Speaker 1: Before we start the episode. One production note. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of quotes from Roald Dahl from
Speaker 1: his interviews with Barry Ferrell. Rather than just have me
Speaker 1: read them in my terrible British accent, we decided to
Speaker 1: bring them to life, so we use an actor's performance
Speaker 1: and some custom software to create a doll like voice. Okay,
Speaker 1: now onto the episode. We've heard a lot about Roll
Speaker 1: Dall so far. His days is a fighter pilot, his
Speaker 1: work as a spy with The Irregulars, his screenwriting in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: What if I told you that on his way to
Speaker 1: becoming the most successful children's author ever, Dahl took a
Speaker 1: quick little detour to become a world class neuroscientist. At
Speaker 1: this point in the season, I feel like you might
Speaker 1: actually believe me as you should. Here's Tom Solomon, a
Speaker 1: doctor who knew Dall, speaking on Liverpool TV.
Speaker 2: In his life he did some amazing medical things. He
Speaker 2: actually invented a neurosurgical device to treat watch on the
Speaker 2: brain to treat hydroch for us, and the treatments leant
Speaker 2: very good, so he invented a new one and it
Speaker 2: was used around the world.
Speaker 3: Thousands of children benefited.
Speaker 1: Okay, then roll Doll the neuroscience engineer. I promise it's
Speaker 1: an even crazier story than that doctor just alluded to.
Speaker 1: But in order to really understand why it was necessary
Speaker 1: for him to become an expert in the brain, I
Speaker 1: got to tell you about Doll's kids. Of all the
Speaker 1: masks that Doll tries on, this is going to be
Speaker 1: his most challenging doting father. For my hard podcast Imagine
Speaker 1: Entertainment and Parallax, I'm Marrion Tracy and this is the
Speaker 1: Secret world of Role Dall Episode five. I didn't become
Speaker 1: a father until after my career had sort of found
Speaker 1: its footing, until I had some stability, which took a while,
Speaker 1: because you know, I'm a writer. But when Dahl becomes
Speaker 1: a dad, he's still trying to figure out his career,
Speaker 1: to figure out what kind of writer he is. He
Speaker 1: hasn't found his voice yet. He's still attempting adult fiction
Speaker 1: in the vein of his heroes like Hemingway, Graham Green,
Speaker 1: and C. S. Forrester. In other words, he's writing this muscular,
Speaker 1: macho prose focused on action. His stories at this time
Speaker 1: are also filled with the pretty explicit sexual adventures of
Speaker 1: his heroes. If you've never read these stories and only
Speaker 1: no Doll from his kids books, you will be shocked.
Speaker 1: Start with my Uncle Oswald. It is raunchy, but here's
Speaker 1: what I'm getting at. It takes Doll going on the
Speaker 1: insane journey with his family that you're about to hear
Speaker 1: for him to figure out who his natural audience is
Speaker 1: and what kind of writer he is. In nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: Doll and Neil welcome their third child, Theo, their only son.
Speaker 1: With two daughters already at home, Olivia and Tessa, Doll
Speaker 1: is thrilled to finally have a boy. According to writer
Speaker 1: Nadia Cohen, Doll writes pretty graphically about his excitement over
Speaker 1: the babies boy parts that I'm not going to subject
Speaker 1: you to here. I'll just say he compares it to
Speaker 1: an exotic flower glowing with promise and leave it at that.
Speaker 1: Dall immediately feels a special kinship with Theo, the only
Speaker 1: boy in a family of sisters, just like Dahl had been.
Speaker 1: Six weeks after Theo's birth, the family moves to New
Speaker 1: York for the winter. Dahl explains what happens next to
Speaker 1: Barry Ferrell, a journalist, to welcome back to a bunch
Speaker 1: because he practically moves in with the family. During this period,
Speaker 1: Farrell writes an entire book about what he witnesses. I
Speaker 1: think Farrell was originally just hoping to write a cozy
Speaker 1: Sunday profile, but ended up becoming embedded with the dolls,
Speaker 1: like a war correspondent in a combat zone. So the
Speaker 1: family is living in New York. Dall is struggling to
Speaker 1: write his short stories while his wife pat Neil, is
Speaker 1: on a break from shooting breakfast to Tiffany's. Dall tells
Speaker 1: Ferrell what happens next.
Speaker 4: It was December fifth, nineteen sixty. We had a nurse
Speaker 4: then Susan and Susan had THEO in his pram on
Speaker 4: their way to pick up Olivia from her nursery school
Speaker 4: two blocks from home, and a cab shot passed and
Speaker 4: took the pram right out of Susan's hands. Susan dashed
Speaker 4: across after it. The plan had flown forty feet through
Speaker 4: the air and into the side of a boss.
Speaker 5: THEO was just four months old.
Speaker 1: Tessa, three years old, is left standing alone on the
Speaker 1: sidewalk as Susan rushes into the street. The police are
Speaker 1: there within minutes and they rush them all to the hospital.
Speaker 1: Neil is only a few blocks away when the accident happens.
Speaker 1: She hears the sirens pass, but she has no idea
Speaker 1: they're for her infant son. When she walks into their apartment,
Speaker 1: the telephone is already ringing. As soon as she receives
Speaker 1: the news, she hangs up and calls Doll at his office.
Speaker 1: She doesn't have the full story, yet doesn't sound overly alarmed.
Speaker 1: THEO has been hurt, she tells him. They say, not
Speaker 1: too seriously, we have to go to the hospital. Dohl
Speaker 1: throws on a coat and gets ready to leave, but
Speaker 1: before he can get out the door, Susan calls from
Speaker 1: the hospital, hysterical, saying, hurry, hurry, So then I knew
Speaker 1: it was bad, Doll says, THEO is an emergency. When
Speaker 1: we get there, Doll continues, they x ray him and
Speaker 1: find lots of fractures, very critical shape, they say. In
Speaker 1: her memoir, Neil goes even further, writing that the doctor
Speaker 1: pulled them aside after examining THEO. He told them we
Speaker 1: are doing everything we can, but he is going to die.
Speaker 1: From that moment on, Neil essentially moves into the hospital,
Speaker 1: living off stale coffee, sleeping in a chair beside her
Speaker 1: son's bed, obsessed with the rhythms of his labored breathing
Speaker 1: when he sleeps, which is a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: Neil climbs two flights of stairs on unsteady legs to
Speaker 1: another kind of visial. In an upstairs room at this
Speaker 1: very same hospital is her old friend, the playwright Lillian Hellman,
Speaker 1: who's keeping watch over Dashiell Hammett, the famous detective novelist
Speaker 1: and her longtime romantic partner. He's dying lung cancer. It's
Speaker 1: a really cruel symmetry. You might remember Hellman played matchmaker
Speaker 1: for Doll o' neil by throwing that dinner party years ago.
Speaker 1: That was the bright beginning of something in a beautiful
Speaker 1: setting filled with brilliant writers and celebrities. Now the two
Speaker 1: women are together again in the opposite of that glamorous setting,
Speaker 1: no more fancy dresses, no makeup, just trapped in a
Speaker 1: sterile Manhattan tower, terrified and grieving. But back to Dol.
Speaker 1: He tells Ferrell about the dreadful special nurses that kept
Speaker 1: getting called in to theo's room. One of these nurses
Speaker 1: walks right in and before even attending to THEO. She
Speaker 1: shows dollan Neil in newspaper clipping about the accident and says,
Speaker 1: how thrilled she is to be assigned this case. This
Speaker 1: is something Doll and Neil are going to have to
Speaker 1: get used to. Unfortunately, Neil is a world famous movie star.
Speaker 1: Her son being in an accident like this is huge
Speaker 1: international news, and some of the nurses seem much more
Speaker 1: interested in getting Neil's autograph than in paying attention to
Speaker 1: her son. They seem downright distracted. One afternoon, Doll observes
Speaker 1: a nurse giving THEO a dose of an anti convulsant,
Speaker 1: and she's giving him a ton of it. Doll says,
Speaker 1: isn't that rather a lot? Yeah, sir, no half an
Speaker 1: ounce like it's supposed to be. She replies, calmly, well,
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be a tenth of a gram.
Speaker 1: Doll later explains, a hell of a lot less. Doctors
Speaker 1: rush in and start to pump the stomach of this
Speaker 1: poor four month old baby after the nurse's mistake. Despite
Speaker 1: the comfort of having helmet and ham it right upstairs,
Speaker 1: the Dolls decide to get the hell out of this hospital,
Speaker 1: so they wrap THEO and blankets, pick him up in
Speaker 1: their arms and just carry him out. All the doctors
Speaker 1: are standing around, looking very worried and protesting, Doll says,
Speaker 1: but their minds are made up to make matters worse.
Speaker 1: It's a crazy snow day in New York. But then
Speaker 1: Niel's longtime agent, Harvey Orkin, suddenly materializes with a car.
Speaker 4: Doll continues, It was snowing like hell, and we were desperate.
Speaker 4: But then Harvey suddenly materialized with a car, and he
Speaker 4: drove very fast and very skillfully through the blizzard, with
Speaker 4: cars skidding at odd angles all around us. I'd not
Speaker 4: forgotten my ride, because here was Harvey, an unhappyish chap,
Speaker 4: a wise, cracky fellow, a person I wasn't so keen on,
Speaker 4: and who doubtlessly wasn't so fond of me. Yet there
Speaker 4: was Harvey, still the sort of friend who would drive
Speaker 4: through the snow for you in an emergency.
Speaker 1: I love this, Dezel. Loyalty is such an important theme
Speaker 1: in Doll's work. Think of Matilda and Miss Honey, Sophie
Speaker 1: and the BFG Charlie and Grandpa Joe. You can just
Speaker 1: feel how much it means to Doll that this guy,
Speaker 1: this agent, who's not even a close friend, has nevertheless
Speaker 1: shown up in a snowstorm to save them. Harvey drives
Speaker 1: them to Presbyterian Hospital. I know it well, It's where
Speaker 1: I had both of my kids. Here. The doctors evaluate
Speaker 1: THEO and operate on him for a subdermal hematoma, which
Speaker 1: is a kind of swelling cause by bleeding into the brain.
Speaker 1: And they put it right, Dahl says, a huge, huge relief. Still,
Speaker 1: THEO will stay in the hospital inside an oxygen tent
Speaker 1: for the next two weeks. It's a terrible period. THEO
Speaker 1: goes temporarily blind from cerebro spinal fluid accumulating around his brain,
Speaker 1: which requires another operation. Remember he's only four months old.
Speaker 1: Each operation is incredibly dangerous. Neil somehow stays relatively calm
Speaker 1: through it all. She has a kind of strength you
Speaker 1: could only step back from and admire. Doll later gushes
Speaker 1: about his wife. THEO finally gets released from the hospital
Speaker 1: right before Christmas. He goes home, but he's a bunch
Speaker 1: of terrifying stepbacks, according to Dennison, including a build up
Speaker 1: of cerebro spinal fluid pressing on the brain that renders
Speaker 1: him silent, unseen, unmoving. Every time there's this build up
Speaker 1: of food, they have to hurry him back to the
Speaker 1: hospital for the fluid to be drained, and of course
Speaker 1: this puts THEO at risk of blindness, brain damage, and death.
Speaker 1: Doctors try to prevent further fluid build up with a
Speaker 1: drainage tube, but the tube keeps getting blocked, making another
Speaker 1: operation necessary, and with every operation the stakes are raised
Speaker 1: and the chances lesson of restoring theo's sight and brain function.
Speaker 1: Neil says, whenever they take THEO back in for surgery,
Speaker 1: he looks up at us with those huge, desolate, bewildered
Speaker 1: eyes that ask, why are you doing this to me again?
Speaker 1: THEO has eight operations in thirty months, all before he's
Speaker 1: three years old, and it's almost all due to the
Speaker 1: inability of this tube to work. I think in a
Speaker 1: lot of partnerships, when one person becomes pessimistic or feels
Speaker 1: defeated about something, the other person just naturally becomes more
Speaker 1: optimistic and upbeat. I've definitely experienced this over the years
Speaker 1: in writing partnerships. While Neil may be showing a ton
Speaker 1: of strength, THEO, she's genuinely not sure if he's going
Speaker 1: to make it through all this so Dall takes the
Speaker 1: opposite outlook. According to Dennison, Again, Dall sets aside any
Speaker 1: assumption that THEO will die. He just puts it out
Speaker 1: of his mind and sets out to find a way
Speaker 1: to save him. Doll's sole focus becomes this tube that
Speaker 1: keeps failing. He writes, I couldn't believe that with everything
Speaker 1: science had come up with, they couldn't produce one little
Speaker 1: clogproof tube. That little clogproof tube becomes his life's mission.
Speaker 1: But what the hell does a writer know about medical tubes?
Speaker 1: Without any medical expertise, a drawn Dall relies on his
Speaker 1: creativity instead. But where to begin. His first call is
Speaker 1: to doctor Kenneth Till, a pediatric neurosurgeon who's been in
Speaker 1: charge of THEO at the hospital. Till can help with
Speaker 1: the science, but they need someone else, to someone who
Speaker 1: can help with the design. In a very inspired, very creative,
Speaker 1: very dolly in move, Doll decides to call a toy maker.
Speaker 1: He knows Stanley Wade. Doll had once bought model airplanes
Speaker 1: from Wade for his nephew, and he remembers how ingenious
Speaker 1: Wade was with tiny instruments. Together the three of them,
Speaker 1: Doll Till and Wade spend hours in Doll's living room
Speaker 1: brainstorming ideas. It's not that different from the writer's room
Speaker 1: in la where Walt Disney first taught Doll how to
Speaker 1: collaborate years ago. They throw ideas on the board, rejecting
Speaker 1: ones that don't work and building on those that do.
Speaker 1: They take breaks to play pool, They snack, they laugh,
Speaker 1: They pour coffee down their throats by the gallon. In hindsight,
Speaker 1: what they come up with seem so obvious, but no
Speaker 1: one had done it before. For instance, until that moment,
Speaker 1: all of these tubes were made of plastic, which was
Speaker 1: expensive and hard to sterilize. Doll and his two partners
Speaker 1: swapped out the plastic for stainless steel, which made the
Speaker 1: device more durable and also way easier to disinfect and
Speaker 1: prevent infections. They also changed the designs slightly to give
Speaker 1: the tube a bigger surface area, which prevented fluid from
Speaker 1: flowing back into the brain and eating blackage. Again, sounds obvious,
Speaker 1: but no one had ever come up with a design
Speaker 1: that reduced the risk of blockage before. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's the special alchemy of these three specific men
Speaker 1: with their very different skill sets or the urgency. Doll
Speaker 1: feels to get this done quickly to save his son.
Speaker 1: But together, Doll, Till and Wade come up with a
Speaker 1: better tube than has ever existed. Can I just stop
Speaker 1: for a second here to say, Oh my God? With
Speaker 1: absolutely no training, Doll wills himself to come up with
Speaker 1: this breakthrough device in order to save theo his only son.
Speaker 1: Is that not the greatest thing you've ever heard? His
Speaker 1: poor infant son is dying. Nothing is working, and instead
Speaker 1: of just throwing his hands up, he literally invents the solution.
Speaker 1: It takes two years for them to build it, which
Speaker 1: is roughly forty thousand years fewer than it would have
Speaker 1: taken me. The Wade Doll Till valve name for its
Speaker 1: three innovators, is so successful that it soon gets manufactured globally.
Speaker 1: Dall insists they not make a profit on it in
Speaker 1: order to be able to distribute it cheaply. According to
Speaker 1: the National Library of Medicine at NIH, the device is
Speaker 1: estimated to have been used in two to three thousand
Speaker 1: children worldwide in the two years after they came up
Speaker 1: with it. It's especially useful in developing nations, where medical
Speaker 1: devices like this mean the difference between life and death.
Speaker 1: Not to take us off topic, but a quick aside
Speaker 1: just to say that I did a bunch of research
Speaker 1: around this, and the only similar example I've found of
Speaker 1: anything like this ever happening a breakthrough medical device getting
Speaker 1: created by someone without medical training is exactly one year later,
Speaker 1: a guy named Paul Winchell, a TV actor who appeared
Speaker 1: in lots of sitcoms like The Brady Bunch and The
Speaker 1: Beverly Hillbillies and was the original voice of Tigger and
Speaker 1: Winnie the Pooh. He co creates the first artificial heart.
Speaker 1: I have nothing more to say about that except what
Speaker 1: the hell was happening in the sixties for Dahl. Creating
Speaker 1: the tube is another incredible feat in a life full
Speaker 1: of them. I think each of these accomplishments was only
Speaker 1: possible because of the one that came before. They all
Speaker 1: built on each other. When Doll was recruited into the
Speaker 1: Irregulars in his twenties without any espionage training, he didn't
Speaker 1: know what he was doing, but in a matter of
Speaker 1: months he was hanging out with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: When he decided to write movies, he was completely clueless,
Speaker 1: but soon he was on top of Hollywood, working with
Speaker 1: Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock. When you go through life
Speaker 1: like that with no apparent ceiling to what's possible, with
Speaker 1: life constantly reinforcing your crazy ambitions, you must start to
Speaker 1: feel like nothing is out of reach. So when no
Speaker 1: device exists to help cure your infant son, you don't
Speaker 1: go to church and pray. You call a doctor and
Speaker 1: a toymaker you know, and say let's get to work. Doll,
Speaker 1: of course, later puts all of this into his writing.
Speaker 1: The lead character in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is partly
Speaker 1: based on the toymaker Wade, and Willy Wonka has parts
Speaker 1: of all three men, an innovating scientist, a creative genius,
Speaker 1: a toy making savant. But instead of torturing children like
Speaker 1: Wonka does, Doll and his buddies build a device to
Speaker 1: save them.
Speaker 4: Invention, my dear friends, is ninety three percent per aspiration,
Speaker 4: six percent electricity, four percent evaporation, and two percent.
Speaker 1: But a Scotch ripple that's one hundred and five percent. That's,
Speaker 1: of course, the line from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 1: But Doll isn't yet ready to write that he's still
Speaker 1: a few years away from dreaming wanka up. He's still
Speaker 1: writing for the wrong audience, namely adults, and it's not
Speaker 1: going well. Doll's creative frustration start bleeding into his home life,
Speaker 1: adding strain to a family already fractured by theo's accident.
Speaker 1: But if he thinks the pressures are intense right now,
Speaker 1: they're nothing compared to what's lying right around the corner.
Speaker 1: Doll o'niel's second oldest daughter, Tessa, sums up what's about
Speaker 1: to happen well when she says, theirs was a family
Speaker 1: that quote toppled unwittingly over the edge of a jagged
Speaker 1: cliff face into a canyon of darkness, which was filled
Speaker 1: with such sadness, such total devastation, that we would never recover. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get ready. Olivia is Dall o'nil's first born. It's now
Speaker 1: November nineteen sixty two, a little less than two years
Speaker 1: after Theo's accident. The family has left New York and
Speaker 1: is living in England. Now, Olivia comes home with a
Speaker 1: note from the headmistress of her elementary school warning of
Speaker 1: a measles outbreak. She's seven years old. Doll Emil's first thought,
Speaker 1: of course, is about THEO. After what he's been through,
Speaker 1: they can't risk him getting the virus under any circumstances.
Speaker 1: Vaccines against the disease are still pretty uncommon in this era,
Speaker 1: and doses are unlimited supply. But pulling some strings, Meal
Speaker 1: is able to obtain the vaccine for THEO, which means Olivia,
Speaker 1: who's perfectly healthy, doesn't get any protection. And of course
Speaker 1: Olivia contracts measles. It does seem like a terrible case
Speaker 1: at first, but here's doll on what happens next.
Speaker 4: One morning, when Olivia was well on the road to recovery,
Speaker 4: I was sitting on her bed showing her how to
Speaker 4: fashion little animals out of colored pipe cleaners, And when
Speaker 4: it came to her turn to make one herself, I
Speaker 4: noticed that her fingers in her mind were not working together,
Speaker 4: and she couldn't do anything.
Speaker 5: How are you feeling all right, I asked her. I
Speaker 5: feel all sleepy, she said. In an hour she was unconscious,
Speaker 5: and in twelve hours she was dead.
Speaker 1: In such a cruel mirror to his own childhood, Olivia
Speaker 1: is seven when she dies, the same age Doll's older sister,
Speaker 1: Astri was when she died. The defining moment of Doll's childhood,
Speaker 1: repeated again in his adulthood. In Doll's memoir Boy, he
Speaker 1: writes about Astri she was far and away my father's favorite.
Speaker 1: He says he adored her beyond measure, and her sudden
Speaker 1: death left him literally speechless for days afterwards. Dall's father
Speaker 1: was so overwhelmed with grief that when he himself went
Speaker 1: down in pneumonia a few weeks after Astrey died, he
Speaker 1: didn't care whether or not he survived. Doll writes, a
Speaker 1: patient had to fight to survive. My father refused to fight.
Speaker 1: He was thinking, I am quite sure of his beloved daughter,
Speaker 1: and he was wanting to join her in heaven. So
Speaker 1: he died too. He was fifty seven years old. My
Speaker 1: mother had now lost a daughter and a husband, all
Speaker 1: in the space of a few weeks. Heaven knows what
Speaker 1: it must have felt like to be hit with a
Speaker 1: double catastrophe like this, Doll finishes, which is such a
Speaker 1: strange turn of phrase, because, of course Dall was hit
Speaker 1: with it too. He was three years old. So the
Speaker 1: big question right now for Doll can he be stronger
Speaker 1: than his father? Was? He genuine he doesn't know the answer.
Speaker 1: He becomes lost. He begins drinking more and taking more
Speaker 1: painkillers for his old back injury from the plane crash.
Speaker 1: It happened so swiftly that one didn't have time to
Speaker 1: prepare for it. Doll writes, I was in a kind
Speaker 1: of daze, I suppose, and morbid thoughts kept after me.
Speaker 1: That kind of thought can run you down, you know,
Speaker 1: worrying about fate and the meaning of things. I couldn't
Speaker 1: do any writing, and that went on for about a
Speaker 1: year and a half. According to Dennison, Doll's only recourse
Speaker 1: is to try to figure out exactly what happened to Olivia.
Speaker 1: Maybe he can invent something that will help others in
Speaker 1: the same situation, like the medical tube he made for THEO.
Speaker 1: He remembers that Olivia strangely hadn't had a reaction to
Speaker 1: her smallpox vaccinations years before, meaning she seemed naturally immune
Speaker 1: to that disease. Huh, maybe there was a connection between
Speaker 1: that and her measle's reaction. He begins writing letters to
Speaker 1: specialists around the globe. He is desperate for answers. Dall
Speaker 1: tells Barry Ferrell.
Speaker 4: I got the idea that the must be some way
Speaker 4: of finding out in advance if a child is susceptible
Speaker 4: to this. I wanted to set up a careful investigation,
Speaker 4: and I was prepared to get in touch with every
Speaker 4: parent of every child in this country who had had
Speaker 4: severe complications from measles. I thought of drawing up a
Speaker 4: questionnaire and correlating the answers. But by then the inoculation
Speaker 4: against measles had become more common in England, so the
Speaker 4: problem had been very largely erased.
Speaker 1: Still, Dahl seems hell banned on blaming himself for Olivia's death.
Speaker 1: After Theo's accident on the Upper East Side, Dal O'Neil
Speaker 1: had decided to get the hell out of Manhattan.
Speaker 4: Normally we would have been in New York in November,
Speaker 4: but after the accident we said, let's get out of
Speaker 4: this place where children are hit by taxi cabs, and
Speaker 4: we moved our permanent household to England. Of course, Olivia
Speaker 4: wouldn't have died if we had stayed in New York.
Speaker 4: They had the inoculations there, but here in England they
Speaker 4: weren't available them.
Speaker 1: Meal's strategy to deal with all this grief is through religion,
Speaker 1: finding solace in her Southern Protestant upbringing. But Doll is
Speaker 1: dismissive of nearly all religious beliefs, comparing them to superstition.
Speaker 1: I don't have those feelings at all, he writes, though
Speaker 1: he does confess to having moments of wondering how so
Speaker 1: much misfortune could befall one family. But Doll doesn't see
Speaker 1: it as a curse or, as he puts it, a
Speaker 1: doom coming down on us. He just thought, how odd.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm capable of taking it beyond that,
Speaker 1: Superstition is something one grows out of. You try avoiding
Speaker 1: all the cracks in the pavement, or you touch all
Speaker 1: the posts in the fence, but then you find out
Speaker 1: later that it doesn't help. You find out that it's
Speaker 1: not going to make a bit of difference if you
Speaker 1: step on the cracks or not. I think I just
Speaker 1: realized subconsciously that if you start thinking about bad luck,
Speaker 1: you're starting to weaken. The great thing is to keep going.
Speaker 1: Whatever happens, Doll finishes, so unlike his father, Doll decides
Speaker 1: to live. He becomes the embodiment of that famous Samuel
Speaker 1: Beckett phrase, you must go on. I can't go on.
Speaker 1: I'll go on. Tessa meanwhile, needs her parents help to
Speaker 1: this poor girl. She watched her brother's accident from the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: and now her older sister is dead. She's understandably struggling.
Speaker 1: The Dolls take her to see Anna Freud, a pioneering
Speaker 1: psychoanalyst and the youngest daughter of Sigmund. Anna suggests family
Speaker 1: therapy for the Dolls, but Roled refuses. His writing still
Speaker 1: isn't going well and he doesn't want to take any
Speaker 1: chances of losing his edge. He says he seemed too
Speaker 1: many writers who could never create anymore after they had
Speaker 1: all their nooks and crannies flattened like pancakes. No therapy
Speaker 1: for him, but Doll does need to find something, something
Speaker 1: that will give his life meaning again. He tells Barry
Speaker 1: Ferrell that there was something that had a huge influence
Speaker 1: on him during the war. It was called Mcrobert's Reply.
Speaker 4: Lady McRobert was a fine Scottish woman with a manor house,
Speaker 4: and she had three sons, all an the raf all pilots,
Speaker 4: and all of them killed one after the other in
Speaker 4: nineteen forty one. Lady McRobert, upon hearing this news, gave
Speaker 4: a tremendous sum of money to pay for the cost
Speaker 4: of a sterling bomber, and when that plane was built,
Speaker 4: she had painted on it. Lady Mcrobert's reply, I can
Speaker 4: remember being moved by that. It was something really dauntless.
Speaker 4: You simply cannot defeat such people.
Speaker 1: Doc comes up with his own version of this. He
Speaker 1: dedicates his masterpiece, The BFG, to Olivia. The book was
Speaker 1: inspired by a story he would tell Olivia at night
Speaker 1: while she fell asleep. Now millions of other children benefit
Speaker 1: from it. It's not exactly a sterling bomber to avenge
Speaker 1: his child's death, but it is his own defiant reply
Speaker 1: to loss, transforming grief into wonder, ensuring that while one
Speaker 1: little girl's laughter was silenced, countless others will echo thanks
Speaker 1: to the pages he writes in her memory. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five. Now Dahl has lost a daughter. He
Speaker 1: has a son who's in and out of the hospital.
Speaker 1: His writing is not going well. He still hasn't found
Speaker 1: his voice or his audience. But at least he's got
Speaker 1: his wife right again. Hold on tight. Just a few
Speaker 1: years after Olivia's death, Neil lands a huge acting job.
Speaker 1: It's the lead in a studio film being directed by
Speaker 1: one of Hollywood's All Time Legends four time Best Director
Speaker 1: winner John Ford.
Speaker 6: Back in the sixties, Orson Welles was interviewed and one
Speaker 6: of the questions he was asked was who his favorite
Speaker 6: American directors were. He said, well, I prefer the old masters,
Speaker 6: by which I mean john Ford, john Ford and John Ford.
Speaker 1: That was director of Peter Bugdanovich from a documentary called
Speaker 1: Directed by John Ford. The movie Ford wants Patrician Neil
Speaker 1: to star in will be his final film. He's retiring,
Speaker 1: even though he's less than a decade removed from some
Speaker 1: of his best work, like The Searchers and The Man
Speaker 1: Who Shot Liberty Violence. Neil is ecstatic to work with Ford,
Speaker 1: and it's maybe the only gig she would have said
Speaker 1: yes to right now, because, in addition to everything else
Speaker 1: going on with her family, she's just discovered she's three
Speaker 1: months pregnant. Neil brings Doll and the kids out to
Speaker 1: LA for the shoot. She's hoping, praying it'll be a
Speaker 1: comforting change of scenery for the grieving family. Neil arranges
Speaker 1: for all of them to stay in director Martin Ritt's house.
Speaker 1: Years earlier, Ritt directed Neil to an Oscar in hud
Speaker 1: By this point, his career has been derailed by the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Blacklist for being a suspected communist. One look at
Speaker 1: his crazy mansion of the Palisades, though, and you know
Speaker 1: this guy isn't totally opposed to capitalism, writ and his
Speaker 1: family are abroad, so Neil, Doll and the kids have
Speaker 1: it all to themselves. When they arrive in La It's February.
Speaker 1: Neil begins filming. Four days into the shoot, she has
Speaker 1: the afternoon off. She comes home to give Tessa a bath. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, Neil feels a searing headache. Come on,
Speaker 1: headache isn't even the right word. It's like a knife
Speaker 1: in her skull. Later writes, she collapses to the floor
Speaker 1: next to the bathtub. Dol happens to be in the bedroom,
Speaker 1: so he hears the thud and comes rushing in. He
Speaker 1: finds Neil unconscious. He quickly pulls poor Tessa out of
Speaker 1: the tub. She's crying her eyes out looking at her
Speaker 1: mom unconscious on the floor. Doll's panic only lasts a moment.
Speaker 1: He's been here before. Almost an autopilot, Doll flies into action.
Speaker 1: He's ready for this. THEO and Olivia have prepared him first,
Speaker 1: he calls an ambulance, then quickly calls doctor Charles Carton,
Speaker 1: a neurosurgeon who consulted on THEO. It's kind of an
Speaker 1: amazing twist of fate. Only because of Theo's accident does
Speaker 1: Doll have the home phone number of one of the
Speaker 1: best neurosurgeons in the world. Thanks to Doll's quick thinking,
Speaker 1: they're a UCLA medical center within twenty minutes of Neil
Speaker 1: falling in the bathroom. Doctor Carton arrives at the same
Speaker 1: time they do. He instantly takes charge, ordering tests and
Speaker 1: X rays. Lead aprons are placed over Neil's belly to
Speaker 1: protect the unborn child. Later, a TV movie will be
Speaker 1: made about all this. I'm afraid it's what I suspected.
Speaker 1: Here's the moment from the film. It's an enterrannial hemorrhage,
Speaker 1: a stroke. If we had another.
Speaker 7: Hemorrhage just now research sad happened while we were X
Speaker 7: raying in the same place.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I know.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, you're familiar with the brain because of Theo's accident
Speaker 3: in New York.
Speaker 1: Another emergency involving the brain. It's almost too hard to believe. First,
Speaker 1: in his twenties, Doll had brain damage from his plane
Speaker 1: crash in the war. Later, his mentor, Charles Marsh died
Speaker 1: from brain inflammation from a mosquito bite. Then theo got
Speaker 1: a brain injury from being hit by a taxi. Olivia
Speaker 1: died from brain inflammation from the measles, and now Neil
Speaker 1: has had a brain aneurysm. What on Earth? Doctor Carton
Speaker 1: bluntly tells dol not to be optimistic. Without surgery, Neil
Speaker 1: will definitely die, but she's unlikely to survive the surgery,
Speaker 1: and if she does survive, she'll have severe complications for
Speaker 1: the rest of her life. Dahl has to decide what
Speaker 1: to do. He tells the doctor to do the surgery.
Speaker 1: So Carton and six other doctors operate on Neil for
Speaker 1: the next seven hours. They cut a four x six
Speaker 1: trap door in her head to remove the blood clots
Speaker 1: in her brain. After the seven hours, the surgery is successful,
Speaker 1: which is sort of shocking even to the doctors. Neil
Speaker 1: will live, but they're sure she'll never be herself again.
Speaker 1: Here's Dahl recounting it all to BBC. One legend, Michael Parkinson.
Speaker 3: I said to Charlie Carton, the surgeon, I said, well,
Speaker 3: She's going to live now, isn't she? He said, yes,
Speaker 3: she is. With that, I'm not sure how Tianya will
Speaker 3: favor you see, which is the right thing to say?
Speaker 1: Isn't heal? Because they odds are it's a vegetable?
Speaker 3: Well they oh, yes, with that kind of brand, Abby.
Speaker 1: It really shakes me up when Dahl says it's a vegetable,
Speaker 1: as if he has to emotionally distance himself from her
Speaker 1: by making her an object. The family does its best
Speaker 1: to keep a low profile during this impossible time, but
Speaker 1: Neil is only two years removed from winning Best Actress.
Speaker 1: She's one of the most famous movie stars in the
Speaker 1: world at the height of her powers. And then on
Speaker 1: February twenty second, Variety runs a story with the banner
Speaker 1: headline film actress Patricia Neil dies at thirty nine. Only
Speaker 1: problem is she's not dead. Reporters, fans, and photographers swarm
Speaker 1: the hospital for the ten days after the surgery. Neil
Speaker 1: remains at a coma doll has to just sit and
Speaker 1: wait to find out what his wife will be like
Speaker 1: when she wakes up. But over that week and a
Speaker 1: half he makes a decision. He decides it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what her abilities are. When she wakes up, He's gonna
Speaker 1: will her back to her old self no matter what.
Speaker 1: For all of Dall's character faults, he's an amazing caretaker
Speaker 1: in times of crisis. During her coma, Doll remains at
Speaker 1: his wife's bedside all day, every day, leaving only to eat,
Speaker 1: see the kids, or catch a few hours of sleep.
Speaker 1: And when she wakes up, his work begins. He's determined
Speaker 1: to get his children their mother back. It's hard not
Speaker 1: to imagine that this is what Doll wishes his mother
Speaker 1: had done for his father when he was three years old.
Speaker 1: If his mother had had Doll's forceful nature, his stubbornness,
Speaker 1: his arrogance, might she have forced his dad to beat
Speaker 1: his pneumonia and depression and live so the Doll could
Speaker 1: have grown up with the father. Neil remains in the
Speaker 1: hospital for over a month, a few days longer than
Speaker 1: Theo's day. In the beginning, she can barely speak, and
Speaker 1: she doesn't seem to remember words or names or events.
Speaker 1: But Dol won't permit that to last. It's his new
Speaker 1: version of creating Theo's tube. He's going to fix Neil himself.
Speaker 1: As Dennison writes that Pat should recover and recover fully.
Speaker 1: Became Rold's obsessive concern. More than any doctor, nurse, or therapist,
Speaker 1: rolled dominated the steps of Pat's recovery. When Dahl finally
Speaker 1: takes his wife home, her right leg is in a
Speaker 1: brace and she has a patch over one eye. He
Speaker 1: quickly hires a nurse, a physiotherapist, and a speech therapist.
Speaker 1: Doctors warn him that more than an hour per day
Speaker 1: of therapy is too much for Neil. But with no
Speaker 1: formal medical or therapeutic training himself, just an unshakable belief
Speaker 1: that he knows what's right, Dahal rejects their advice and
Speaker 1: creates a rigorous schedule for his wife all day, every day.
Speaker 1: Their friends who visit are shocked at Doll's militaristic attitude.
Speaker 1: He seems to be torturing Neil. He becomes unrelenting, forcing
Speaker 1: her to do speech therapy five hours a day. The
Speaker 1: only thing that keeps Neil going is looking at theo
Speaker 1: seeing how well he's doing, which convinces her of the
Speaker 1: brains of to heal itself. But of course it's still
Speaker 1: an impossible struggle for Neil. She can barely speak or move.
Speaker 1: She has no agency. She cries all the time as
Speaker 1: her speech comes back and fits and starts. She blows
Speaker 1: up at Doll constantly, and she asks Barry Ferrell, the
Speaker 1: journalist who's covering all this and who's become one of
Speaker 1: her best friends, how to commit suicide. Farrell, who's just thirty,
Speaker 1: is totally freaked out by this world famous actress asking
Speaker 1: him these questions. He doesn't know whether he should tell
Speaker 1: Doll or not. It turned out not to matter, because
Speaker 1: one night at dinner, Ferrell explains pat mentioned suicide in
Speaker 1: front of Rold and some guests, making her usual joke
Speaker 1: about not knowing how she had drunk a bit too
Speaker 1: much wine, and the laughter that spilled out of her
Speaker 1: as she spoke sounded wild and demented. Well, if that's
Speaker 1: all that's sopping you, your problems are solved, Doll tells
Speaker 1: her in front of everyone. We've got knives in the
Speaker 1: kitchen that will do you up fine, and there are
Speaker 1: my razor blades upstairs or else. You can lock yourself
Speaker 1: in the car and turn on the engine, and before
Speaker 1: you know it, Bob's your uncle. Nothing to it. Making
Speaker 1: a joke of it is, of course, Doll's way to cope,
Speaker 1: and then he finds another way, turning it into his fiction.
Speaker 1: Here's Doll explaining to Michael Parkinson.
Speaker 3: Again when she started to pick up words, she made
Speaker 3: them up, and I made her list them once. I
Speaker 3: don't know where they asked. You'd just once say you'll
Speaker 3: drive me crazy. She used to say, you'll jake my
Speaker 3: de Arbels. It is a spindle phrase. She used to
Speaker 3: call it a dry martini, a red screwdriver.
Speaker 1: Dolls taking notes on all of his wife's funny, strange
Speaker 1: turns of phrase, and it's going to put them into
Speaker 1: the mouth of the BFG. If you haven't read that
Speaker 1: book in a while. Here's a typical speech by the
Speaker 1: giant from Steven Spielberg's adaptation.
Speaker 8: And then there would be a great rumple dumpish, wouldn't they,
Speaker 8: And all the human beans would be rummaging and whiffling
Speaker 8: from the jarant what you saw and getting wildly excited.
Speaker 8: And then they'd be locking me up in a cage
Speaker 8: and to be looked at with all the squiggling, you know,
Speaker 8: hippo dumplings and crocodilen dilly's and jiggy rabs, and then
Speaker 8: there would be a joy gantious looksy joint hunt for
Speaker 8: all of the boys.
Speaker 1: I liked how that very unique speech pattern is part
Speaker 1: of what makes the BFG one of the most indelible
Speaker 1: characters ever put to print, And it comes right out
Speaker 1: of his wife's stroke. On the one hand, it's not
Speaker 1: Doll's most attractive trait to poke fun at his ill
Speaker 1: wife's limitations. On the other, turning what must have been
Speaker 1: intense private pain into his art is what all great
Speaker 1: artists have always done. It just comes off a little
Speaker 1: more comical in Doll's case, but he does make the
Speaker 1: bfg's wordplay sympathetic, at least, like when he has him say,
Speaker 1: please understand that I cannot be helping it if I
Speaker 1: sometimes is saying things a little squiggly words, is oh,
Speaker 1: such a twitch tickling problem to me. For Neil, of course,
Speaker 1: it was much more terrifying than funny. Here she is
Speaker 1: years later on Fresh Air speaking to Terry Gross.
Speaker 7: I didn't even know one word from the other when
Speaker 7: I first became conscious. My son he used to give
Speaker 7: me reading lessons. You know. He would say cat and dog.
Speaker 7: I mean they'd be written because he had had to
Speaker 7: have those cards when he was young. I didn't even
Speaker 7: know what that meant. I knew what nothing meant. You
Speaker 7: have no idea when your brain is operating on me,
Speaker 7: you have no brain. It's sad.
Speaker 1: As you can hear from that clip, Neil did make
Speaker 1: the amazing recovery that her husband insisted on. What maybe
Speaker 1: most miraculous about the entire ordeal is that despite the
Speaker 1: intense trauma Neil goes through, she somehow doesn't lose the pregnancy.
Speaker 1: She was three months long when the stroke happened. In
Speaker 1: the first week of August, Neil gives birth to their
Speaker 1: fifth and final child, a happy, perfectly healthy baby girl, Lucy,
Speaker 1: and life continues. Neil's good buddy, the actress Anne Bancroft,
Speaker 1: steps into her role on the John Ford film and
Speaker 1: comes by the house all the time, often with her
Speaker 1: husband mel Brooks. Not for nothing, but knowing what we
Speaker 1: do now about dolls feelings about Jews, there is no
Speaker 1: amount of money I wouldn't pay to just watch him
Speaker 1: interact with mel Brooks. Lots of Neil's friends come by
Speaker 1: to see her during this period. Frank Sinatra shows up
Speaker 1: with a stack of records, Judy Garland brings flowers, Carrie
Speaker 1: Grant and john Ford come for coffee, Robert Altman drops
Speaker 1: by to cook dinner for the family. Dahl's nutty rehab
Speaker 1: program for his wife has worked. It's an incredible comeback story,
Speaker 1: and Neil has offered tons of jobs. According to Cohen,
Speaker 1: Mike Nichols offers her one of the most iconic roles
Speaker 1: in cinema history, the part of Missus Robinson, opposite Dustin
Speaker 1: Hoffman and the Graduate. But Neil doesn't think she's ready
Speaker 1: for such a heavy lift, and the role goes again
Speaker 1: to her pal An Bancroft. Instead, Neil takes on some
Speaker 1: commercials for pain relievers, easy gigs, which speak to her recovery.
Speaker 9: You can't let a simple headache interfere with the joy
Speaker 9: of life get in the way of your day. The
Speaker 9: joys of this world belong to the bjas. Let ann
Speaker 9: to help you bite headache pain and win well.
Speaker 1: The commercials pay well. The bills for Neil's medical care
Speaker 1: are astronomical. Her insurance with the screen actor's Guil covers some,
Speaker 1: but with Doll's insistance on round the clock rehab expenses
Speaker 1: are adding up, and without Neil fully back at work,
Speaker 1: Doll has to become the breadwinner. Doll tries to figure
Speaker 1: out how he can start making some real money. He
Speaker 1: shifts gears. Doll has always gotten a lot of pleasure
Speaker 1: out of making up stories for his kids, and with
Speaker 1: Olivia and Theo's accidents, his kids have been on his
Speaker 1: mind non stop for several years now. He decides to
Speaker 1: try an experiment. He takes one of his old stories
Speaker 1: for adults, William and Mary, about a troubled marriage, and
Speaker 1: more or less rewrites it for kids. It's a strange
Speaker 1: idea for a children's story, but it's about to become
Speaker 1: about a million times more successful in that forum than
Speaker 1: it ever was for adults. He does the same thing
Speaker 1: with another one of his adult stories, fifty Thousand frog Skins,
Speaker 1: and again it becomes a classic. It took Dahl going
Speaker 1: through everything you just heard with his wife and especially
Speaker 1: with his children for him to finally find his voice.
Speaker 1: Doll is about to get everything he's ever wanted become
Speaker 1: one of the richest, most famous, most successful men in
Speaker 1: the world. We'll hear all of that in our next episode,
Speaker 1: and we'll also hear how he basically does everything he
Speaker 1: possibly can to screw it all up. The secret world
Speaker 1: of Role Dall is produced by Imagine Audio and Parallax
Speaker 1: Studios for iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by me Aaron Tracy,
Speaker 1: produced by Matt Schrader. Post production by wind Hill Studios,
Speaker 1: with editing, scoring, and sound design by Mark Henry Phillips.
Speaker 1: Editing by Ryan Seton, Music by a PM. Executive producers
Speaker 1: Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, and Aaron Treece.
Speaker 1: Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark Henry Phillips and
Speaker 1: eleven Laps. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to
Speaker 1: rate and review The Secret World of Role Dall on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Copyright twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and Parallax