Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. This is the second
Speaker 1: part of our two parter on artist and author Wanda Gog.
Speaker 1: In part one, we talked about her formative years and
Speaker 1: her financial struggles as she tried to finish her education,
Speaker 1: get to art school, and support her mother and six
Speaker 1: siblings after her father's death when she was just a teenager.
Speaker 1: We're gonna pick up right where we left off, so
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to the first episode, you should
Speaker 1: probably go back and do that, or this won't really
Speaker 1: make all that much sense or have all that much gravity.
Speaker 1: So we mentioned at the end of part one that
Speaker 1: Wanda had published an essay called a Hotbed of Feminists.
Speaker 1: That's kind of where part one ends. And this was
Speaker 1: published in the periodical The Nation, And while it was
Speaker 1: obviously about the Gog household, the family's aim in this
Speaker 1: piece was changed to merr and it shares the story
Speaker 1: of growing up in a family of almost all girls.
Speaker 1: It opens with quote the smell of olive oil and
Speaker 1: mama in bed. This combination always meant a new baby
Speaker 1: in our family. It was one girl after another, which
Speaker 1: pleased me greatly, for I considered boys not only unesthetic,
Speaker 1: but extremely unnecessary creatures. It offers insight into the growing
Speaker 1: up years of the household, noting, quote, my mother, who
Speaker 1: was a natural iconoclast, arranged our hair in unusual ways,
Speaker 1: refused to burden us with starch clothes, and considered shoes
Speaker 1: and stockings unnecessary in hot weather. Sundays included. It also
Speaker 1: shares what it was like for Wanda growing up in
Speaker 1: a non religious home, noting that when her classmates asked
Speaker 1: her what denomination they were, she just told them they
Speaker 1: were nothing, which led said classmates to tell Wanda her
Speaker 1: family was unfit for heaven. When she asked her father
Speaker 1: about it, he tells her quote, nobody knows what will
Speaker 1: happen to us. Just do the best you know how,
Speaker 1: and everything will be all right. This essay also shares
Speaker 1: the details of the really difficult times the family faced
Speaker 1: immediately after Anton's death. It mentions how the final year
Speaker 1: of her father's life was stressful because he couldn't work,
Speaker 1: and that while her mother had been told to take
Speaker 1: in washing to make ends meet. Afterwards quote. But mother,
Speaker 1: after the strain of the past year, was too weary
Speaker 1: and ill to even do her own housework, and I
Speaker 1: could see that the few dollars I would earn as
Speaker 1: a clerk in the village store would never solve our problem. Besides,
Speaker 1: I was needed at home to help with the housework
Speaker 1: and to take care of the baby. This I did,
Speaker 1: and by drawing place cards and writing children's stories, which
Speaker 1: I illustrated, I earned about as much as the store
Speaker 1: job would have brought. There followed years of struggle for us.
Speaker 2: All this essay they may or may not have led
Speaker 2: to the next big accomplishment in her life. Some versions
Speaker 2: of Wanda Gog's life story say that a woman named
Speaker 2: Ernestine Evans read this essay and was inspired to reach
Speaker 2: out to Wanda. Other accounts say that Evans attended an
Speaker 2: early nineteen twenty eight exhibition of Gog's work and there
Speaker 2: became interested in her. It's also possible that she saw
Speaker 2: the article and then sought out the exhibition. Still other
Speaker 2: versions say that Evans was a socialist and recognized Wanda's
Speaker 2: socialist values and wanted to elevate them. But regardless of
Speaker 2: how Evans found Gog and loved her work and was
Speaker 2: in a position to offer her a project that would
Speaker 2: become a significant part of her legacy. Ernestine Evans was
Speaker 2: an editor at Coward McCann Publishing, and she offered Wanda
Speaker 2: a contract to create a children's book. Wanda actually had
Speaker 2: a kid's book that she had been working on since
Speaker 2: at least nineteen twenty. Partner Earle had even helped her
Speaker 2: shop it around to publishers, but no one had wanted it.
Speaker 2: For the next several months. After meeting Evans, Wanda worked
Speaker 2: on the manuscript and illustrations, and it was published before
Speaker 2: the end of nineteen twenty eight. That book, Millions of Cats,
Speaker 2: was groundbreaking in a number of ways. The layout of
Speaker 2: the book was very unique for its time. This was
Speaker 2: a period when children's book illustrations were not typically laid
Speaker 2: out in a way that integrated them with the text.
Speaker 2: There was usually text and story on one page and
Speaker 2: an illustration on the facing page, but Gog's illustrations flow
Speaker 2: from page to page in concert with the lettering, and
Speaker 2: the story features an elderly couple who want a kiddie,
Speaker 2: but when the husband ventures out to find a beautiful cat,
Speaker 2: he cannot choose just one and ends up leading millions
Speaker 2: of cats home without thinking about the resources it will
Speaker 2: take to care for them. They do things along the way,
Speaker 2: like they all want to drink water, and if each
Speaker 2: of them has one lap, they empty out a lake,
Speaker 2: and they all want to eat. And if they each
Speaker 2: eat a blade of grass from a hill, the hill
Speaker 2: is left barren, et cetera. Spoiler alert jump twenty seconds
Speaker 2: ahead if you don't want to know. The cats all
Speaker 2: eat each other, except for one skinny straggler who becomes
Speaker 2: the couple's beloved pet. One of the most alluring aspects
Speaker 2: of God's Book for Children, present right here from the
Speaker 2: beginning and Millions of Cats, is that the stories are
Speaker 2: actually kind of dark, obviously from that synopsis. In this way,
Speaker 2: they harken back to the oldest fairy tales, and they're
Speaker 2: often ghoulish twists. This is generally attributed to the cultural
Speaker 2: tone of her family's background and her upbringing. She would
Speaker 2: have been told stories as a child that came from
Speaker 2: her parents' bohemian folklore, rather than the more sanitized, hyper
Speaker 2: positive and cheery children's stories that had become popular in
Speaker 2: the US in the early nineteen hundreds. This reflected in
Speaker 2: her own account of her early years, written in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty quote, I was born in this country, but often
Speaker 2: feel as though I had spent my early years in Europe.
Speaker 2: My father was born in Bohemia, as were my mother's parents.
Speaker 2: My birthplace, New All, Minnesota, was settled by Middle Europeans,
Speaker 2: and I grew up in an atmosphere of old World
Speaker 2: customs and legends, of Bavarian and Bohemian folk songs of
Speaker 2: German Markin and turnver inactivities. I spoke no English until
Speaker 2: I went to school.
Speaker 1: Millions of Cats is, despite those weird circumstances of the
Speaker 1: de Newment, incredibly charming with its repeated refrain of cats here,
Speaker 1: cats there, cats and kittens everywhere, hundreds of cats, thousands
Speaker 1: of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats. And
Speaker 1: if you want to hear that read in the best
Speaker 1: possible way, there is a version of it that's read
Speaker 1: by James Earl Jones, and I highly recommend it. Wanda
Speaker 1: was a cat lover herself, although she only had two cats,
Speaker 1: not millions, which was named Snoopy, which is so cute,
Speaker 1: and she used her own cats as models to create
Speaker 1: the drawings of the hordes of Cats in the books.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the success of Millions of Cats and
Speaker 1: what the book meant to Wanda in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first we will pause for a sponsor break. Millions
Speaker 1: of Cats was hugely popular right out of the gate.
Speaker 1: It had sold ten thousand copies by January of nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine, and another five thousand by the end of February,
Speaker 1: and it just kept going. Its success offered Gog her
Speaker 1: first taste of real money and lasting financial stability, and
Speaker 1: that book is still in print almost one hundred years later,
Speaker 1: making it the longest running illustrated book in print in
Speaker 1: the US. Millions of Cats was an accidental insurance policy
Speaker 1: for economic uncertainty. The royalties from this and later book
Speaker 1: projects provided Gog with a dependable income even throughout the Depression.
Speaker 1: Though the first thirty eight years of her life had
Speaker 1: involved a lot of financial difficulty, Millions of Cats really
Speaker 1: ended all that very quickly, and it also won her
Speaker 1: a Newberry Award. Writing for Minnesota History Magazine in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, Richard W. Cox noted quote when Wanda took
Speaker 1: her manuscript of Millions of Cats to publishers in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven. Little did she suspect the significance of this
Speaker 1: moment to herself or American art. Millions of Cats became
Speaker 1: the prototype for the picture book, defined as one in
Speaker 1: which a single artist conceives, writes, illustrates, and supervises the
Speaker 1: printing of the whole book project. Her success in the
Speaker 1: children's book field should not have come as a surprise,
Speaker 1: as her upbringing and later training left her peculiarly prepared
Speaker 1: for the new genre. Telling, reading, writing, and illustrating stories
Speaker 1: was a major pastime in the Goog home, and Wanda
Speaker 1: proved to be more imaginative here than the other children.
Speaker 1: Wanda may have been the most imaginative of her siblings,
Speaker 1: but she was not the only one with artistic talent,
Speaker 1: and she involved her family in the project. Her brother,
Speaker 1: Howard lettered the book. This was in service to its quality.
Speaker 1: Coward McCann had a letterer do the work, and Wanda
Speaker 1: had rejected it, so then she had her brother do
Speaker 1: it instead, and he would letter everything she worked on
Speaker 1: going forward. Millions of Cats, as we said, made Wanda money,
Speaker 1: and it also made her famous. She was suddenly put
Speaker 1: in a position of having to do interviews and have appearances,
Speaker 1: but the success for her was all about putting her
Speaker 1: in the more important position of being able to make
Speaker 1: art for art's sake. Everything in her life was in
Speaker 1: service to her art, and she was adamant that the
Speaker 1: priority was always going to be art. Coward McCann and
Speaker 1: other publishers were eager to make deals for more books
Speaker 1: with her signature style, but her business decisions were always
Speaker 1: guided by the question of whether it would enable her
Speaker 1: to make the art she wanted to make, Like basically,
Speaker 1: how much can I make on this project and how
Speaker 1: long can I then just go to my studio and
Speaker 1: paint the stuff I want to make. Everyone knew Wanda
Speaker 1: because of millions of cats, but to her this book
Speaker 1: was just a tool to sustain her true calling. She
Speaker 1: also had a lot of offers to illustrate children's books
Speaker 1: written by other people, and that was always a hard pass,
Speaker 1: with one sort of odd exception.
Speaker 2: That was in nineteen twenty nine when she illustrated Michael
Speaker 2: Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom that was not the work
Speaker 2: of a contemporary author. It was originally published in sixteen
Speaker 2: sixty two. Wigglesworth was a Puritan minister and the book
Speaker 2: describes the day of judgment. It's fairly dark, so it
Speaker 2: was sort of up Wanda's ali. She took imagery from
Speaker 2: New England to gravestones for the art in the book.
Speaker 2: Many of Gog's most well known works have sort of
Speaker 2: long stories in how they develop over time, for example,
Speaker 2: jumping forward for a moment. In nineteen forty one, she
Speaker 2: produced a lithograph called Macy's Stairway, and this shows a
Speaker 2: fairly pedestrian view of an industrial style stairway illustrated in
Speaker 2: Gog's moody, almost cartoonish way, showing the coiled up emergency
Speaker 2: fire hose on one of the landings and the mounted
Speaker 2: handrail along the exterior edge of the stair with a
Speaker 2: glimpse of the heavier wooden mules and balusters on the
Speaker 2: other side of the stair. But she started working on
Speaker 2: this image eleven years earlier. She apparently loved Macy's department store.
Speaker 2: She often shopped there, and she spent an afternoon there
Speaker 2: drawing in January of nineteen twenty nine, and then that
Speaker 2: drawing was refined to a finish drawing and then was
Speaker 2: made into an etching. She was not very happy with
Speaker 2: the etching, and then it wasn't until eleven years later
Speaker 2: that she was ready to revisit this image for its
Speaker 2: lithographic form, which is essentially a copy of that original
Speaker 2: finished drawing. Later, in nineteen twenty nine, gog published her
Speaker 2: second book with Coward McCann, The Funny Thing. The story
Speaker 2: is about a man named Bobo who serves the birds
Speaker 2: and rabbits and mice beautiful food that he prepares, until
Speaker 2: one day a very strange creature shows up. That quote
Speaker 2: looked something like a dog and a little like a giraffe,
Speaker 2: and from the top of its head to the tip
Speaker 2: of its tail there was a row of beautiful blue points.
Speaker 2: This creature is the Funny Thing. It calls itself an
Speaker 2: ammal and tells Bobo that it doesn't want his cheeses
Speaker 2: and puddings because he eats dolls. This distresses Bobo so
Speaker 2: much because he cannot bear the thought of children losing
Speaker 2: their dolls in this way. So he comes up with
Speaker 2: a way to feed the Funny Thing something else. So,
Speaker 2: in spite of this dock market crash, people seem to
Speaker 2: have money to buy the Funny Thing, because it, like
Speaker 2: millions of Cats, was very popular Gog found herself once
Speaker 2: again requested all kinds of appearances and interviews. She also
Speaker 2: had a book tour during which she visited her family,
Speaker 2: including her sister Stella, who was at that point married
Speaker 2: with a child, and she visited her grandparents. These visits
Speaker 2: were very inspirational for Gog, and she produced a series
Speaker 2: of lithographs that captured scenes from her family's living spaces,
Speaker 2: including Grandma's parlor. One of the hallmarks of Gog's work
Speaker 2: is this sense that the lines used to create the
Speaker 2: images are moving or vibrating slightly, and Grandma's parlor is
Speaker 2: a perfect example of that. What is essentially a static
Speaker 2: scene showing part of a Victorian looking couch, a bureau,
Speaker 2: and a small side table that sits in front of
Speaker 2: a window with long curtains feels very much like there's
Speaker 2: movement in the room. It's a really interesting and unique illusion,
Speaker 2: particularly because the style of the art is not realistic,
Speaker 2: so it's kind of like looking into a slightly cartoonish
Speaker 2: parallel dimension. During the nineteen twenties, Gog and Earl Humphries
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time at a rented place out
Speaker 2: in the New Jersey Country they called tumble timbers. The
Speaker 2: rural life that Wanda loved, which came with few amenities,
Speaker 2: would not have been possible if Earle had not been
Speaker 2: willing to handle a lot of the heavy labor aspects
Speaker 2: of life on a farm. He kept the firewood chopped
Speaker 2: and ready, made sure they had food, and tended the
Speaker 2: gardens that Wanda loved so much. His willingness to do
Speaker 2: the farm's heavy labor made it possible for Wanda to
Speaker 2: work on her art without having to concern herself with
Speaker 2: the day to day chores. But there was tension in
Speaker 2: this relationship. Earl cheated on Wanda at the end of
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties, and Wanda reciprocated by also cheating. The
Speaker 2: pair decided at that point to have what basically sounds
Speaker 2: like an open relationship, although they called it vacation. Admittedly,
Speaker 2: the parlance of an open relationship did not exists then, right, right,
Speaker 2: So it makes sense that they're like, we're on vacation
Speaker 2: from our regular Yeah. Yeah, there were no pollocules at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Wanda eventually began an affair with Karl Zigrisser avwaya Gallery,
Speaker 2: as he had long made it clear that he was
Speaker 2: interested in her once they started their sexual relationship, though
Speaker 2: it seems to have gone pretty awkwardly. It was an
Speaker 2: on again, off again kind of situation over several years,
Speaker 2: and it seems like it just sort of found a
Speaker 2: feeling kind of forced.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wanda also saw other people once she was on vacation.
Speaker 1: She felt very free to flirt and see whoever she wanted.
Speaker 1: Like when she went to visit New York, she would
Speaker 1: often have dates and have brief romantic dalliances with people there.
Speaker 1: Wanda and Earl moved away from their home at Tumble
Speaker 1: Timbers in nineteen thirty and they first moved to a
Speaker 1: place in West Cornwall, Connecticut that was owned by a friend,
Speaker 1: and there she worked on her book Snippy and Snappy,
Speaker 1: which is about two sibling field my mind and a
Speaker 1: wild adventure that they go on when the ball of
Speaker 1: yarn that they love gets picked up by a little
Speaker 1: girl and they follow that little girl home. During the
Speaker 1: years leading up to the nineteen thirties, Wanda had moved
Speaker 1: a lot. While she spent spring and summer in the country,
Speaker 1: she was often back in New York for the entire winter,
Speaker 1: and she was tiring of the inconsistency of just picking
Speaker 1: up and moving every few months. She wanted a more
Speaker 1: permanent and stable home and not to be maintaining two residences.
Speaker 1: She had reached a point in her career that she
Speaker 1: had the money to start looking for her own property,
Speaker 1: so in June of nineteen thirty one, she purchased a
Speaker 1: farm in Milford, New Jersey. When she purchased it, the house,
Speaker 1: which sat on a pretty sizable acreage of land, was
Speaker 1: not updated, but Wanda and Earl renovated it. They added
Speaker 1: indoor plumbing. Her brother Howard did some of the renovation
Speaker 1: work on the house. Wanda also had a separate studio
Speaker 1: space built on the property away from the house. She
Speaker 1: called All Creation at the name that eventually came to
Speaker 1: be used for the entire farm. Once she was settled
Speaker 1: in a place that felt truly her own, Gog once
Speaker 1: again found her groove as an artist, and she produced
Speaker 1: a lot of lithographs and multiple books. Her lithographic work
Speaker 1: during this period showed an embrace of nature and a
Speaker 1: move away from representing city life, instead focusing on landscapes
Speaker 1: and still lifes. She was working at the time on
Speaker 1: what would become the ABC Bunny for Coward McCann. When
Speaker 1: her artistic interest was drawn elsewhere, she started working on
Speaker 1: an illustrated version of her favorite book, Henry David Throse Walden.
Speaker 1: This was initially something she wanted to submit to a
Speaker 1: book contest, but although she put in a load of
Speaker 1: work to prepare it, at the last minute she changed
Speaker 1: her mind and didn't submit it because she felt that
Speaker 1: this would only get a limited run if it actually
Speaker 1: won the contest, and she wanted it to a wider audience.
Speaker 1: But oddly she never seemed to pursue it any further.
Speaker 1: It was never published. Meanwhile, the Great Depression had caused
Speaker 1: her income from selling her fine art to slow to
Speaker 1: just about nothing, so she went back to The ABC Bunny,
Speaker 1: which was published in nineteen thirty three. The ABC Bunny
Speaker 1: isn't solely an ABC book. It has a narrative structure,
Speaker 1: with each letter representing the next event in the bunny's story.
Speaker 1: Like her other books, her brother Howard lettered this one,
Speaker 1: and her sister Flavia also wrote a song for it,
Speaker 1: which is included in score format at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the book. Coming up, we'll talk about the last years
Speaker 1: of Wandagg's life, starting with a sabbatical that she took
Speaker 1: to just paint and draw whatever she liked. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about how that worked out after we hear from the
Speaker 1: sponsors that keep the show going. After the publication of
Speaker 1: The ABC Bunny, Gog felt like she had earned some
Speaker 1: time to once again focus solely on her own art.
Speaker 1: But once she had that time, she was not feeling
Speaker 1: especially inspired, so she eventually went back to working on
Speaker 1: another book, and that became Gone Is Gone, or The
Speaker 1: Story of a Man who wanted to do housework. And
Speaker 1: in this story, a man named Fritzel is convinced that
Speaker 1: he works harder in the fields than his wife, Lisi
Speaker 1: works taking care of the house and the animals and
Speaker 1: the baby, So the pair decide to switch places for
Speaker 1: a day. Some rather frightening things happen in this book.
Speaker 1: We've already mentioned that Wanda Gog's art style in her
Speaker 1: book style is a little dark. Fritzel almost kills the
Speaker 1: family's cow by accident, for example, and at the end
Speaker 1: of the day he begs his wife to please take
Speaker 1: back the housework so he can go back to the fields.
Speaker 1: Lisy did great in the fields, by the way, throughout
Speaker 1: these early years, at all creation when she was working,
Speaker 1: initially on sabbatical and then on this book. Gog's diaries
Speaker 1: show a new maturity where she's very reflective about her
Speaker 1: work and less prone to the sweeping generalizations about artistic
Speaker 1: gifts that she made in her younger years. She evolved
Speaker 1: her view of the artist's job as including the need
Speaker 1: to cultivate their own work and be judicious about creative
Speaker 1: choices instead of only following every muse that pops up.
Speaker 2: Her next two book projects were adaptations. She published her
Speaker 2: version of Grim's fairy tales Tales from Grim, which she
Speaker 2: rewrote and illustrated, in nineteen thirty six, and in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight she published snow White in the Seven Dwarfs.
Speaker 2: That was the year after Walt Disney released his film
Speaker 2: version of snow White, and the Gog version serves as
Speaker 2: sort of a counter to it, an alternative version. In
Speaker 2: Gog's telling of the story, the queen turns literally green
Speaker 2: with envy when the mirror tells her that snow White
Speaker 2: is more beautiful, and when the Prince finds snow White
Speaker 2: in an eternal slumber and a casket in the wood,
Speaker 2: he does not kiss her back to life. He decides
Speaker 2: to carry the princess back to the castle, and she's
Speaker 2: jostled on the journey, with a piece of apple lodged
Speaker 2: in her throat being dislodged that leads to her awakening.
Speaker 1: There are interpretations of Wanda Gog's literature for children that
Speaker 1: see it as an expression of Wanda's larger worldview. Richard Cox,
Speaker 1: once again, writing for Minnesota History in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: notes quote the cat battle in Millions of Cats may
Speaker 1: reflect her revulsion against the destruction caused by World War One.
Speaker 1: Peasants abound in nearly all her stories, and Wanda's regard
Speaker 1: for the peasant class was almost legendary. Her seven dwarfs
Speaker 1: are frugal, hard working, sensible men, not Disney's famous likable
Speaker 1: comic fools who anxiously stumble around the forest cottage awaiting
Speaker 1: snow White's next kiss. Wanda spoke of peasants in the
Speaker 1: sense of all honest workers trying to maintain their integrity
Speaker 1: amidst the pressures of the industrial Western world. The picture
Speaker 1: book proved to be a good way for her to
Speaker 1: serve humanity and to vindicate herself from earlier accusations of elitism.
Speaker 1: And being out of touch with ordinary human beings. She
Speaker 1: also revealed in her children's books the strength and dignity
Speaker 1: of women like Wanda herself. Females in her books assert
Speaker 1: their opinions and make decisions. They suffer the same sins
Speaker 1: of pride, vanity, and greed as men. One is. Artwork
Speaker 1: in these books, over which she had complete editorial control,
Speaker 1: is whimsical, but it's not simplistic. Gog refused to apply
Speaker 1: lesser standards to her work for children's picture books than
Speaker 1: she would to any fine art lithograph she made.
Speaker 2: Coward McCann remained eager to leverage Gog's popularity and had
Speaker 2: been suggesting that she write about her unconventional upbringing. This
Speaker 2: led her to revisit her journals from her early life,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen forty Gog published the diaries she had
Speaker 2: kept from the ages of fifteen to twenty three, basically
Speaker 2: the period of time between when her father died and
Speaker 2: when her mother died. She wrote in the opening to it, quote,
Speaker 2: I had often wondered how I would feel upon rereading them,
Speaker 2: and had even speculated about it in my diary. At times,
Speaker 2: I found that I was able to regard my youthful outpourings,
Speaker 2: while with a natural interest and hence not complete detachment,
Speaker 2: still with considerable objectivity. True, all the usual juvenilities were
Speaker 2: still there, the slang and silliness, the girlish gush and crush,
Speaker 2: the introspection, the agonizing over love, the youthful arrogance and trigidity.
Speaker 2: But recognizing these traits as typical of the various age
Speaker 2: groups of which I was successively a part, I saw
Speaker 2: myself as only one of many going through the normal
Speaker 2: phases of adolescence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people were very interested in this book, of course.
Speaker 1: I will say. She also did edit those diary entries
Speaker 1: a good bit, including the name change that we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier in talking about her. Through the years, Wanda and
Speaker 1: Earle had stayed together, although they had continued to have
Speaker 1: their vacation periods where they were free to see other people,
Speaker 1: and they definitely did. And then on August twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, they married rather suddenly. And this sounds
Speaker 1: pretty romantic, and there may have been an element of
Speaker 1: romance to it, but this move was actually catalyzed by
Speaker 1: a work issue for Earl. So because it was wartime,
Speaker 1: Humphries was working in a war job. He was working
Speaker 1: in a machine shop, and he had organized the workers
Speaker 1: there into a union. The shop managers threatened to fire Earle,
Speaker 1: but their reason had nothing to do with his unionization,
Speaker 1: even though it really did. The reason that they gave
Speaker 1: was that he was living in sin with a woman
Speaker 1: who was not his wife. So Wanda and Earl fixed
Speaker 1: that lickety split, and Wanda became a bride at the
Speaker 1: age of fifty. Wanda was having some health issues at
Speaker 1: this point. She'd gone to various doctors and they'd all
Speaker 1: told her that she just needed rest. Problem that still
Speaker 1: exists today when women go to the doctor. Wanda felt
Speaker 1: she was having menopause related problems, but the doctors told
Speaker 1: her she was too young for that. In some cases,
Speaker 1: they were reportedly shocked when she told them she was
Speaker 1: almost fifty. She was very petite and thin for her
Speaker 1: whole life, and a lot of times that made her
Speaker 1: seem a lot younger than she really was. She was
Speaker 1: mistaken for a teenager well into her adult life, but
Speaker 1: none of that addressed why she felt terrible a lot
Speaker 1: of the time. Yeah, there are some references in her
Speaker 1: diary where you can tell she's talking about not feeling great,
Speaker 1: and it reads as being almost tentative to actually write
Speaker 1: down what she's experiencing because it seems a little scary.
Speaker 1: By nineteen forty four, though, Wanda was often complaining of
Speaker 1: shortness of breath, and it was bad enough that she
Speaker 1: could not work on her art, which for her was
Speaker 1: like not being able to breathe, and then just day
Speaker 1: to day things like brushing her teeth became simply too
Speaker 1: much for her. At this point, she had started staying
Speaker 1: exclusively in an apartment that she had gotten in New
Speaker 1: York because the winters at all Creation were too cold
Speaker 1: and traveling between the two was too arduous. Finally, in
Speaker 1: February of nineteen forty five, she was admitted to Doctor's
Speaker 1: Hospital for exploratory surgery, and the resulting news was very bad.
Speaker 1: Wanda had lung cancer and had months to live. This
Speaker 1: news was not given to Wanda, but to Earle and
Speaker 1: Earl and Wanda's brother, Howard discussed the matter and decided
Speaker 1: not to tell Wanda or her sisters. This is how
Speaker 1: it was often handled at the time. I'm not excusing it,
Speaker 1: but that's like how it was often handled at the time. Yes,
Speaker 1: Wanda still had treatments and her diary entries indicate that
Speaker 1: she figured out from those treatments that she must have
Speaker 1: had one or more malignant growths, and she knew she
Speaker 1: was only getting worse. Earle did everything he could to
Speaker 1: make Wanda's life as comfortable as possible. They spent time
Speaker 1: in Milford when she felt well enough, and he drove
Speaker 1: her to Florida for a vacation in the spring of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five. After they got back to New York
Speaker 1: and then to New Jersey, she oversaw the planting of
Speaker 1: her annual vegetable garden and worked on another project, more
Speaker 1: Tales from Grimm for Coward McCann. In late June of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, Wanda rapidly declined and was admitted to
Speaker 1: Doctor's hospital once again. She died there on June twenty seventh.
Speaker 1: Today you can visit the new Olm House, designed by
Speaker 1: Anton Goog, that Wanda and her siblings grew up in
Speaker 1: if you happen to be visiting Minnesota. It is open
Speaker 1: regular hours June to October and then by appointment throughout
Speaker 1: the rest of the year. So if that's something you
Speaker 1: want to do, highly recommend you check out their website.
Speaker 1: So that you get all the details before you show
Speaker 1: up and find out maybe you couldn't go in. But
Speaker 1: that is Wanda Gog. I have so much behind the
Speaker 1: scenes stuff to talk about for her, and in the
Speaker 1: meantime I have a little bit a listener mail. This
Speaker 1: is a listener mail about one of my favorite topics
Speaker 1: of recent past, spite houses. This is from our listener Lily,
Speaker 1: who writes, Hello, lovely ladies. Your podcast has been one
Speaker 1: of my favorites for years, so firstly, thank you for
Speaker 1: all your good work and wonderful and interesting content. I
Speaker 1: got especially excited about your episode on spite houses, which
Speaker 1: is just a hilarious concept to me. In December twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two to March twenty twenty three, I had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to work and live in Lebanon, and towards the
Speaker 1: end of my time there I learned about Abasa translated
Speaker 1: to English the Grudge. This is the thinnest building in
Speaker 1: Beirut and was the result of feuding brothers arguing about
Speaker 1: how to share the property their father had left them.
Speaker 1: I was so fortunate to have a friend in Beirut
Speaker 1: who took me there so I could see the building
Speaker 1: and the stunningly beautiful view that the one brother wanted
Speaker 1: to block from the other. Looking for wered to hear
Speaker 1: about hopefully more spite houses around the world and all
Speaker 1: other things you come up with. I've attached photos I
Speaker 1: took of the grudge and also a few of my
Speaker 1: little fur ball, Wilma Waffle. She's a ten year old,
Speaker 1: cuddly and very gracious lady from a little island on
Speaker 1: the Arctic Circle right off the coast of Norway, Trena,
Speaker 1: and she lives to lay on the floor for a
Speaker 1: big belly rub. She also loves smelly shoes and bird watching.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a cat that was very obsessed
Speaker 1: with smelly shoes and we used to discuss that he
Speaker 1: looked like he was huffin' when he got in there.
Speaker 1: She is adorable, by the way. I want to rub
Speaker 1: that tummy so much. And I love the grudge. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't love it, but I love it. It's one
Speaker 1: that did come up when I was looking at spite
Speaker 1: houses online, but it's a little newer, and also I
Speaker 1: didn't have a ton of info on it. But it
Speaker 1: is a very very narrow house that has been built
Speaker 1: to block a beautiful view from another house, because that's
Speaker 1: a number of spite houses come about that way. I'm
Speaker 1: just laughing about spite houses now. If you would like
Speaker 1: to write to us about spite houses, or kiddies or
Speaker 1: wandagg or children's literature or any of the other many
Speaker 1: many things, you can do that at History podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com. If you have not subscribed to the
Speaker 1: show and you would like to, I promise you that
Speaker 1: is the easiest thing you will maybe do today. You
Speaker 1: can do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite podcasts.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.