February 9, 2026 • 36 mins
After a brief introduction at a mutual friend’s dinner party, Dahl falls madly in love with Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal. He’s determined to win her over, but soon discovers a giant, immovable obstacle in his path. Namely, she’s still in love with the biggest movie star in the world. Eventually, Neal and Dahl build a life together. But can their relationship survive as her career soars into the stratosphere, while his comes crashing down to Earth?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In your book, you said that you didn't love him
when you married him.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
No, I did not when I married him.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
This is Patricia Neil, the movie star Roll Dahl met
at the end of our last episode, talking about the
beginning of their relationship later in life on The Arlene
Hearson Show.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's just that I desperately wanted to have children, and
of course one had to be married in those days
to have children, and I decided that I would marry
Rualdall because I wanted he would make good children.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
For Okay, we're going to take a break out, and
so begins the defining relationship of Doll's life, one that's
going to last thirty years and produce five children. Get Ready.
As noisy and epic as you think Doll's professional and
social lives have been so far, it is nothing compared
to the intensity of what you're about to hear in
his family life. For my hard podcast Imagine Entertainment in Parallax,
(00:57):
I'm Marrion Tracy, and this is the Secret World of
Roald Dall. Episode four. Let's pick up just before Dall
meets Patricia Neil. It's nineteen fifty two. Doll is now
thirty six years old. He's already lived so many lives,
the businessman, the fighter, pilot, the spy, the screenwriter. The
(01:17):
question is now what he decides to try making a
living at the craft he's had some sporadic success with.
It's the next mask he's going to put on. He's
going to become a great novelist or die trying. Keep
in mind, this is many years before Doll's success with
James Bond. Right now, he's desperate to write important fiction.
(01:38):
Like his hero Hemingway, Dall can feel the talent inside
of himself. He's bursting with creativity and ambition. Only when
he's writing does he feel the kind of transcendence that
exists nowhere else in his life. Doll has already had
a little success with short stories like the one that
got Walt Disney and Eleanor Roosevelt's attention. So he builds
himself a writing office in a small bachelor apartment and
(02:00):
spends all day every day working on his craft. Like
a lot of people determined to go into the creative arts,
he's throwing himself into it, body and soul, which of
course is not necessarily the right move. The life of
a writer is a life of rejection, even for those
who are most successful. It's basically an exercise in daily humiliations.
So if you make writing your whole identity, you're going
(02:22):
to be in big trouble. Speaking from personal experience before
I got married and started a family, anytime I would
fail with a TV pitch or a pilot not getting
picked up, he would be an earthquake. You gotta have
balance in your life right now, Doll has none. My
grandfather used to say, you marry the person you're dating
at the age you want to be married, which I
(02:44):
always found pretty cynical. I'm more of a romantic at heart,
and I think Doll is too. He's in his mid
thirties and he's majorly resisted settling down. The guy has
dated some of the most glamorous, most influential women on
the planet, so one of the reason he's still single
is that his bar is high, and Doll, like I said,
(03:05):
is a romantic. He doesn't want to marry someone unless
he feels that transcendent feeling. His mentor, Charles Marsh, has
been pleading with him to just settle on someone already.
He tells Doll that his lack of a wife and
his lack of success with writing are inextricably linked. Finding
a wife will focus him. It'll give him a reason
to work and to be successful, And if he needs to,
(03:27):
Marsh whispers, he can always have an affair or a
series of affairs down the line. Awfully cynical, but also
sadly common for the era. For evidence, see Marsh and
pretty much every other person we've talked about in this
series so far. Doll is reluctant. Not only does he
want the spark, but he worries a wife will take
(03:49):
time and focus away from his writing, which is where
his passion really lies at the moment. But soon he
has to admit to himself all the time and focus
he's putting into his writing isn't really yielding results. He's
submitting his stories to every magazine, every publisher, every agent
he can get an address for, but the rejections are
piling up. They're almost eye level with his six foot
(04:10):
six frame. The guy grows monumentally depressed, and he has
to admit he is pretty lonely. Maybe Marsh is right,
Maybe my grandfather is right. Maybe a wife won't be
a distraction, she'll be a motivator. So Dall finally determines
he's going to find one. The mask of the writer
will have to wait is time to see how husband
(04:33):
and father fit. As I mentioned, Doll first meets Neil
at a Manhattan dinner party thrown by playwright Lillian Hellman.
Doll is unusually nervous at the party. For one thing,
Hellman is a much more successful writer than he is.
She's someone who really wants to impress. He's so uneasy
(04:54):
that he ends up getting into a screaming match with
another guest, a guest who happens to be Bernstein, the
world famous composer. These two really go at it, and
just when Dalls most worked up, that's when he realizes
that Hellman has decided to play matchmaker. She's seated him
next to a twenty six year old who he recognizes
for magazine covers. It's not an exaggeration to say she's
(05:16):
one of the most beautiful women in the world. Neil
has already acted in major Broadway plays, winning a Tony
for one that Helman wrote, but Dall recognizes her from
the movies. Hollywood, of course, has snapped Neil up and
decided to make her a star. She's now one of
those incredibly rare actresses who gets critical praise and big
box office She's like the Amy Adams of her time,
(05:38):
reddish hair at all. As we've heard, Doll is no
stranger to dating movie stars, but this one's different. Neil
is a force. Watching some of her old films, it's
easy to see why she's so in demand. Whenever she's
on screen, she forces you to look at her. When
she moves, your eyes move with her, no matter which
other huge movie stars are in the frame, and it's
(06:00):
the same in real life. Doll is so nervous looking
at her in the chair next to his it's one
of the few times in his life he's actually tongue tied.
He decides he can't just hint on her like every
guy she meets. That won't make him stand out. He
does some quick calculations in his head and comes up
with an ingenious idea right there on the spot. Here's
what he'll do. He'll totally and completely ignore her. Throughout
(06:25):
the entire dinner, Doll focuses on Leonard Bernstein, pretending Neil
is an empty chair, even when she tries to involve
herself in their argument. But that doesn't mean He's not
entirely focused on Neil. He's observing her, watching how she
carries herself, taking mental notes and storing them away for
future use, like he does with everything that intrigues him.
(06:45):
By the time entrees are served, Doll's mind is made up.
He's found his wife. There's just one problem. The next morning,
he calls Lillian Hellman and gets Neil's phone number. He
hangs up, and like a nerve fifteen year old with
sweaty palms, he dials her. He clears his throat several times,
smooths out his air, takes a deep breath. It's so
(07:08):
unlike him to be anything but confident and calm approaching
a woman. He kind of likes this new feeling, though
his juices are flowing in a way they usually don't.
When Neil answers, he doesn't make small talk. He barely
tells her who's calling. He just jumps in and asks
her to dinner, remembering how incredibly rude he was to
her the night before. Neil can't compute this. She takes
(07:28):
a pause long enough to light a cigarette, rejects him
out right, and then hangs up. But of course rejection
doesn't really bother at all. Remember how many times he's
going to fail in Hollywood before James Bond comes around?
Same thing here. He decided this is what he wants.
This is the rare woman he can actually imagine committing to.
But all his suaveness and swagger elude him. Doll waits
(07:52):
two days and calls Neil again and asks her out again.
She says no again. She decided at the dinner party
that all was someone not to know. He can't believe it.
It honestly never occurred to him that she might reject him.
It's just not how life has gone for him so far.
He reminds me of the story my favorite director Mike
(08:12):
Nichols tells about casting The Graduate. He wanted his main character,
Benjamin Braddock to realistically be someone who strikes out with
women his own age, which leads him to have an
affair with his mother's friend, Missus Robinson. Nichols auditioned Robert
Redford for the role, giving him direction. He said to Redford,
you know how it feels when a girl turns you
down for a date. Redford responded, what do you mean.
(08:34):
That's when they turned instead to Dustin Hoffman, who created
one of the more iconic performances ever Lake Redford Dall
doesn't get rejected. He's been bouncing between actresses, heiresses and
congresswomen for a decade and now he can't even get
a date. What is happening? Two days later, he shamelessly
calls Neil again, and this third time, she rejects him
(08:57):
again and orders him to stop calling her. But on
Doll's fourth attempt, Neil surprises him by green to go
out one time. Has Doll just worn her down? Sort of?
But the truth is Neil has a much bigger reason
for finally saying yes. She's desperate to do anything she
(09:17):
can to get over the greatest heartbreak of her life.
As Doll and Neil start dating, this is the big
obstacle in their path. Neil is still very much in
love with someone else, and annoyingly for Doll, not just
anyone the most famous, most handsome, biggest movie star in
the world, Gary Cooper. Neil has recently co starred with
(09:44):
Cooper in two movies, almost back to back.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Why didn't you kind of set them up?
Speaker 4 (09:48):
I didn't think it would make any difference to you
who came or did it?
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Miss?
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Frank Neil was twenty one, Cooper was forty six. It's
possible you're having trouble picturing Cooper right now. Very few
of his movies are still talked about today. Mostly it's
this heroic sheriff and heigh noon who refuses to run
away from trouble.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Won't be here tomorrow, seems to me, I've got to
stay anyway. I'm the same man.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Or whether out this but back in mid century America,
Gary Cooper was it. Cooper is nominated for the Best
Actor Oscar five times. That's the same number as Tom
Hanks and Al Pacino and Robert de Niro. Cooper wins twice.
He's also just about the most stylish man in Hollywood,
an observation immortalized by Irving Berlin when he revised his
(10:36):
song Putting on the Writs dressed up like a million
dollar Trooper trying hard to look like Garrett Cooper souper duper.
Billy Wilder, who usirected Cooper opposite Audrey Hepburn, says Cooper
was the most elegant man that ever lived. Neil was
(10:57):
completely over the top in love with him despite being
more than twice her age. And oh yeah, there was
one other problem. He was married. Here's Neil explaining to
Arlee and herson again, did.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Do this father? Well, of course it did. But I
was so stupid at that in those days of my life,
I didn't know that I should have had respect for
marriage and left him alone. You know, when one's young,
you want what you want when you want it, and
you can get into bad trouble that way.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
A giant understatement. The relationship nearly kills Neil when it ends.
She actually asks a friend how to commit suicide. This
is when she meets Roll Daal. He can see how
tormented she is. She was obviously pretty shaken up all around.
He says she had come to New York primarily to
get away from an unfortunate romance. So what should d'all do?
(11:51):
What would you do? Walk away? Problem is he just
can't shake the feeling that this is his one chance
for happiness and stability. He puts on an all out
charm offensive, the same way he went over William Stevenson
and Charles marsh and c s Forrester and Franklin and
Eleanor Roosevelt. But it's just not working on Neil. If
(12:11):
you read Neil's memoir, where she's shockingly vulnerable and open.
It's actually a great read. She talks constantly about how
devastated she was over the Cooper breakup. The number of
times she mentions him is pretty astonishing, considering she was
with someone else, namely Doll, ten times longer than she
was with Cooper. Her relationship with Cooper has enough highs
and lows to be its own tragic love story podcast.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
Well, what's a man gonna do when he falls in
love with a girl?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
That's Cooper in my favorite of his movies, Ernst Slubitch's
Bluebeard's Eth Wife And if.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
He finds he's made a mistake, carry on behind her back, lie,
make excuses, not me.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
If only Cooper took his character's advice to heart, I
think that's im Marl In the movie. Cooper keeps falling
in and out of love, but he does the kind
of weirdly honest and maybe even noble thing. When he
meets someone new. He divorces his current wife and marries
her when the film begins. He's been married and divorced
seven times in real life, though Cooper stayed married during
(13:07):
his affairs, which is even messier. The passion between Neil
and Cooper was always running out of ten. We had
reached a depth of real appreciation that all people desire
but few realize. Neil writes in her memoir, He truly
loved my body, and I loved his, and he knew
it when he reached out to love me. It was
first with those penetrating eyes, which stripped away all barriers
(13:29):
between us, and then with those godlike hands, which seemed
to create me in his arms. I thought, I am
at last. I am Yeah. So if you missed it,
that's Neil adopting the biblical creation story as a metaphor
for sex with Cooper. I'm telling you, find yourself somebody
who looks at you the way Patricia Neil looks at
(13:49):
Gary Cooper. Since Cooper is married with a family, Neil
continues dating other guys, if for no other reason than
to have something to do on weekends. She starts dating
Kirk Douglas, a handsome star of Spartacus and Ace in
the Hole. Neil writes, we would sometimes come back to
my apartment for a drink, but there was never anything
between us but good night kisses. Until one night I
(14:09):
was feeling low. I had had a few drinks, and
let's face it, Kirk was very attractive. I found myself
responding to his extremely persuasive kisses. But when it came
right down to it, and it did, I simply couldn't.
After he left, the doorbell rang and an unexpected Gary
Cooper was standing on the threshold. A strange cloud darkened
(14:30):
his face. I looked into your window tonight, he told her,
and I saw what was happening. She continues. Nothing had
really happened at all, but I was impressed by this
outburst of jealousy, which was so unlike Gary. I could
feel myself starting to smile. Suddenly Gary slapped me. I
felt the sting of pain shoot through my nose. My
hand sprang to my face to soothe the blow. I
(14:51):
looked into my palm and saw blood, then back into
Gary's shocked eyes. Baby, I'm sorry. Let's just forget about it,
he said. There's a lot there, stalking, spying, assault, and
then toad insults Andre. Right on its heels comes another wound,
this one from another woman, a girl actually. One morning,
(15:14):
Neil's agent drives her to meet Cooper, who's waiting in
his truck for her. Gary did not jump out as
he normally did to open the door. Neil writes in
her memoir, I got in beside him. When I saw
his face, my blood turned to ice. Before I could
say anything, I heard someone approach, and as I looked
at the window, Rocky and Maria passed into my view.
Rocky is the nickname everyone calls Gary Cooper's wife, Maria
(15:37):
is their young daughter. Maria's face is stained with tears.
The child looks at me, Neil says, and spits on
the ground. Such a little girl, and she spits with
so much hate. Gary explains he had told his wife
about the affair. When Rocky asked him if he was
in love with Neil, he admitted to her he was.
Rocky then told their daughter, which I'm sorry, but that sucks.
(16:01):
I'm not defending Cooper, and I have a lot of
sympathy for Rocky, but telling your young daughter that her
dad is having an affair is such a lame choice.
Getting spit out by this little girl really screws with
Neil's head. But I guess not enough, because it doesn't
stop her from doing the exact same thing with her
own daughter twenty five years later, when she discovers the
Doll has been having his own affair. It's like people
(16:23):
run out of original ways to hurt each other after
that awful encounter, A lot of people would have ended
the affair. Not Neil and Cooper. They don't even try
that hard to conceal it anymore. After hearing Cooper star
in a radio play, for instance, Neil sends him a
wire to tell him how fabulous he was. The next
day she gets a wire back. It reads, in all caps,
(16:44):
I have had just a bad enough of you. You
had better stop now or you will be sorry, Signed
missus Gary Cooper. Can you imagine getting a letter like
that you will be sorry? It's like out of a
bad daytime TV show, And it takes a certain kind
of personnelity to get that letter and just throw it
in the trash and keep on trucking. But soon things
(17:06):
get much more complicated for Neil and Cooper.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
And I decided then that I would never ever ever
get in that kind of situation again.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Here's Neil again with Arlene Hurson.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
You mean involved with the married me and I didn't.
But you also became pregnant, Neil. People talk about abortion
in those days, it wasn't was forbidden. Nobody talked about it.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Oh, it was horrifying, you know it really was, but
you know you didn't mention it to a soul and
you had to do is how to end this thing?
Speaker 1 (17:43):
So what happened?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
In other interviews, Neil basically says Cooper forced her to
have the abortion. Decades later, she says, if she had
only one thing to do over in her life, she
would have had that baby. And you got a wonder
if she had, would she and Daal still have gotten together.
Would he have been ready to be a stepfather to
Gary Cooper's love child. I don't know. But soon after
(18:04):
the abortion, Neil and Cooper break it off for the
last time in Hollywood terms. Neil writes in her memoir,
he was not going to pick up my option. That's
literally how she phrases it. When I read that in
her book, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Neil decides she needs to get the hell out of
la so she moves to New York and meets Dahl.
(18:24):
But for the first many years of their relationship they're
just not alone. Cooper's presence is there too. It really
screws all up, which is a little surprising. Doll always
had a thing for dating women who've just broken up
with or are currently married to famous powerful men. Remember
the French actress Annabella, She was married to movie starts
Tyrone Power while dating Doll, or Claire Booth Luce, who
(18:47):
was married to one of the most influential men of
the century. Dahl also dated Phyllis Brooks, an actress in
a relationship with mister Swave himself Carrie Grant, but this
was different. For whatever reason, this was the first time
that Dall really felt an adequate in comparison to the
other man. Probably didn't help that Cooper was good buddies
with Doll's writing hero Hemingway. It messed with Doll's confidence
(19:08):
And I get it. When I was in my twenties,
a young movie star flirted with my girlfriend at lunch
in la and I couldn't sleep for a week. So
how the hell is Doll going to get over this
giant obstacle standing in the way of his being able
to finally get married, settle down, start a family. His
reaction is to follow Neil around like a pathetic puppy dog.
(19:29):
Neil is rehearsing a play when she begins dating doll.
Doll hangs around the empty theater every day, then nips
back to her dressing room when the play opens. He
goes to almost every performance, clapping wildly, then taking her
out for supper afterwards or to a party with her friends.
The man who seduced his way across DC in New
York has become a clingy, needy boyfriend to understand why
(19:51):
Doll's acting this way, why he's so sure Neil is
the only woman for him and he has to fight
for her. I got to tell you a little more
about her. Honestly, she's amazing. When she was twenty, the
age when people are acting in bad college productions of
experimental theater, Neil was already on Broadway. She won all
the major awards as Best Broadway Actress of nineteen forty six,
(20:12):
which directly led to famous mustachioed movie mogul Jack Warner
signing her to a long term contract. The new Garbo,
Warner repeated over and over to anyone that would listen.
Neil goes on to make over thirty films in her career,
but the two I deeply love are Hud and Breakfast
to Tiphany's. In Hud, she plays a long suffering housekeeper
(20:32):
abused by young Paul Newman. She's incredible in it, so
strong while so vulnerable, and goes toe to toe with Newman,
which is not an easy task. She wins the oscar
for it. In Tiffany's Neil plays opposite another legend, Audrey Hepburn,
again not easy, especially when she's playing Audrey's competition for
the male lead. When Dahl first meets Neil, she hasn't
(20:54):
yet made either of these movies. Instead, Dahl recognizes her
from The Day the Earth Stood Still early sci fi film.
It's playing in the theater within walking distance of Lilian
Hellman's apartment the night they're seated next to each other.
Neil's look is also really singular. She has this rich,
reddish hair, very unusual in Hollywood at the time. She's
(21:14):
a broad five foot eight, a full four to five
inches taller than the biggest stars like Elizabeth Taylor and
Maril Monroe. It gives her authority. She looks like someone
you wouldn't want to mess with, which remember, is exactly
Dolls type. But Neil doesn't seem unapproachable like Taylor or Monroe.
She feels sort of relatable, even in a film like Tiffany's,
(21:35):
where she's a wealthy, sharky New Yorker, and she always
stands out for how naturalistic she is. Her contemporaries lean
into melodrama with that very formal, often very phony, mid
Atlantic accent. You know the one I'm talking about. Think
Katherine Hepburn in the Philadelphia Story.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
You'll seem quite contemptuous.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
And may all of a sudden not Neil. She's a
method actor trained at the Actor Studio under Elia Kazan
along with Newman, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean. She's also
just obviously brilliant. You can tell from watching her on
screen how smart she is, same way you can tell
with Emma Thompson or Jodie Foster or Sirsha Ronan. Neil
also has this really husky, smoky voice, which gives her
(22:17):
characters so much gravitas, and the way she's able to
shift her voice from tough to vulnerable within the same
exchange offers layers to all her characters, like in this
scene from hud As Mary.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Dad for six years, only thing he's ever good for
was to scratch my back where it couldn't rage you.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Still gone down it often not, so how is Doll
going to convince Neil to forget about her dreamy X
and marry him. He's kind of hoping sex will do
the trick. One of Roldall's great assets, Neil writes in
her memoir, was his desire never to leave a female unfulfilled.
(22:57):
I learned that in the art of making love, Rolled
was a master, and believe me, at this point in
my life, I was not easy to reach. One day
during their courtship, on a perfect autumn afternoon, during a
stroll through midtime Manhattan, Doll works up the courage, turns
to Neil and abruptly asks her to marry him. Her response,
(23:18):
oh no, seriously, that's what she said. She opens up
about the moment more in her autobiography. It's simple. I
thought to myself, I really don't love Rold and I
don't want to get married. But then that was not
entirely true. I did want marriage and a family. Rold
would have beautiful children. What was I holding out for
a great love that would never come again? When was
(23:41):
I going to face reality? Isn't that every married person's
worst fear that their spouse might have been thinking that
when they were proposed to, but the guy won't give up.
He's as persistent about this as he is about everything
in his life, and the next time he asks, she
acquiesces worn her down. The poor guy isn't yet the
(24:03):
writer helplic home. He can't even afford a ring for Neil.
As always, Charles marsh comes to the rescue, providing Doll
with a diamond. Dall and Neil decide to get married
at Trinity Church at the intersection of Broadway and Wall
Street in Lower Manhattan, a towering Gothic revival built in
the late sixteen hundreds. Famous New Yorkers like Alexander Hamilton
(24:23):
are buried right out front. It's so hot on July second,
nineteen fifty three, the day of the wedding, that Doll
rips the lining right out of his brand new suit
when he wakes up that morning. Can't you just pictureing
Neil laughing at that, just laying in bed, summer suns
streaming through the slits in the window shades her wedding day,
gazing up at this tall, handsome man she's about to
(24:45):
marry as he towers over her, clumsily struggling with his
new suit. I'll bet she was glowing. Maybe she's even
forgotten to think about Gary Cooper, and Doll must have
been optimistic about the future, too excited to finally have
reached this new stage of his life, a new kind
of venture. Neither one had any idea of the utter
tragedy and heartbreak that would come from this marriage, or
(25:08):
the incredible world beating successes that would result from it.
Neither Doll nor Neil invite their families to the wedding.
They want to keep it small. From personal experience, I
think the wedding industrial complex is practically criminal, especially in
New York, and I don't blame anyone who chooses to
abstain from it. But why no loved ones. It's not
(25:29):
like this is each of their third or fourth marriages
or something. This is the first marriage for both. At
least Charles marsh is invited. He did provide the ring,
after all, he's Doll's best man. It's also a bad
sign that neither bride nor groom remembered to arrange for
any music, and then, in a really bad zign, here's
what we know Neil was thinking during the ceremony when
(25:49):
asked the big question, do you take this man? We
know because she writes about it. Later. She says she
thought to herself, I had been through. My great passionate
love life was more than that. That night, they go home,
bags of leftover food under their arms, smiles still plastered
to their faces. Both a little drunk. They take off
(26:10):
their fancy clothes, climb into bed. Doll switches off the
light and softly says to his new wife, I love you.
Neil feels tears come to her eyes, they roll down
her cheeks in the dark silence. I could feel my
heart breaking. She later writes, I so wanted to be
married but to another man, And Doll telling his bride
that he loves her just now, you know, on their
(26:32):
wedding night he will be one of only three times
he ever says that's her. Over the next thirty years,
the start of Doll O'Neil's marriage goes about as well
as your picturing actors congregate together, you know, Doll writes
to a friend, They're not like writers. They're in our
apartment all the time, pushing and swarming around. It's me
(26:53):
against a lot of them. Soon after the wedding, maybe
partly because of all the flighty actors, hanging around. He
starts to wonder if maybe he's just not cut out
for marriage. He may have made a mistake. He even
tells this to Neil in bed one night, then rolls
over and goes to sleep. He doesn't bring it up
again for years. I have to think one reason Doll
(27:19):
resisted domestic life for so long and then has so
much trouble with it when he finally commits, stems from
his previous life as a spy. I mean, there's a
reason James Bond doesn't settle down right, leaving espionage and
war behind, re entering the normal world, It's nearly impossible
to distract himself from his difficult domestic life. Dog goes
(27:39):
back to his real love, his writing. Maybe now he
can finally focus. He churns out short story after short story,
but still hasn't quite found his voice. I talk about
this issue with my creative writing students at Yale all
the time. More than almost anything else, more than the
ability to write witty dialogue or construct a sound plot
or an interesting scene, the way to get hired as
(28:01):
a writer is to show you have a distinct, compelling voice.
Think about any of your favorite writers. Quentin Tarantino, Joan Didion,
Aaron Sorkin, or Tony Morrison. They all have incredibly distinct voices.
You wouldn't confuse even a single page of any of
those writers works with someone else's. At this moment in
his career, Dahl thinks his voice is that of a
(28:23):
sophisticated New Yorker, someone whose stories are at home in
the New Yorker magazine. This is the world he's living
in with Patricia Neil, the one where playwright Clifford o'dett's
lives upstairs and they go to dinner parties with Lillian
Hellman and Leonard Bernstein. But this just isn't Dahl's natural voice.
He hasn't found it yet. Charles Marsh does not agree.
(28:46):
He thinks the problem with Dahl's career is the discord
in his marriage. Dahl has told Marsh that Neil is
hanging out with her theater friends way too much. She
isn't serving his needs enough. Marsh seems to completely understand,
writing back with a line that feel ripped out of
mad Men. You want a woman to think of you
eighty percent of the time and to work like hell
on the eighty percent without asking you for direction. He
(29:09):
invites Doll o'nil to Jamaica, where they can work on
the marriage. Marsh brings along his newest youngest wife yet, Claudia,
who you will be shocked to learn used to be
his secretary. Yeah, just when you think Marsh can't be
any more of a mid century cliche, the guy marries
his secretary. In Jamaica, Marsh gives doll' neil a good
(29:31):
talking to about finding compromise in their relationship. Why he
thinks they would respect his opinion on marriage is anybody's guests,
but Doll takes it to heart. One reason is the
last advice he's ever going to get from Marsh. On
this trip to Jamaica, Marsh is bitten by a mosquito
and contracts cerebral malaria, setting off a decline in health
(29:53):
from which he'll never fully recover. For Dol, it's like
losing the only father he's ever known. He's inconsolable, and
it's the first in a long line of tragedies that
will unfold over the next few years. Another obstacle for
(30:15):
Doll o' neil is the fact that, unlike almost all
marriages in this period, Neil is making way more money
than her husband. It makes Doll feel totally inadequate, which
Neil does sympathize with. So she sets out to become
more like the kind of wife Doll wants, which sadly
is a doting, cooking, cleaning obedient one. Take a guess
(30:35):
how well that's going to go. After a while, Doll
does at least partially accept the reality that Neil is
not his mother. She's not going to anticipate his every need,
and she's just objectively way more successful than he is.
He lowers his expectations of her cooking and cleaning. Okay,
good for him, I guess for her part, Neil hands
(30:58):
over all control for finding is to Doll, which sort
of works for a while. Giving him control of the
money achieves an instantaneous lessening of tension in the marriage,
she says, And if that doesn't sound like the nineteen fifties,
I don't know what does. As the marriage goes on,
Neil continues her wild rise in Hollywood. She stars in
(31:19):
some seminal films of the era, like Elia Kazan's A
Face in the Crowd.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
I always should have been an equal partner. Well, no,
I'm gonna be.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
An equal partner.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
I want to get something out deserve and she does
tons of success. But while Neil is on the way out,
Doll's writing career stalls again. The New Yorker has not
accepted a story by Dohl for five years. Frustrated, he
spends two years writing a play. But this is the
era of big musicals like Damn Yankees and My Fair Lady.
(31:48):
Dall's dark character drama isn't what audiences want. In fact,
though he'd never admit it, the show may have only
gotten picked up because of who he was married to.
But Dall's committed to it's how committed to it he is.
He misses the birth of their first child because he's
on tour with the play in Boston, and while he
does manage to get the play a Broadway run, it's
(32:09):
an instant flop. Neil, on the other hand, gets nominated
for Best Actress. She continues to be the name in
this family. And while I mentioned that Dolls skip their
daughter's birth to be with his play on the road,
Neil basically does the exact opposite. She skips the Academy
Awards because she's pregnant and chooses not to travel. In fact,
(32:29):
she sleeps through the show.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Hollywood's Big Knight. Gregory Peck names the best actress Church
and here Annabella accepts for Patricia Neil, who is in London.
It's a triumph for miss Neil, who was awakened in
the night. They're hear the good news.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Did you catch that accepting the oscar on Neil's behalf
is Doll's old girlfriend Annabella. Imagine how that conversation might
have gone. A very uncharitable reading would be that Doll
is so insecure about his wife winning the Oscar while
he's struggling in his own career, that he not only
encourages her to stay home, but when she thinks about
who should accept the Oscar on her behalf if she wins,
(33:10):
he insists on his ex girlfriend, who could use a
moment in the spotlight man this marriage. Doll O'Neil's first child, Olivia,
comes two years after their meeting at Lillian Hellman's party.
Tessa comes next two years later, then Theo three years
after that, and then four years later Ophelia and Lucy
(33:33):
five children. According to writer Matthew Denison, Neil initially struggles
as a mother. At one point, she hands one of
the kids over to her sister in law for several weeks,
which is the kind of thing you read in a
biography and are like, oh, there's an issue there. But
step back for a second. She has five kids, five
and not that far apart in age. I don't know
(33:54):
anyone with more than three children five must feel like
five hundred. And she has a giant career. Let's give
the lady a break. By all accounts, it does seem
that Doll is doing his share with the kids, or
at least his share for a father in that era.
With all the negative things Neil has to say about
her husband and her memoir, and there's a lot, she
really does have nice things to say about him as
(34:15):
a father. After their rocky start, Doll and Neil slowly
settled into family life. They develop a nice routine, both
continuing to work hard, relying on nanny's and totally smitten
with their kids. Neil, despite her body in a constant
state of creation and recovery, works a ton, making her
three greatest movies. In fact, life is good. They've settled
(34:39):
into a rhythm, but the biggest tragedy of Doll's life
is about to occur. Followed by another, followed by one more,
all involving the brain, and it's followed by an epic
amount of career success. It's the stuff of TV melodrama,
which is actually about to become. Dall has been tested
(35:02):
many times over the years, but this next period of
his life is going to be way more intense than anything.
It also maybe what turns him into the writer he
was always meant to be. The Secret World of Roald
(35:23):
Dahl is produced by Imagine Audio and Parallax Studios for
iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by 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 Seton,
Music by a PM. Executive producers Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker,
(35:48):
Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, 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 Role Dall on Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts. Copyright twenty twenty six, Imagine
Entertainment iHeartMedia and Parallax
In your book, you said that you didn't love him
when you married him.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
No, I did not when I married him.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
This is Patricia Neil, the movie star Roll Dahl met
at the end of our last episode, talking about the
beginning of their relationship later in life on The Arlene
Hearson Show.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's just that I desperately wanted to have children, and
of course one had to be married in those days
to have children, and I decided that I would marry
Rualdall because I wanted he would make good children.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
For Okay, we're going to take a break out, and
so begins the defining relationship of Doll's life, one that's
going to last thirty years and produce five children. Get Ready.
As noisy and epic as you think Doll's professional and
social lives have been so far, it is nothing compared
to the intensity of what you're about to hear in
his family life. For my hard podcast Imagine Entertainment in Parallax,
(00:57):
I'm Marrion Tracy, and this is the Secret World of
Roald Dall. Episode four. Let's pick up just before Dall
meets Patricia Neil. It's nineteen fifty two. Doll is now
thirty six years old. He's already lived so many lives,
the businessman, the fighter, pilot, the spy, the screenwriter. The
(01:17):
question is now what he decides to try making a
living at the craft he's had some sporadic success with.
It's the next mask he's going to put on. He's
going to become a great novelist or die trying. Keep
in mind, this is many years before Doll's success with
James Bond. Right now, he's desperate to write important fiction.
(01:38):
Like his hero Hemingway, Dall can feel the talent inside
of himself. He's bursting with creativity and ambition. Only when
he's writing does he feel the kind of transcendence that
exists nowhere else in his life. Doll has already had
a little success with short stories like the one that
got Walt Disney and Eleanor Roosevelt's attention. So he builds
himself a writing office in a small bachelor apartment and
(02:00):
spends all day every day working on his craft. Like
a lot of people determined to go into the creative arts,
he's throwing himself into it, body and soul, which of
course is not necessarily the right move. The life of
a writer is a life of rejection, even for those
who are most successful. It's basically an exercise in daily humiliations.
So if you make writing your whole identity, you're going
(02:22):
to be in big trouble. Speaking from personal experience before
I got married and started a family, anytime I would
fail with a TV pitch or a pilot not getting
picked up, he would be an earthquake. You gotta have
balance in your life right now, Doll has none. My
grandfather used to say, you marry the person you're dating
at the age you want to be married, which I
(02:44):
always found pretty cynical. I'm more of a romantic at heart,
and I think Doll is too. He's in his mid
thirties and he's majorly resisted settling down. The guy has
dated some of the most glamorous, most influential women on
the planet, so one of the reason he's still single
is that his bar is high, and Doll, like I said,
(03:05):
is a romantic. He doesn't want to marry someone unless
he feels that transcendent feeling. His mentor, Charles Marsh, has
been pleading with him to just settle on someone already.
He tells Doll that his lack of a wife and
his lack of success with writing are inextricably linked. Finding
a wife will focus him. It'll give him a reason
to work and to be successful, And if he needs to,
(03:27):
Marsh whispers, he can always have an affair or a
series of affairs down the line. Awfully cynical, but also
sadly common for the era. For evidence, see Marsh and
pretty much every other person we've talked about in this
series so far. Doll is reluctant. Not only does he
want the spark, but he worries a wife will take
(03:49):
time and focus away from his writing, which is where
his passion really lies at the moment. But soon he
has to admit to himself all the time and focus
he's putting into his writing isn't really yielding results. He's
submitting his stories to every magazine, every publisher, every agent
he can get an address for, but the rejections are
piling up. They're almost eye level with his six foot
(04:10):
six frame. The guy grows monumentally depressed, and he has
to admit he is pretty lonely. Maybe Marsh is right,
Maybe my grandfather is right. Maybe a wife won't be
a distraction, she'll be a motivator. So Dall finally determines
he's going to find one. The mask of the writer
will have to wait is time to see how husband
(04:33):
and father fit. As I mentioned, Doll first meets Neil
at a Manhattan dinner party thrown by playwright Lillian Hellman.
Doll is unusually nervous at the party. For one thing,
Hellman is a much more successful writer than he is.
She's someone who really wants to impress. He's so uneasy
(04:54):
that he ends up getting into a screaming match with
another guest, a guest who happens to be Bernstein, the
world famous composer. These two really go at it, and
just when Dalls most worked up, that's when he realizes
that Hellman has decided to play matchmaker. She's seated him
next to a twenty six year old who he recognizes
for magazine covers. It's not an exaggeration to say she's
(05:16):
one of the most beautiful women in the world. Neil
has already acted in major Broadway plays, winning a Tony
for one that Helman wrote, but Dall recognizes her from
the movies. Hollywood, of course, has snapped Neil up and
decided to make her a star. She's now one of
those incredibly rare actresses who gets critical praise and big
box office She's like the Amy Adams of her time,
(05:38):
reddish hair at all. As we've heard, Doll is no
stranger to dating movie stars, but this one's different. Neil
is a force. Watching some of her old films, it's
easy to see why she's so in demand. Whenever she's
on screen, she forces you to look at her. When
she moves, your eyes move with her, no matter which
other huge movie stars are in the frame, and it's
(06:00):
the same in real life. Doll is so nervous looking
at her in the chair next to his it's one
of the few times in his life he's actually tongue tied.
He decides he can't just hint on her like every
guy she meets. That won't make him stand out. He
does some quick calculations in his head and comes up
with an ingenious idea right there on the spot. Here's
what he'll do. He'll totally and completely ignore her. Throughout
(06:25):
the entire dinner, Doll focuses on Leonard Bernstein, pretending Neil
is an empty chair, even when she tries to involve
herself in their argument. But that doesn't mean He's not
entirely focused on Neil. He's observing her, watching how she
carries herself, taking mental notes and storing them away for
future use, like he does with everything that intrigues him.
(06:45):
By the time entrees are served, Doll's mind is made up.
He's found his wife. There's just one problem. The next morning,
he calls Lillian Hellman and gets Neil's phone number. He
hangs up, and like a nerve fifteen year old with
sweaty palms, he dials her. He clears his throat several times,
smooths out his air, takes a deep breath. It's so
(07:08):
unlike him to be anything but confident and calm approaching
a woman. He kind of likes this new feeling, though
his juices are flowing in a way they usually don't.
When Neil answers, he doesn't make small talk. He barely
tells her who's calling. He just jumps in and asks
her to dinner, remembering how incredibly rude he was to
her the night before. Neil can't compute this. She takes
(07:28):
a pause long enough to light a cigarette, rejects him
out right, and then hangs up. But of course rejection
doesn't really bother at all. Remember how many times he's
going to fail in Hollywood before James Bond comes around?
Same thing here. He decided this is what he wants.
This is the rare woman he can actually imagine committing to.
But all his suaveness and swagger elude him. Doll waits
(07:52):
two days and calls Neil again and asks her out again.
She says no again. She decided at the dinner party
that all was someone not to know. He can't believe it.
It honestly never occurred to him that she might reject him.
It's just not how life has gone for him so far.
He reminds me of the story my favorite director Mike
(08:12):
Nichols tells about casting The Graduate. He wanted his main character,
Benjamin Braddock to realistically be someone who strikes out with
women his own age, which leads him to have an
affair with his mother's friend, Missus Robinson. Nichols auditioned Robert
Redford for the role, giving him direction. He said to Redford,
you know how it feels when a girl turns you
down for a date. Redford responded, what do you mean.
(08:34):
That's when they turned instead to Dustin Hoffman, who created
one of the more iconic performances ever Lake Redford Dall
doesn't get rejected. He's been bouncing between actresses, heiresses and
congresswomen for a decade and now he can't even get
a date. What is happening? Two days later, he shamelessly
calls Neil again, and this third time, she rejects him
(08:57):
again and orders him to stop calling her. But on
Doll's fourth attempt, Neil surprises him by green to go
out one time. Has Doll just worn her down? Sort of?
But the truth is Neil has a much bigger reason
for finally saying yes. She's desperate to do anything she
(09:17):
can to get over the greatest heartbreak of her life.
As Doll and Neil start dating, this is the big
obstacle in their path. Neil is still very much in
love with someone else, and annoyingly for Doll, not just
anyone the most famous, most handsome, biggest movie star in
the world, Gary Cooper. Neil has recently co starred with
(09:44):
Cooper in two movies, almost back to back.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Why didn't you kind of set them up?
Speaker 4 (09:48):
I didn't think it would make any difference to you
who came or did it?
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Miss?
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Frank Neil was twenty one, Cooper was forty six. It's
possible you're having trouble picturing Cooper right now. Very few
of his movies are still talked about today. Mostly it's
this heroic sheriff and heigh noon who refuses to run
away from trouble.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Won't be here tomorrow, seems to me, I've got to
stay anyway. I'm the same man.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Or whether out this but back in mid century America,
Gary Cooper was it. Cooper is nominated for the Best
Actor Oscar five times. That's the same number as Tom
Hanks and Al Pacino and Robert de Niro. Cooper wins twice.
He's also just about the most stylish man in Hollywood,
an observation immortalized by Irving Berlin when he revised his
(10:36):
song Putting on the Writs dressed up like a million
dollar Trooper trying hard to look like Garrett Cooper souper duper.
Billy Wilder, who usirected Cooper opposite Audrey Hepburn, says Cooper
was the most elegant man that ever lived. Neil was
(10:57):
completely over the top in love with him despite being
more than twice her age. And oh yeah, there was
one other problem. He was married. Here's Neil explaining to
Arlee and herson again, did.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Do this father? Well, of course it did. But I
was so stupid at that in those days of my life,
I didn't know that I should have had respect for
marriage and left him alone. You know, when one's young,
you want what you want when you want it, and
you can get into bad trouble that way.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
A giant understatement. The relationship nearly kills Neil when it ends.
She actually asks a friend how to commit suicide. This
is when she meets Roll Daal. He can see how
tormented she is. She was obviously pretty shaken up all around.
He says she had come to New York primarily to
get away from an unfortunate romance. So what should d'all do?
(11:51):
What would you do? Walk away? Problem is he just
can't shake the feeling that this is his one chance
for happiness and stability. He puts on an all out
charm offensive, the same way he went over William Stevenson
and Charles marsh and c s Forrester and Franklin and
Eleanor Roosevelt. But it's just not working on Neil. If
(12:11):
you read Neil's memoir, where she's shockingly vulnerable and open.
It's actually a great read. She talks constantly about how
devastated she was over the Cooper breakup. The number of
times she mentions him is pretty astonishing, considering she was
with someone else, namely Doll, ten times longer than she
was with Cooper. Her relationship with Cooper has enough highs
and lows to be its own tragic love story podcast.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
Well, what's a man gonna do when he falls in
love with a girl?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
That's Cooper in my favorite of his movies, Ernst Slubitch's
Bluebeard's Eth Wife And if.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
He finds he's made a mistake, carry on behind her back, lie,
make excuses, not me.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
If only Cooper took his character's advice to heart, I
think that's im Marl In the movie. Cooper keeps falling
in and out of love, but he does the kind
of weirdly honest and maybe even noble thing. When he
meets someone new. He divorces his current wife and marries
her when the film begins. He's been married and divorced
seven times in real life, though Cooper stayed married during
(13:07):
his affairs, which is even messier. The passion between Neil
and Cooper was always running out of ten. We had
reached a depth of real appreciation that all people desire
but few realize. Neil writes in her memoir, He truly
loved my body, and I loved his, and he knew
it when he reached out to love me. It was
first with those penetrating eyes, which stripped away all barriers
(13:29):
between us, and then with those godlike hands, which seemed
to create me in his arms. I thought, I am
at last. I am Yeah. So if you missed it,
that's Neil adopting the biblical creation story as a metaphor
for sex with Cooper. I'm telling you, find yourself somebody
who looks at you the way Patricia Neil looks at
(13:49):
Gary Cooper. Since Cooper is married with a family, Neil
continues dating other guys, if for no other reason than
to have something to do on weekends. She starts dating
Kirk Douglas, a handsome star of Spartacus and Ace in
the Hole. Neil writes, we would sometimes come back to
my apartment for a drink, but there was never anything
between us but good night kisses. Until one night I
(14:09):
was feeling low. I had had a few drinks, and
let's face it, Kirk was very attractive. I found myself
responding to his extremely persuasive kisses. But when it came
right down to it, and it did, I simply couldn't.
After he left, the doorbell rang and an unexpected Gary
Cooper was standing on the threshold. A strange cloud darkened
(14:30):
his face. I looked into your window tonight, he told her,
and I saw what was happening. She continues. Nothing had
really happened at all, but I was impressed by this
outburst of jealousy, which was so unlike Gary. I could
feel myself starting to smile. Suddenly Gary slapped me. I
felt the sting of pain shoot through my nose. My
hand sprang to my face to soothe the blow. I
(14:51):
looked into my palm and saw blood, then back into
Gary's shocked eyes. Baby, I'm sorry. Let's just forget about it,
he said. There's a lot there, stalking, spying, assault, and
then toad insults Andre. Right on its heels comes another wound,
this one from another woman, a girl actually. One morning,
(15:14):
Neil's agent drives her to meet Cooper, who's waiting in
his truck for her. Gary did not jump out as
he normally did to open the door. Neil writes in
her memoir, I got in beside him. When I saw
his face, my blood turned to ice. Before I could
say anything, I heard someone approach, and as I looked
at the window, Rocky and Maria passed into my view.
Rocky is the nickname everyone calls Gary Cooper's wife, Maria
(15:37):
is their young daughter. Maria's face is stained with tears.
The child looks at me, Neil says, and spits on
the ground. Such a little girl, and she spits with
so much hate. Gary explains he had told his wife
about the affair. When Rocky asked him if he was
in love with Neil, he admitted to her he was.
Rocky then told their daughter, which I'm sorry, but that sucks.
(16:01):
I'm not defending Cooper, and I have a lot of
sympathy for Rocky, but telling your young daughter that her
dad is having an affair is such a lame choice.
Getting spit out by this little girl really screws with
Neil's head. But I guess not enough, because it doesn't
stop her from doing the exact same thing with her
own daughter twenty five years later, when she discovers the
Doll has been having his own affair. It's like people
(16:23):
run out of original ways to hurt each other after
that awful encounter, A lot of people would have ended
the affair. Not Neil and Cooper. They don't even try
that hard to conceal it anymore. After hearing Cooper star
in a radio play, for instance, Neil sends him a
wire to tell him how fabulous he was. The next
day she gets a wire back. It reads, in all caps,
(16:44):
I have had just a bad enough of you. You
had better stop now or you will be sorry, Signed
missus Gary Cooper. Can you imagine getting a letter like
that you will be sorry? It's like out of a
bad daytime TV show, And it takes a certain kind
of personnelity to get that letter and just throw it
in the trash and keep on trucking. But soon things
(17:06):
get much more complicated for Neil and Cooper.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
And I decided then that I would never ever ever
get in that kind of situation again.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Here's Neil again with Arlene Hurson.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
You mean involved with the married me and I didn't.
But you also became pregnant, Neil. People talk about abortion
in those days, it wasn't was forbidden. Nobody talked about it.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Oh, it was horrifying, you know it really was, but
you know you didn't mention it to a soul and
you had to do is how to end this thing?
Speaker 1 (17:43):
So what happened?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
In other interviews, Neil basically says Cooper forced her to
have the abortion. Decades later, she says, if she had
only one thing to do over in her life, she
would have had that baby. And you got a wonder
if she had, would she and Daal still have gotten together.
Would he have been ready to be a stepfather to
Gary Cooper's love child. I don't know. But soon after
(18:04):
the abortion, Neil and Cooper break it off for the
last time in Hollywood terms. Neil writes in her memoir,
he was not going to pick up my option. That's
literally how she phrases it. When I read that in
her book, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Neil decides she needs to get the hell out of
la so she moves to New York and meets Dahl.
(18:24):
But for the first many years of their relationship they're
just not alone. Cooper's presence is there too. It really
screws all up, which is a little surprising. Doll always
had a thing for dating women who've just broken up
with or are currently married to famous powerful men. Remember
the French actress Annabella, She was married to movie starts
Tyrone Power while dating Doll, or Claire Booth Luce, who
(18:47):
was married to one of the most influential men of
the century. Dahl also dated Phyllis Brooks, an actress in
a relationship with mister Swave himself Carrie Grant, but this
was different. For whatever reason, this was the first time
that Dall really felt an adequate in comparison to the
other man. Probably didn't help that Cooper was good buddies
with Doll's writing hero Hemingway. It messed with Doll's confidence
(19:08):
And I get it. When I was in my twenties,
a young movie star flirted with my girlfriend at lunch
in la and I couldn't sleep for a week. So
how the hell is Doll going to get over this
giant obstacle standing in the way of his being able
to finally get married, settle down, start a family. His
reaction is to follow Neil around like a pathetic puppy dog.
(19:29):
Neil is rehearsing a play when she begins dating doll.
Doll hangs around the empty theater every day, then nips
back to her dressing room when the play opens. He
goes to almost every performance, clapping wildly, then taking her
out for supper afterwards or to a party with her friends.
The man who seduced his way across DC in New
York has become a clingy, needy boyfriend to understand why
(19:51):
Doll's acting this way, why he's so sure Neil is
the only woman for him and he has to fight
for her. I got to tell you a little more
about her. Honestly, she's amazing. When she was twenty, the
age when people are acting in bad college productions of
experimental theater, Neil was already on Broadway. She won all
the major awards as Best Broadway Actress of nineteen forty six,
(20:12):
which directly led to famous mustachioed movie mogul Jack Warner
signing her to a long term contract. The new Garbo,
Warner repeated over and over to anyone that would listen.
Neil goes on to make over thirty films in her career,
but the two I deeply love are Hud and Breakfast
to Tiphany's. In Hud, she plays a long suffering housekeeper
(20:32):
abused by young Paul Newman. She's incredible in it, so
strong while so vulnerable, and goes toe to toe with Newman,
which is not an easy task. She wins the oscar
for it. In Tiffany's Neil plays opposite another legend, Audrey Hepburn,
again not easy, especially when she's playing Audrey's competition for
the male lead. When Dahl first meets Neil, she hasn't
(20:54):
yet made either of these movies. Instead, Dahl recognizes her
from The Day the Earth Stood Still early sci fi film.
It's playing in the theater within walking distance of Lilian
Hellman's apartment the night they're seated next to each other.
Neil's look is also really singular. She has this rich,
reddish hair, very unusual in Hollywood at the time. She's
(21:14):
a broad five foot eight, a full four to five
inches taller than the biggest stars like Elizabeth Taylor and
Maril Monroe. It gives her authority. She looks like someone
you wouldn't want to mess with, which remember, is exactly
Dolls type. But Neil doesn't seem unapproachable like Taylor or Monroe.
She feels sort of relatable, even in a film like Tiffany's,
(21:35):
where she's a wealthy, sharky New Yorker, and she always
stands out for how naturalistic she is. Her contemporaries lean
into melodrama with that very formal, often very phony, mid
Atlantic accent. You know the one I'm talking about. Think
Katherine Hepburn in the Philadelphia Story.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
You'll seem quite contemptuous.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
And may all of a sudden not Neil. She's a
method actor trained at the Actor Studio under Elia Kazan
along with Newman, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean. She's also
just obviously brilliant. You can tell from watching her on
screen how smart she is, same way you can tell
with Emma Thompson or Jodie Foster or Sirsha Ronan. Neil
also has this really husky, smoky voice, which gives her
(22:17):
characters so much gravitas, and the way she's able to
shift her voice from tough to vulnerable within the same
exchange offers layers to all her characters, like in this
scene from hud As Mary.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Dad for six years, only thing he's ever good for
was to scratch my back where it couldn't rage you.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Still gone down it often not, so how is Doll
going to convince Neil to forget about her dreamy X
and marry him. He's kind of hoping sex will do
the trick. One of Roldall's great assets, Neil writes in
her memoir, was his desire never to leave a female unfulfilled.
(22:57):
I learned that in the art of making love, Rolled
was a master, and believe me, at this point in
my life, I was not easy to reach. One day
during their courtship, on a perfect autumn afternoon, during a
stroll through midtime Manhattan, Doll works up the courage, turns
to Neil and abruptly asks her to marry him. Her response,
(23:18):
oh no, seriously, that's what she said. She opens up
about the moment more in her autobiography. It's simple. I
thought to myself, I really don't love Rold and I
don't want to get married. But then that was not
entirely true. I did want marriage and a family. Rold
would have beautiful children. What was I holding out for
a great love that would never come again? When was
(23:41):
I going to face reality? Isn't that every married person's
worst fear that their spouse might have been thinking that
when they were proposed to, but the guy won't give up.
He's as persistent about this as he is about everything
in his life, and the next time he asks, she
acquiesces worn her down. The poor guy isn't yet the
(24:03):
writer helplic home. He can't even afford a ring for Neil.
As always, Charles marsh comes to the rescue, providing Doll
with a diamond. Dall and Neil decide to get married
at Trinity Church at the intersection of Broadway and Wall
Street in Lower Manhattan, a towering Gothic revival built in
the late sixteen hundreds. Famous New Yorkers like Alexander Hamilton
(24:23):
are buried right out front. It's so hot on July second,
nineteen fifty three, the day of the wedding, that Doll
rips the lining right out of his brand new suit
when he wakes up that morning. Can't you just pictureing
Neil laughing at that, just laying in bed, summer suns
streaming through the slits in the window shades her wedding day,
gazing up at this tall, handsome man she's about to
(24:45):
marry as he towers over her, clumsily struggling with his
new suit. I'll bet she was glowing. Maybe she's even
forgotten to think about Gary Cooper, and Doll must have
been optimistic about the future, too excited to finally have
reached this new stage of his life, a new kind
of venture. Neither one had any idea of the utter
tragedy and heartbreak that would come from this marriage, or
(25:08):
the incredible world beating successes that would result from it.
Neither Doll nor Neil invite their families to the wedding.
They want to keep it small. From personal experience, I
think the wedding industrial complex is practically criminal, especially in
New York, and I don't blame anyone who chooses to
abstain from it. But why no loved ones. It's not
(25:29):
like this is each of their third or fourth marriages
or something. This is the first marriage for both. At
least Charles marsh is invited. He did provide the ring,
after all, he's Doll's best man. It's also a bad
sign that neither bride nor groom remembered to arrange for
any music, and then, in a really bad zign, here's
what we know Neil was thinking during the ceremony when
(25:49):
asked the big question, do you take this man? We
know because she writes about it. Later. She says she
thought to herself, I had been through. My great passionate
love life was more than that. That night, they go home,
bags of leftover food under their arms, smiles still plastered
to their faces. Both a little drunk. They take off
(26:10):
their fancy clothes, climb into bed. Doll switches off the
light and softly says to his new wife, I love you.
Neil feels tears come to her eyes, they roll down
her cheeks in the dark silence. I could feel my
heart breaking. She later writes, I so wanted to be
married but to another man, And Doll telling his bride
that he loves her just now, you know, on their
(26:32):
wedding night he will be one of only three times
he ever says that's her. Over the next thirty years,
the start of Doll O'Neil's marriage goes about as well
as your picturing actors congregate together, you know, Doll writes
to a friend, They're not like writers. They're in our
apartment all the time, pushing and swarming around. It's me
(26:53):
against a lot of them. Soon after the wedding, maybe
partly because of all the flighty actors, hanging around. He
starts to wonder if maybe he's just not cut out
for marriage. He may have made a mistake. He even
tells this to Neil in bed one night, then rolls
over and goes to sleep. He doesn't bring it up
again for years. I have to think one reason Doll
(27:19):
resisted domestic life for so long and then has so
much trouble with it when he finally commits, stems from
his previous life as a spy. I mean, there's a
reason James Bond doesn't settle down right, leaving espionage and
war behind, re entering the normal world, It's nearly impossible
to distract himself from his difficult domestic life. Dog goes
(27:39):
back to his real love, his writing. Maybe now he
can finally focus. He churns out short story after short story,
but still hasn't quite found his voice. I talk about
this issue with my creative writing students at Yale all
the time. More than almost anything else, more than the
ability to write witty dialogue or construct a sound plot
or an interesting scene, the way to get hired as
(28:01):
a writer is to show you have a distinct, compelling voice.
Think about any of your favorite writers. Quentin Tarantino, Joan Didion,
Aaron Sorkin, or Tony Morrison. They all have incredibly distinct voices.
You wouldn't confuse even a single page of any of
those writers works with someone else's. At this moment in
his career, Dahl thinks his voice is that of a
(28:23):
sophisticated New Yorker, someone whose stories are at home in
the New Yorker magazine. This is the world he's living
in with Patricia Neil, the one where playwright Clifford o'dett's
lives upstairs and they go to dinner parties with Lillian
Hellman and Leonard Bernstein. But this just isn't Dahl's natural voice.
He hasn't found it yet. Charles Marsh does not agree.
(28:46):
He thinks the problem with Dahl's career is the discord
in his marriage. Dahl has told Marsh that Neil is
hanging out with her theater friends way too much. She
isn't serving his needs enough. Marsh seems to completely understand,
writing back with a line that feel ripped out of
mad Men. You want a woman to think of you
eighty percent of the time and to work like hell
on the eighty percent without asking you for direction. He
(29:09):
invites Doll o'nil to Jamaica, where they can work on
the marriage. Marsh brings along his newest youngest wife yet, Claudia,
who you will be shocked to learn used to be
his secretary. Yeah, just when you think Marsh can't be
any more of a mid century cliche, the guy marries
his secretary. In Jamaica, Marsh gives doll' neil a good
(29:31):
talking to about finding compromise in their relationship. Why he
thinks they would respect his opinion on marriage is anybody's guests,
but Doll takes it to heart. One reason is the
last advice he's ever going to get from Marsh. On
this trip to Jamaica, Marsh is bitten by a mosquito
and contracts cerebral malaria, setting off a decline in health
(29:53):
from which he'll never fully recover. For Dol, it's like
losing the only father he's ever known. He's inconsolable, and
it's the first in a long line of tragedies that
will unfold over the next few years. Another obstacle for
(30:15):
Doll o' neil is the fact that, unlike almost all
marriages in this period, Neil is making way more money
than her husband. It makes Doll feel totally inadequate, which
Neil does sympathize with. So she sets out to become
more like the kind of wife Doll wants, which sadly
is a doting, cooking, cleaning obedient one. Take a guess
(30:35):
how well that's going to go. After a while, Doll
does at least partially accept the reality that Neil is
not his mother. She's not going to anticipate his every need,
and she's just objectively way more successful than he is.
He lowers his expectations of her cooking and cleaning. Okay,
good for him, I guess for her part, Neil hands
(30:58):
over all control for finding is to Doll, which sort
of works for a while. Giving him control of the
money achieves an instantaneous lessening of tension in the marriage,
she says, And if that doesn't sound like the nineteen fifties,
I don't know what does. As the marriage goes on,
Neil continues her wild rise in Hollywood. She stars in
(31:19):
some seminal films of the era, like Elia Kazan's A
Face in the Crowd.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
I always should have been an equal partner. Well, no,
I'm gonna be.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
An equal partner.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
I want to get something out deserve and she does
tons of success. But while Neil is on the way out,
Doll's writing career stalls again. The New Yorker has not
accepted a story by Dohl for five years. Frustrated, he
spends two years writing a play. But this is the
era of big musicals like Damn Yankees and My Fair Lady.
(31:48):
Dall's dark character drama isn't what audiences want. In fact,
though he'd never admit it, the show may have only
gotten picked up because of who he was married to.
But Dall's committed to it's how committed to it he is.
He misses the birth of their first child because he's
on tour with the play in Boston, and while he
does manage to get the play a Broadway run, it's
(32:09):
an instant flop. Neil, on the other hand, gets nominated
for Best Actress. She continues to be the name in
this family. And while I mentioned that Dolls skip their
daughter's birth to be with his play on the road,
Neil basically does the exact opposite. She skips the Academy
Awards because she's pregnant and chooses not to travel. In fact,
(32:29):
she sleeps through the show.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Hollywood's Big Knight. Gregory Peck names the best actress Church
and here Annabella accepts for Patricia Neil, who is in London.
It's a triumph for miss Neil, who was awakened in
the night. They're hear the good news.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Did you catch that accepting the oscar on Neil's behalf
is Doll's old girlfriend Annabella. Imagine how that conversation might
have gone. A very uncharitable reading would be that Doll
is so insecure about his wife winning the Oscar while
he's struggling in his own career, that he not only
encourages her to stay home, but when she thinks about
who should accept the Oscar on her behalf if she wins,
(33:10):
he insists on his ex girlfriend, who could use a
moment in the spotlight man this marriage. Doll O'Neil's first child, Olivia,
comes two years after their meeting at Lillian Hellman's party.
Tessa comes next two years later, then Theo three years
after that, and then four years later Ophelia and Lucy
(33:33):
five children. According to writer Matthew Denison, Neil initially struggles
as a mother. At one point, she hands one of
the kids over to her sister in law for several weeks,
which is the kind of thing you read in a
biography and are like, oh, there's an issue there. But
step back for a second. She has five kids, five
and not that far apart in age. I don't know
(33:54):
anyone with more than three children five must feel like
five hundred. And she has a giant career. Let's give
the lady a break. By all accounts, it does seem
that Doll is doing his share with the kids, or
at least his share for a father in that era.
With all the negative things Neil has to say about
her husband and her memoir, and there's a lot, she
really does have nice things to say about him as
(34:15):
a father. After their rocky start, Doll and Neil slowly
settled into family life. They develop a nice routine, both
continuing to work hard, relying on nanny's and totally smitten
with their kids. Neil, despite her body in a constant
state of creation and recovery, works a ton, making her
three greatest movies. In fact, life is good. They've settled
(34:39):
into a rhythm, but the biggest tragedy of Doll's life
is about to occur. Followed by another, followed by one more,
all involving the brain, and it's followed by an epic
amount of career success. It's the stuff of TV melodrama,
which is actually about to become. Dall has been tested
(35:02):
many times over the years, but this next period of
his life is going to be way more intense than anything.
It also maybe what turns him into the writer he
was always meant to be. The Secret World of Roald
(35:23):
Dahl is produced by Imagine Audio and Parallax Studios for
iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by 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 Seton,
Music by a PM. Executive producers Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker,
(35:48):
Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, 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 Role Dall on Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts. Copyright twenty twenty six, Imagine
Entertainment iHeartMedia and Parallax
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