January 26, 2026 • 43 mins
In his early 20s, Dahl flies harrowing combat missions for the Royal Air Force until it all comes to a sudden, violent end. Reassigned to the U.S., Dahl is quickly drawn into a world of power, wealth, and influence under the guidance of two mysterious mentors.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Rolled Dall. He's twenty three years old.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
As he soars through the sky, the cockpit of the
RAF fighter he's sitting in has no roof. He's six
foot six, so his head juts well up above the windshield,
completely exposed. His goggles offer zero protection at this speed.
Wind and sand and debris wire just assaulting his face.
He's basically blind, and every single breath is a battle.
(00:36):
He thinks he may have veered off course, has no
idea where he is, somewhere over the Libyan desert. Maybe
he can't get his bearings. Blind and a chaos, just
desperately trying to navigate while enemy fire.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Tears through the air around him.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
He can feel the vibrations of bullets wheezing past his head. Oh,
and Doll got inside a plane for the very first
time less than six months earlier. Writer Matthew Denison tells
us the Doll had taken off from northern Egypt this
evening in his pocket, classified documents pinpointing his entire squadron's location.
(01:12):
Within the hour, the desert sunset gives way the absolute
darkness his fuel gauge dropping, Doll realizes with growing dread
that he has strayed hopelessly off course, then catastrophe. The
underbelly of his aircraft catches a boulder hiding in the darkness.
Metal shrieks as the plane's nose pitches forward and crashes
(01:33):
to the ground. Crumpling like paper, Doll is catapulted against
the instrument panel. The impact drives his nose backward through
his face, His skull fractures, blood runs hot and.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Thick down his skin.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Denison writes, the doll can no longer feel where his
teeth should be. Disoriented, he does feel the approaching heat
of flames that threaten to consume both him and his aircraft.
His overall's already burning. Doll drags himself away from the
twisted wreckage as fast as he can. Each inch across
the sand is agony behind him. The inferno reaches the planes' ammunition.
(02:13):
Its machine guns begin firing wildly, bullets kicking up sands
in all directions.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
By some miracle of chance or fate, Doll.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Has crawled just far enough the bullets don't find him.
As shock overtakes his battered body, sleep finally claims him.
Let's now travel back to a year before that devastating crash.
This is before Doll was sent to Washington, before he
(02:44):
was recruited into the Irregulars, before he spent weekends mixing
Martiniz with the President. Doll's just a guy in a
room in his early twenties, trying to figure out what
to do with his life. All Doll knows for sure
is that right now he needs to escape his family's
home in Buckinghamshire, which feels like a damn prison. He's
desperate for some adventure. Dall is someone who's always always
(03:06):
looking for adventure. It's impossible to say for certain where
this spirit comes from, but the tragedy of his youth
offers a pretty good clue. When Dall was three, his
seven year old sister, Astrey, died of appendicitis. The family
had barely processed this loss when just three weeks later,
Dall's father died. Technically, Doll's father died of pneumonia, but
(03:28):
he basically chose not to fight the illness because of
his depression over Astrey. The two deaths in a row
like that were an earthquake for young Doll. Buckingham Shure,
despite its beauty, is stained by these memories for him.
If you can remember the forbidden forest scenes in the
Harry Potter movies.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
You've glimpsed these woods, but.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
What appears magical on screen is suffocating to Doll. He
understood that if he didn't break free soon, he'd be trapped,
bogged down here, forced into the tedious business that his father,
a shipbroker, have been so successful in. Dall's desire for
adventure is something he shares in common with a lot
of great writers, desperate to experience everything in order to
(04:13):
have something to write about a plot, a character, a situation,
and emotion. Writers in Dolls era are expected to be
deeply physically engaged with the world, not just observers but participants,
which feels different from today right Today's writers often prioritize
things like activism and family and intellectual engagement over physical
risk taking. But physicality aside, there's no substitute for adventure
(04:37):
and new experiences in a writer's life. My creative writing
students at Yale always asks me how to make it
as screenwriters. I encourage them to go live their lives
a little get engaged with the world in some fashion.
Because young writers who just move right to la after
graduation and start work in an agency's mailroom all end
up writing scripts that feel less like real life and
more like echoes of TV shows they've seen. When Dahl
(05:01):
graduates school, he sets out on his first grade adventure
and applies to Shell Oil. I know, I know, becoming
a trainee at an oil company does not sound like
a cutting edge prospect, but back in the late thirties,
it is as exciting as it gets. Shell Oil is
one of the hottest companies in the world. Here's Tony
Curtis trying to woo Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It
(05:22):
Hot by masquerading as the heir to guess what company
I want you. Yes, so did my father and my grandfather.
You might say we had a passion for shows. That's
why we name the oil company after it. Here are you.
There's massive demand for oil, for butting car companies and aviation.
Joining Shells like joining an AI company today. And the
(05:43):
most attractive part for Doll is that you're guaranteed to
be said somewhere across the globe. Adventure served up in
a silver platter. Doll gets posted in East Africa, fully
aware what a commitment this is, As he points out
in an interview by Peter Wallace and thrill Maker from
Night five.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
You see, in those days they didn't have airplanes, so
we're talking about nineteen thirty five. To go to someone
like Africa, it was a long way. It was a
two and a half week trip in the boat. When
you went, you went for three years.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
But it's all totally thrilling.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Doll immerses himself in the local culture, learning Swahili and
enjoying the adventure of it all. He doesn't realize it,
but he's setting himself up for a lifetime's worth of
characters too. When Daal invents Charlie Bucket of chocolate factory fame,
he actually models him on one of the young African
boys he befriends in Tanzania. It's only on later drafts,
under pressure from his British publishers, that Charlie becomes white.
(06:40):
But it's fascinating to think how groundbreaking the book might
have been. Charlie's family represents extreme poverty. Remember those four
grandparents all sharing that one giant bed. Making them black
would have transformed the story into a powerful statement about
racial inequality, and when Charlie has his triumph at the end,
it could have served as a broader metaphor for overcomings
the stomach prejudice. Anyway, Doll's work for Shell eventually.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Grows tedious for him.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
He's basically selling oil to farmers across the vastness of Tanzania.
Not a great deal of intelligence or imagination was required.
He later admits the idea of rising through the ranks
to become an executive someday sounds like death to him.
He feels the itch to keep moving. But here's what
I think is really driving Doll. He's trying to figure
(07:25):
out not only what kind of man he is, but
what it means to be a man. After Dall lost
his father, he was brought up by his mother and
his many many sisters. There were never any adult men
in his life. Why this is so relevant is that
the different worlds Doll goes into in his twenties are
like the most basic fantasies of what a child thinks
it means to be a man in the mid twentieth century.
(07:47):
First he'll tried business with Shell oil, then head to
war to become a fighter pilot. Then he becomes a spy,
a serial playboy, and seducer of women. He's trying on
all these different macho exteriors, seeing what fits, and I mean,
I get it, though we're living in very different times.
I struggle with this too. Am I a man not
in the way my grandfather would recognize? I have a
(08:09):
wife and kids and a career. But with a gun
to my head, I could maybe tell you what pliers
are for. Maybe for Dahl in the late nineteen thirties,
World War Two is knocking some of his heroes, like
Hemingway and Tolkien fought in the First World War. Now
history is offering his chance. He hears about British forces
(08:30):
and Tanzania needing help, and he jumps at it. He
abandoned shell oil and enlists as a Special Constable with
the King's African Rifles. His assignment is to arrest any
German attempting to escape across the border into neutral East Africa.
Dahl helps detain a couple hundred Germans whose only crime
is being German. He moves these innocent people into a
(08:52):
camp of barbed wire to be held for who knows
how long. It Shakestall's conscience. This may not be the
adventure he's after. During the long days patrolling the border
and the vicious sun. Dall watches warplanes fly overhead. Now
that looks like freedom to him. He gets an idea.
He'll volunteer for the Royal Air Force, though he's never
(09:13):
even been inside a plane before.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
He buys a car and drives six.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Hundred miles to Nairobi to enroll in flight training school.
He quickly realizes he's not a great fit. Literally, Doll
crams himself into Gloucester Gladiators, Tiger Boths and Hawker Hurricanes.
Picture the plane from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
when Harrison Ford and Sean Connery escape from German fighters.
These are open air cockpits designed for pilots who are
(09:40):
five foot seven to five ten.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
At six six, Doll's head sticks way up.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Above the windshield like an NBA player squeezed into a
tiny convertible with the top down, his knees pulled up
to his chest, and his face constantly battered by rushing wind.
Despite all that, soaring up in the air, something magical happens.
Falls in love with flying. This passion will re emerge
later in his writing. Several of his young characters escape
(10:07):
their earth bound troubles by literally flying away.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Most famously in James and the Giant Peach.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
The British Air Force is in such dire need of
fighters that Dolls quickly sent to the front lines before
he even completes combat training. Sixteen other newly minted pilots
go with him, but by war's end, only three of
the sixteen will survive, including Dol. That's how close we
were to never having heard of Willy, Wonka or Matilda.
(10:37):
According to writer Nadia Cohen, Doll's first kill comes quickly.
He shoots down a German plane and returns to base
with the sobering realization that he's probably just ended another
man's life. His conscience is rattled again, just like during
those border patrol arrests. Is he built for this. He's
in his early twenties, He's sensitive, thoughtful, and he knows
(10:58):
what it feels like to lose a father and sister
well before their time. Now he's taken the life of
a young stranger, someone who probably has his own father, sister, brother.
Dahl knows precisely what that family will endure. The next day,
Doll finds himself in another air battle. He shoots down
a second German plane, killing another pilot. He's affected, but
(11:19):
he finds it gets a bit easier to compartmentalize.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Two days later, in the.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Battle of Athens, Doll and the squadron are vastly outnumbered.
It'll be a miracle if any of them survive. Dahl
describes it as a long dog fight in which fifteen
hurricanes fought for half an hour with between one hundred
and fifty and two hundred German bombers. Four of Doll's
fellow pilots are shot down right before his eyes. Doll
(11:46):
spends every last bit of ammunition he carries. When he
finally lands back a base, his plane is riddled with
bullet holes. Dall ends up needing a full month to recuperate.
Then he hears the decimated remnants of his squadron are
reassembling in Haifa. More adventure awaits, Doll finds another car
(12:08):
and drives to Israel. He flies over French airbases every
day for the next month, according to Cohen, shooting down
at least two more aircraft. Doll keeps crashing his own planes,
but always somehow walks away until the crash that open
this episode, When Dol eventually writes that horrific crash into
(12:28):
his memoirs, he conspicuously excludes the fact that there was
another pilot with him that day in the Libyan desert.
Maybe dolphinks having company made the whole thing less heroic
even more curious, official RAF records showed Doll crash landed
due to low fuel after getting lost, but Dallin says
he was shot down.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
In both of Doll's memoirs about his childhood, he perpetuates
myths like this about himself. Now, to be fair, the
memoirs are written in the style we associate with his fiction,
so it's almost like a wink. Don't believe everything I'm
telling you, folks. Dahl has the same habit of mythmaking
in interviews throughout his life. Now, with some celebrities, we
just call this straight up lying, but with Dol, I'm
(13:11):
not sure i'd use that word.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
It's as if he's acknowledging that people expect him.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
To be Willy Wonka or the BFG, so they shouldn't
take what he says at face value. But of course
this makes his later problematic remarks and interviews more complicated.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
To deal with.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
We'll grapple with how to reconcile Doll's dedication to defeating
the Nazis as a young man, which is at least
somewhat inextricable from helping save the Jews of Europe, with
the charges of anti Semitism against him as a much
older man. For weeks after Doll's crash in the Libyan desert,
(13:46):
he lies in a military hospital, unable to even open
his eyes. Doctors are sure he'll be blind, He'll spend
the rest of his life in darkness. Here's Dol, many
years later, reflecting on the toll of all these crashes.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
I've had so many operations. I'm tied to you with
bits of stream. I've had two hip replacements, my spines
be not praised on many times from an airplane crash,
and this year I had three massive operations on my tummy.
But I'm all right there. But I'm a bit of
a wreck physically.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I always laugh when I hear him say tummy. There
Doll speaks the way he writes, there's this childlike quality
of someone who never fully grew up, an old man
who still says tummy with a completely straight face. Woven
inside a much more gruesome, sobering account of horrible pain
and The mixture of those elements are kind of the
hallmarks of his books, too, right, the juxtaposition of childlike
(14:40):
wonder alongside genuine darkness. It's the bfg's gentle dream catching
coexisting with child gobbling giants and the whimsy of Willy
Wonka alongside children facing horrific if comical fates. Dall ends
up spending six long months in that hospital. Slowly and
almost moraulously, he regains his vision. He emerges with the
(15:03):
knowledge that he's cheated death, which encourages him to take
even more risks going forward. He now knows he can
survive a fall. Doll isn't alone among great artists who
spent significant time recovering from catastrophic injuries. Free to Callo
had devastating trauma from a bus crash when she was
slightly younger than daul spending months in a cast. That's
(15:24):
when she began to think about those haunting portraits. Similarly,
Stephen King was hit by a van and nearly killed,
leading to months of painful recovery. He was older than
Doll or Callo, but he had not yet written some
of his best work. In these long recoveries, not only
do you learn to endure the solitude and loneliness of
the creative life.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
But you also have so much time to reflect on
your ideas.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
And maybe you also gain insight into suffering or pain
or healing.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Like Kllo and King, the lifelong.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Chronic pain that Dahl deals with after the crash majorly
infiltrates his work and reshapes his personality. Just recently, the
US Navy published a confidential report Odin's Eye, suggesting the
extreme conditions faced by fighter pilots HIGI maneuvers and repeated
physical trauma like dollhad, can lead to long term effects
on memory, mood, and behavior. Could lingering brain trauma from
(16:13):
his pilot days have contributed to Doll's sharp temper. Could
the injuries account for what some people very much, including
his first wife, describe as his prickly personality. His wife's
nickname for him, after all, was rolled the Rotten And
might the brain trauma also account for his vivid, dark imagination.
His headaches from the crash becomes so intense that he
(16:35):
blacks out regularly, which is not what you want to
hear if you're his commanding officer. Setting him up in
the air, Dall is desperate to keep flying to keep
the adventure going, but the RAF grounds him.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
His flying days are over.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Dolls a mess, Terrified, he'll have no choice but to
go back to Buckinghamshire, back to that landscape haunted by
childhood loss, back to a conventional life that seems to
him worse than death. Luckily, that's when Dolls recruited to
Washington for an avenger so strange that even his imagination
couldn't have conjured it.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
In our last episode, I talked about.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Doll's life in the Shadowy Spy game in Washington with
the Irregulars. He quickly makes friends there with other spies who,
like him, go on to create some of the most
iconic cultural touchstones of the twentieth century, like Ian Fleming,
the creator of a spy as famous for how he
likes as Martinis as anything else.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
A Martini shaken nutstud and.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Doll's Georgetown roommate David Ogilvy, who later revolutionizes modern advertising
and serves as an inspiration for Don Draper on mad Men.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
You never say thank you, That's what the money is for.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Plus Noel Coward, the British playwright and wit who redefined theater,
interviewed here by Dick Cavott.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
You're what is the word for? Win Warne has terrific
prolific qualities.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Ellen Yeah, or of the most influential storytellers and fabulous
of the century, all hanging out together playing spy verse spy. Predictably,
as these charismatic operatives carry out their spy work, they
increasingly find themselves under the FBI's suspicious gaze. Jag Or Hoover,
the authoritarian head of the Bureau, has very rigid rules
(18:20):
for his agents, identical suits, military short haircuts, and absolutely
no facial hair, so imagine how he feels about these
arrogant playboys of British intelligence operating on his turf. The
FBI turned a blind eye to the Irregulars when they started,
but at this point it's like, are we really just
going to let these British secret agents do whatever the
hell they want on American soil? The Bureau attempts to
(18:41):
get a bill through Congress putting the irregulars, including Doll,
under its supervision.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
They open up secret.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Files on Doll and every other irregular. The noose is tightening. Finally,
William Stevenson, the head of the Irregulars, has no choice
but to agree that all one hundred and thirty seven
British intelligence agents in the US will run all their
missions by Jagger Hoover. But no one thinks Stevenson will
actually honor this agreement. According to writer Jenet Conan, stevenson
(19:07):
superiors in England dispatch emissaries to him to verify his
compliants spies infiltrating spies.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
One in particular, who will.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Call Agent X, keeps feeding damaging reports about the irregulars
back to London. Stevenson is furious and turns to his
most resourceful agent for help, Roll Doll. Dall devises an
elegant trap. He invites Agent X to his George shown
apartment for drinks, a seemingly innocent social call between colleagues,
But hidden within Dall's living room is a microphone capturing
(19:36):
every word. As the evening progresses and booze flows, Dall
skillfully steers the conversation, encouraging X to disparage his employers
back in Britain. The secretly recorded conversation is promptly dispatched
to London. Agent X is recalled immediately, the threat to
Stephenson neutralized for now through Doll's cunning years later. This
(19:58):
real life espionage operation will resurface in Doll's fiction, transformed
into a chilling short story about a wealthy husband and
wife who invite a younger couple to their home. The
hosts secretly install a microphone in the guest bedroom, eavesdropping
on their visitors most intimate conversations. The threat of the
(20:21):
FBI has rattled Doll, making him very aware that the
Irregular's days are numbered and therefore so are his. He's
desperate not to go back home to England, to his
mother's house. But what's next? What's he really trained for?
He sees his pals Fleming and Ogilvy and Coward setting
themselves up for future career success in other fields. They
all have mentors who seem to be guiding them, so
(20:43):
Doll begins looking for his own mentor.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
One way I.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Could have structured this podcast, by the way, is to
tell Doll's story by following the hero's journey. Joseph Campbell's
outline for great adventurers from Odysseus to Luke Skywalker, which
Doll fits to a tea. All heroes, according to Campbell,
both fictional and real, go through a series of distinct stages.
First is a call to adventure when the hero gets
(21:08):
pulled out of their ordinary world by a quest for Dall.
This is being recruited to Washington to join the Irregulars.
Among the many stages that follow, there's one particularly relevant here,
meeting the mentor. Once the hero commits to their quest,
a guide or magical helper appears. Think Obi Wan Kenobi
and Star Wars or Morpheus. In the Matrix for Dall,
(21:31):
it's Charles Marsh, an arrogant, well connected, obscenely wealthy newspaper tycoon.
Marsh started out as a journalist, rising up to become
managing editor of the Cincinnati Post, but his hunger for
wealth and status led him to buy every newspaper he
could get his hands on. By the time he meets Dahl,
(21:53):
Marsh is filthy rich and has grown bored of the
newspaper game. He's putting all his energy and resources into
his passion the war effort. Here's how Robert Carrow, the
Extraordinary author of the Years of Lyndon Johnson series, describes Marsh.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Having made money. He liked to play the patron with it.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
A tall man six foot three, he had the broad,
high forehead and the beaked nose of a Roman emperor
and a manner to match tips to head waiters were
dispensed with a gesture reminiscent of a king tossing coins
to subjects. Marsh traffics and power. If you're in his orbit,
you're introduced to the right people, and you're in a
position to know and be known. Marsh own's a grand
(22:32):
mansion on our street and joy shown in which he's
always playing host. DC insiders, artists, politicians, and powerbrokers of
all sorts can just come on in, have a drink, talk,
or more often negotiate to give you a sense of
the house and the man. Marsh commissions a large oil
portrait of himself and hangs it over the mantle in
the main sitting room. I love that detail. It says
(22:54):
so much about the guy, doesn't it. I'm imagining my
wife's reaction if I brought home a big old painting
of my life and announced we were hanging it over
the couch. Should be into it, right. Vice President Henry
Wallace is a constant presence at Marsh's mansion. Cabinet members, media, titans,
and diplomats circulate through the rooms, and so does young
Roll Doll, Marsh's oldest daughter, Antoinette says, of Doll, we
(23:16):
all just adored him, especially my father. We sort of
adopted him. Rold was a real charmer when he wanted
to be. He was great fun to be around. Adopted
is the right word. This is the family that Doll wants,
not the one colored by tragedy in Buckingham Shure. He
wants the one that offers the key to success in Washington,
and having access to all the visitors at our Street
(23:38):
is a gold mine for a young spy. One night,
at a game of high stakes poker, Doll is in
a funk, losing hand after hand, drinking too much, growing frustrated.
He doesn't have much money, so every dollar.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
He loses is giant.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
But he likes his next hand, so he goes all in,
not realizing or maybe not yet savvy enough to appreciate,
that he's playing against Washington powerbrokers, the ultimate bluffers and hustlers.
Doll loses his entire paycheck on this one hand, which
is devastating for him the player he loses it to,
though Harry Truman Dall may be getting cleaned out, but
(24:17):
the information intel and connections he's making are priceless. Charles
Marsh at this moment, is in his fifties, he's married,
and he also has a much, much younger girlfriend. Did
you not see that coming from a guy who hangs
a giant painting of himself in his living room. This
younger woman happens to have a very whimsical dolli in
(24:37):
name Alice Glass. She's six feet tall, with movie star
good looks and long blonde hair. According to Conit, the
first time Marsh sees Alice, she's stark naked, a pale,
shimmering goddess rising unexpectedly from his swimming pool. This was
when Marsh was in his forties, one of the most
powerful newspaper magnets in the country. Alice was nineteen. During
(25:02):
their relationship, Alice carries on her own affairs with several
other men, most of whom are in Marsha's social circle.
According to Marsh's daughter Antoinette, again, Alice has a crush
on Doll, but Doll wisely rejects her.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
He has so much to lose. Doll knows what.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Happened when Lancelot slept with King Arthur's wife, namely the
fall of camelot. Alice is furious at Doll's rejection. Men
do not turn her down. She's cold to Doll whenever
she sees him from then on. By the way, one
man who did not turn Alice down was Lyndon Johnson.
LBJ was POWs with Marsh. Marsh put the weight of
(25:38):
his newspaper editorials behind LBJ and helped him win his
first race. LBJ paid Marsh back by having an affair
with Alice.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Marsh was apoplectic when he discovered it. He got LBJ elected,
but Alice in lbj's affair was much more than a fling.
It continued for twenty five years. What eventually broke them
up was Alice's passionate opposition to the Vietnam War. In
all his time with Marsh, Doll has always presented himself
(26:11):
as a simple employee of the British Embassy. So how
does Marsh feel when he discovers that young Doll is
actually a spy? Will he be even more annoyed with
Doll than he was with his other lying, backstabbing, lanky protege.
Will he cast him into the wilderness? This young man
he's been so generous with has been infiltrating his home,
reporting back to the Brits on all his fancy guests.
(26:34):
It's just the opposite. Marsh has the same goal as
Doll to defeat the Nazis, so he's tickled when he
discovers Doll has been keeping the secret Antoinette, Marsh remembers,
my father said, gluck, here, we're on the same team.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
We can help each other.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Marsh quickly becomes essential to Doll's spy work, introducing him
to influential people and tutoring him on cultivating secret sources
which he picked up in his newspaper days. By this time,
Doll is already well versed in the art of seduction.
He plays to Marsha's ego by asking the older man
advice about his future and tantalizing him with a pique
(27:10):
at his orders from the Irregulars whenever he can just
enough to whet Marsh's appetite. When Doll spends a weekend
with the Roosevelts and Hyde Park, for instance, he makes
a private copy of his report and surreptitiously gives it
to Marsh, which the older man hungrily consumes. In their
private talks. Doll even adds a few details he observed
about FDR that are too scandalous to put in his
(27:31):
official report. Isaiah Berlin, who works in the British Embassy
and later becomes one of the most influential philosophers of
the century, is also summoned on occasion to the R
Street Mansion to see how Marsh can help the war effort.
Berlin's take on Marsh is that there's a screw faintly
loose somewhere.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
I felt frightened of him.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Berlin says, as if in the presence of someone slightly unbalanced.
If Doll feels the same, he keeps it to himself.
Marsh is a man who can deliver him the war,
screw loose or not. Continuing his work for the Irregulars.
Part of Doll's assignment is to romance his way through
a bevy of older, powerful, influential women. His dance card
(28:15):
is a who's who of American wealth and privilege. Elizabeth Arden,
the cosmetic superstar, Milicent Rogers, the standard oil Heiress, and
Evelyn Walks Maclin, the gold Mine Heiress. Doll's looks and confidence,
plus his background as a fighter pilot, help explain why
he's so attractive. To women, but he also just seems
to understand women in a way the most men, especially
(28:36):
men of that time, aren't capable of or don't care to.
Proof lives in his fiction, some of his most memorable
characters are female Sophie from the BFG Verrukos Salt and
Violet Beauregard from a certain chocolate factory, and of course
Matilda Wormwood.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
These characters aren't just.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Unique and inventive, they've a Vonne ability and a truth
that his male characters often lack. Dahl also finds time
for affairs that have nothing to do with espionage. One
of his most significant relationships is with the beautiful French
movie star Annabella.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
She's deeply affected by the war.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Her brother had been shot and killed trying to escape
the Nazis, which may well have been what.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Bonded her in Dall.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
When they meet, she's already married to someone rich and successful.
Like so many of Dahl's other girlfriends, Annabella's husband is
movie star Tyrone Power Power was one of Hollywood's first
action heroes. It's unclear how Dahl feels about cuckholding this
giant star, though honestly its possible Power doesn't even care
since the rumor is that he's having his own affair
(29:43):
with Judy Garland.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
But as we'll see later, Dall.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Is drawn to women who are, were, or had recently
been in long term relationships with handsome movie stars.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Maybe it's an ego trip.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
When a woman who's within Adonna celebrity chooses to be
with Doll instead. Dall credits Annabella with teaching him about sex.
Like Charles Marsh, she becomes a mentor. Dall stays in
touch with her for decades, often seeking her advice during
turbulent years and his future marriages. By a certain point,
(30:14):
it feels like Doll has dated or seduced every available
and unavailable woman in Washington. He's pooped, but British Intelligence
is not done with him. They agree, at least to
transfer him out of DC. For someone always seeking adventure
and looking for glamorous, beautiful women to spend time with,
Dall is sent to what will be his personal xanad
(30:34):
Manhattan of the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
The Irregulars have their New York offices on.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
The thirty fifth and thirty six floors of thirty Rockefeller Center,
the same iconic Art deco skyscraper that will later house
this Tonight Show, Late Night and Saturday Night Live, which
seems like a super weird place to stash an organization
devoted to conducting spy work. Maybe operating out of thirty
Rock is partly a way to convince the book that
they're not doing anything too shady. After all, their public
(31:04):
goal is simply to promote British interests in America. Fascinating
side note, Doll is mesmerized by the incredible speed of
the elevator at thirty Rock, which is unlike anything he's
ever experienced and becomes an inspiration for his Chocolate Factory sequel,
Charlie and the Glass Elevator. Dall instantly takes to the
(31:25):
glamorous scene. Despite the challenges of the war, the city
is still a hub of fashion and arts and nightlife.
This is the era of the Stork Club, with regulars
like Sinatra and Hemingway, the Copacabana, the Cotton Club, and
the twenty one Club. Doll dives in headfirst, ringing out
every last job of it that he possibly can. Amid
the champagne and midnight conversations, he finds himself even more
(31:48):
in his element than he'd been in Washington. Working even
more in his favor. The war has led to a
significant shortage of eligible men in the city, although my
wife would say there's always a shortage of eligible men
in the city, which I think is an insult to me,
like if there were more eligible men that I wouldn't
have gotten so lucky.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I digress.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
The point is Dall is even more in demand as
a romantic partner in New York than he'd been in DC,
which is saying something again. According to Marsh's daughter Antoinette,
Doll was very arrogant with his women, but he got
away with it. The uniform didn't hurt one bit, and
he was an ace. Girls just fell at Rolled's feet.
(32:32):
Dalla is still obsessed with figuring out what he's going
to do when the war ends. Going back to Buckingham
Shure is out of the question. His ambitions are coalescing
around storytelling. Keep in mind this is before he writes
the Gremlin story that gets him invited to FDR's White House.
Right now, Dolla is mostly writing short autobiographical stories, and
they're all rejected for publication. He grows incredibly frustrated, which
(32:55):
is mirrored in some of his later protagonists like Matilda
or James from the Giant who will themselves to greatness
despite being cruelly underestimated. Dall's first break as a writer
is one of those amazing stories of luck meeting talent
at just.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
The right moment.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I truly love this origin story. Here's Dahl telling you
years later in Thrill Maker, a nineteen eighty five documentary
where he's interviewed during a visit back to Norway.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
They wanted people who had been in combat to publish
stories in the American papers to give Britain a boost,
and a man was sent to me, a famous writer
called CS Forrester, who wrote Captain horn Blur stories. And
he can't see me, and he said, I will take
you out to lunch and you will tell me almost
(33:43):
exciting adventure in the RAF and I will write it
and it'll be published because I can always get them published,
and it'll be good for Britain. So I said, lovely.
I was terribly excited to go out to this famous writer.
I'd read everything you'd written.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
CS Fourster isn't as much today, but the guy is
a giant in Doll's era. It's the equivalent of Aaron Sorkin.
Just swinging by my office and asking me to lunch.
As we've seen, Doll does not lack confidence, so he's
not as petrified going into that meeting as I would
have been.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
He continues.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
We had lunch, and halfway through lunch we had roast
duck and he was trying to eat his, and I
was trying to tell him the story, and he was
trying to take notes. And I said, look, I'll go
home tonight and scribble this down roughly and send it
to you, and you couldn't put it right, and that'll
(34:35):
be it too, that'll save you and you can eat
your roast duck in a piece.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
And he said, our super So I did it.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
You know what I love thinking about here? What if
Forrester hadn't ordered the duck. What if he'd had a
ham sandwich, and therefore a free hand to write notes.
What's about to happen might never have happened, and this
podcast would be about some other writer. It's these tiny
moments of chance, a roast duck rather than a ham sandwich,
but sometimes alter the entire trajectory of a life.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Doc continues, and it's funny to think when I got
home in the evening, and started writing it. It sort
of went very nicely, and I felt the story growing
under me, and so I wrote it and I sent
it to him. Didn't expect me hear anymore, And a
week later I got a letter from him saying, I
was expecting you to send me notes. You've sent me
(35:29):
a complete story. Did you know that you were a writer?
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Did you know that you were a writer? When you're
starting out, hearing that you actually have talent and might
be able to do the crazy thing you dream of
doing from someone who's already made it is everything in
a completely different field. Jerry Seinfeld talks about doing one
of his first ever stand up sets when a much
more established comic, Jackie Mason, calls him over, telling Jerry
(35:55):
how jealousy is because Jerry is clearly going to be
a huge star. Seinfeld talks about that quick interaction with
Mason being enough to live off of for years. It's
a stamp of approval, and Forrester is true to his
word about getting the story published under Doll's name. His
agent secures it a slot in the Saturday Evening Post,
which has a circulation of about three million at the time.
(36:18):
Dolls paid one hundred and eighty seven dollars for the story,
which is like three thousand dollars today. It's printed over
two pages in the August first, nineteen forty two edition.
But all of that is frosting. Did you know you
were a writer? Is what will carry Doll for years.
Doll is now a published writer. He's twenty six years old.
(36:39):
In many ways, his life has just begun. The elation
of being published is soon tempered by a major change
in circumstance for Dol. As the war ends, Dolls informed
that his services in America are no longer required. He
hasn't seen his mother or sister in years. He takes
(37:01):
a deep breath and goes back to Buckinghamshire. The ghosts
of his father and sister hang over the place. He's
been going from adventure to adventure, avoiding his home for years.
His mother, who can guilt trip with the best of them,
insists that her beloved only son move in with her
while he's in town, and for a time, it's not
as bad as Doll imagined.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
According to Conint.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Again, Doll loses himself in the comforting rhythms of rural life.
He manages his mother's farm, tends to the livestock and
loafs now. I can't stress enough what a bunker's transition
this must have been. From international man of mystery seducing
his way across DC in New York on a Monday,
to a small town farmer living at home with mom
that Friday. Writer Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway's wife, visits Stall around
(37:47):
this time and says she perceives a suffocating atmosphere of
adoration by his mother. Doll soon begins gambling again, but
it's not Harry Truman sitting across the table anymore. He
gets into dog racing, which I mean has that ever
led to good things for anyone? He even breeds his
own greyhounds to compete, and shockingly loses a ton of
the family's money at the track. Doll is spiraling, his
(38:11):
sisters start worrying. Will Dahl become one of those people
who is electric as a young man with the light
in his eyes and a world of potential. Then returns
from his adventures to drink, gamble, lose his hair, gain
a belly, and live at a ho hum existence in
his mother's basement, squandering all that youthful promise. Luckily for Doll,
his great mentor his obi one is watching. Charles Marsh
(38:36):
decides to intervene. He practically kidnaps Doll away from Buckinghamshire,
brings him to New York and puts him up in
his lavish townhouse on ninety second Street. If Dall had
been paying his own way, he'd more likely be in
a studio apartment with roommates on the Lower East Side.
Marsh insists on underwriting all of Doll's expenses until Dol
can start making his own money as a writer. That's
(38:58):
how strongly Marsh believes in him. I'm blown away by this,
and I think Doll is too. He basically puts it
all in a book later on. It's Willy Wonka handing
over his factory to Charlie is an act of extraordinary
patronage from a mysterious older man of means to a
young man in whom he sees great promise. Marsh believes
(39:20):
in Doll's talent every bit as much as C. S.
Forrester did, and Lake Forrester Marsh has connections. Once Marsh
has got Doll in New York, he introduces the young
writer to the most powerful magazine editor in town.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Harold Ross, the.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Eccentric, meticulous founding editor of The New Yorker. The New
Yorker then as it is now, is the ultimate destination
for short fiction. Despite his often brusque personality, Ross is
deeply committed to the writers he works with, nurturing household
names like Dorothy Parker, James Thurberr, and J. D.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Salinger.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Ross takes an instant liking to Doll's stories. This is
huge for Doll. The New Yorker buys several of dolls
stories in a row, including his now classic Skin, which
follows an old destitute man on whose back of famous
artist wants tattooed to painting. When art collectors realize it's worth,
they offered the destitute man huge amounts of money for
(40:15):
his tattoo. The story then takes a really dark turn,
implying that the collectors intend to claim the artwork off
the man's back by any means necessary. The story explores
the intersection of art and commerce, exploitation, and the high
personal cost of other people's greed, three themes that Doll
will return to in his work and in his private
(40:38):
life for decades. All of Doll's stories in this period
are dark twisty, witty, somewhat gruesome, and totally unique. And
this includes his gremlin story, which we discussed Eleanor Roosevelt
loving so much. But all sorts of readers are going
crazy for the stories. The New York Harold Tribune writes
the Dolls developing something like a cult of fans. Doll
(41:01):
can't believe it's all happening. His old pal from the Irregulars,
Noel Coward, is also a little surprised, but for a
different reason, saying about Doll, the stories are brilliant and
his imagination is fabulous. Unfortunately, there is in all of
them an underlying streak of cruelty and macabre unpleasantness and
a crudely adolescent emphasis on sex. Coward continues, this is
(41:24):
strange because rold is a sensitive and gentle creature. Mixing
his gentle, sensitive side with his attraction to cruelty and
unpleasantness is, of course, what will make Dall more successful
and more widely read than Coward or any other living writer.
That is, if he can buckle down and focus on
(41:44):
his work. Because while we've heard Dahl spend his twenties spying, seducing,
and manipulating his way across DC in New York. He's
about to fall prey to the seduction of something with
almost infinite alert. Doll, the master manipulator, is about to
discover for what it means to be manipulated by something
far more cunning than himself, something that will whisper promises
(42:06):
of glory while slowly invisibly tightening its grip around his throat,
and right now he's walking straight into its embrace. The
Secret World of Roald Dahl is produced by Imagine Audio
and Parallax Studios for iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by
(42:29):
me Aaron Tracy, produced by Matt Schrader, post production by
wind Hill Studios, with editing, scoring, and sound design by
Mark Henry Phillips. Editing by Ryan Seaton, Music by eight PM.
Executive producers Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard,
(42:50):
and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark
Henry Phillips and Eleven Laps. If you enjoyed this episode,
be sure to rate and review The Secret World of
Roll Doll on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Copyright twenty twenty six Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and Parallax
Rolled Dall. He's twenty three years old.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
As he soars through the sky, the cockpit of the
RAF fighter he's sitting in has no roof. He's six
foot six, so his head juts well up above the windshield,
completely exposed. His goggles offer zero protection at this speed.
Wind and sand and debris wire just assaulting his face.
He's basically blind, and every single breath is a battle.
(00:36):
He thinks he may have veered off course, has no
idea where he is, somewhere over the Libyan desert. Maybe
he can't get his bearings. Blind and a chaos, just
desperately trying to navigate while enemy fire.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Tears through the air around him.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
He can feel the vibrations of bullets wheezing past his head. Oh,
and Doll got inside a plane for the very first
time less than six months earlier. Writer Matthew Denison tells
us the Doll had taken off from northern Egypt this
evening in his pocket, classified documents pinpointing his entire squadron's location.
(01:12):
Within the hour, the desert sunset gives way the absolute
darkness his fuel gauge dropping, Doll realizes with growing dread
that he has strayed hopelessly off course, then catastrophe. The
underbelly of his aircraft catches a boulder hiding in the darkness.
Metal shrieks as the plane's nose pitches forward and crashes
(01:33):
to the ground. Crumpling like paper, Doll is catapulted against
the instrument panel. The impact drives his nose backward through
his face, His skull fractures, blood runs hot and.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Thick down his skin.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Denison writes, the doll can no longer feel where his
teeth should be. Disoriented, he does feel the approaching heat
of flames that threaten to consume both him and his aircraft.
His overall's already burning. Doll drags himself away from the
twisted wreckage as fast as he can. Each inch across
the sand is agony behind him. The inferno reaches the planes' ammunition.
(02:13):
Its machine guns begin firing wildly, bullets kicking up sands
in all directions.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
By some miracle of chance or fate, Doll.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Has crawled just far enough the bullets don't find him.
As shock overtakes his battered body, sleep finally claims him.
Let's now travel back to a year before that devastating crash.
This is before Doll was sent to Washington, before he
(02:44):
was recruited into the Irregulars, before he spent weekends mixing
Martiniz with the President. Doll's just a guy in a
room in his early twenties, trying to figure out what
to do with his life. All Doll knows for sure
is that right now he needs to escape his family's
home in Buckinghamshire, which feels like a damn prison. He's
desperate for some adventure. Dall is someone who's always always
(03:06):
looking for adventure. It's impossible to say for certain where
this spirit comes from, but the tragedy of his youth
offers a pretty good clue. When Dall was three, his
seven year old sister, Astrey, died of appendicitis. The family
had barely processed this loss when just three weeks later,
Dall's father died. Technically, Doll's father died of pneumonia, but
(03:28):
he basically chose not to fight the illness because of
his depression over Astrey. The two deaths in a row
like that were an earthquake for young Doll. Buckingham Shure,
despite its beauty, is stained by these memories for him.
If you can remember the forbidden forest scenes in the
Harry Potter movies.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
You've glimpsed these woods, but.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
What appears magical on screen is suffocating to Doll. He
understood that if he didn't break free soon, he'd be trapped,
bogged down here, forced into the tedious business that his father,
a shipbroker, have been so successful in. Dall's desire for
adventure is something he shares in common with a lot
of great writers, desperate to experience everything in order to
(04:13):
have something to write about a plot, a character, a situation,
and emotion. Writers in Dolls era are expected to be
deeply physically engaged with the world, not just observers but participants,
which feels different from today right Today's writers often prioritize
things like activism and family and intellectual engagement over physical
risk taking. But physicality aside, there's no substitute for adventure
(04:37):
and new experiences in a writer's life. My creative writing
students at Yale always asks me how to make it
as screenwriters. I encourage them to go live their lives
a little get engaged with the world in some fashion.
Because young writers who just move right to la after
graduation and start work in an agency's mailroom all end
up writing scripts that feel less like real life and
more like echoes of TV shows they've seen. When Dahl
(05:01):
graduates school, he sets out on his first grade adventure
and applies to Shell Oil. I know, I know, becoming
a trainee at an oil company does not sound like
a cutting edge prospect, but back in the late thirties,
it is as exciting as it gets. Shell Oil is
one of the hottest companies in the world. Here's Tony
Curtis trying to woo Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It
(05:22):
Hot by masquerading as the heir to guess what company
I want you. Yes, so did my father and my grandfather.
You might say we had a passion for shows. That's
why we name the oil company after it. Here are you.
There's massive demand for oil, for butting car companies and aviation.
Joining Shells like joining an AI company today. And the
(05:43):
most attractive part for Doll is that you're guaranteed to
be said somewhere across the globe. Adventure served up in
a silver platter. Doll gets posted in East Africa, fully
aware what a commitment this is, As he points out
in an interview by Peter Wallace and thrill Maker from
Night five.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
You see, in those days they didn't have airplanes, so
we're talking about nineteen thirty five. To go to someone
like Africa, it was a long way. It was a
two and a half week trip in the boat. When
you went, you went for three years.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
But it's all totally thrilling.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Doll immerses himself in the local culture, learning Swahili and
enjoying the adventure of it all. He doesn't realize it,
but he's setting himself up for a lifetime's worth of
characters too. When Daal invents Charlie Bucket of chocolate factory fame,
he actually models him on one of the young African
boys he befriends in Tanzania. It's only on later drafts,
under pressure from his British publishers, that Charlie becomes white.
(06:40):
But it's fascinating to think how groundbreaking the book might
have been. Charlie's family represents extreme poverty. Remember those four
grandparents all sharing that one giant bed. Making them black
would have transformed the story into a powerful statement about
racial inequality, and when Charlie has his triumph at the end,
it could have served as a broader metaphor for overcomings
the stomach prejudice. Anyway, Doll's work for Shell eventually.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Grows tedious for him.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
He's basically selling oil to farmers across the vastness of Tanzania.
Not a great deal of intelligence or imagination was required.
He later admits the idea of rising through the ranks
to become an executive someday sounds like death to him.
He feels the itch to keep moving. But here's what
I think is really driving Doll. He's trying to figure
(07:25):
out not only what kind of man he is, but
what it means to be a man. After Dall lost
his father, he was brought up by his mother and
his many many sisters. There were never any adult men
in his life. Why this is so relevant is that
the different worlds Doll goes into in his twenties are
like the most basic fantasies of what a child thinks
it means to be a man in the mid twentieth century.
(07:47):
First he'll tried business with Shell oil, then head to
war to become a fighter pilot. Then he becomes a spy,
a serial playboy, and seducer of women. He's trying on
all these different macho exteriors, seeing what fits, and I mean,
I get it, though we're living in very different times.
I struggle with this too. Am I a man not
in the way my grandfather would recognize? I have a
(08:09):
wife and kids and a career. But with a gun
to my head, I could maybe tell you what pliers
are for. Maybe for Dahl in the late nineteen thirties,
World War Two is knocking some of his heroes, like
Hemingway and Tolkien fought in the First World War. Now
history is offering his chance. He hears about British forces
(08:30):
and Tanzania needing help, and he jumps at it. He
abandoned shell oil and enlists as a Special Constable with
the King's African Rifles. His assignment is to arrest any
German attempting to escape across the border into neutral East Africa.
Dahl helps detain a couple hundred Germans whose only crime
is being German. He moves these innocent people into a
(08:52):
camp of barbed wire to be held for who knows
how long. It Shakestall's conscience. This may not be the
adventure he's after. During the long days patrolling the border
and the vicious sun. Dall watches warplanes fly overhead. Now
that looks like freedom to him. He gets an idea.
He'll volunteer for the Royal Air Force, though he's never
(09:13):
even been inside a plane before.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
He buys a car and drives six.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Hundred miles to Nairobi to enroll in flight training school.
He quickly realizes he's not a great fit. Literally, Doll
crams himself into Gloucester Gladiators, Tiger Boths and Hawker Hurricanes.
Picture the plane from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
when Harrison Ford and Sean Connery escape from German fighters.
These are open air cockpits designed for pilots who are
(09:40):
five foot seven to five ten.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
At six six, Doll's head sticks way up.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Above the windshield like an NBA player squeezed into a
tiny convertible with the top down, his knees pulled up
to his chest, and his face constantly battered by rushing wind.
Despite all that, soaring up in the air, something magical happens.
Falls in love with flying. This passion will re emerge
later in his writing. Several of his young characters escape
(10:07):
their earth bound troubles by literally flying away.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Most famously in James and the Giant Peach.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
The British Air Force is in such dire need of
fighters that Dolls quickly sent to the front lines before
he even completes combat training. Sixteen other newly minted pilots
go with him, but by war's end, only three of
the sixteen will survive, including Dol. That's how close we
were to never having heard of Willy, Wonka or Matilda.
(10:37):
According to writer Nadia Cohen, Doll's first kill comes quickly.
He shoots down a German plane and returns to base
with the sobering realization that he's probably just ended another
man's life. His conscience is rattled again, just like during
those border patrol arrests. Is he built for this. He's
in his early twenties, He's sensitive, thoughtful, and he knows
(10:58):
what it feels like to lose a father and sister
well before their time. Now he's taken the life of
a young stranger, someone who probably has his own father, sister, brother.
Dahl knows precisely what that family will endure. The next day,
Doll finds himself in another air battle. He shoots down
a second German plane, killing another pilot. He's affected, but
(11:19):
he finds it gets a bit easier to compartmentalize.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Two days later, in the.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Battle of Athens, Doll and the squadron are vastly outnumbered.
It'll be a miracle if any of them survive. Dahl
describes it as a long dog fight in which fifteen
hurricanes fought for half an hour with between one hundred
and fifty and two hundred German bombers. Four of Doll's
fellow pilots are shot down right before his eyes. Doll
(11:46):
spends every last bit of ammunition he carries. When he
finally lands back a base, his plane is riddled with
bullet holes. Dall ends up needing a full month to recuperate.
Then he hears the decimated remnants of his squadron are
reassembling in Haifa. More adventure awaits, Doll finds another car
(12:08):
and drives to Israel. He flies over French airbases every
day for the next month, according to Cohen, shooting down
at least two more aircraft. Doll keeps crashing his own planes,
but always somehow walks away until the crash that open
this episode, When Dol eventually writes that horrific crash into
(12:28):
his memoirs, he conspicuously excludes the fact that there was
another pilot with him that day in the Libyan desert.
Maybe dolphinks having company made the whole thing less heroic
even more curious, official RAF records showed Doll crash landed
due to low fuel after getting lost, but Dallin says
he was shot down.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
In both of Doll's memoirs about his childhood, he perpetuates
myths like this about himself. Now, to be fair, the
memoirs are written in the style we associate with his fiction,
so it's almost like a wink. Don't believe everything I'm
telling you, folks. Dahl has the same habit of mythmaking
in interviews throughout his life. Now, with some celebrities, we
just call this straight up lying, but with Dol, I'm
(13:11):
not sure i'd use that word.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
It's as if he's acknowledging that people expect him.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
To be Willy Wonka or the BFG, so they shouldn't
take what he says at face value. But of course
this makes his later problematic remarks and interviews more complicated.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
To deal with.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
We'll grapple with how to reconcile Doll's dedication to defeating
the Nazis as a young man, which is at least
somewhat inextricable from helping save the Jews of Europe, with
the charges of anti Semitism against him as a much
older man. For weeks after Doll's crash in the Libyan desert,
(13:46):
he lies in a military hospital, unable to even open
his eyes. Doctors are sure he'll be blind, He'll spend
the rest of his life in darkness. Here's Dol, many
years later, reflecting on the toll of all these crashes.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
I've had so many operations. I'm tied to you with
bits of stream. I've had two hip replacements, my spines
be not praised on many times from an airplane crash,
and this year I had three massive operations on my tummy.
But I'm all right there. But I'm a bit of
a wreck physically.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I always laugh when I hear him say tummy. There
Doll speaks the way he writes, there's this childlike quality
of someone who never fully grew up, an old man
who still says tummy with a completely straight face. Woven
inside a much more gruesome, sobering account of horrible pain
and The mixture of those elements are kind of the
hallmarks of his books, too, right, the juxtaposition of childlike
(14:40):
wonder alongside genuine darkness. It's the bfg's gentle dream catching
coexisting with child gobbling giants and the whimsy of Willy
Wonka alongside children facing horrific if comical fates. Dall ends
up spending six long months in that hospital. Slowly and
almost moraulously, he regains his vision. He emerges with the
(15:03):
knowledge that he's cheated death, which encourages him to take
even more risks going forward. He now knows he can
survive a fall. Doll isn't alone among great artists who
spent significant time recovering from catastrophic injuries. Free to Callo
had devastating trauma from a bus crash when she was
slightly younger than daul spending months in a cast. That's
(15:24):
when she began to think about those haunting portraits. Similarly,
Stephen King was hit by a van and nearly killed,
leading to months of painful recovery. He was older than
Doll or Callo, but he had not yet written some
of his best work. In these long recoveries, not only
do you learn to endure the solitude and loneliness of
the creative life.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
But you also have so much time to reflect on
your ideas.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
And maybe you also gain insight into suffering or pain
or healing.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Like Kllo and King, the lifelong.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Chronic pain that Dahl deals with after the crash majorly
infiltrates his work and reshapes his personality. Just recently, the
US Navy published a confidential report Odin's Eye, suggesting the
extreme conditions faced by fighter pilots HIGI maneuvers and repeated
physical trauma like dollhad, can lead to long term effects
on memory, mood, and behavior. Could lingering brain trauma from
(16:13):
his pilot days have contributed to Doll's sharp temper. Could
the injuries account for what some people very much, including
his first wife, describe as his prickly personality. His wife's
nickname for him, after all, was rolled the Rotten And
might the brain trauma also account for his vivid, dark imagination.
His headaches from the crash becomes so intense that he
(16:35):
blacks out regularly, which is not what you want to
hear if you're his commanding officer. Setting him up in
the air, Dall is desperate to keep flying to keep
the adventure going, but the RAF grounds him.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
His flying days are over.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Dolls a mess, Terrified, he'll have no choice but to
go back to Buckinghamshire, back to that landscape haunted by
childhood loss, back to a conventional life that seems to
him worse than death. Luckily, that's when Dolls recruited to
Washington for an avenger so strange that even his imagination
couldn't have conjured it.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
In our last episode, I talked about.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Doll's life in the Shadowy Spy game in Washington with
the Irregulars. He quickly makes friends there with other spies who,
like him, go on to create some of the most
iconic cultural touchstones of the twentieth century, like Ian Fleming,
the creator of a spy as famous for how he
likes as Martinis as anything else.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
A Martini shaken nutstud and.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Doll's Georgetown roommate David Ogilvy, who later revolutionizes modern advertising
and serves as an inspiration for Don Draper on mad Men.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
You never say thank you, That's what the money is for.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Plus Noel Coward, the British playwright and wit who redefined theater,
interviewed here by Dick Cavott.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
You're what is the word for? Win Warne has terrific
prolific qualities.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Ellen Yeah, or of the most influential storytellers and fabulous
of the century, all hanging out together playing spy verse spy. Predictably,
as these charismatic operatives carry out their spy work, they
increasingly find themselves under the FBI's suspicious gaze. Jag Or Hoover,
the authoritarian head of the Bureau, has very rigid rules
(18:20):
for his agents, identical suits, military short haircuts, and absolutely
no facial hair, so imagine how he feels about these
arrogant playboys of British intelligence operating on his turf. The
FBI turned a blind eye to the Irregulars when they started,
but at this point it's like, are we really just
going to let these British secret agents do whatever the
hell they want on American soil? The Bureau attempts to
(18:41):
get a bill through Congress putting the irregulars, including Doll,
under its supervision.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
They open up secret.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Files on Doll and every other irregular. The noose is tightening. Finally,
William Stevenson, the head of the Irregulars, has no choice
but to agree that all one hundred and thirty seven
British intelligence agents in the US will run all their
missions by Jagger Hoover. But no one thinks Stevenson will
actually honor this agreement. According to writer Jenet Conan, stevenson
(19:07):
superiors in England dispatch emissaries to him to verify his
compliants spies infiltrating spies.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
One in particular, who will.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Call Agent X, keeps feeding damaging reports about the irregulars
back to London. Stevenson is furious and turns to his
most resourceful agent for help, Roll Doll. Dall devises an
elegant trap. He invites Agent X to his George shown
apartment for drinks, a seemingly innocent social call between colleagues,
But hidden within Dall's living room is a microphone capturing
(19:36):
every word. As the evening progresses and booze flows, Dall
skillfully steers the conversation, encouraging X to disparage his employers
back in Britain. The secretly recorded conversation is promptly dispatched
to London. Agent X is recalled immediately, the threat to
Stephenson neutralized for now through Doll's cunning years later. This
(19:58):
real life espionage operation will resurface in Doll's fiction, transformed
into a chilling short story about a wealthy husband and
wife who invite a younger couple to their home. The
hosts secretly install a microphone in the guest bedroom, eavesdropping
on their visitors most intimate conversations. The threat of the
(20:21):
FBI has rattled Doll, making him very aware that the
Irregular's days are numbered and therefore so are his. He's
desperate not to go back home to England, to his
mother's house. But what's next? What's he really trained for?
He sees his pals Fleming and Ogilvy and Coward setting
themselves up for future career success in other fields. They
all have mentors who seem to be guiding them, so
(20:43):
Doll begins looking for his own mentor.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
One way I.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Could have structured this podcast, by the way, is to
tell Doll's story by following the hero's journey. Joseph Campbell's
outline for great adventurers from Odysseus to Luke Skywalker, which
Doll fits to a tea. All heroes, according to Campbell,
both fictional and real, go through a series of distinct stages.
First is a call to adventure when the hero gets
(21:08):
pulled out of their ordinary world by a quest for Dall.
This is being recruited to Washington to join the Irregulars.
Among the many stages that follow, there's one particularly relevant here,
meeting the mentor. Once the hero commits to their quest,
a guide or magical helper appears. Think Obi Wan Kenobi
and Star Wars or Morpheus. In the Matrix for Dall,
(21:31):
it's Charles Marsh, an arrogant, well connected, obscenely wealthy newspaper tycoon.
Marsh started out as a journalist, rising up to become
managing editor of the Cincinnati Post, but his hunger for
wealth and status led him to buy every newspaper he
could get his hands on. By the time he meets Dahl,
(21:53):
Marsh is filthy rich and has grown bored of the
newspaper game. He's putting all his energy and resources into
his passion the war effort. Here's how Robert Carrow, the
Extraordinary author of the Years of Lyndon Johnson series, describes Marsh.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Having made money. He liked to play the patron with it.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
A tall man six foot three, he had the broad,
high forehead and the beaked nose of a Roman emperor
and a manner to match tips to head waiters were
dispensed with a gesture reminiscent of a king tossing coins
to subjects. Marsh traffics and power. If you're in his orbit,
you're introduced to the right people, and you're in a
position to know and be known. Marsh own's a grand
(22:32):
mansion on our street and joy shown in which he's
always playing host. DC insiders, artists, politicians, and powerbrokers of
all sorts can just come on in, have a drink, talk,
or more often negotiate to give you a sense of
the house and the man. Marsh commissions a large oil
portrait of himself and hangs it over the mantle in
the main sitting room. I love that detail. It says
(22:54):
so much about the guy, doesn't it. I'm imagining my
wife's reaction if I brought home a big old painting
of my life and announced we were hanging it over
the couch. Should be into it, right. Vice President Henry
Wallace is a constant presence at Marsh's mansion. Cabinet members, media, titans,
and diplomats circulate through the rooms, and so does young
Roll Doll, Marsh's oldest daughter, Antoinette says, of Doll, we
(23:16):
all just adored him, especially my father. We sort of
adopted him. Rold was a real charmer when he wanted
to be. He was great fun to be around. Adopted
is the right word. This is the family that Doll wants,
not the one colored by tragedy in Buckingham Shure. He
wants the one that offers the key to success in Washington,
and having access to all the visitors at our Street
(23:38):
is a gold mine for a young spy. One night,
at a game of high stakes poker, Doll is in
a funk, losing hand after hand, drinking too much, growing frustrated.
He doesn't have much money, so every dollar.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
He loses is giant.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
But he likes his next hand, so he goes all in,
not realizing or maybe not yet savvy enough to appreciate,
that he's playing against Washington powerbrokers, the ultimate bluffers and hustlers.
Doll loses his entire paycheck on this one hand, which
is devastating for him the player he loses it to,
though Harry Truman Dall may be getting cleaned out, but
(24:17):
the information intel and connections he's making are priceless. Charles
Marsh at this moment, is in his fifties, he's married,
and he also has a much, much younger girlfriend. Did
you not see that coming from a guy who hangs
a giant painting of himself in his living room. This
younger woman happens to have a very whimsical dolli in
(24:37):
name Alice Glass. She's six feet tall, with movie star
good looks and long blonde hair. According to Conit, the
first time Marsh sees Alice, she's stark naked, a pale,
shimmering goddess rising unexpectedly from his swimming pool. This was
when Marsh was in his forties, one of the most
powerful newspaper magnets in the country. Alice was nineteen. During
(25:02):
their relationship, Alice carries on her own affairs with several
other men, most of whom are in Marsha's social circle.
According to Marsh's daughter Antoinette, again, Alice has a crush
on Doll, but Doll wisely rejects her.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
He has so much to lose. Doll knows what.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Happened when Lancelot slept with King Arthur's wife, namely the
fall of camelot. Alice is furious at Doll's rejection. Men
do not turn her down. She's cold to Doll whenever
she sees him from then on. By the way, one
man who did not turn Alice down was Lyndon Johnson.
LBJ was POWs with Marsh. Marsh put the weight of
(25:38):
his newspaper editorials behind LBJ and helped him win his
first race. LBJ paid Marsh back by having an affair
with Alice.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Marsh was apoplectic when he discovered it. He got LBJ elected,
but Alice in lbj's affair was much more than a fling.
It continued for twenty five years. What eventually broke them
up was Alice's passionate opposition to the Vietnam War. In
all his time with Marsh, Doll has always presented himself
(26:11):
as a simple employee of the British Embassy. So how
does Marsh feel when he discovers that young Doll is
actually a spy? Will he be even more annoyed with
Doll than he was with his other lying, backstabbing, lanky protege.
Will he cast him into the wilderness? This young man
he's been so generous with has been infiltrating his home,
reporting back to the Brits on all his fancy guests.
(26:34):
It's just the opposite. Marsh has the same goal as
Doll to defeat the Nazis, so he's tickled when he
discovers Doll has been keeping the secret Antoinette, Marsh remembers,
my father said, gluck, here, we're on the same team.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
We can help each other.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Marsh quickly becomes essential to Doll's spy work, introducing him
to influential people and tutoring him on cultivating secret sources
which he picked up in his newspaper days. By this time,
Doll is already well versed in the art of seduction.
He plays to Marsha's ego by asking the older man
advice about his future and tantalizing him with a pique
(27:10):
at his orders from the Irregulars whenever he can just
enough to whet Marsh's appetite. When Doll spends a weekend
with the Roosevelts and Hyde Park, for instance, he makes
a private copy of his report and surreptitiously gives it
to Marsh, which the older man hungrily consumes. In their
private talks. Doll even adds a few details he observed
about FDR that are too scandalous to put in his
(27:31):
official report. Isaiah Berlin, who works in the British Embassy
and later becomes one of the most influential philosophers of
the century, is also summoned on occasion to the R
Street Mansion to see how Marsh can help the war effort.
Berlin's take on Marsh is that there's a screw faintly
loose somewhere.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
I felt frightened of him.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Berlin says, as if in the presence of someone slightly unbalanced.
If Doll feels the same, he keeps it to himself.
Marsh is a man who can deliver him the war,
screw loose or not. Continuing his work for the Irregulars.
Part of Doll's assignment is to romance his way through
a bevy of older, powerful, influential women. His dance card
(28:15):
is a who's who of American wealth and privilege. Elizabeth Arden,
the cosmetic superstar, Milicent Rogers, the standard oil Heiress, and
Evelyn Walks Maclin, the gold Mine Heiress. Doll's looks and confidence,
plus his background as a fighter pilot, help explain why
he's so attractive. To women, but he also just seems
to understand women in a way the most men, especially
(28:36):
men of that time, aren't capable of or don't care to.
Proof lives in his fiction, some of his most memorable
characters are female Sophie from the BFG Verrukos Salt and
Violet Beauregard from a certain chocolate factory, and of course
Matilda Wormwood.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
These characters aren't just.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Unique and inventive, they've a Vonne ability and a truth
that his male characters often lack. Dahl also finds time
for affairs that have nothing to do with espionage. One
of his most significant relationships is with the beautiful French
movie star Annabella.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
She's deeply affected by the war.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Her brother had been shot and killed trying to escape
the Nazis, which may well have been what.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Bonded her in Dall.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
When they meet, she's already married to someone rich and successful.
Like so many of Dahl's other girlfriends, Annabella's husband is
movie star Tyrone Power Power was one of Hollywood's first
action heroes. It's unclear how Dahl feels about cuckholding this
giant star, though honestly its possible Power doesn't even care
since the rumor is that he's having his own affair
(29:43):
with Judy Garland.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
But as we'll see later, Dall.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Is drawn to women who are, were, or had recently
been in long term relationships with handsome movie stars.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Maybe it's an ego trip.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
When a woman who's within Adonna celebrity chooses to be
with Doll instead. Dall credits Annabella with teaching him about sex.
Like Charles Marsh, she becomes a mentor. Dall stays in
touch with her for decades, often seeking her advice during
turbulent years and his future marriages. By a certain point,
(30:14):
it feels like Doll has dated or seduced every available
and unavailable woman in Washington. He's pooped, but British Intelligence
is not done with him. They agree, at least to
transfer him out of DC. For someone always seeking adventure
and looking for glamorous, beautiful women to spend time with,
Dall is sent to what will be his personal xanad
(30:34):
Manhattan of the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
The Irregulars have their New York offices on.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
The thirty fifth and thirty six floors of thirty Rockefeller Center,
the same iconic Art deco skyscraper that will later house
this Tonight Show, Late Night and Saturday Night Live, which
seems like a super weird place to stash an organization
devoted to conducting spy work. Maybe operating out of thirty
Rock is partly a way to convince the book that
they're not doing anything too shady. After all, their public
(31:04):
goal is simply to promote British interests in America. Fascinating
side note, Doll is mesmerized by the incredible speed of
the elevator at thirty Rock, which is unlike anything he's
ever experienced and becomes an inspiration for his Chocolate Factory sequel,
Charlie and the Glass Elevator. Dall instantly takes to the
(31:25):
glamorous scene. Despite the challenges of the war, the city
is still a hub of fashion and arts and nightlife.
This is the era of the Stork Club, with regulars
like Sinatra and Hemingway, the Copacabana, the Cotton Club, and
the twenty one Club. Doll dives in headfirst, ringing out
every last job of it that he possibly can. Amid
the champagne and midnight conversations, he finds himself even more
(31:48):
in his element than he'd been in Washington. Working even
more in his favor. The war has led to a
significant shortage of eligible men in the city, although my
wife would say there's always a shortage of eligible men
in the city, which I think is an insult to me,
like if there were more eligible men that I wouldn't
have gotten so lucky.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I digress.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
The point is Dall is even more in demand as
a romantic partner in New York than he'd been in DC,
which is saying something again. According to Marsh's daughter Antoinette,
Doll was very arrogant with his women, but he got
away with it. The uniform didn't hurt one bit, and
he was an ace. Girls just fell at Rolled's feet.
(32:32):
Dalla is still obsessed with figuring out what he's going
to do when the war ends. Going back to Buckingham
Shure is out of the question. His ambitions are coalescing
around storytelling. Keep in mind this is before he writes
the Gremlin story that gets him invited to FDR's White House.
Right now, Dolla is mostly writing short autobiographical stories, and
they're all rejected for publication. He grows incredibly frustrated, which
(32:55):
is mirrored in some of his later protagonists like Matilda
or James from the Giant who will themselves to greatness
despite being cruelly underestimated. Dall's first break as a writer
is one of those amazing stories of luck meeting talent
at just.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
The right moment.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I truly love this origin story. Here's Dahl telling you
years later in Thrill Maker, a nineteen eighty five documentary
where he's interviewed during a visit back to Norway.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
They wanted people who had been in combat to publish
stories in the American papers to give Britain a boost,
and a man was sent to me, a famous writer
called CS Forrester, who wrote Captain horn Blur stories. And
he can't see me, and he said, I will take
you out to lunch and you will tell me almost
(33:43):
exciting adventure in the RAF and I will write it
and it'll be published because I can always get them published,
and it'll be good for Britain. So I said, lovely.
I was terribly excited to go out to this famous writer.
I'd read everything you'd written.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
CS Fourster isn't as much today, but the guy is
a giant in Doll's era. It's the equivalent of Aaron Sorkin.
Just swinging by my office and asking me to lunch.
As we've seen, Doll does not lack confidence, so he's
not as petrified going into that meeting as I would
have been.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
He continues.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
We had lunch, and halfway through lunch we had roast
duck and he was trying to eat his, and I
was trying to tell him the story, and he was
trying to take notes. And I said, look, I'll go
home tonight and scribble this down roughly and send it
to you, and you couldn't put it right, and that'll
(34:35):
be it too, that'll save you and you can eat
your roast duck in a piece.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
And he said, our super So I did it.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
You know what I love thinking about here? What if
Forrester hadn't ordered the duck. What if he'd had a
ham sandwich, and therefore a free hand to write notes.
What's about to happen might never have happened, and this
podcast would be about some other writer. It's these tiny
moments of chance, a roast duck rather than a ham sandwich,
but sometimes alter the entire trajectory of a life.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Doc continues, and it's funny to think when I got
home in the evening, and started writing it. It sort
of went very nicely, and I felt the story growing
under me, and so I wrote it and I sent
it to him. Didn't expect me hear anymore, And a
week later I got a letter from him saying, I
was expecting you to send me notes. You've sent me
(35:29):
a complete story. Did you know that you were a writer?
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Did you know that you were a writer? When you're
starting out, hearing that you actually have talent and might
be able to do the crazy thing you dream of
doing from someone who's already made it is everything in
a completely different field. Jerry Seinfeld talks about doing one
of his first ever stand up sets when a much
more established comic, Jackie Mason, calls him over, telling Jerry
(35:55):
how jealousy is because Jerry is clearly going to be
a huge star. Seinfeld talks about that quick interaction with
Mason being enough to live off of for years. It's
a stamp of approval, and Forrester is true to his
word about getting the story published under Doll's name. His
agent secures it a slot in the Saturday Evening Post,
which has a circulation of about three million at the time.
(36:18):
Dolls paid one hundred and eighty seven dollars for the story,
which is like three thousand dollars today. It's printed over
two pages in the August first, nineteen forty two edition.
But all of that is frosting. Did you know you
were a writer? Is what will carry Doll for years.
Doll is now a published writer. He's twenty six years old.
(36:39):
In many ways, his life has just begun. The elation
of being published is soon tempered by a major change
in circumstance for Dol. As the war ends, Dolls informed
that his services in America are no longer required. He
hasn't seen his mother or sister in years. He takes
(37:01):
a deep breath and goes back to Buckinghamshire. The ghosts
of his father and sister hang over the place. He's
been going from adventure to adventure, avoiding his home for years.
His mother, who can guilt trip with the best of them,
insists that her beloved only son move in with her
while he's in town, and for a time, it's not
as bad as Doll imagined.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
According to Conint.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Again, Doll loses himself in the comforting rhythms of rural life.
He manages his mother's farm, tends to the livestock and
loafs now. I can't stress enough what a bunker's transition
this must have been. From international man of mystery seducing
his way across DC in New York on a Monday,
to a small town farmer living at home with mom
that Friday. Writer Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway's wife, visits Stall around
(37:47):
this time and says she perceives a suffocating atmosphere of
adoration by his mother. Doll soon begins gambling again, but
it's not Harry Truman sitting across the table anymore. He
gets into dog racing, which I mean has that ever
led to good things for anyone? He even breeds his
own greyhounds to compete, and shockingly loses a ton of
the family's money at the track. Doll is spiraling, his
(38:11):
sisters start worrying. Will Dahl become one of those people
who is electric as a young man with the light
in his eyes and a world of potential. Then returns
from his adventures to drink, gamble, lose his hair, gain
a belly, and live at a ho hum existence in
his mother's basement, squandering all that youthful promise. Luckily for Doll,
his great mentor his obi one is watching. Charles Marsh
(38:36):
decides to intervene. He practically kidnaps Doll away from Buckinghamshire,
brings him to New York and puts him up in
his lavish townhouse on ninety second Street. If Dall had
been paying his own way, he'd more likely be in
a studio apartment with roommates on the Lower East Side.
Marsh insists on underwriting all of Doll's expenses until Dol
can start making his own money as a writer. That's
(38:58):
how strongly Marsh believes in him. I'm blown away by this,
and I think Doll is too. He basically puts it
all in a book later on. It's Willy Wonka handing
over his factory to Charlie is an act of extraordinary
patronage from a mysterious older man of means to a
young man in whom he sees great promise. Marsh believes
(39:20):
in Doll's talent every bit as much as C. S.
Forrester did, and Lake Forrester Marsh has connections. Once Marsh
has got Doll in New York, he introduces the young
writer to the most powerful magazine editor in town.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Harold Ross, the.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Eccentric, meticulous founding editor of The New Yorker. The New
Yorker then as it is now, is the ultimate destination
for short fiction. Despite his often brusque personality, Ross is
deeply committed to the writers he works with, nurturing household
names like Dorothy Parker, James Thurberr, and J. D.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Salinger.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Ross takes an instant liking to Doll's stories. This is
huge for Doll. The New Yorker buys several of dolls
stories in a row, including his now classic Skin, which
follows an old destitute man on whose back of famous
artist wants tattooed to painting. When art collectors realize it's worth,
they offered the destitute man huge amounts of money for
(40:15):
his tattoo. The story then takes a really dark turn,
implying that the collectors intend to claim the artwork off
the man's back by any means necessary. The story explores
the intersection of art and commerce, exploitation, and the high
personal cost of other people's greed, three themes that Doll
will return to in his work and in his private
(40:38):
life for decades. All of Doll's stories in this period
are dark twisty, witty, somewhat gruesome, and totally unique. And
this includes his gremlin story, which we discussed Eleanor Roosevelt
loving so much. But all sorts of readers are going
crazy for the stories. The New York Harold Tribune writes
the Dolls developing something like a cult of fans. Doll
(41:01):
can't believe it's all happening. His old pal from the Irregulars,
Noel Coward, is also a little surprised, but for a
different reason, saying about Doll, the stories are brilliant and
his imagination is fabulous. Unfortunately, there is in all of
them an underlying streak of cruelty and macabre unpleasantness and
a crudely adolescent emphasis on sex. Coward continues, this is
(41:24):
strange because rold is a sensitive and gentle creature. Mixing
his gentle, sensitive side with his attraction to cruelty and
unpleasantness is, of course, what will make Dall more successful
and more widely read than Coward or any other living writer.
That is, if he can buckle down and focus on
(41:44):
his work. Because while we've heard Dahl spend his twenties spying, seducing,
and manipulating his way across DC in New York. He's
about to fall prey to the seduction of something with
almost infinite alert. Doll, the master manipulator, is about to
discover for what it means to be manipulated by something
far more cunning than himself, something that will whisper promises
(42:06):
of glory while slowly invisibly tightening its grip around his throat,
and right now he's walking straight into its embrace. The
Secret World of Roald Dahl is produced by Imagine Audio
and Parallax Studios for iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by
(42:29):
me Aaron Tracy, produced by Matt Schrader, post production by
wind Hill Studios, with editing, scoring, and sound design by
Mark Henry Phillips. Editing by Ryan Seaton, Music by eight PM.
Executive producers Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard,
(42:50):
and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark
Henry Phillips and Eleven Laps. If you enjoyed this episode,
be sure to rate and review The Secret World of
Roll Doll on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Copyright twenty twenty six Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and Parallax
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