On this episode of Our American Stories, Roald Dahl was a British author of popular children's books which have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. He has been called "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century.” Dahl worked in Washington DC during WWII. He married American actress Patricia Neal in 1953, and together they had 5 children. Hollywood made five of his children’s books into movies: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (twice), Matilda, The Witches, James and the Giant Peach, and The BFG.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Roald Dahl was a British author of popular children's books,
(00:30):
which have sold more than three hundred million copies worldwide.
He's been called one of the greatest storytellers for children
of the twentieth century. Howlu had made five of his
children's books into movies, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Twice, Matilda,
the Witches, James and the Giant Peach and the BFG.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
My name is Steve Garden and I'm a roll Dolphan,
and I've been a Roll Dolphan for a long time.
I'm now my calties but I'm also the director of
the rod Dal Museum and Story Center, which is an
independent charity, wonderful little museum that you can visit in
the village of Great Misson in Akiamsher in the UK,
which is just outside of London, although it feels like
(01:13):
a world away because it's beautiful countryside and Great Missington
is the village where Roddale moved to in nineteen fifty
four and it's where he lived and.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Worked and produced most of the stories that people will
know and love.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
The Roaldal Museum holds rod Dahal's personal at working archive,
so we have an amazing insight into the mind of
a great creative force. What we try and do at
the museum is try and explore how his lived experience
fueled his creativity. He's one of the most celebrated Your
resouthors of all time. He produced officially twenty titles for children,
(01:51):
and these stories have been adapted into musicals, films, TV
shows and more. Besides, his most iconic works really starred
with James of the Giant Peach, his first proper book
for children in nineteen sixty one, and he moved on
to Chili in the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mister Fox, the
Enormous Crocodile, Amazing Purple Patch, in the nineteen eighties, with BTG.
(02:15):
George's Marvelous Medicine, The Witches, and perhaps most famously Matilda,
which I believe sold some seventeen million plus copies around
the world. Roddhal was entirely Norwegian by parentage, but He
grew up in Wales in September nineteen sixty and in
large homes with many children, because his father had two
(02:35):
children from his first marriage, and then four children with
Dahl's mother, Sophia Magdalena Hesselberg, of which Rold was the
only boy, hence the title of his first volume of autobiography,
boy Tales from Childhood. He was also known as the
apple of his mother's eye, and this probably was reinforced
by tragically the loss of one of his sisters when
he was only four and his father, Harald died a
(02:57):
few months later. The family led and says of a
broken heart.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
The secret of my mother was minding her own business
and always being there. If she's wanted, then you'll gravitate
towards her. She is there like a great big rock.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
And this probably characterizes some of Darhls's lifelong search for
father figures some of his most famous characters, particularly Willy Wonka.
There's always a trace if you understand his life story
to some of his most famous creations.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
When he was a.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Young boy, he didn't like school, but he did love
sweets or candy.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Here's an excerpt from Rod Dhl's autobography.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
When I was seven, my mother decided I should go
to a proper boys school. It was called Klandalf Cathedral School,
and it stood right under the shadow of the cathedral.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
The sweet shop at Klandath was the very center of
our lives.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
To us, it was what a bar is to a drunk,
or a church to a bishop. Without it, there would
have been.
Speaker 6 (03:59):
Little live for. But it had one terrible drawback, this
sweet shop. The woman who owned it, it was a horror.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
She never welcomed us when we went in, and the
only time she spoke were when she said things like.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
I'm watching you, so keep your thieving fingers of them chocolates.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
So one day they decided to get back to her.
Dahl described this as his moment of brilliance and glory.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
My four friends and I had come across a loose
floorboard at the back of the classroom one day.
Speaker 6 (04:38):
We lifted up and found a dead mouse. It was
an exciting discovery. Old all right, tick, I said, why don't.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
We slip it into one of missus Pratjett's jars of sweets.
Then when she puts her dirty hand in to grab
a handful, she'll grab a stinky dead mouse.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Instead when you're old enough to do and experienced enough
to be a competent writer. By then you've become pompous,
an adult, grown up, and you've lost all your jokiness.
And so unless you are a kind of undeveloped adult
(05:23):
and you still have an enormous amount of childishness in
you and you giggle at funny stories and jokes and things,
I don't think you can do it.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
The five of us left school and headed for the
sweet shop. We were tremendously jazzed up. We felt like
a gang of desperados setting out to Robert Traine. We
were the victors now, and Missus Project was the victim.
She's still behind the counter and has small, malignant pig eyes.
Speaker 6 (05:59):
Watched us suspiciously.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
When I saw Missus Pratchett turn my head away for
a couple of seconds, I lifted the heavy glass lid
of the god stop a jar.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
And dropped the mouse in.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
His Rod Dall's biographer Domald Stark.
Speaker 7 (06:20):
Well, I think Roll thought they got away with it,
but in fact, of course he hadn't.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
We all went back to our classrooms, and then a
message came in asking for the five of us to
report immediately to the head master's study. Off we went trembling.
When we got there, the head master was standing up
in the middle of the room with a long, thin
(06:46):
cane in his hands. He ticked us off, told us
that we were going to be punished, and told us
also to line up against the side of the study.
I was last in the line, he telled Thwaits. I
think he was first to bend over, and he gave
him four colossal cracks, and he went hopping out of
(07:10):
the room, clutching his buttocks and wimpring. Then the next
one got the same treatment, and then the next and
the next.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And you've been listening to Steve Gardum, the Roll Doll
Museum director. When we come back, more of the roll
Dolls story here on our American Stories. Here are in
our American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
need to be told. But we can't do it without you.
(07:42):
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
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a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot com. And we continue with
(08:09):
our American stories and the story of Rold dol Let's
pick up, with Doll himself completing the story of his
punishment for the prank he played on that mean candy store.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
On her on the second or third well, I'm not
sure what it was. We suddenly got the shock of
our lives because from the far corner of the room
came Missus Pratchett's voice saying, that's it, lay into a headmaster,
give it to him and all that's And we looked
around and there was this farther old hag sitting in
an armchair watching and when I came up, I remember her, Yelly,
(08:44):
that's the nastiest of the lot. You lay into a
head master and let him off. And I limped out,
clutching my buttocks and wimprint, and off we went.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
He went on to another famous Wish private school called Repton,
which had an extreme system of what was known as fagging,
where younger boys were essentially servants or even slaves to
the older boys. An abuse and misuse of power that
this created was rife. Nevertheless, memories from these times still
(09:19):
stayed with him. Even the trick played on missus Pratchett
in his childhood days in fanduffin Wales became the inspiration
for a similar prank played on Miss Trunshibile in Matilda.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
It's like a war, Matilda said, You're darn right. It's
like a war, Tenser cried. And the casualties are terrific.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
We are the crusaders, the gallant army, fighting for our
lives with hardly any weapons at all.
Speaker 8 (09:44):
And the trunch bull it's the prince of darkness, the
foul serpent, the fiery dragon, with all the weapons at
her command.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I've never liked authority. I've never got on very well
in institutions. But it's wrong, of course to be like that,
because you couldn't run schools and institutions like that. If
everyone was like that, there shouldn't be too many rebels around.
There shouldn't be what you are on. Well, yes, but
(10:20):
you'll get much mellow as you get older, you know.
I'm still a rebel in some respects, yes, very much so.
I don't like a conformists. People who conform.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Matilda's one of the four books by dal ranked among
the School Library Journal's Top one hundred all time Children's books.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
This is more than any other writer on the list.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Matilda has been made it for a movie twice, first
in nineteen ninety six, directed by and starring Danny DeVito
and Mara Wilson as Matilda, and in the UK and
around the world. The stage musical has been a success
in London's West End since twenty ten, and it became
a movie in twenty twenty two. One of the things
(11:01):
that Darl's school days gave to him was a near
lifelong habit of letter writing, particularly to his mother and
to his sisters. So he was sent away to boarding
school in England, away from Wales following the incident of
the Sweet Shop, and that started a habit of writing
a letter once a week. He was terribly homesick. He
was a young boy, is probably only nine, and he
(11:23):
said he used to sleep facing across the Bristol Channel
to Wales because he was so homesick. His role reading
from James and the Giant Peach, first published in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
One, until he was four years old. James Henry Trotter
had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother
and father in a beautiful house beside the sea. There
were always plenty of other children for him to play with,
and there was a sandy beach for him to run
about on and the ocean to peddle in. It was
the perfect life for a small boy. Then one day
(11:57):
James's mother and father went to London to do some shop,
and they're a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly
got eaten up in full daylight, mind you, and on
the crowded street by an enormous, angry rhinoceros which had
escaped from the London zoo. Now this, as you can
well imagine, was a rather nasty experience for two such
(12:19):
gentle parents, But in the long run it was far
nastier for James than it was for them. Their troubles
were all over in a jiffy. They were dead and
gone in thirty five seconds flat. Poor James, on the
other hand, was still very much alive, and all at
once he found himself alone and frightened in a vast
(12:41):
unfriendly world.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
His Rod Dar's biographer, Donald Stark.
Speaker 7 (12:46):
I think you can sense, even in those very early
schoolboy letters, the storyteller kind of beginning to enjoy his craft.
He often tells her stories that have been told to
him at school, and then he starts to invent, and
he starts to use language in a funny way, and
I mean some of them are really pretty remarkable for
(13:07):
a young child. So although I think he had no
idea that that's what he was doing, I think in
some ways he was cutting his teeth as a storyteller.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Were you bright at school? Not particularly? No, No, I
was better at games than that work. There's certainly no
sign of in the ability to write or do anything else. No,
I was nothing at school. I wasn't even a house prefect.
I used to read avidly. In my last school at Revden,
all the laboratories were outside in the outhouse, where there
(13:37):
was no heating at all. And in the winter, of course,
it was freezing in there, and the prefects they used
to send us out before they went to the laboratory themselves.
They would send us out to warm the seat for them.
So you took your trousers down and sat on the
seat until the prefect was ready to come out there.
(13:59):
And that's when I, of course, I took a dickens
out and I'd read most of most of Dickens warming
the seats of the laboratories for the prefeates.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
After school, Dahl, having been advised that he probably wouldn't
get into Oxpital, Cambridge with his academic record, he took
a job with Shell Oil. His avowed intention was to
be posted somewhere exotic.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
If you think at the time, which was nineteen thirty
three or four, there were virtually no aeroplanes flying you anywhere.
There weren't any no commercial airline. It's impossible for young
people today to understand the excitement of getting on a
boat and traveling solidly for three or four weeks and
(14:41):
finishing up in Africa among the coconut parts.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Eventually he was sent to East Africa Tanganyika as it
was known at the time Tanzania today. This becomes part
of the stories he tells his roles celebrated illustrator Quentin Blake,
who rolled once described as the finest illustrator of children's
books anywhere in the world today.
Speaker 9 (15:03):
The first book I did was The Enormous Crocodile. It
says he had hundreds of teeth, and of course what
it is especially for eating children.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
Soon he thought one of them is going to sit
on my head and I'll give a jerk and a snap,
and after that.
Speaker 8 (15:28):
It will be yum, yum yum.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
At that moment there was a flash of brown. It
was Mugglewump the monkey.
Speaker 10 (15:37):
Run.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
Muggle Ump shouted to the children.
Speaker 5 (15:39):
All of you, run, run, run.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
There's not a sea saw. It's the enormous crocodile, and
he wants to eat you up.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
I'm quite prepared to have them killed in the most grizzly,
pastful way, like little boys pulled out of the windows
and eaten my giants and bone crunched up and everything,
or a child falling into a chocolate making machine and
coming out as fudge. That's fine as long as there
is a wapping read laugh. At the same time, he.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Was in Tanganyika, Tanzania at the time that the Second
World War broke out, and he decided to volunteer for
the Royal Air Force. So he drove into Kenya from
Tanzania and then was signed up as a pilot officer
in training, and he graduated third in his particular class,
only behind two men who previously had civilian flying experience,
(16:33):
so he was something of a talent in this area. However,
on his first qualified flight from Egypt into the Libyan
desert to try and meet up with eighty Squadron. Something
went very very wrong. The location of the air base
that he was aiming for was not where it was
supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And you've been listening to Steve Gardam and he's the
Royal Donn Museum director in buckingham Shire, England. You've also
been hearing from Roald Dahl himself and from other authorities
on the subject of Roald Dahl. And my goodness, what
a life story. A tough life early on in regard
to just not really connecting in school, but his reaction
(17:17):
to that in the end, his creativity may have indeed
stemmed from that. He had to find his own life
within that life. And I love what he said about
never liking authority, that you don't want too many rebels
because you need that authority. Well life can't well life
can't be life. But he was a rebel, didn't fit
(17:38):
in and in the end unleashed his early life may
indeed have unleashed his lifelong curiosity and creativity. When we
come back more of Roald Dahl's story here on our
American Stories and we continue with our American stories and
(18:11):
the story of Roald Dahl. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So he and another pilot who were flying information had
to make a terrible choice, and the choice was to
set down in raw desert.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
The other pilot managed it.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Dhal hit a rock and smashed his skull into the
control panel of his plane, driving his nose back into
his face. He blacked out. The other pilot helped pulling
from the wreckage and they were found. Darl's injuries were severe.
Here again is Royal Dahl's biographer Domin Storic.
Speaker 7 (18:40):
The crash clearly was incredibly important because it became the
subject of his first piece of published work. But I
think it also may well have changed his personality. He
thought and often said that he felt something had changed
in him as a result of this crash. They were
(19:01):
the head injuries that made him into a writer.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
It's my cozy little theory that because I was a
fairly square young chair, and that I started writing soon
after that, that maybe the head helped.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
He convalesced in Egypt, in Alexandria, and he recovered enough
to be able to join up with Achy Squadron after
a really long and uncomfortable flight for such a tall man.
Dhl was nearly six foot seven, and he had to
be crammed into the cockpit of a Hurricane fighter. When
he arrived in Greece, he had to be lifted out
of the plane by other men because his muscles were
cramped up from being in the position for so long.
(19:39):
This was then the start of Darl's true combat experience
in the Second World War. It was brief, but it
was as exciting and as intense, and as dangerous and
as thrilling, as terrifying as anybody could imagine to be.
He was part of a terrifyingly low odds rearguard action
(20:00):
fifteen Royal Air Force Hurricane fighters against an estimated two
hundred German Air Force planes.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Even by the conservative standards of.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Royal Air Force reporting, Dhal probably shot down at least
ive n by planes, which in RAF terms makes him
an ace. What happened next, again, is not entirely clear.
The USA was only just joining the war. Not everybody
in Washington d C was in favor of supporting this
European campaign, and so there was a public relations task
(20:31):
that needs to be performed. Led out of the British
embassy in Washington in early nineteen forty two.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
Didn't I read that you were a spy.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
That's an ugly word, spy.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
No I did.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
I worked for British Sis yes last half of the war.
When I was injured and couldn't fly, Sure I did.
I went to America and did it. My job was
to try to help Winston Churchill to get on with
FDR and tell Winston what was in the old boy's
(21:08):
mind in America. You know, I was really not spying
against the Americans. I was trying to create energy.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
On the slow boat over the North Atlantic, not an
easy crossing.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
At that time.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Dahl and a fellow pilot, Douglas Bygoods, exchanged stories about
a piece of Royal Air Force folklore. This was the
idea of Grimlins.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
It's a wonderful idea.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I've always found this incredibly charming, The idea that to
soften discussions between aircrew and ground crew when things went
wrong with planes in a rushed and difficult environment in
the height of height of wartime. Instead of pilots landing
and shouting and raving at ground crew potentially put their
(21:55):
life in danger by missing some crucial piece of maintenance.
The idea was to say, well, the gremlins did this,
These little creatures, these supernatural sprites, were responsible for sticky
rudders and dodgy landing gear and all these kind of
hiccups that inevitably would happen with what was, of course,
an aeroplane itself in the nineteen thirties and forties was
still incredibly new technology and being developed incredibly fast. Now,
(22:19):
when he ended up in Washington, bear in mind he
only had a few war stories be out, a few
more than anybody else there. He was tall, he was handsome,
He was an an unfamiliar uniform. That was why he
was felt he could be a public relations asset.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
I was sitting in my rather grand office in the
British Embassy wondering what to do. And there was a
knock on the door and I said come in, and
the tiny little man came in with thick glasses and said,
excuse me, you're busy, and I said not in the
least no it do come in and he said my
(22:52):
name is Forester. C. S. Forester. I said, get on,
you know you can't be there. One of my hearers,
great great writers at that time Captain Hornblern. Yes, he said,
Now you've been the war Americas and just coming in.
I'll take you out at dinner lunch. It was tell
me your most exciting exploit and I'll write it up
(23:16):
in a Saturday Evening Post and we'll get the British
a bit of published thing. So we went out to lunch,
and I remember we had roast duck, and he was
trying to take notes and eat this bloody duck at
the same time, you know, and he couldn't do it.
And I said, well, why don't I scribble it down
for you this evening into the rough way, and then
(23:36):
you can put it right when I send it to it.
And he said, well that would be super, would you
do that?
Speaker 6 (23:41):
And I said, well so we'll.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
So we finished our duck and I went home that
evening and I wrote this thing out and sent it
to him. And I got a letter back about a
week later saying I asked for notes, not a finished story.
I didn't touch. It's the Sad Evening Post. A bought
it for once for one thousand dollars. The agent takes
ten percent. Here's my check for nine hundred and amazing
(24:04):
stuff city. So I thought, my god, I've can't bussy's all.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
What really probably got his name known as an author
of some potential was the telling of the stories of
the Gremlins. He wrote these stories down rough and rudimentary form.
Because of the structure of the hierarchy of the Royal
Air Force, this had to be passed up through the ranks,
and it came to somebody who felt able to share
it with one of their own contacts, and that contact
(24:31):
was Walt Disney. Disney was having both a good and
a bad war. Some of the projects the Disney Company
was working on were propaganda films, but Disney always had
a weather eye out for something that was perhaps more
in tune with the House of Mouse, and he thought
he maybe saw this in the story of the Gremlins.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
I was very lucky because I my first little book
I wrote was called The Gremlins, which was bought by
Walt Disney and Eleanor Roosevelt ready to her grandchildren and
loved this book. And so I got invited to the
White House, and we got to know each other a bit,
(25:11):
you know, and I would go for weekends at FDR. Header.
His country place is called Hyde Park, The Fast Place
and used to go there got to know him. I
was only a young chap of twenty six in an
Aria uniform.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
I was met by Walt's number one artist and taken
to the Beverly Hills Hotel, and after a bath and
a shave, was driven up to the studio and ushered
up to Walt's room. The room itself is very magnificent,
with sofa, armchairs and a grand piano. I said thank
(25:50):
you very much and followed him down to an enormous
room where half a dozen of his best artists were
waiting with pencils poised to be told.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
What a g and look like?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Long story short as a movie project, The Gremlins died
in development hell, as many movie projects do.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And you've been listening to the story of Roll Dahl
in part told by Steve Gardam. He's the Roll Dahal
Museum director in Buckinghamshire, England. You're also hearing from Roll
Dahal himself. And what a story he is telling, by
the way, not only a great storyteller in written form,
but my goodness, in spoken form too. What a voice
(26:32):
he has, what a unique and beautiful voice. And his
service in the Royal Air Force and that crash well,
that indeed he attributes in part to the imaginary talents
he would later exhibit. And then, of course what brings
in the United States is his intelligent work for the
British Army and for Sir Winston Churchill of course, his
(26:52):
job there get an insight into FDR's mind, in short,
how to bring the Americans into the war earlier, and
that of course leads to the publishing of The Gremlins,
Eleanor Roosevelt having this book of his being a family favorite,
and last but not least to the offices of the
Great Walt Disney himself. When we come back more of
(27:16):
this remarkable story, Roll Dohl's story here on our American stories,
(27:38):
and we continue with our American stories and roll Dahl's story.
Let's pick up when we last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Sometime around the publication of The Gremlin Story, initially in
Cosmopolitan magazine and the later as a book illustrated with
some Disney illustrations, there was a bit of a Gremlin craze,
and we even see this not just through Disney but
through Warner Brothers. The Bugs Bunny cartoon, Falling Hair and.
Speaker 10 (28:02):
Get a load of dish Bogs, it is here a
constant minister to pilots at the Grimlins whorect planes with
the dia Bol little seb but Peg.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
But his work as an assistant heir atashe to the
British Embassy in his public relations role meant that he
met Ernest Hemingway. He played poker with Harry Truman and
tennis with Truman's breeddecessor as Vice President, Henry Wallace. He
became friends with the James Bond Novelisy and Freeman, who
also worked in British Security Services.
Speaker 7 (28:37):
Then in London. They saw each other from time to time,
and it was no surprise when it came to writing
a screenplay if you only lived twice, that the producers
turned to Roll rather than someone else to write it.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Of course, one of the things that darl Is most
famously associated with is chocolate, and this was a deep
and abiding love.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
When I was at boarding school when we were fifteen
sixteen seventeen, the big Cadbridge chocolate factory in England. For
some reason they chose my school and the housemaster was
sent eighty boxes of chocolate in plain brown cardboard. I
remember it, and you opened it up and inside were
(29:18):
about eight different bars of chocolates with different things in
the middle, and you marked each chocolate from one to
ten marks, and you made a comment rotten, delicious, beastly,
too bitter to anything. But that told me, and it
would tell anyone, that inside these giant chocolate factories there
(29:41):
is an inventing room where men and women in white coats,
scientists are walking around trying to make new and delicious chocolates.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
And so the idea of inventedness and chocolate and confectionery
and candy was set in all at a very young age,
and the idea, the excitement of these chocolate bars never
left him.
Speaker 5 (30:03):
Did you know that he's invented chocolate ice cream so
that it stays cold for hours and hours without being
in the refrigerator. That's impossible, said little Charlie, staring at
his grandfather. Of course, it's impossible, said Grandpa Joe. It's
completely absurd, But mister Willy Wonka has done it.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
He wrote the screenplay for the movie of Charlie and
the Chocolate Battery, but he was frustrated by the casting choice,
which seems incredible given that the movie that came out
in nineteen seventy one has the iconic performance of Gene
Wilder as Willy Wonka, but Dahl wanted the great British
comedian Spike Milligan because he felt that perhaps Wilder was
(30:49):
too safe for choice. What's interesting is that actually they
seem to have been kindred spirits. Wilder took the role
on the proviso that he would make his introduction as
Willie Wonker on screen in a very particular way, and
that is the way that if you've seen Oneka seventy one,
you will know that Wonka appears behind the gates of
his factory with a stoop and a limp, leaning heavily
(31:12):
on a cane, and there's a point of which he
appears to lose his balance, and then he does a
tumble forward and stands up and is full of bright,
sparky energy. And it's the brilliant introduction that he puts
to the character.
Speaker 11 (31:24):
I said, I like to come out with a cane
and be crippled. And I said, because no one will
know from that time on whether I'm lying or telling
the truth. He said, you mean, if we don't do that,
you won't do the part. I said, yeah, And that's
what I'm saying Okay, okay, we'll do it. And I
(31:51):
meant it too, because it was a tricky part. But
that element of who knows is he lying or is
he telling the truth was what my main motor wife.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
People call it the darkness in Darl's writing, the edge.
They're not entirely safe, they're not entirely sure, and I
think this is evidenced by the fact that so many
of the child characters that are the heroes of darl
stories are in perilous situations, and yet throughout Dahl there's
also elevening of that peril. Dahl himself was on record
(32:23):
as saying, you know, you have to let people think
that evil could win, but you mustn't let it do so.
It was one of his tenets for writing a good
children's book. There had to be a genuine sense of peril,
but there has to be a happy and positive outcome.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Dahl was adamant that his stories were in entertainment.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
They were an encouragement to read, so that children would
read many more books. But of course his first audience
was often his own children, and his children tell a
tale of how he was effectively the BFG.
Speaker 12 (32:54):
Every night before we went to sleep. My father used
to tell my sister Lucy and I as story. He
told about fantastic mister Fox this way, and actually sometime
later he told us about the Big Friendly Giant, which
is the BFG.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
As part of a stunt prank, just a bit of
entertainment his children, he would pretend to be the giant,
blowing dreams through their window through a bamboo garden cane.
Speaker 12 (33:17):
He would write our names in a weed killer on
the grass and tell us the fairies had been.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
If they reacted positively to a story, that was a
clue that it would go somewhere.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
I have such a terror of boring the reader that
I always condense my work into a short, short, and
shorter and shorter. And then I began to have children
of my own, and again, without any thought of ever
(33:48):
wanting to write a children's sport clupe, I used to
try to make them up a story every night, which
lots of fathers and mothers do, and I find it
rather difficult. It's a good one every night, But now
and again I would make one, and the next night
there would say, do go on with the one you
(34:09):
were telling this last night about the peach that grew
a grow something And when this went on for several
nights with one story, which was about the peach that
never stopped growing, I thought, well, why shouldn't I try
and write that to me? So I sat down started
writing you, James, the Giant Peach, and it was published
(34:32):
and it did right way. EI thought, well, I'll do another,
So I did Charlie in the Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
That being said, when he showed an early draft of
Charlie and Chocolate Factory to a nephew back in the
nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Uncle Rold, I think is rotten, was the response.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
However, darl had never been a well man since his
accident in the Second World Wood suffered from chronic back pain.
He perhaps didn't have the healthier lifestyle with cigarettes and
a love of wine and fine food. He dining from
a blood disease in nineteen ninety, age seventy four.
Speaker 5 (35:05):
When eventually you do finally have to give up or
want to give up, whichever comes first, when I die,
When you die, is there any particular way in which
you want to have been remembered.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
Well? And you can quote ask a wild and so
when I am gone, I hope it will be said
my sins were scarlet, but my books were read.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
What he left us is an incredible creative legacy, and
the Rod Dal Museum does what it can to work
with that, to encourage the writers of tomorrow to learn
from Rod's creative practice and see how by feeding your
imagination with inspiration, by working over and over again at
the hard graft of creativity and then sharing it telling
your stories to an audience, that's how a legacy like
(35:56):
Dolls can be produced.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Yes, I've never wanted to be anything special. Actually, I've
always had drives. If I set out to do a thing,
I'm jolly well going to finish it and do it promptly.
And I'm not the only one who has that. Half
the world has it. The other half doesn't. And that's
the trouble.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
Steve Gardham and he's the Royal Doll Museum Director in Buckinghamshire, England,
and my goodness, what a job that must be preserving
and protecting and promoting the works of one of the
(36:38):
great writers of the twentieth century and he was indeed,
writing for children is no less a task, no less
important than writing for any other audience. In my goodness,
so many adults have been moved by his work too,
and that's what makes him great. And what a story
he was telling. While he was in America in his
intelligence work, he got to meet Hemingway, President Truman, and
(37:01):
also he got to really recall those incidences when he
was a kid being visited with all that great chocolate
from the Cadbury's factory for the kids to test, and
most kids would just eat the chocolate, and his memory
of that was that wow. Inside that factory must be
an inventing room. He wrote the screenplay We Learned Willie
(37:25):
Wanka in the Chocolate Factory. Gene Wold to the Star
talking about what he did, the choices he made, and
how important they were to him. His characters were never simple,
any more than mel Blank's characters were simple. He said
in the end that there has to be a genuine
sense of peril in the stories, but there always has
to be a positive outcome. And I love what he said.
(37:48):
I have such a terror of boring my reader, he said.
But of course he had children and he wanted to
tell them stories, and so he did, and some had
staying power. Some of them became the stories we all
know the story of Roald Dahal, his connection to America
and to all of us who live here and the world.
(38:10):
Here on our American Stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Roald Dahl was a British author of popular children's books,
(00:30):
which have sold more than three hundred million copies worldwide.
He's been called one of the greatest storytellers for children
of the twentieth century. Howlu had made five of his
children's books into movies, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Twice, Matilda,
the Witches, James and the Giant Peach and the BFG.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
My name is Steve Garden and I'm a roll Dolphan,
and I've been a Roll Dolphan for a long time.
I'm now my calties but I'm also the director of
the rod Dal Museum and Story Center, which is an
independent charity, wonderful little museum that you can visit in
the village of Great Misson in Akiamsher in the UK,
which is just outside of London, although it feels like
(01:13):
a world away because it's beautiful countryside and Great Missington
is the village where Roddale moved to in nineteen fifty
four and it's where he lived and.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Worked and produced most of the stories that people will
know and love.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
The Roaldal Museum holds rod Dahal's personal at working archive,
so we have an amazing insight into the mind of
a great creative force. What we try and do at
the museum is try and explore how his lived experience
fueled his creativity. He's one of the most celebrated Your
resouthors of all time. He produced officially twenty titles for children,
(01:51):
and these stories have been adapted into musicals, films, TV
shows and more. Besides, his most iconic works really starred
with James of the Giant Peach, his first proper book
for children in nineteen sixty one, and he moved on
to Chili in the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mister Fox, the
Enormous Crocodile, Amazing Purple Patch, in the nineteen eighties, with BTG.
(02:15):
George's Marvelous Medicine, The Witches, and perhaps most famously Matilda,
which I believe sold some seventeen million plus copies around
the world. Roddhal was entirely Norwegian by parentage, but He
grew up in Wales in September nineteen sixty and in
large homes with many children, because his father had two
(02:35):
children from his first marriage, and then four children with
Dahl's mother, Sophia Magdalena Hesselberg, of which Rold was the
only boy, hence the title of his first volume of autobiography,
boy Tales from Childhood. He was also known as the
apple of his mother's eye, and this probably was reinforced
by tragically the loss of one of his sisters when
he was only four and his father, Harald died a
(02:57):
few months later. The family led and says of a
broken heart.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
The secret of my mother was minding her own business
and always being there. If she's wanted, then you'll gravitate
towards her. She is there like a great big rock.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
And this probably characterizes some of Darhls's lifelong search for
father figures some of his most famous characters, particularly Willy Wonka.
There's always a trace if you understand his life story
to some of his most famous creations.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
When he was a.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Young boy, he didn't like school, but he did love
sweets or candy.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Here's an excerpt from Rod Dhl's autobography.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
When I was seven, my mother decided I should go
to a proper boys school. It was called Klandalf Cathedral School,
and it stood right under the shadow of the cathedral.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
The sweet shop at Klandath was the very center of
our lives.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
To us, it was what a bar is to a drunk,
or a church to a bishop. Without it, there would
have been.
Speaker 6 (03:59):
Little live for. But it had one terrible drawback, this
sweet shop. The woman who owned it, it was a horror.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
She never welcomed us when we went in, and the
only time she spoke were when she said things like.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
I'm watching you, so keep your thieving fingers of them chocolates.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
So one day they decided to get back to her.
Dahl described this as his moment of brilliance and glory.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
My four friends and I had come across a loose
floorboard at the back of the classroom one day.
Speaker 6 (04:38):
We lifted up and found a dead mouse. It was
an exciting discovery. Old all right, tick, I said, why don't.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
We slip it into one of missus Pratjett's jars of sweets.
Then when she puts her dirty hand in to grab
a handful, she'll grab a stinky dead mouse.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Instead when you're old enough to do and experienced enough
to be a competent writer. By then you've become pompous,
an adult, grown up, and you've lost all your jokiness.
And so unless you are a kind of undeveloped adult
(05:23):
and you still have an enormous amount of childishness in
you and you giggle at funny stories and jokes and things,
I don't think you can do it.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
The five of us left school and headed for the
sweet shop. We were tremendously jazzed up. We felt like
a gang of desperados setting out to Robert Traine. We
were the victors now, and Missus Project was the victim.
She's still behind the counter and has small, malignant pig eyes.
Speaker 6 (05:59):
Watched us suspiciously.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
When I saw Missus Pratchett turn my head away for
a couple of seconds, I lifted the heavy glass lid
of the god stop a jar.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
And dropped the mouse in.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
His Rod Dall's biographer Domald Stark.
Speaker 7 (06:20):
Well, I think Roll thought they got away with it,
but in fact, of course he hadn't.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
We all went back to our classrooms, and then a
message came in asking for the five of us to
report immediately to the head master's study. Off we went trembling.
When we got there, the head master was standing up
in the middle of the room with a long, thin
(06:46):
cane in his hands. He ticked us off, told us
that we were going to be punished, and told us
also to line up against the side of the study.
I was last in the line, he telled Thwaits. I
think he was first to bend over, and he gave
him four colossal cracks, and he went hopping out of
(07:10):
the room, clutching his buttocks and wimpring. Then the next
one got the same treatment, and then the next and
the next.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And you've been listening to Steve Gardum, the Roll Doll
Museum director. When we come back, more of the roll
Dolls story here on our American Stories. Here are in
our American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
need to be told. But we can't do it without you.
(07:42):
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love our stories in America
like we do, please go to our American Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, Give
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot com. And we continue with
(08:09):
our American stories and the story of Rold dol Let's
pick up, with Doll himself completing the story of his
punishment for the prank he played on that mean candy store.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
On her on the second or third well, I'm not
sure what it was. We suddenly got the shock of
our lives because from the far corner of the room
came Missus Pratchett's voice saying, that's it, lay into a headmaster,
give it to him and all that's And we looked
around and there was this farther old hag sitting in
an armchair watching and when I came up, I remember her, Yelly,
(08:44):
that's the nastiest of the lot. You lay into a
head master and let him off. And I limped out,
clutching my buttocks and wimprint, and off we went.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
He went on to another famous Wish private school called Repton,
which had an extreme system of what was known as fagging,
where younger boys were essentially servants or even slaves to
the older boys. An abuse and misuse of power that
this created was rife. Nevertheless, memories from these times still
(09:19):
stayed with him. Even the trick played on missus Pratchett
in his childhood days in fanduffin Wales became the inspiration
for a similar prank played on Miss Trunshibile in Matilda.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
It's like a war, Matilda said, You're darn right. It's
like a war, Tenser cried. And the casualties are terrific.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
We are the crusaders, the gallant army, fighting for our
lives with hardly any weapons at all.
Speaker 8 (09:44):
And the trunch bull it's the prince of darkness, the
foul serpent, the fiery dragon, with all the weapons at
her command.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I've never liked authority. I've never got on very well
in institutions. But it's wrong, of course to be like that,
because you couldn't run schools and institutions like that. If
everyone was like that, there shouldn't be too many rebels around.
There shouldn't be what you are on. Well, yes, but
(10:20):
you'll get much mellow as you get older, you know.
I'm still a rebel in some respects, yes, very much so.
I don't like a conformists. People who conform.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Matilda's one of the four books by dal ranked among
the School Library Journal's Top one hundred all time Children's books.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
This is more than any other writer on the list.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Matilda has been made it for a movie twice, first
in nineteen ninety six, directed by and starring Danny DeVito
and Mara Wilson as Matilda, and in the UK and
around the world. The stage musical has been a success
in London's West End since twenty ten, and it became
a movie in twenty twenty two. One of the things
(11:01):
that Darl's school days gave to him was a near
lifelong habit of letter writing, particularly to his mother and
to his sisters. So he was sent away to boarding
school in England, away from Wales following the incident of
the Sweet Shop, and that started a habit of writing
a letter once a week. He was terribly homesick. He
was a young boy, is probably only nine, and he
(11:23):
said he used to sleep facing across the Bristol Channel
to Wales because he was so homesick. His role reading
from James and the Giant Peach, first published in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
One, until he was four years old. James Henry Trotter
had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother
and father in a beautiful house beside the sea. There
were always plenty of other children for him to play with,
and there was a sandy beach for him to run
about on and the ocean to peddle in. It was
the perfect life for a small boy. Then one day
(11:57):
James's mother and father went to London to do some shop,
and they're a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly
got eaten up in full daylight, mind you, and on
the crowded street by an enormous, angry rhinoceros which had
escaped from the London zoo. Now this, as you can
well imagine, was a rather nasty experience for two such
(12:19):
gentle parents, But in the long run it was far
nastier for James than it was for them. Their troubles
were all over in a jiffy. They were dead and
gone in thirty five seconds flat. Poor James, on the
other hand, was still very much alive, and all at
once he found himself alone and frightened in a vast
(12:41):
unfriendly world.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
His Rod Dar's biographer, Donald Stark.
Speaker 7 (12:46):
I think you can sense, even in those very early
schoolboy letters, the storyteller kind of beginning to enjoy his craft.
He often tells her stories that have been told to
him at school, and then he starts to invent, and
he starts to use language in a funny way, and
I mean some of them are really pretty remarkable for
(13:07):
a young child. So although I think he had no
idea that that's what he was doing, I think in
some ways he was cutting his teeth as a storyteller.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Were you bright at school? Not particularly? No, No, I
was better at games than that work. There's certainly no
sign of in the ability to write or do anything else. No,
I was nothing at school. I wasn't even a house prefect.
I used to read avidly. In my last school at Revden,
all the laboratories were outside in the outhouse, where there
(13:37):
was no heating at all. And in the winter, of course,
it was freezing in there, and the prefects they used
to send us out before they went to the laboratory themselves.
They would send us out to warm the seat for them.
So you took your trousers down and sat on the
seat until the prefect was ready to come out there.
(13:59):
And that's when I, of course, I took a dickens
out and I'd read most of most of Dickens warming
the seats of the laboratories for the prefeates.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
After school, Dahl, having been advised that he probably wouldn't
get into Oxpital, Cambridge with his academic record, he took
a job with Shell Oil. His avowed intention was to
be posted somewhere exotic.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
If you think at the time, which was nineteen thirty
three or four, there were virtually no aeroplanes flying you anywhere.
There weren't any no commercial airline. It's impossible for young
people today to understand the excitement of getting on a
boat and traveling solidly for three or four weeks and
(14:41):
finishing up in Africa among the coconut parts.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Eventually he was sent to East Africa Tanganyika as it
was known at the time Tanzania today. This becomes part
of the stories he tells his roles celebrated illustrator Quentin Blake,
who rolled once described as the finest illustrator of children's
books anywhere in the world today.
Speaker 9 (15:03):
The first book I did was The Enormous Crocodile. It
says he had hundreds of teeth, and of course what
it is especially for eating children.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
Soon he thought one of them is going to sit
on my head and I'll give a jerk and a snap,
and after that.
Speaker 8 (15:28):
It will be yum, yum yum.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
At that moment there was a flash of brown. It
was Mugglewump the monkey.
Speaker 10 (15:37):
Run.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
Muggle Ump shouted to the children.
Speaker 5 (15:39):
All of you, run, run, run.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
There's not a sea saw. It's the enormous crocodile, and
he wants to eat you up.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
I'm quite prepared to have them killed in the most grizzly,
pastful way, like little boys pulled out of the windows
and eaten my giants and bone crunched up and everything,
or a child falling into a chocolate making machine and
coming out as fudge. That's fine as long as there
is a wapping read laugh. At the same time, he.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Was in Tanganyika, Tanzania at the time that the Second
World War broke out, and he decided to volunteer for
the Royal Air Force. So he drove into Kenya from
Tanzania and then was signed up as a pilot officer
in training, and he graduated third in his particular class,
only behind two men who previously had civilian flying experience,
(16:33):
so he was something of a talent in this area. However,
on his first qualified flight from Egypt into the Libyan
desert to try and meet up with eighty Squadron. Something
went very very wrong. The location of the air base
that he was aiming for was not where it was
supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And you've been listening to Steve Gardam and he's the
Royal Donn Museum director in buckingham Shire, England. You've also
been hearing from Roald Dahl himself and from other authorities
on the subject of Roald Dahl. And my goodness, what
a life story. A tough life early on in regard
to just not really connecting in school, but his reaction
(17:17):
to that in the end, his creativity may have indeed
stemmed from that. He had to find his own life
within that life. And I love what he said about
never liking authority, that you don't want too many rebels
because you need that authority. Well life can't well life
can't be life. But he was a rebel, didn't fit
(17:38):
in and in the end unleashed his early life may
indeed have unleashed his lifelong curiosity and creativity. When we
come back more of Roald Dahl's story here on our
American Stories and we continue with our American stories and
(18:11):
the story of Roald Dahl. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So he and another pilot who were flying information had
to make a terrible choice, and the choice was to
set down in raw desert.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
The other pilot managed it.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Dhal hit a rock and smashed his skull into the
control panel of his plane, driving his nose back into
his face. He blacked out. The other pilot helped pulling
from the wreckage and they were found. Darl's injuries were severe.
Here again is Royal Dahl's biographer Domin Storic.
Speaker 7 (18:40):
The crash clearly was incredibly important because it became the
subject of his first piece of published work. But I
think it also may well have changed his personality. He
thought and often said that he felt something had changed
in him as a result of this crash. They were
(19:01):
the head injuries that made him into a writer.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
It's my cozy little theory that because I was a
fairly square young chair, and that I started writing soon
after that, that maybe the head helped.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
He convalesced in Egypt, in Alexandria, and he recovered enough
to be able to join up with Achy Squadron after
a really long and uncomfortable flight for such a tall man.
Dhl was nearly six foot seven, and he had to
be crammed into the cockpit of a Hurricane fighter. When
he arrived in Greece, he had to be lifted out
of the plane by other men because his muscles were
cramped up from being in the position for so long.
(19:39):
This was then the start of Darl's true combat experience
in the Second World War. It was brief, but it
was as exciting and as intense, and as dangerous and
as thrilling, as terrifying as anybody could imagine to be.
He was part of a terrifyingly low odds rearguard action
(20:00):
fifteen Royal Air Force Hurricane fighters against an estimated two
hundred German Air Force planes.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Even by the conservative standards of.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Royal Air Force reporting, Dhal probably shot down at least
ive n by planes, which in RAF terms makes him
an ace. What happened next, again, is not entirely clear.
The USA was only just joining the war. Not everybody
in Washington d C was in favor of supporting this
European campaign, and so there was a public relations task
(20:31):
that needs to be performed. Led out of the British
embassy in Washington in early nineteen forty two.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
Didn't I read that you were a spy.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
That's an ugly word, spy.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
No I did.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
I worked for British Sis yes last half of the war.
When I was injured and couldn't fly, Sure I did.
I went to America and did it. My job was
to try to help Winston Churchill to get on with
FDR and tell Winston what was in the old boy's
(21:08):
mind in America. You know, I was really not spying
against the Americans. I was trying to create energy.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
On the slow boat over the North Atlantic, not an
easy crossing.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
At that time.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Dahl and a fellow pilot, Douglas Bygoods, exchanged stories about
a piece of Royal Air Force folklore. This was the
idea of Grimlins.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
It's a wonderful idea.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I've always found this incredibly charming, The idea that to
soften discussions between aircrew and ground crew when things went
wrong with planes in a rushed and difficult environment in
the height of height of wartime. Instead of pilots landing
and shouting and raving at ground crew potentially put their
(21:55):
life in danger by missing some crucial piece of maintenance.
The idea was to say, well, the gremlins did this,
These little creatures, these supernatural sprites, were responsible for sticky
rudders and dodgy landing gear and all these kind of
hiccups that inevitably would happen with what was, of course,
an aeroplane itself in the nineteen thirties and forties was
still incredibly new technology and being developed incredibly fast. Now,
(22:19):
when he ended up in Washington, bear in mind he
only had a few war stories be out, a few
more than anybody else there. He was tall, he was handsome,
He was an an unfamiliar uniform. That was why he
was felt he could be a public relations asset.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
I was sitting in my rather grand office in the
British Embassy wondering what to do. And there was a
knock on the door and I said come in, and
the tiny little man came in with thick glasses and said,
excuse me, you're busy, and I said not in the
least no it do come in and he said my
(22:52):
name is Forester. C. S. Forester. I said, get on,
you know you can't be there. One of my hearers,
great great writers at that time Captain Hornblern. Yes, he said,
Now you've been the war Americas and just coming in.
I'll take you out at dinner lunch. It was tell
me your most exciting exploit and I'll write it up
(23:16):
in a Saturday Evening Post and we'll get the British
a bit of published thing. So we went out to lunch,
and I remember we had roast duck, and he was
trying to take notes and eat this bloody duck at
the same time, you know, and he couldn't do it.
And I said, well, why don't I scribble it down
for you this evening into the rough way, and then
(23:36):
you can put it right when I send it to it.
And he said, well that would be super, would you
do that?
Speaker 6 (23:41):
And I said, well so we'll.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
So we finished our duck and I went home that
evening and I wrote this thing out and sent it
to him. And I got a letter back about a
week later saying I asked for notes, not a finished story.
I didn't touch. It's the Sad Evening Post. A bought
it for once for one thousand dollars. The agent takes
ten percent. Here's my check for nine hundred and amazing
(24:04):
stuff city. So I thought, my god, I've can't bussy's all.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
What really probably got his name known as an author
of some potential was the telling of the stories of
the Gremlins. He wrote these stories down rough and rudimentary form.
Because of the structure of the hierarchy of the Royal
Air Force, this had to be passed up through the ranks,
and it came to somebody who felt able to share
it with one of their own contacts, and that contact
(24:31):
was Walt Disney. Disney was having both a good and
a bad war. Some of the projects the Disney Company
was working on were propaganda films, but Disney always had
a weather eye out for something that was perhaps more
in tune with the House of Mouse, and he thought
he maybe saw this in the story of the Gremlins.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
I was very lucky because I my first little book
I wrote was called The Gremlins, which was bought by
Walt Disney and Eleanor Roosevelt ready to her grandchildren and
loved this book. And so I got invited to the
White House, and we got to know each other a bit,
(25:11):
you know, and I would go for weekends at FDR. Header.
His country place is called Hyde Park, The Fast Place
and used to go there got to know him. I
was only a young chap of twenty six in an
Aria uniform.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
I was met by Walt's number one artist and taken
to the Beverly Hills Hotel, and after a bath and
a shave, was driven up to the studio and ushered
up to Walt's room. The room itself is very magnificent,
with sofa, armchairs and a grand piano. I said thank
(25:50):
you very much and followed him down to an enormous
room where half a dozen of his best artists were
waiting with pencils poised to be told.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
What a g and look like?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Long story short as a movie project, The Gremlins died
in development hell, as many movie projects do.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And you've been listening to the story of Roll Dahl
in part told by Steve Gardam. He's the Roll Dahal
Museum director in Buckinghamshire, England. You're also hearing from Roll
Dahal himself. And what a story he is telling, by
the way, not only a great storyteller in written form,
but my goodness, in spoken form too. What a voice
(26:32):
he has, what a unique and beautiful voice. And his
service in the Royal Air Force and that crash well,
that indeed he attributes in part to the imaginary talents
he would later exhibit. And then, of course what brings
in the United States is his intelligent work for the
British Army and for Sir Winston Churchill of course, his
(26:52):
job there get an insight into FDR's mind, in short,
how to bring the Americans into the war earlier, and
that of course leads to the publishing of The Gremlins,
Eleanor Roosevelt having this book of his being a family favorite,
and last but not least to the offices of the
Great Walt Disney himself. When we come back more of
(27:16):
this remarkable story, Roll Dohl's story here on our American stories,
(27:38):
and we continue with our American stories and roll Dahl's story.
Let's pick up when we last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Sometime around the publication of The Gremlin Story, initially in
Cosmopolitan magazine and the later as a book illustrated with
some Disney illustrations, there was a bit of a Gremlin craze,
and we even see this not just through Disney but
through Warner Brothers. The Bugs Bunny cartoon, Falling Hair and.
Speaker 10 (28:02):
Get a load of dish Bogs, it is here a
constant minister to pilots at the Grimlins whorect planes with
the dia Bol little seb but Peg.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
But his work as an assistant heir atashe to the
British Embassy in his public relations role meant that he
met Ernest Hemingway. He played poker with Harry Truman and
tennis with Truman's breeddecessor as Vice President, Henry Wallace. He
became friends with the James Bond Novelisy and Freeman, who
also worked in British Security Services.
Speaker 7 (28:37):
Then in London. They saw each other from time to time,
and it was no surprise when it came to writing
a screenplay if you only lived twice, that the producers
turned to Roll rather than someone else to write it.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Of course, one of the things that darl Is most
famously associated with is chocolate, and this was a deep
and abiding love.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
When I was at boarding school when we were fifteen
sixteen seventeen, the big Cadbridge chocolate factory in England. For
some reason they chose my school and the housemaster was
sent eighty boxes of chocolate in plain brown cardboard. I
remember it, and you opened it up and inside were
(29:18):
about eight different bars of chocolates with different things in
the middle, and you marked each chocolate from one to
ten marks, and you made a comment rotten, delicious, beastly,
too bitter to anything. But that told me, and it
would tell anyone, that inside these giant chocolate factories there
(29:41):
is an inventing room where men and women in white coats,
scientists are walking around trying to make new and delicious chocolates.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
And so the idea of inventedness and chocolate and confectionery
and candy was set in all at a very young age,
and the idea, the excitement of these chocolate bars never
left him.
Speaker 5 (30:03):
Did you know that he's invented chocolate ice cream so
that it stays cold for hours and hours without being
in the refrigerator. That's impossible, said little Charlie, staring at
his grandfather. Of course, it's impossible, said Grandpa Joe. It's
completely absurd, But mister Willy Wonka has done it.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
He wrote the screenplay for the movie of Charlie and
the Chocolate Battery, but he was frustrated by the casting choice,
which seems incredible given that the movie that came out
in nineteen seventy one has the iconic performance of Gene
Wilder as Willy Wonka, but Dahl wanted the great British
comedian Spike Milligan because he felt that perhaps Wilder was
(30:49):
too safe for choice. What's interesting is that actually they
seem to have been kindred spirits. Wilder took the role
on the proviso that he would make his introduction as
Willie Wonker on screen in a very particular way, and
that is the way that if you've seen Oneka seventy one,
you will know that Wonka appears behind the gates of
his factory with a stoop and a limp, leaning heavily
(31:12):
on a cane, and there's a point of which he
appears to lose his balance, and then he does a
tumble forward and stands up and is full of bright,
sparky energy. And it's the brilliant introduction that he puts
to the character.
Speaker 11 (31:24):
I said, I like to come out with a cane
and be crippled. And I said, because no one will
know from that time on whether I'm lying or telling
the truth. He said, you mean, if we don't do that,
you won't do the part. I said, yeah, And that's
what I'm saying Okay, okay, we'll do it. And I
(31:51):
meant it too, because it was a tricky part. But
that element of who knows is he lying or is
he telling the truth was what my main motor wife.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
People call it the darkness in Darl's writing, the edge.
They're not entirely safe, they're not entirely sure, and I
think this is evidenced by the fact that so many
of the child characters that are the heroes of darl
stories are in perilous situations, and yet throughout Dahl there's
also elevening of that peril. Dahl himself was on record
(32:23):
as saying, you know, you have to let people think
that evil could win, but you mustn't let it do so.
It was one of his tenets for writing a good
children's book. There had to be a genuine sense of peril,
but there has to be a happy and positive outcome.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Dahl was adamant that his stories were in entertainment.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
They were an encouragement to read, so that children would
read many more books. But of course his first audience
was often his own children, and his children tell a
tale of how he was effectively the BFG.
Speaker 12 (32:54):
Every night before we went to sleep. My father used
to tell my sister Lucy and I as story. He
told about fantastic mister Fox this way, and actually sometime
later he told us about the Big Friendly Giant, which
is the BFG.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
As part of a stunt prank, just a bit of
entertainment his children, he would pretend to be the giant,
blowing dreams through their window through a bamboo garden cane.
Speaker 12 (33:17):
He would write our names in a weed killer on
the grass and tell us the fairies had been.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
If they reacted positively to a story, that was a
clue that it would go somewhere.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
I have such a terror of boring the reader that
I always condense my work into a short, short, and
shorter and shorter. And then I began to have children
of my own, and again, without any thought of ever
(33:48):
wanting to write a children's sport clupe, I used to
try to make them up a story every night, which
lots of fathers and mothers do, and I find it
rather difficult. It's a good one every night, But now
and again I would make one, and the next night
there would say, do go on with the one you
(34:09):
were telling this last night about the peach that grew
a grow something And when this went on for several
nights with one story, which was about the peach that
never stopped growing, I thought, well, why shouldn't I try
and write that to me? So I sat down started
writing you, James, the Giant Peach, and it was published
(34:32):
and it did right way. EI thought, well, I'll do another,
So I did Charlie in the Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
That being said, when he showed an early draft of
Charlie and Chocolate Factory to a nephew back in the
nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Uncle Rold, I think is rotten, was the response.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
However, darl had never been a well man since his
accident in the Second World Wood suffered from chronic back pain.
He perhaps didn't have the healthier lifestyle with cigarettes and
a love of wine and fine food. He dining from
a blood disease in nineteen ninety, age seventy four.
Speaker 5 (35:05):
When eventually you do finally have to give up or
want to give up, whichever comes first, when I die,
When you die, is there any particular way in which
you want to have been remembered.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
Well? And you can quote ask a wild and so
when I am gone, I hope it will be said
my sins were scarlet, but my books were read.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
What he left us is an incredible creative legacy, and
the Rod Dal Museum does what it can to work
with that, to encourage the writers of tomorrow to learn
from Rod's creative practice and see how by feeding your
imagination with inspiration, by working over and over again at
the hard graft of creativity and then sharing it telling
your stories to an audience, that's how a legacy like
(35:56):
Dolls can be produced.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Yes, I've never wanted to be anything special. Actually, I've
always had drives. If I set out to do a thing,
I'm jolly well going to finish it and do it promptly.
And I'm not the only one who has that. Half
the world has it. The other half doesn't. And that's
the trouble.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
Steve Gardham and he's the Royal Doll Museum Director in Buckinghamshire, England,
and my goodness, what a job that must be preserving
and protecting and promoting the works of one of the
(36:38):
great writers of the twentieth century and he was indeed,
writing for children is no less a task, no less
important than writing for any other audience. In my goodness,
so many adults have been moved by his work too,
and that's what makes him great. And what a story
he was telling. While he was in America in his
intelligence work, he got to meet Hemingway, President Truman, and
(37:01):
also he got to really recall those incidences when he
was a kid being visited with all that great chocolate
from the Cadbury's factory for the kids to test, and
most kids would just eat the chocolate, and his memory
of that was that wow. Inside that factory must be
an inventing room. He wrote the screenplay We Learned Willie
(37:25):
Wanka in the Chocolate Factory. Gene Wold to the Star
talking about what he did, the choices he made, and
how important they were to him. His characters were never simple,
any more than mel Blank's characters were simple. He said
in the end that there has to be a genuine
sense of peril in the stories, but there always has
to be a positive outcome. And I love what he said.
(37:48):
I have such a terror of boring my reader, he said.
But of course he had children and he wanted to
tell them stories, and so he did, and some had
staying power. Some of them became the stories we all
know the story of Roald Dahal, his connection to America
and to all of us who live here and the world.
(38:10):
Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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