Speaker 1: When I mentioned the name Roll Dall, do you what
Speaker 1: do you think of?
Speaker 2: Definitely you need the BFG. That was a classic Charlie
Speaker 2: and the Chocolate Factory. And I think there was a
Speaker 2: series of the glass gray Glass elevator. Love those.
Speaker 1: When you picture Doll in your mind, what does he
Speaker 1: look like?
Speaker 2: Well, he's definitely older, gentleman, I would say, seventy ish,
Speaker 2: kind of big guy. Not fat, certainly not fat. He
Speaker 2: doesn't like fat people. But like you know, a tall man,
Speaker 2: bin cardigan sweater, a beard, sitting in a big kind
Speaker 2: of comfy reading chair, kind of like masterpiece theater style.
Speaker 1: When I mentioned the name Roll Dahl, what do you
Speaker 1: think of?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 4: I think of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda James
Speaker 4: and the Giant Peach, and that he was I think
Speaker 4: an anti Stlite.
Speaker 1: Dad. What do you know about Roll Dahl? Almost nothing.
Speaker 5: I think I Knowd's name, but if you ask me
Speaker 5: what he did, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think I could tell you anything about it. Did
Speaker 1: you know the doll was a spy for British Intelligence?
Speaker 2: No worry, I did not know that.
Speaker 1: That's wild. He worked for my sex.
Speaker 2: Very surprising. I'm very curious.
Speaker 1: Was this before he wrote his stories. It must have
Speaker 1: been during the war. Roll Doll was a spy for
Speaker 1: British intelligence. What his job was literally to seduce the
Speaker 1: wives of powerful Americans and he was really good at it.
Speaker 4: Okay, I don't think that's true.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you I was a spy. I talked to
Speaker 1: a lot of people about rolldal and none of them
Speaker 1: knew even a fraction of his full story. And the
Speaker 1: full story is bananas. Forget the Roll Doll in your head,
Speaker 1: the one who's the most successful children's author of all time.
Speaker 1: Forget the image you have of him, which, if it's
Speaker 1: like mine, is a disheveled BFG look like grandfather figure
Speaker 1: and a worn out cardigan and shaped like a spoon.
Speaker 1: Because the Roll Doll I'm about to introduce you to
Speaker 1: operated in the shadows of World War II as a
Speaker 1: dashing British spy. Honestly, we could do a whole ten
Speaker 1: part series just about the spy unit Doll was recruited
Speaker 1: into during the war, a group of secret British agents
Speaker 1: in America that called themselves the Irregulars, a name they
Speaker 1: took from the informal network of child spies and Sharlock Holmes,
Speaker 1: which also tells you how they see themselves, young men
Speaker 1: operating in the shadows where traditional agents can't go. So.
Speaker 1: Picture a handsome, twenty five year old Doll, four thousand
Speaker 1: miles from home, thrust into this world without a single
Speaker 1: day of espionage training. Imagine how intimidated he feels walking
Speaker 1: into a room with this collection of remarkably almost suspiciously
Speaker 1: handsome and charming men who seemed born for this work. Doll,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, feels like an imposter in way
Speaker 1: over his head. Let's hear from the man himself, Roll Dall,
Speaker 1: describing his unlikely employment goals.
Speaker 5: My job was to try to help WinCE Churchill to
Speaker 5: get on with FDR and hell Winston. What was in
Speaker 5: the old boy's mind in America?
Speaker 1: I mean, how cool is he playing it there as
Speaker 1: if he's just setting a lunch with some old pals
Speaker 1: and not orchestrating an alliance between the two most powerful
Speaker 1: leaders in the free world. As you'll hear, Doll's whole
Speaker 1: life is one surprise after another. It defies all expectations.
Speaker 1: We would never expect a writer like say Stephen King
Speaker 1: to secretly conduct espionage, or Jason Bourne to retire from
Speaker 1: his spy work to pen forty nine beloved books that
Speaker 1: change children's literature forever. The combination simply should not exist
Speaker 1: in one human being. But then, how do you explain
Speaker 1: Roll Dall impossibly implausibly real. Welcome to his deeply bizarre universe.
Speaker 1: I promise it'll only get stranger from here. For my
Speaker 1: hard podcasts, Imagine Entertainment and Parallax. This is the secret
Speaker 1: world of Role Dall. I'm your host, Aaron Tracy. I
Speaker 1: also teach in the English department at Yale, So books
Speaker 1: have always been a huge part of my life, and
Speaker 1: dolls were the foundation, the first ones I ever cracked
Speaker 1: open and read on my own. Doll's stories are would
Speaker 1: turn me onto reading. But that's only part of why
Speaker 1: I've spent decades obsessed with Roll Doll. I'm even more
Speaker 1: fascinated by what an enigma he is. He tries on
Speaker 1: all these different masks, kind of like Bob Dylan. He's
Speaker 1: impossible to nail down. The man is a total cipher,
Speaker 1: which is maddening when you think about the fact that
Speaker 1: we offer him up to our most impressionable population. I
Speaker 1: have two young kids. They're going to grow up reading
Speaker 1: Doll like millions of others. Now, when my wife and
Speaker 1: I hire a babysitter, you better believe we do a
Speaker 1: little digging into who she is first. But we just
Speaker 1: happily bring Doll into our children's rooms, and not to
Speaker 1: get too precious about it, but into their hearts and minds,
Speaker 1: letting him worm directly into their ears night after night.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't we have some idea of who this guy is? Well,
Speaker 1: I promise you you don't, but you're about to. Another
Speaker 1: reason I'm really obsessed with Doll is because he lives
Speaker 1: the noisiest, craziest, most adventurous life you've ever heard. As
Speaker 1: a writer, I'm a writer. Literally, no one would describe
Speaker 1: me as adventurous. I write a ton of TV and
Speaker 1: audio dramas. But at eleven am as I record this
Speaker 1: and I'm still in my bathroom. The most adventurous I
Speaker 1: ever am is changing up my smoothie recipe by adding peppermint.
Speaker 1: That's what being a writer is. But no one told
Speaker 1: Roald Dahl. You may only know Dahl for his books,
Speaker 1: but when we're done with this series, you're gonna feel
Speaker 1: like his writing is about the nineteenth most interesting thing
Speaker 1: about him, which is especially bananas. When you'll get the numbers.
Speaker 1: The man has sold over three hundred million books. He's
Speaker 1: been translated into sixty three languages. And we put that
Speaker 1: three hundred million copies sold into context. Herman Melville, Henry James,
Speaker 1: Virginia Woolf, Tony Morrison, Philip Roth, fellow children's author Shel Silverstein.
Speaker 1: Add up all of their sales of all of their books,
Speaker 1: and it equals about twenty five percent of Dolls. That's
Speaker 1: a nutting number. Here's another one. In twenty eighteen, the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Reporter wrote that Netflix spent around one billion dollars
Speaker 1: for the rights to Dolls works. But of course his
Speaker 1: impact is so much bigger than the stats. The man
Speaker 1: has permeated our collective consciousness. I have never in my
Speaker 1: life unwrapped a candy bar without part of me wondering,
Speaker 1: even for just a millisecond, if there might be a
Speaker 1: golden ticket in there, Which is meant to say, I
Speaker 1: don't have my issues with the man. He could be difficult,
Speaker 1: sometimes incredibly nasty to those he's closest to, kind of
Speaker 1: like some of his characters, it's easy to forget how
Speaker 1: he actually treats the kids in his books, especially the
Speaker 1: ones who aren't the heroes.
Speaker 6: Take missus glup straight to the fudge room, but look sharp,
Speaker 6: or her little boys are able to get poured into
Speaker 6: the boiler.
Speaker 3: You bot him up. I know it.
Speaker 5: Goodbye Missus gloup adiu Alvider's Yep.
Speaker 1: All those children on the chocolateur A get tortured in
Speaker 1: gruesome ways. Same in the Witches, same in Matilda. There's
Speaker 1: so much nastiness there, leaks off the page, staining your fingers.
Speaker 1: When he died in nineteen ninety, the Washington Post, my
Speaker 1: hometown newspaper, did not mince words. Quote. No children's author
Speaker 1: of the past thirty years has regularly sparked more controversy
Speaker 1: than Roald Dahl. On the one hand, kids consistently name
Speaker 1: him their favorite writer. On the other, our best critics
Speaker 1: maintained that his books are larded with gratuitous violence, bigotry, sexism, vulgarity, greed,
Speaker 1: and all manner of foulness. And that's not some hit
Speaker 1: piece or social media takedown, it's his obituary. Dahl's nastiness
Speaker 1: and his controversies have sucked up a lot of oxygen
Speaker 1: in the past few years. I now look at the
Speaker 1: spines of his books on my shelf, not that differently
Speaker 1: than I look at JK. Rowlings, which is to say,
Speaker 1: kind of queasily. We'll definitely get into all that. It's fascinating,
Speaker 1: sometimes ugly stuff from a guy who helped shape generations,
Speaker 1: but for now, I'll just say it's a strange, super
Speaker 1: complicated thing to admire so much about Doll with the
Speaker 1: knowledge that he wouldn't have come to my Hanaka party.
Speaker 1: My friend, the writer Ben Dolnik, captures the dilemma perfectly
Speaker 1: in a short essay he wrote. He writes about watching
Speaker 1: his daughter fall heglong quote into that extraordinary, silent, inexpensive schedule,
Speaker 1: disrupting passion of reading. Ben wrestles with watching her cherish
Speaker 1: books written by a man who may have been repelled
Speaker 1: by her very existence. I wanted to start the show
Speaker 1: off by talking to friends about their perceptions of Doll,
Speaker 1: because the weirdness that people see in him is really telling.
Speaker 1: Here's the opening of a BBC profile from nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: This is how a venerable, respected network introduces one of
Speaker 1: the world's most famous authors. The man who lives in
Speaker 1: this house makes very good orange marmalade. He also reads orchids.
Speaker 1: He has never eaten a dish of tripe in his life,
Speaker 1: and he wishes that his dog could speak to him.
Speaker 1: He's Roald dal who else in the world will be
Speaker 1: introduced like that? He makes very good or marmalade and
Speaker 1: has never eaten s tripe. But that's how people talk
Speaker 1: about Doll. He's a curiosity, a character, not a man. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think it's at least partly due to his appearance
Speaker 1: a real life giant at six foot six plus. He's
Speaker 1: got that name that's so unusual for most people, and
Speaker 1: his creativity is just so off the charts. So with
Speaker 1: all that, he can't possibly be like you and me, right,
Speaker 1: he must be some fantastical creature that just wandered into
Speaker 1: our world. People are desperate for him to be a
Speaker 1: real life BFG or a Mistrench bol or Willy Wonka,
Speaker 1: which fine is not that unfair or unusual. We definitely
Speaker 1: imagine Hemingway was as haunted as his characters. We'd feel
Speaker 1: cheated if Phoebe waller Bridge wasn't as raw or hilarious
Speaker 1: as hers. But here's the crucial difference. Those other writers'
Speaker 1: characters operate within the boundaries of recognizable human behavior. Doll's
Speaker 1: creations exist in a universe where children turn into blueberries
Speaker 1: and giants roam the countryside collecting dreams. So was Doll
Speaker 1: really is? Mischievous and outlandish? Whimsical and grow Tescus his
Speaker 1: characters sort of? Now, I'm incredibly excited to tell you
Speaker 1: about Doll's very strange life as a very real secret agent.
Speaker 1: Picture Doll in his early twenties, that critical moment when
Speaker 1: most of us are fumbling to find our path. Not
Speaker 1: long before, he'd been soaring through the skies as a
Speaker 1: fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force, but a series
Speaker 1: of catastrophic crashes have left him broken, his flying career
Speaker 1: abruptly terminated. So now he's at a crossroads. The war
Speaker 1: continues to rage, but his part in it has been
Speaker 1: stripped away, and he's looking for what to do with
Speaker 1: his life. Doll finds himself at a cocktail party in
Speaker 1: London that a date has tried him to. He towers
Speaker 1: awkwardly above the crowd, nursing a drink, contemplating an early exit.
Speaker 1: It's an elite crowd, but it's a lot of rehearsed
Speaker 1: anecdotes and performative laughter. Then something catches his eye, a
Speaker 1: solitary figure standing apart. Not a film star or socialite,
Speaker 1: but someone far more intriguing to a political obsessive like
Speaker 1: dahl Major Harold Balfour, a member of Churchill's war cabinet,
Speaker 1: one of the men literally deciding the fate of Britain.
Speaker 1: As German bombs fall in London. Dahl Sen says this
Speaker 1: could be his chance. Impressing the Major might lead to something,
Speaker 1: though he has no idea that this conversation will alter
Speaker 1: the trajectory of his entire life. Let me pause here
Speaker 1: for a quick sec to set the scene for what's
Speaker 1: going on in the world, because it's crucial to what
Speaker 1: Doll is about to become part of. The late nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties and early forties are one of those rare times
Speaker 1: that it's not an exaggeration to say the fate of
Speaker 1: the world is at stake. Hitler isn't just winning battles.
Speaker 1: He's winning the war, mostly because the US is sitting
Speaker 1: on the sidelines. The British ambassador warns his government that
Speaker 1: nine out of ten Americans are determined to stay out
Speaker 1: of the war, in other words, to not help Britain.
Speaker 1: The most famous of these is Charles Lenburg.
Speaker 6: It is not that England is losing war, and I
Speaker 6: have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win
Speaker 6: this war for England, regardless of how much assistance we sin.
Speaker 6: That is why the America First Committee has been formed.
Speaker 1: And this is while Germany is sweeping through Europe. The
Speaker 1: Nazis take Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: Luxembourg and France, and America we're just watching an unfold Many,
Speaker 1: if not most, Americans are still traumatized from the first
Speaker 1: time we joined at a World War twenty years earlier.
Speaker 1: The memory of American boys coming home in coffins We're
Speaker 1: not coming home at all, remains raw. The thinking is
Speaker 1: simply that Hitler is not our problem. The public isn't
Speaker 1: yet aware of what's going on with the Jews of Europe.
Speaker 1: The reports of them being rounded up and sent to
Speaker 1: concentration camps is just too impossible to believe, so we
Speaker 1: choose not to. Britain, of course, is on the brink.
Speaker 1: You know this, You've seen the movies, read the books,
Speaker 1: listen to the podcasts, Think Churchill Pacing War Rooms by Lamplight,
Speaker 1: Britain's darkest hour. If FDR doesn't send help and fast,
Speaker 1: England is done. So put yourself in Winston Churchill's position.
Speaker 1: Your island nation stands as one of the last flickering
Speaker 1: lights of democracy in Europe. Your cities are being bombed
Speaker 1: into rubble. Your people are sleeping in subway tunnels, and
Speaker 1: across the Atlantics, it's America, powerful, untouched and stubbornly unwilling
Speaker 1: to join the fight. What wouldn't you do to change
Speaker 1: their minds? At that point? Is anything off the table?
Speaker 1: This is where espionage becomes not just an option but
Speaker 1: a necessity. Okay, So back to our cocktail party. Dollspot's
Speaker 1: Major Balfour, a man who's signature on documents can move
Speaker 1: troops and redirect warplanes. Doll takes a deep breath, and,
Speaker 1: with that peculiar confidence that will define him throughout his life,
Speaker 1: he crosses the room, introduces himself in some begins to chat.
Speaker 1: Doll gives great chat. His conversation has all the hallmarks
Speaker 1: of his later fiction. Wickedly funny, wildly creative, a little dirty,
Speaker 1: totally compelling, Doll is one of those people who just
Speaker 1: instinctively knows how to captivate. I'm always so jealous of
Speaker 1: those people, the ones who have small crowds gathered around
Speaker 1: them at parties, funny and magnetic without being at all
Speaker 1: self conscious. The Major, like everyone else who meets Dall
Speaker 1: in this period, is taken with him. And then it happens.
Speaker 1: The Major tells Doll that he's looking for smart, well
Speaker 1: educated young men to go to America to join the
Speaker 1: British embassy. This conversation has changed everything, but not how
Speaker 1: Doll thinks it has. Doll thinks he's being recruited for
Speaker 1: a diplomatic post. What the Major leaves out is what
Speaker 1: he really has in mind for Doll. Military intelligence. The
Speaker 1: head of the Irregulars has tasked the Major with finding brilliant, articulate, charming,
Speaker 1: morally flexible young men with military backgrounds to join his outfit.
Speaker 1: The Major seems to have found such a man. The
Speaker 1: very next week, Dolls out a plane to Washington. When
Speaker 1: Dohl first arrives in DC, he's entranced. It's this big
Speaker 1: cauldron of power ego mixed with ambition, mixed with secks,
Speaker 1: mixed again with power, Yet it all feels as intimate
Speaker 1: as a college campus. Everybody knows everybody. I grew up
Speaker 1: in DC and then the Northwest part of it. Walk
Speaker 1: into any restaurant, linger in any bookstore, sit at any
Speaker 1: coffee shop counter, and people are talking politics. It's in
Speaker 1: the water supply, just like the entertainment industry in LA.
Speaker 1: So every room Doll enters is an opportunity. Doll's trickiest
Speaker 1: endeavor when he first arrives is finding decent housing in
Speaker 1: the notoriously overcrowded city. He opens the newspaper and looks
Speaker 1: through the classifieds. He finds a surprisingly nice place that
Speaker 1: he can actually afford. The reason he can afford it
Speaker 1: is because there was a bloody murder suicide in it
Speaker 1: last week. Victim Rosemary Sigley, was a beautiful young researcher
Speaker 1: for the agency that becomes the CIA. She was also
Speaker 1: a wealthy heiress. Her murder was a giant scandal, and
Speaker 1: two days after there was a line of people outside
Speaker 1: waiting to see if the scene of the crime would
Speaker 1: be rented at a discount. You gotta love the real
Speaker 1: estate market. But what's important for us is that Doll
Speaker 1: is the first man in that line, which tells you
Speaker 1: so much about who he is. The future author of
Speaker 1: tales filled with darkly comic violence, isn't remotely bothered by
Speaker 1: the apartment's bloody history. If anything, there's a flicker of
Speaker 1: fascination as he signs the lease. The apartment's gruesome backstory
Speaker 1: isn't a deterrent, It's almost an attraction. The man loves gruesome.
Speaker 1: Here's one of his most beloved books, with a little
Speaker 1: girl torturing her.
Speaker 7: Nemesis, when if you tried to poison me, Oh, Matilda.
Speaker 2: I knew it.
Speaker 1: So Much of Doll's fiction pulls the reader towards scenes
Speaker 1: of fear and dread. There's a ton of children in
Speaker 1: peril and adults with real bad intentions, danger lurking, and
Speaker 1: what we thought were safe spaces. He's able to conjure
Speaker 1: these scenes so well because they're part of his fabric.
Speaker 1: Dahl SE's darkness everywhere, which means he barely notices it anymore.
Speaker 1: When Dall moves into Rosemary's place, it takes him two
Speaker 1: nights before he spots the rusty bloodstains still in the
Speaker 1: carpet and the single bullet hole in the ceiling. Lots
Speaker 1: of people me very much included, would immediately move out.
Speaker 1: Doll simply makes a mental note of it, another detail
Speaker 1: and the strange tapestry of his life, and goes to
Speaker 1: sleep under the same roof where a bullet ended someone
Speaker 1: else's now. Dall is ostensibly in DC to work for
Speaker 1: the British Embassy, so that's what he does for a while.
Speaker 1: He pushes diplomatic papers, attends formal functions, fills out reports,
Speaker 1: and he's suffocating. Each morning he sits before stacks of documents,
Speaker 1: watching the clock move with excruciating slowness. Dahl wants something
Speaker 1: bigger for his life. He's searching for something with meaning.
Speaker 1: But what Dall doesn't realize is that someone is watching
Speaker 1: his every move. The big legendary figure you need to
Speaker 1: know about right now is William Stephenson code name Intrepid.
Speaker 1: Stevenson is Winston Churchill's head of espionage in America. He's
Speaker 1: one of the key inspirations for James Bond, who was
Speaker 1: created by one of his agents. This gives you a
Speaker 1: sense of what Stephenson looks like, impeccably dressed, handsome features
Speaker 1: and penetrating eyes that catalog everything. His clean cut compose
Speaker 1: and emanates the confidence of a man who can have
Speaker 1: you vanished with a single phone call. This is the
Speaker 1: man whose attention now turns to Roll Dall to accomplish
Speaker 1: Britain's mission during this really scary time. Stevenson is the
Speaker 1: one who assembles that elite, spiring the Irregulars. Writer and
Speaker 1: historian Jeanette Conan calls their operation one of the most
Speaker 1: controversial and almost certainly one of the most successful covert
Speaker 1: action campaigns in the Annals of Espionage. Stevenson's eye for
Speaker 1: talent is wild. Just for starters. There's Rolldall, of course,
Speaker 1: and Ian Fleming, who later creates James Bond, essentially immortalizing
Speaker 1: his own experiences here, and David Ogilvy, who goes on
Speaker 1: to invent modern advertising. Three world class creators of fantasy.
Speaker 1: So picture Roll Doll, James Bond, and Don Draper all
Speaker 1: hanging out, drinking and seducing their way through a foreign
Speaker 1: capital during wartime, and you start to have a sense
Speaker 1: of what it's like. The whole thing feels like the
Speaker 1: premise of a prestige TV series. Beautiful Rakish young men
Speaker 1: recruited into a shadow organization far from home because of
Speaker 1: their smarts, persuasiveness, and talent for deception, tasked with doing
Speaker 1: whatever they have to to save the free world from fascism.
Speaker 1: The mission of the Irregulars is broad gathering intelligence, sabotaging enemies,
Speaker 1: and creating propaganda that shifts public opinion. Their official history
Speaker 1: describes them as howard with the vague task of doing
Speaker 1: all that was not being done and could not be
Speaker 1: done by other means, Which, come on is a license
Speaker 1: to operate in the gray areas if I've ever heard one.
Speaker 1: Doll can't believe he's been recruited into this group. A
Speaker 1: month ago, he was languishing in the English countryside, desperate
Speaker 1: to figure out his life, hungry for purpose. Now he's
Speaker 1: found a role filled with subterfuge, deceit, storytelling, and role play.
Speaker 1: In other words, all of his natural skills with the
Speaker 1: highest stakes imaginable. The personal stakes for Doll are huge too.
Speaker 1: He can't go home to Buckingham Sure after this and
Speaker 1: tend to the sheep. This job is about to become
Speaker 1: his whole identity. You can tell how formative it all
Speaker 1: is for Doll by the fact that it echoes through
Speaker 1: his later fiction like a recurring dream. Willy Wonka with
Speaker 1: an air of mystery beneath a playful exterior, constantly testing
Speaker 1: those who enter his orbit. He's definitely inspired by Stevenson
Speaker 1: and others Doll works for in the Spy Game, also
Speaker 1: the Secret Society and the Witches that performs covert missions.
Speaker 1: All of these stories that are going to captivate millions
Speaker 1: of children are born in the shadows of wartime espionage.
Speaker 1: So far, though the Irregulars are failing at their task
Speaker 1: of winning America to their side, they're forced to get creative.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite tactics of theirs is when they
Speaker 1: hire a Hungarian astrologer, Louis de Wall. The assignment they
Speaker 1: give him to publicly predict Hitler's demise based on the
Speaker 1: positions of the stars and therefore make Germany seem less
Speaker 1: scary to Americans. It's like a pr smear campaign on
Speaker 1: the fascist dictator. Can't you just picture these younger regulars
Speaker 1: around a table at two am at some smoky Georgetown bar,
Speaker 1: whiskey flowing. One says, what if we just told Americans
Speaker 1: they have nothing to lose because the stars have already
Speaker 1: decided the Third Reich is done for and instead of
Speaker 1: laughing it off. There's a long silence. They look at
Speaker 1: each other intensely and say that is brilliant. They're so
Speaker 1: tickled with their idea they send Louis on a national tour.
Speaker 1: Stevenson's main tactics, however, involved targeting the upper echelons of
Speaker 1: the US government, and this is both to bring the
Speaker 1: US into the war, and once that's accomplished, to make
Speaker 1: sure London maintains significant influence. If Britain can get someone
Speaker 1: close to the American president, that would be huge. Enter
Speaker 1: young Roll Doll. It turns out one of Doll's skills
Speaker 1: in particular makes him especially effective with the irregulars. It's
Speaker 1: the same skill he'll later become legendary for his storytelling.
Speaker 1: Doll has recently begun writing short stories. It's not yet
Speaker 1: the all consuming passion it will become. Like many young writers,
Speaker 1: Doll is trying to find his voice by writing mostly autobiographically. Specifically,
Speaker 1: he's churning out brief fiction pieces inspired by his childhood
Speaker 1: and his time in the Royal Air Force. The stories
Speaker 1: are clever and dark, a little scary, and totally original.
Speaker 1: One story in particular centers on these grotesque little creatures
Speaker 1: he calls Gremlins whose sabotage aircraft a fun Gothic story,
Speaker 1: which doubles is a fable for American and British cooperation.
Speaker 1: One reason to Work continues to be read and seen
Speaker 1: and performed over a century after his birth is that
Speaker 1: Lake Greek myths, his narratives tapp directly into our primal
Speaker 1: fears and desires. They speak to universal human concerns, wrapped
Speaker 1: in the irresistible package of the bizarre and scary and funny.
Speaker 1: The Gremlins has all of this. And in case you're wondering,
Speaker 1: as I was, this Gremlins has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the Stephen Spielberg produced classic. Dall mails the story out
Speaker 1: to every magazine accepting unsolicited submissions, and one bites the
Speaker 1: Gremlins gets published in a local journal, and the story
Speaker 1: connects with readers. Those who dig it pass it around
Speaker 1: to their pals. Of course, in these days that means
Speaker 1: literally handing your copy of the physical magazine to someone. Eventually,
Speaker 1: because this is just how Doll's luck works, his story
Speaker 1: gets passed to a certain very important person.
Speaker 5: You may have heard of, Eleanor Roosevelt, ready to her grandchildren.
Speaker 5: And I loved this book.
Speaker 1: Here's Dahl years later on a chat show on BBC
Speaker 1: one speaking to host Terry Wogan about his stroke of
Speaker 1: incredible fortune.
Speaker 5: And so I got invited to the White House and
Speaker 5: we got to know each other a bit, you know,
Speaker 5: and I would go for weekends. FDR had his country
Speaker 5: place is called Hyde Park at Fast Place, and used
Speaker 5: to go there to know him. I was only a
Speaker 5: young chap of twenty six in an RAF uniform, and
Speaker 5: I had no business around there.
Speaker 1: Really, are you kidding me? First, by just befriending a
Speaker 1: staffer or an intern in the Roosevelt administration would be giant. Doll,
Speaker 1: in his mid twenties, becomes pals with the First Family
Speaker 1: and how he do it through his skill he hasn't
Speaker 1: yet realized will be his superpower. Making up a clever story.
Speaker 1: Dall spends his time at Hyde Park, swimming, bird watching,
Speaker 1: barbecuing and drinking with the President and First Lady. He's
Speaker 1: making mental notes on everything, desperate to report it all
Speaker 1: back to Stevenson and prove himself in the job. According
Speaker 1: to Dol, he even managers to spend time alone with FDR,
Speaker 1: mixing Martiniz before lunch while the tipsy President says things
Speaker 1: like I just received an interesting cable from mister Churchill,
Speaker 1: and then proceeds to tell Doll what Churchill wrote. Surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: FDR clearly takes a liking to Doll. Two. He even
Speaker 1: drives Doll around the property and especially made car. It
Speaker 1: all feels pretty surreal for a young man not many
Speaker 1: years out of high school who's been tapped as a
Speaker 1: spy and is now casually hanging out with the most
Speaker 1: powerful couple on the planet. At the end of his
Speaker 1: first weekend with the First Family in all those lavish surroundings,
Speaker 1: Doll goes back to his tiny apartment with the bloodstained
Speaker 1: carpet and writes up an incredibly thorough twelve page report
Speaker 1: with journalistic precision quote visit to Hyde Park July second
Speaker 1: to fourth, Yeah, he got invited there for July fourth.
Speaker 1: Doll's report includes everything FDR said about Churchill, his impressions
Speaker 1: about whether FDR will run for another term, and everything
Speaker 1: else he thinks could even possibly be relevant. Whether Doll's
Speaker 1: report was read by Churchill himself, but it's clear his
Speaker 1: work helps the British government gain insight into where America stands.
Speaker 1: There's even a suggestion that Roosevelt may have used Doll
Speaker 1: to convey information to the British that was impossible for
Speaker 1: FDR to stay outright for diplomatic reasons. For Doll, it
Speaker 1: is such a head trip. Writer Matthew Denison points out
Speaker 1: Rold's life have become a double life. He was still
Speaker 1: ostensibly working for the British embassy at the same time
Speaker 1: he was a gather and conduit of information in Britain's
Speaker 1: best interests. Needless to say, Doll's handlers are more than
Speaker 1: a little shocked and beyond thrilled with this kid, and
Speaker 1: Dall's early success only makes him more confident. The young
Speaker 1: man who felt rudderless just months earlier now moves through
Speaker 1: Washington with the assurance of someone who believes he can't fail.
Speaker 1: One of Dall's more salacious tasks for the Irregulars is
Speaker 1: seducing powerful women in order to enlist their help. This
Speaker 1: is a task the young Doll is very excited about.
Speaker 1: He's also built for it, and he uses this trait
Speaker 1: for his most important seduction with a woman with the
Speaker 1: very whimsical very dolli in name Claire Booth. Loose Dolls
Speaker 1: first sent to Claire because of who she's married to.
Speaker 1: Claire is one half of one of the most influential
Speaker 1: power couples of the century. Her husband is Henry Loose,
Speaker 1: who builds a media empire that quite literally shapes what
Speaker 1: millions of Americans think. He's the founder of Ready for It,
Speaker 1: Time Magazine, Fortune Magazine, Life Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. When
Speaker 1: these publications begin running pieces with distinctly anti British undertones,
Speaker 1: British intelligence is not happy for a nation fighting for
Speaker 1: its survival. This isn't just bad press, it's an existential threat.
Speaker 1: If American public opinion turns against Britain, vital Aid could
Speaker 1: evaporate overnight. The irregulars have to find a way to
Speaker 1: change the tenor of Henry's magazines. They're not sure how
Speaker 1: to reach Henry, who's notoriously stubborn, but maybe they can
Speaker 1: get to his wife. After all, it's an open secret
Speaker 1: that the Loose marriage is unconventional. For its final twenty
Speaker 1: eight years, Henry apparently refuses to sleep with Claire. He
Speaker 1: says he's in such profound awe of her that he
Speaker 1: can't get aroused, a truly tragic condition that vanishes whenever
Speaker 1: he's around almost literally any other woman. Dahl first meets
Speaker 1: Claire at the New York premiere of a propaganda film,
Speaker 1: Eagle Squadron. It's about US airman who volunteered to fly
Speaker 1: with the Royal Air Force. The lobby outside the screening
Speaker 1: room is packed with DC power players. Cigar smoke hangs
Speaker 1: in lazy clouds beneath crystal chandeliers. The murmur of hush
Speaker 1: conversations about policy and the war intermingles with the clink
Speaker 1: of cocktail glasses. Dahl's date, Nancy Carroll, is a celebrity
Speaker 1: once nominated for Best Actress, which tells you everything about
Speaker 1: Doll's social currency. There whispers about the impropriety of Nancy's
Speaker 1: obvious infatuation with Dol, who's twelve years younger than her,
Speaker 1: but Nancy doesn't seem to care, and neither does All.
Speaker 1: He already draws attention with his height and good looks.
Speaker 1: He enjoys the gaze of the room, but doesn't seek it,
Speaker 1: and his focus is now pulled elsewhere. Claire Loose is
Speaker 1: not in a spotlight, but in a pocket of conversation
Speaker 1: where men lean down to hear her. Doll doesn't approach,
Speaker 1: not yet. He observes how Claire holds court teasing some
Speaker 1: young congressman who said the wrong thing. The house lights
Speaker 1: begin to flicker. Dahl leads Nancy into the theater, but
Speaker 1: as they settle in, his eyes remain Unclare Claire spots
Speaker 1: his stare, this impossibly handsome, impossibly composed British diplomat. She
Speaker 1: gets a chill when she realizes he's not looking away.
Speaker 1: He's telling her this look is not a passing glance,
Speaker 1: not an accident. Doll has already been briefed on Claire
Speaker 1: by the irregulars. For Claire's part, there's no flustered, bashful reaction.
Speaker 1: Dall does not return home that night. Later in the week,
Speaker 1: when Dall dutifully writes a letter to his mother, he
Speaker 1: tells her everything, and I mean everything, even about his
Speaker 1: awkward exchange with his landlady. After getting home from Claire's.
Speaker 1: He writes, quote, I got home at nine am the
Speaker 1: next morning. I had to do a lot of talking
Speaker 1: to re establish my reputation. Doll's job, of course, isn't
Speaker 1: just to have one night stance. If he's going to
Speaker 1: change Claire's opinion of the Brits and try to get
Speaker 1: her to influence her husband's magazines. It needs to be
Speaker 1: a more involved affair. Dall soon realizes focusing only on
Speaker 1: the effect Claire might have on time and life is shortsighted.
Speaker 1: Changing Claire's mind about the Brits will also be hugely helpful,
Speaker 1: because what I haven't mentioned yet is that Claire is
Speaker 1: incredibly influential in her own right. Claire lives a giant life,
Speaker 1: almost as noisy as Dolls Blake Doll. Claire finds incredible
Speaker 1: success in a number of completely different fields. She starts
Speaker 1: out as a short story writer. The New York Times
Speaker 1: finds her first published volume superficial, but praises its quote
Speaker 1: lovely festoons of epigrams, and writes, what malice there may
Speaker 1: be in these pages has a falinity that is the
Speaker 1: purest angoring. I have absolutely no idea what that means either,
Speaker 1: but I guess it's not good because it pushes Claire
Speaker 1: to pivot away from short stories and to try playwriting.
Speaker 1: Turns out she's pretty good at it. In nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: Claire writes The Women, which runs over six hundred performances
Speaker 1: on Broadway. It's a commentary on the pamper lives of
Speaker 1: wealthy Manhattan socialites, which Claire is about to become. The
Speaker 1: play is adapted twice for the movies, later with a
Speaker 1: Net Betting and Meg Ryan, but first with Joan Crawford.
Speaker 5: Well, girl, looks like it's back to the perfume grounded
Speaker 5: for me.
Speaker 6: And by the way, there's a name for you, ladies,
Speaker 6: but it is used in high society outside of.
Speaker 1: A kennel Lake Dahl, Claire bores easily. After her success
Speaker 1: with the Women, Claire decides to move into journalism. She
Speaker 1: works at Vogue Vanity Fair, then decides to try war
Speaker 1: correspondent for Life magazine. Growing restless yet again, Claire takes
Speaker 1: her varied experiences in creative writing, journalism, and in the
Speaker 1: war and decides to run for Congress. Accomplished, beautiful and wealthy,
Speaker 1: Claire wins her election, and she's seated on the powerful
Speaker 1: House Military Affairs Committee. Here she is years later on
Speaker 1: the cartoonishly conservative William F. Buckley Show, speaking about the
Speaker 1: subject of men versus women.
Speaker 3: Man's ruth strength. We're stronger than a woman's strength. It's
Speaker 3: that simple. After which, in order to get out from anger,
Speaker 3: she developed a thing called guile. Gile was weaponed against tyranny.
Speaker 1: With Claire's seat in Congress, her powerful committee assignment, and
Speaker 1: her unique ability to captivate audiences with her writing, plus
Speaker 1: her husband's little publishing empire, you could argue Claire's about
Speaker 1: as influential as it gets, which is bad for the Brits,
Speaker 1: because she also gives a blistering forty minute speech on
Speaker 1: the House floor arguing passionately against cooperation with England. If
Speaker 1: Doll can help sway her, he'll be a hero to
Speaker 1: the irregulars. Claire is in a very different social stratosphere
Speaker 1: than twenty something Dull, living off cheese sandwiches in his
Speaker 1: tiny walk up apartment. But even though Claire is already
Speaker 1: incredibly successful, anne married, and at thirty nine, thirteen years
Speaker 1: older than Dahl, she falls for him. Here's a tall,
Speaker 1: handsome ex pilot who can talk literature and theater with
Speaker 1: her in a way most DC boys cannot. The relationship
Speaker 1: is electric, and Doll is soon complaining to his superiors
Speaker 1: about Claire's appetite. According to a lawyer who serves an
Speaker 1: FDR's administration, again with a name that may as well
Speaker 1: be out of a Doll story, Creak more Fath Doll
Speaker 1: confides in him that he just can't take another night
Speaker 1: with Claire. She's completely worn him out over three NonStop evenings.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have anything left. I went to the ambassador
Speaker 1: this morning, Doll says, and I said, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a great assignment, but I just can't go on. And
Speaker 1: according to Dol, the Ambassador replied, Rold, did you ever
Speaker 1: see the Charles Lotton movie Henry the Eighth Do you
Speaker 1: remember the scene of Henry going to the bedroom with
Speaker 1: Anne of Cleaves and he turns and says, the things
Speaker 1: I've done for England, Well, that's what you've got to do.
Speaker 1: Many years later, Doll will put the things I've done
Speaker 1: for England line into Sean Connery's mouth as James Bond.
Speaker 1: I don't really believe the British Ambassador said all that
Speaker 1: to Doll. To me, this feels less like a real
Speaker 1: complaint and more like a humble brag. Dolls trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what it means to be a man in
Speaker 1: this uncertain period. Should he be a macho playboy or
Speaker 1: a more sensitive man of letters. He's twenty six. This
Speaker 1: is when you figure out who you are, which isn't
Speaker 1: easy when you're lying about your identity. It's almost everyone
Speaker 1: you meet. The overall effect of Doll's relationship with Claire
Speaker 1: is pretty profound. He reports back on all his intimate,
Speaker 1: candid conversations with her. He's able to tell his superiors
Speaker 1: about internal debates regarding the British that are happening in
Speaker 1: Congress and behind closed doors in influential media circles. He's
Speaker 1: offering unparalleled insight into American political dynamics, and he helps
Speaker 1: the British craft proactive ways to engage the Americans for help.
Speaker 1: And pretty soon, wouldn't you know it, Life Maga is
Speaker 1: running some pro British stories framing Britain as America's most
Speaker 1: essential ally. But even more importantly, dall is in weekending
Speaker 1: with the President, carrying on an affair with the congresswoman
Speaker 1: and mingling with some of the most powerful figures in
Speaker 1: the country. In espionage accesses everything, and Doll has it,
Speaker 1: But he's still far from achieving all his goals. He
Speaker 1: still has a lot of work left to do, and
Speaker 1: he's going to have to do it with a ton
Speaker 1: of obstacles in his way. While I've mentioned that pretty
Speaker 1: much everybody who meets Stall loves him. The truth is
Speaker 1: that when anyone is as successful as Dollars, there are
Speaker 1: going to be those who don't appreciate it. A charming, arrogant, handsome,
Speaker 1: twenty six year old foreigner actively practicing espionage on behalf
Speaker 1: of six in the US and conducting affairs with some
Speaker 1: of the most powerful women in the nation. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: going to engender some enemies for one, the FBI. The
Speaker 1: Secret World of Roll Dall is produced by Imagine Audio
Speaker 1: and Parallax Studios for iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Tracy, produced by Matt Schrader, post production by
Speaker 1: wind Hill Studios, with editing, scoring, and sound design by
Speaker 1: Mark Henry Phillips. Editing by Ryan Seton, music by a PM.
Speaker 1: Executive producers Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard,
Speaker 1: and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark
Speaker 1: Henry Phillips and Eleven Laps. If you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 1: be sure to rate and review The Secret World of
Speaker 1: Roll Dall on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Copyright twenty twenty six Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and parallax