Well the word mountains not
on the list, and scaling is not on the list.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
And you know, it was a real problem.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
And so Sus Away said later that he went through
the list until he found words that rhymed, and two
of the first words that rhyme were.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Cat and hat.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
So SEUs knew he had something of a.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Story or a character at least in A Cat with
a Hat. And he takes another year from there to
actually finish the book and agonizes over every single page
doing this. But if you go through A Cat on
the Hat, you can see him working with that word list.
There's one page, for example, where the cat stands on
(21:22):
a ball, which is where on the list, and starts juggling,
and Sue's downloading everything on that list. He's juggling a
take a rake, a plate, demand a boat, a car,
He's juggling. It's like Sue's taking everything on that listing
trying to get it on the page there. So that
book sells lights out. I mean, that is the moment
that Sue's can be a children's writer full time because
(21:44):
this book. Teachers love it because it's got the educator
proved wordless. Parents love it because, unlike most children's books,
it's fun for adults to read. And kids love it
because they don't even realize that they're learning their vocabulary
words with it. It's a fun book to read. It rhymes,
the pictures great, and it ain't Dick and Jane. This
is the big moment in Susan's career when he truly
(22:06):
becomes doctor Sue's. So Captin Had comes out in the
spring of nineteen fifty seven, The Grinch comes out in
the fall of nineteen fifty seven, So you talk about
hitting twice in one year.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Now, the Grinch is not one of those books that's
written with a word list.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Sue's had what he called his big books that he
was not inhibited by the word list. But The Grinch,
I think is such a fascinating book because Sus often
said throughout his life that his favorite character was the Grinch.
In fact, his car the license plate of his car
that he drove in California said Grinch on the license plate.
What I love about the Grinch is that, you know, remember,
(22:42):
part of the message behind the Grinch is that Christmas
doesn't come from a store. And I love that this
book was written by somebody who spent the first part
of his career probably telling you.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
That Christmas did come from a store. I mean, the
the guy was in advertising was very good at it.
So I think there's a little bit of Seus's reckoning with.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Himself in this story, which is one of the reasons
why I think he took it so personally and could
really sympathize with the Grinch and the Grinch coming around.
But it's a great example of Seuss's really working on
an ending. Because Seuss didn't like his books to be
overtly preachy or messaging, he often said, you know again,
consistent with what he said in the nineteen forty nine lectures.
(23:23):
If you're trying to be preachy again, kids are going
to see you coming. They're going to recognize immediately what
you're up to you. They're going to fold up shop,
they're going to walk away, like no kid wants to
be preached too. So when he got to the end
of The Grinch and was trying to figure out what
happens after the Grinch has kind of redeemed himself, what
do you end it with?
Speaker 4 (23:40):
He was trying to keep it from being a little too.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Religious if he could, and which is why it ultimately
ends with sort of the Brotherhood of Man where you
see you know and the cartoon They do it brilliantly
when the.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Star comes up, but he's serving the roast beast at dinner.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
So it's more of a family type ending than than
a Christmas y ending per se. But that was Seuss
working really hard.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
With an ending.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
One of my favorite stories about one of his later
books is Green Eggs and Ham, because Green Eggs and
Ham comes about as a result of a bet between
Seuss and his editor at Random House, Bennett Surf and
Bennett Surf loves the Kat and the Hat. I mean
the kat and hat is printing money, just doing great,
and Surf who adores Sue's Bennett Surf often talked about
(24:22):
how there was only one real genius who worked for
him at Random House, and he says that was doctor Seuss,
a high praise because he was publishing a fault.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Ter ave time too.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Bennett Surr says to doctor Seuss, Okay, smart guy, Kat
and the Hat used about two hundred unique words from
your word list. I'll bet you fifty bucks you can't
write a book that uses less than fifty.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Of those words. And Sue says, you're on.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
And that book becomes green eggs and Ham. And look
at the way green eggs and ham is put together.
It is repetition. You don't even realize that the vocabulary
is so limit because you are just constantly seeing the
same words over and over again in different orders. I am, Sam, Sam,
I am. Do you like green eggs and ham? Would
you like him with the fox? Would you like him
(25:09):
in a box? I would not like them with a fox.
I would not like him in a box. It's just
it's repetition, using those same words over and over in
a really interesting way.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Seuss gets it in under the Wire. I think he's
got forty eight.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Unique words in that book ultimately when he does it,
And he later on said that Bennett Surf didn't.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
Pay him his fifty bucks either.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
But Green Eggs and Ham is written on a bet
to really hamstring Seuss with a very narrow educator approved
word list, and Sus kills it with green eggs and Ham,
which is still to this day the best selling Doctor
Seus's book of all time.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
And why not.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
It's punchy, it's fun again, educator approved word list, but
you don't even realize that you're only seeing less than
fifty unique words, because what Seuss does with so little
in that is brilliant keeps that book moving again. That's
suits that Seus's worrying about the plot propelling things for it.
It's tormenting this poor guy into eating green eggs and ham.
(26:07):
That is what's driving that plot forward. And as a student,
as a reader, as a kid, you can't turn those
pages fast enough to see if they're going to get
him to try.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Green eggs and ham, which he ultimately does.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
It is everything Seuss does well compressed down into that
one single book.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
And what a story you're hearing.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
He's first challenged to write a book kids can't put down,
but limited to three hundred educator approved words. And from
that constriction came creativity that happens all the time, folks.
The less we have to choose from, sometimes the better
we choose. And of course he finds these two words
cat and hat. He's looking for a rhyme, and the
(26:46):
rest is history. Then comes the Grinch, and then comes
the biggest challenge of all. His pal at his publishing
company says, let's see if he can do it in
fifty words rather than three hundred. And of course, the
best seller of all time Green Eggs and ham Well,
it was conceived as a result of a bet. When
we come back more of this remarkable story of how
(27:09):
Theodore Geisel became Doctor Seuss. Here on our American Stories,
(27:37):
and we're back with our American stories and with Brian J.
Jones sharing the story of Theodore Geisel aka Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Back to Brian with a final part of this story.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
So Seuss is one of these creatives who took his
work very seriously. There's a great quote from his wife
Helen that I think every writer can relate.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
To, or anybody he does anything creative. I think every
day too.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
And she often said, he's miserable when he's writing a book,
and even more miserable when he's not. There's nothing casual
in a Seue's book. Sus would often start books, realized
they were going nowhere, and then throw them at what
he called his bone pile. But Suss had this really
tough work ethic. Sat down at the desk every single
(28:26):
morning and sat there all day, whether anything.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
Happened or not.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Some days, you know, the ideas came and the workflow.
At other days nothing happened. But he was going to
sit in that office every single day of his life
work and Sus would, you know, do the rough sketches
of his page, and he would type out the rhymes
and the narrative and glue it to the page and
put it up on the wall, and then he would
stand back and stare at it. And people told me
who knew him, would tell these great stories about it.
(28:51):
He always had a cigarette burning, and he would put
his hands in his back pockets with his palms in
and he would lean way forward with that cigare are
out in his mouth and just stare at the pages
on the wall. He would step back, and then he
would walk over and he would move a page and
he wouldn't even say anything. Sus would sweat the way
everything rhyme to make sure it scanned perfectly. And you
(29:12):
didn't have to read a word weird, like you didn't
have to put the stress if you had a three
syllable word, you didn't have to put the stress in
the wrong place to make the rhyme scheme work. That
he didn't want you, you know, taking a word like
refrigerator and having to say refrigerator to make the rhyme work.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
He wanted it to be you know, you would.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Say the word refrigerator and it would still scan properly.
So Sus was very fussy about the way the words
themselves worked. Now, having said that, even if the rhyme
scanned perfectly, if Sus stepped back and one of those
lines on the page was significantly longer than the other,
Sus just didn't like the way that looked, so he
would start over. He would rewrite the page. But that's
(29:50):
the way he worked on these books, and sometimes it
could take months and sometimes years to get it until
he was perfectly happy with the book book.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
So SUS's artistic style is definitely unique.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Suss often said that that was him trying to draw
realistically and it all came out wrong.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
I mean, he basically says he's doing the best he
can with what he's got, and that's what comes out
at the other end. Now, of course that's him being modest,
I think, but it's definitely an inimitable style.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
And it is one of those styles that when you
see it, you immediately know Seuss. You immediately know Sue's word.
You know, it's very subtle, but you know, you notice
a lot of Susan's characters have eyelashes, for example, it's
one of these weird little touches you see that makes
it look Soussian. So his artistic style is him, as
he always said, just doing the best he could with
the way he knew how to draw. But that love
(30:40):
of language and that real fun sense of workplay again,
I think a lot of that came from listening to
his German relatives talking and just listening to the way
those German words came tumbling out and how funny they
could be. And again, if you wanted to make a
German word, make it explain something even more.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
You didn't add words to a sentence.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
You just added more letters to a word, and you
got these long, drawn out, ridiculous looking words. I think
Susse really got a kick out of that. You know,
sus is so funny and a little frustrating when throughout
his life people would ask him, you know where do
you come up with? You know where'd you come up with?
Something like the loras, for example, is a perfect example.
He said, well, I drew him and he was clearly
a lorax, the most unhelpful answer possible. But you know,
(31:22):
Suss didn't really have a hard time coming up with
these crazy words.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
His made up names sound organic, They sound like they're
real words. They don't sound like he's trying too hard.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
I don't know where he gets that ability from, And
again it could come from that love of language, of
listening to German words qualifying themselves over and over again.
But sus is really really great at just coming up
with a word like grinch or sneech or lorax or
something that sounds like it already.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
Existed before Seuss made it up. Susan's wife, Helen, is
one of the most important people in his story.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Sort of the unsung here, although he in his lifetime,
in her lifetime, he sung her praises gave her plenty
of credit on it.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
She was a brilliant editor, a brilliant writer in her
own right.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
She was one of the few people who could read
his work in its rough form and walk back to
him and just hold it in his face and say
this doesn't work, which is a tough place.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
For a spouse to be in at times.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
But Helen was the one person who could be absolutely
blunt with him, who didn't bother sitting around and saying, yes,
you're brilliant.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
Everything you do is wonderful. She's the one who there's
a great moment in one.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Of the magazine interview that he does, for example, where
the journalist actually reports the moment when he's sitting by
the pool and Helen walks out and hands some pages
from I Think the Grinch and says, you're making the
who's look like bugs, and Sue says something like, well,
they are bugs, and she says, no, the Who's are people.
She says, not going to have it with him, and
(32:51):
so he might complain about it. But he goes back
and fixes it. So she was the one, you know,
his first and best reader. She was the one who
would go through it and you know, help him keep
on course and tell him the things didn't work, and
tell him if she thought a rhyme was not quite
right or if a drawing looked weird, and he took
her word seriously. Whatever she said he took to heart.
(33:13):
So she was one of his really important you know,
in his career, one of his really important first editors.
And Helen, again, like Seuss, was a great recruiter, was
great at going out identifying talent, great at finding great
writers and you know who could turn in these amazing
manuscripts that she helped edit.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
So she was really really important to his story in
that regard, on the professional side of it.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
On the personal side, Helen couldn't have children, so so
doctor Seuss and Helen never had any kids of their own.
And as Sus always said throughout his life, you have
them all, entertain them. It's rare when an artist gets
to say goodbye to their readers on their own terms,
and Sus does that with Oh the Places You'll Go.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
Sus knew this was likely his last one. Is his
health had been declining.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Sus was a smoker his entire life, and it gave
him cancer of the tongue and then his jaw, and
he was in constant pain. His teeth were coming lucid times.
And so Sus, by the time he's working out other places,
knows that this is likely his last one, and it's
an opportunity for him to say goodbye to his readers,
which again not every artist gets that opportunity.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
You can see Sus putting everything he's got into that book.
There are pages, there are big spreads inside that book
where you've.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Got characters that look like they stepped out of Judge
magazine from nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
There's men, you know, with boulder hats on who look
out of time and out of place, and something from
the nineteen twenties. He's got little black cats.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
That you should show up, and his cartoons in there
before you ever created the cat, and mate, you've got
little cats reacting in some of his books. You know,
there's little homages to some of his other books going
on in some of these other pages. There's just there's
a lot going on in the a lot of what
people today would call easter eggs, clues, little little hat
tips to some of his earlier work, and it's Sue's
sort of putting everything into this book as he's telling
(35:06):
his reader, you're amazing, You're going to succeed in life.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
But it's him saying goodbye.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
It sells every graduation, it's, you know, twice a year
for a spring graduation and fall graduation. That book's constantly selling.
Everybody gets promoted, they get that book. But it was Sue's,
it was his valedictory message. It was him telling everyone
to get bye. You're great, you're brilliant, go have fun.
And that was him turning the lights out as he
said that not every artist gets to do that. I mean,
what a great way for sus to go out on
(35:34):
a book that again became that big and is really
that beautiful, Really a fantastic piece of Susian work. So
I think part of the reason sus is timeless is
because all of his really great books sort of speak
to something eternal in all of us and something we
can all relate to.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
I mean, every one of us in our.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Life at some point has been sitting inside on a
rainy day with nothing to do, and just wishing something
interesting would happen, and you know, and that's that's where
the Cat.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
And Hat comes are.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
He comes in on the rainy day and causes chaos,
which he cleans up. As Sus always points out, there's
something eternal about that. There's something eternal about scratching your
head and wondering about the holiday and what is this
all about? And this about more than just giving people things.
I mean, that's an internal question. There's so much in
Sus that just touches something inside all of us, no
matter where we are, where we're sitting, what part of
(36:25):
the world we're in. Susa's books don't look like anything else.
They don't look like they're taking place in a certain
time period. Even something like The Cat in the Hat
that was written in the fifties and actually has you know,
human children in it. There's something about the way it's
dram that doesn't look like it's nineteen fifty seven, you know.
I mean, there's something still timeless in that artistic style.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
That he's got. SUS's books are fun.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Sus just feels like he's existing on his own plane
the entire time. It's like the Susian universe, you know,
it's got his own rules. That you seem to get
inherently when you visit.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
Madison Derricott. And a special thanks to Brian J. Jones,
author of Becoming Doctor Seuss, Theodore Geisel and the Making
of an American Imagination. Go to Amazon or the usual
Suspects and buy this book. We learned that his bride
was a real unsung hero, a brilliant editor and writer,
(37:22):
one of the few people who could be blunt with
her husband this doesn't work, she would say.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
She was Zeus's first and best reader.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
We learned from Helen that he's miserable when he's writing,
but more miserable when he's not.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
And then a story about all the places you will go.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
I never knew this, I never knew it was his
farewell book, and he did it in classic Susian style.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Go have fun, kids, You're wonderful, goodbye? So simple?
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Was it the German language and his love of it,
his love of rhythm, his love of drawing? Was it
Frank Kapper? Was it Chuck Jones? Was it all of
the above? And of of course that God given talent,
that imagination. Well, you be the judge. The story of
Theodore Geisel, known as Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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