Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Now that I knew my father's secret, I kept it
Speaker 2: from him as he did for me, and.
Speaker 1: Joined my parents and their subterfus. The heir of secrecy
Speaker 1: was the oxygen I breathed, and the lies I told
Speaker 1: in school were fodder for the petty crimes I'd continue
Speaker 1: to commit.
Speaker 3: That's Gryffin Dunn, actor, producer, director, writer, and author of
Speaker 3: The Friday Afternoon Club, A family memoir. Griffin's is a
Speaker 3: story about growing up in a storied storytelling family. His
Speaker 3: father was the best selling writer Dominic Dunn. His aunt
Speaker 3: was none other than the great Joan Didion. His uncle
Speaker 3: was the writer John Gregory Dunn. It was a family
Speaker 3: that lived at the intersection of Hollywood fame and literary glory.
Speaker 3: A family who has had his share of shiny stardom,
Speaker 3: along with a heavy dose of tragedy, ambition, privilege, ascents,
Speaker 3: and falls from grace. It is also, at its core,
Speaker 3: a story about secrets and how they shape us. I'm
Speaker 3: Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets. The secrets that
Speaker 3: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 3: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. This episode was
Speaker 3: recorded in front of a live audience at the Miami
Speaker 3: Book Fair.
Speaker 4: Tell me about the landscape of your childhood.
Speaker 1: Well, I was born in New York. My father was
Speaker 1: in live television. He was a stage manager for a
Speaker 1: show called Howdy Duty, and he did felthy things with
Speaker 1: his puppet right before on the air too. And he
Speaker 1: moved his family, my mother and myself later my brother,
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles, and we lived in a house in
Speaker 1: Santa Monica and then to Beverly Hills. And my father
Speaker 1: was from childhood enamored with celebrity and movie stars, and
Speaker 1: you know, he's very, very social, and so my childhood
Speaker 1: was very kind of regimented. That was the priority, particularly
Speaker 1: most parents at that time. The priority was to be
Speaker 1: not a parent, but to be in society and giving parties.
Speaker 1: And my father's sort of quest for celebrity. He could
Speaker 1: never believe as a movie fan that all these celebrities
Speaker 1: would come to his house and drink his booze. And
Speaker 1: on certain big parties, my brother, sister and I would
Speaker 1: would be in our bathrobes and my sister would wear
Speaker 1: a little Dickens like nightcap and we would come down
Speaker 1: and bow and my sister would curtsey to the guests
Speaker 1: and they'd all go ooh, that's so cute and then
Speaker 1: send us back upstairs, or if it was a big party,
Speaker 1: we'd be checked into a hotel. So it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, half being a kid and half being part
Speaker 1: of the guests, you know, part of the family.
Speaker 3: Tell me a little bit about both of your parents,
Speaker 3: as close as you can to being a kid, you know,
Speaker 3: how did you perceive each of them when you were
Speaker 3: at that stage.
Speaker 4: In your life.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a quote from my father, who was
Speaker 1: very ended up, a very different man than the child
Speaker 1: I grew up with. And I remember once saying I
Speaker 1: was angry at him about something and he said, what
Speaker 1: can I say, kid, I'm just a work in progress.
Speaker 1: So he was very much a work in progress when
Speaker 1: I was growing up. So my impression at that time
Speaker 1: was my father, who was not terribly athletic, maybe even
Speaker 1: accused of being a touch feminine, who loved movie stars
Speaker 1: and wanted everything to be just so, you know, production
Speaker 1: design wise. As a kid growing up, he was kind
Speaker 1: of an embarrassment. I kind of wanted my friends, my
Speaker 1: best friends, their fathers who were movie stars, you know,
Speaker 1: one was Jack Paletz who almost killed Shane, and the
Speaker 1: other was a guy named Howard Keel who was played Lumberjacks.
Speaker 1: And then there was my dad. So a part of
Speaker 1: me was a little embarrassed about, you know, his masculinity,
Speaker 1: and it was I was such a kid I felt
Speaker 1: identified by it. I remember one day I came to
Speaker 1: school and told everybody my father was arrested for robbing
Speaker 1: a bank, which everyone believed. And my father, you know,
Speaker 1: got a call from the principal, you know, going Nick, oh,
Speaker 1: you're out of jail. You know. My dad said, is
Speaker 1: that something you'd like me to do? Rob a bank?
Speaker 1: And I kind of it? Did you know? We later
Speaker 1: played baseball. We threw a mit around a ball around
Speaker 1: for a baseball game, a father son baseball game.
Speaker 3: Wasn't that a direct outgrowth of absolutely?
Speaker 4: You know, he understood that that.
Speaker 3: Was a kind of cry for help in some way.
Speaker 3: And then it became let's throw a baseball around. And
Speaker 3: he didn't have the right glove, and he used your like,
Speaker 3: was he a lefty or you're a lefty?
Speaker 1: He was a righty. I was a lefty, and so
Speaker 1: he was. When we were practicing, I had an extra Mi.
Speaker 1: He would wear it on his other hand and I
Speaker 1: would throw him the ball and it would just hit
Speaker 1: the mitt and then pull up to the ground. You know,
Speaker 1: our family dog was so embarrassed that he took the
Speaker 1: dog to the ball away from us. But I put
Speaker 1: him in right field. He was the last one chosen
Speaker 1: of the fathers, and I put him in right field
Speaker 1: because it was very rare that a lefty would would
Speaker 1: be at bat. And my worst nightmare came true, which
Speaker 1: there was a lefty. It was Jack Palant, by the way,
Speaker 1: and it went right toward him and he wasn't paying attention.
Speaker 1: He was like talking to Natalie Wood and eating a
Speaker 1: hot dog and it went sailing over his head and
Speaker 1: it was such an embarrassment to me. But you know,
Speaker 1: he walked back after finally we got up a bat
Speaker 1: and he said, sorry, kid, I know I fucked that up.
Speaker 1: And it made me want to just hug him. And
Speaker 1: I was looking for my friends. I was ready to
Speaker 1: punch their face if they said anything because he was
Speaker 1: just so disarming. You know, it just really touched me.
Speaker 3: It's such a complicated stew of things, right to on
Speaker 3: the one hand, see your father and in some way
Speaker 3: have a sense of embarrassment because you're a kid, and
Speaker 3: what kids want, kids want to be like other kids. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and also to know that there's something so real and
Speaker 3: genuine about him. He was owning who he was and
Speaker 3: kind of saying, you know, sorry.
Speaker 1: This is what she got, it's what you got.
Speaker 3: As Griffin grows up, he spends more and more stories
Speaker 3: the lie about his dad robbing a bank. That was
Speaker 3: just the beginning.
Speaker 1: I became a real fiber, a real kind of liar.
Speaker 1: And my parents we went to church, a Catholic church
Speaker 1: in Beverly Hills. We called our Lady of the Cadillacs
Speaker 1: because of the extravagant cars that were in the parking lot.
Speaker 1: And one day I just decided, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go to church. I don't want to do it. And
Speaker 1: my dad is going, come on, get in the car,
Speaker 1: get in the car, and I went, I'm not going.
Speaker 1: I don't know what possessed me to say I'm not going.
Speaker 1: And during this time I had a real, i no delusional,
Speaker 1: relationship with the President John Kennedy, and I used to
Speaker 1: write him letters and once I heard back from his secretary,
Speaker 1: Missus Lincoln. Her name was and I used to think
Speaker 1: about them time. Anyway, I said, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: church and dang mine help fuck it.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 1: Gets in the car with my brother and sister. And
Speaker 1: then when they drive back, my brother and sister comes
Speaker 1: screaming into the living room. We just met the Kennedys.
Speaker 1: We sat next to the Kennedys and we met them.
Speaker 1: I thought, Wow, God must be really pissed and how
Speaker 1: could he do that. I was bereft and I could
Speaker 1: not I couldn't live with the fact that my brother
Speaker 1: and sister met the Kennedys and I didn't. So I
Speaker 1: went to school the next day and I told everybody
Speaker 1: I met the Kennedy's and uh, you know, it was
Speaker 1: old stage thing. I would like tap them, mister President,
Speaker 1: I'm Griffin Dunn. And he turns to jack and goes,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Jackie, this is a little boy who
Speaker 1: wrote that letter. And I started to tell this over
Speaker 1: and over. And I'm in the middle of, you know,
Speaker 1: starting school the neighborhood playoffs with all my new actor friends,
Speaker 1: and I'm starting to tell this story and I and
Speaker 1: he turned to Jackie, you go, and I go, wait,
Speaker 1: I didn't meet the Kennedys. I'm making all this up.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I never met. And I'd start
Speaker 1: to have like a breakdown about it. He goes, Okay,
Speaker 1: nobody's saying you did. And I called my brother and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I almost told this story again.
Speaker 1: I've been, you know, feasting off your experience and lying that.
Speaker 1: He goes, what are you talking about? At that time?
Speaker 1: You guys all met the Kennedys, and I never did.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, we didn't meet the Kennedys. Dad told
Speaker 1: us to say we met the Kennedys. So I've been
Speaker 1: telling a lie on top of a lie, you know,
Speaker 1: for eighteen years or.
Speaker 3: So, a lie on top of a lie. And what
Speaker 3: do lies do? Really? They shift both our inward and
Speaker 3: outward narratives. When we lie, after all, we're keeping a
Speaker 3: kind of secret. We know we're lying, and even if
Speaker 3: we're doing it really, really well, even if, as in
Speaker 3: Griffin's case, we're an excellent actor, still we're aware on
Speaker 3: some level that we're bringing other people into our own fabrication,
Speaker 3: and that knowing is a very lonely place to be.
Speaker 3: Griffin's childhood was lived in a house that pulsed with secrets,
Speaker 3: and as children. Our lived experience is all we know
Speaker 3: of the world.
Speaker 1: As we were growing up, we had this, you know,
Speaker 1: we were presenting one image. It was sort of based
Speaker 1: on the Kennedy family, you know, this winning family of
Speaker 1: two boys and a little girl and a young, handsome
Speaker 1: couple and just with great social grace, and that this
Speaker 1: loving couple was a loving couple was the first sort
Speaker 1: of secret that you don't feel as a kid, but
Speaker 1: you know, and you don't know that your father has
Speaker 1: actually got a sort of see secret life, that he's
Speaker 1: closeted men who had to keep this a secret, particularly
Speaker 1: at this time in his standing in the industry and socially,
Speaker 1: to be you know, exposed or out of the closet
Speaker 1: would have been a terrible verdict with terrible consequences, and
Speaker 1: especially growing up as a little boy and knowing that
Speaker 1: you know that your preference is not heterosexual, and so
Speaker 1: he had that shame. But you know, you don't know
Speaker 1: you're thinking feeling shame. There's just something in the air.
Speaker 1: There's an atmosphere that you kind of grieve, and you know,
Speaker 1: my mother. The other thing we didn't know was that
Speaker 1: my mother was terribly ill. She was getting sicker, and sicker,
Speaker 1: and she eventually was diagnosed with MS as having MS.
Speaker 1: But she took that pain and also the unhappiness of
Speaker 1: her marriage, and probably the knowing and keeping the secret
Speaker 1: of my father to herself, not even talking to him
Speaker 1: about it. So it makes a a a rather thick
Speaker 1: atmosphere that you know, you kind of grow up and
Speaker 1: it results in you know, in my case, led to
Speaker 1: me lying, telling these FIBs. I know the Kennedys, I
Speaker 1: got a lion, I have a baby lion at home.
Speaker 1: I you know, I mean, just crap and just fall
Speaker 1: out of my mouth.
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 3: When Griffin is eleven, he becomes a self described discipline
Speaker 3: problem and is sent off to an all boys boarding
Speaker 3: school in Massachusetts. This was very unusual in his family's
Speaker 3: milieu to send a kid to boarding school at that
Speaker 3: age on the other side of the country, and the
Speaker 3: school was strict, really strict. It was there that Griffin
Speaker 3: prof not only his lying, but his stealing as well.
Speaker 1: I could look at someone in the eye and I
Speaker 1: could just tell a total untruth and my pulse would
Speaker 1: never rise. I'd have the pulse of a serial killer.
Speaker 1: And all of that was I could trace to the
Speaker 1: untruths in the I don't know the facade that I
Speaker 1: was growing up with.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, there was this moral center,
Speaker 3: you know, at the core of the serial killer facade.
Speaker 1: I did have a sense of morality and empathy. I
Speaker 1: always had that, even though I didn't know quite about
Speaker 1: like my dad's secrets, I kind of suspected it, so
Speaker 1: I always had real sympathy and love for him. I
Speaker 1: related to that much more than the social gadfly. That
Speaker 1: was something real. And I then went to another school,
Speaker 1: all boys, God forbid. I went to school with girls,
Speaker 1: and I was That's when I found acting. And I
Speaker 1: was playing at Yago in Othello, and the night before
Speaker 1: I was to do the performance, my best friend, who
Speaker 1: was I gravitated toward acting. He gravitated toward drugs, and
Speaker 1: he came in. He went, man, we don't get high
Speaker 1: anymore and you're just a joe actor, And he gilded
Speaker 1: me into taking a hit a pot and teacher comes in.
Speaker 1: I smell smoke and I go no, and this plume
Speaker 1: comes out and it was immediate expulsion. And I was
Speaker 1: taking to the headmaster that very night, to his home
Speaker 1: and he wants to cut a deal. I mean, he
Speaker 1: looks at me as like a fundraising tool of the future,
Speaker 1: and he said, if you rat out John my friend,
Speaker 1: you can do iago and just say he was the
Speaker 1: only one smoking. And I don't know. I couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it, and I got kicked out of school.
Speaker 1: And that was the last I ever set foot in
Speaker 1: the school again. You know, it was in the tenth grade.
Speaker 1: It would have been eleventh, but I was held back
Speaker 1: because I was dyslexic. So you know, I went and
Speaker 1: into the adult world feeling very uneducated, which led to
Speaker 1: another fib that I went to college, which I never did.
Speaker 1: But I did catch up on my reading somehow. Being dyslexic,
Speaker 1: I was told, you're kind of a dummy, and we
Speaker 1: feel sorry for you. But once I got out of school,
Speaker 1: I didn't have that pressure. So I had to catch
Speaker 1: up with my own lie and read the books I
Speaker 1: would have read, and then I became a voracious reader.
Speaker 3: Literature is perhaps the only art form that can offer
Speaker 3: us direct access to inner lives other than our own.
Speaker 3: We approach books as maps of sorts, guideposts to help
Speaker 3: us navigate how we live inhabit a world of imaginative
Speaker 3: empathy and understand how others live. So it makes a
Speaker 3: lot of sense, especially that those of us who have
Speaker 3: grown up with family secrets are drawn to reading. Read
Speaker 3: to feel less alone, to peer into the windows of
Speaker 3: other people's homes, to see what we recognize and what
Speaker 3: we don't. Griffin is nearly twenty when he moved to
Speaker 3: New York to start his career. He's waiting tables, going
Speaker 3: to acting school and auditioning. Sounds like a fairly typical experience,
Speaker 3: but there's more to it. His parents are now divorced,
Speaker 3: and Griffin isn't only getting to know himself during this time,
Speaker 3: he's getting to know his dad too.
Speaker 1: When I first moved, he'd actually gone into self exile.
Speaker 1: He'd lost all of his money, he'd sold all of
Speaker 1: his belongings in a garage sale, and all the people
Speaker 1: that he invited to his home and they all haggled
Speaker 1: with him over ashtrays and end irons and stuff, and
Speaker 1: he left quite humiliated. So when I was in New
Speaker 1: York beginning my career, he had driven up the coast
Speaker 1: of California into Oregon and lived in a cabin right
Speaker 1: in front where his car broke down, and he lived
Speaker 1: there and then really grew character. He was at that
Speaker 1: point in his life and I was just beginning my
Speaker 1: life as an actor. But it was also, you know,
Speaker 1: an incredible I wanted to live in New York. From
Speaker 1: the moment I first laid Iceland, I knew. I just
Speaker 1: was counting the days, and I created a narrative of
Speaker 1: really kind of a magical New York. You know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't getting acting work, but I worked at Radio City
Speaker 1: Music Hall, feeding in the popcorn concession are and I
Speaker 1: had a little paper hat and one of my jobs
Speaker 1: was to refill the popcorn and the Nativity scene. They
Speaker 1: had a zoo downstairs, and I would feed the camel's
Speaker 1: popcorn and wander around to the catacombs and Rockefeller Center.
Speaker 1: And my roommate at the time was my best friend,
Speaker 1: Carrie Fisher, who eventually said, I got this part in
Speaker 1: a movie that's really stupid, and so I got to
Speaker 1: go to England. And so she's like working and I'm
Speaker 1: as an actress and I'm working as a waiter and
Speaker 1: a popcorn concessionaire. So it was kind of great, and
Speaker 1: she was, you know, in a Broadway show before in
Speaker 1: the chorus, and I would go around backstage and I
Speaker 1: knew all the stage hands and see them throwing snow
Speaker 1: for the you know, the dancing scenes of the debut,
Speaker 1: Reynolds dancing under a snow. So it was all, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just the New York I wanted, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Griffin, it's striking me that it's so much about
Speaker 3: what things look like and what things really are. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are all of these layers to that where I mean,
Speaker 3: when you were living with Carrie Fisher in the Day's
Speaker 3: Artists Building and you would go to the restaurant in
Speaker 3: the Cafe Days Artists Building on West sixty seventh Street
Speaker 3: in New York City, the very expensive, very expensive restaurant,
Speaker 3: the may Treads thought that you were, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know, a viscount or a lord, and and you
Speaker 3: know treated you as such and you didn't dissuade him.
Speaker 3: There's constantly these things that are kind of turning on
Speaker 3: their head. So tell me, like what was your relationship
Speaker 3: with your father like during those years, and when did
Speaker 3: you actually come to know, you know, sort of the
Speaker 3: truth of his sexuality and which you kind of always
Speaker 3: knew all along, but didn't know. Again, this being kind
Speaker 3: of about the secrets we.
Speaker 1: Keep from our sh sure well, growing as an individual,
Speaker 1: you know, and finding out who you are. And I
Speaker 1: always hope to find that, but never have to go
Speaker 1: through the journey of finding myself that my father did.
Speaker 1: I've never seen such public humiliation. And he really he
Speaker 1: took that pain and that humiliation and his secrets and
Speaker 1: he learned from it. And he lived in this cabin
Speaker 1: and he wanted to be a writer and expressed itself
Speaker 1: in these single space letters, just pages and pages that
Speaker 1: were confessional and him really getting at the root of
Speaker 1: who he was and how he got to this point
Speaker 1: in his life. And he was also it was a
Speaker 1: workshop for finding his voice, a voice that he would
Speaker 1: eventually find as a very well known writer. So here
Speaker 1: I was really getting to know him now. He never talked.
Speaker 1: We'd never once had a discussion about being closeted or not.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel the need to have that conversation. I
Speaker 1: think he always assumed his sons knew. I know my
Speaker 1: sister knew because when my dad was having this garage sale,
Speaker 1: the lowest point in his life, my sister, who was
Speaker 1: starting out as an actress, and immediately started working and
Speaker 1: was making more money than him by far. Out of
Speaker 1: the gate. She brought her her friend who was older
Speaker 1: than her but younger than my father, a guy named Norman,
Speaker 1: and he helped, you know, so Dad wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: touch the money and everything. He tagged everything with Dominique
Speaker 1: and did all the bartering for him. My sister, who
Speaker 1: was one to really knew how to keep a secret,
Speaker 1: she saw what was going on, and I never knew
Speaker 1: anything about it.
Speaker 3: On November fourth of nineteen eighty two, Griffin's sister, Dominique,
Speaker 3: age twenty two, was brutally murdered. She was a beautiful,
Speaker 3: talented young actress at the start of what was going
Speaker 3: to be an exceptional life, and she died at the
Speaker 3: hands literally of her ex boyfriend. This tragedy struck at
Speaker 3: the very heart of the Dunn family, who attended the
Speaker 3: media circus of the trial every day. Nick took notes
Speaker 3: at the trial. His rage and grief funneled into Pristine's
Speaker 3: sentences and razor sharp observations that later became a piece
Speaker 3: for Vanity Fair. At the trial, Griffin was struck by
Speaker 3: a peculiar distance Nick seemed to be keeping from Norman.
Speaker 3: It would be years before he would find out why.
Speaker 1: Norman was a witness at the trial of Dominique's murder
Speaker 1: for the murderer, and that's the next time I saw him.
Speaker 1: And then as my father has cancer, he's at an
Speaker 1: experimental stem cell treatment place in Germany, and I fly
Speaker 1: there to be with him, and I knock on his door.
Speaker 1: When I arrived, I'm in the room next door, and
Speaker 1: the door opens and there is Norman, the guy from
Speaker 1: the trial, and my dad, who's quite ill, goes, you
Speaker 1: remember Norman from the trial. Well, they'd been lovers for
Speaker 1: over forty years. My dad was very weak, he was
Speaker 1: very pale. He was in and out of sleep, and
Speaker 1: Norman and I sat ordered a bottle of wine and
Speaker 1: we talked. We brought me right up to speed from
Speaker 1: the time they first met, and that Dominique was the
Speaker 1: only one who knew and she thought she was tickled
Speaker 1: pink that she set this relationship. But she never told us,
Speaker 1: She never told her brothers, she never told anyone. So
Speaker 1: that's how I found out.
Speaker 3: It's such an amazing story, and I think, like some
Speaker 3: of the work of becoming an adult, you know, that
Speaker 3: is an ongoing work in progress is coming to know
Speaker 3: our parents as people, you know, people that aren't our parents,
Speaker 3: people who had lives before us, and you know, during
Speaker 3: our lives that aren't just about about us.
Speaker 4: And it was so striking and so moving.
Speaker 3: And you're thinking back to Dominique's trial and your father
Speaker 3: kept his distance from Norman in this very you know
Speaker 3: in a way that you noticed and then understanding those
Speaker 3: years later that he must have been absolutely terrified that
Speaker 3: their relationship was going to come out on cross examination
Speaker 3: of Norman. And you describe it as the longest day
Speaker 3: of his life.
Speaker 1: Which I was not aware of. I didn't know, of
Speaker 1: course at this time, that my father and Norman knew
Speaker 1: each other and kept in touch. But Norman was the
Speaker 1: very first person on the when my sister was attacked,
Speaker 1: when Dominique was attacked the first time by the same
Speaker 1: man whould eventually killed her. He tried to strangle her.
Speaker 1: He did strangle her, but she escaped and had scars
Speaker 1: on her throat and rushed to Norman's house, who had
Speaker 1: the wherewithal to take pictures which were used in the trial.
Speaker 1: And then Norman was called as a witness to recount
Speaker 1: that night and every day in this courtroom was a
Speaker 1: was criminal to the way our family was treated by
Speaker 1: the judge, by the defense attorney. We could not get
Speaker 1: a break. It was relentless and our only day of
Speaker 1: a victory, a small one that it was. Was Norman's testimony,
Speaker 1: how his composure he kept under this hostile little defense attorney,
Speaker 1: never losing his composure. And and at one point he
Speaker 1: was pointing at the blow ups with the pictures of
Speaker 1: Dominique's throat in her face, and at one point she's smiling, Well,
Speaker 1: how do you explain if this is so serious, why
Speaker 1: is she laughing? And he said, well, Dominique is an actress.
Speaker 1: And the next day she was playing the part of
Speaker 1: a battered housewife and she said, well, at least I
Speaker 1: won't have to go into makeup. It was real victory
Speaker 1: for us that day. But my father was oddly distant.
Speaker 1: He didn't come to the lunch we all went every
Speaker 1: day where we just you know, hugged Norman and thank Norman.
Speaker 1: And I didn't find out till years later when I
Speaker 1: started to write the book, and I was I got
Speaker 1: to the part about, you know, covering the trial, that
Speaker 1: I went to the Brisco Center in Austin, where my
Speaker 1: father's papers were kept, and I found out, you know,
Speaker 1: in his diary, an entry I'd never seen that He
Speaker 1: was terrified that day that this defense attorney was going
Speaker 1: to out him as a man who would date have
Speaker 1: an affair with his daughter's best friend and make that
Speaker 1: a meal and persperge his character. And that he wrote,
Speaker 1: if I have done anything that will affect the outcome
Speaker 1: of this trial in the favor of the killer, I'm
Speaker 1: going to kill myself. And I never knew. I just
Speaker 1: never knew, you know, the pain, Wow, horrible that day
Speaker 1: must have been for him. I never knew that, but
Speaker 1: it made sense.
Speaker 3: Before Nick passes, he has one more reveal for his son.
Speaker 3: He tells him that he had fought in the war
Speaker 3: and says it was just not something he ever felt
Speaker 3: he needed to share or say. Griffin is floored to
Speaker 3: learn that his dad was indeed braver than Jack Palance
Speaker 3: and all the actors playing war heroes, that he was
Speaker 3: a war hero, the real deal.
Speaker 1: It just says so much to his character. You know,
Speaker 1: at that time, he was in the mid nineties, By
Speaker 1: that time, he was famous. He always wanted to be famous,
Speaker 1: and here he was famous. And you know, he loved
Speaker 1: He was a joy to see enjoying his success. And
Speaker 1: you know, he would recount a cab driver who recognized him.
Speaker 1: Or one time he was at the chateau and he's
Speaker 1: taking an elevator. He calls and leaves a voicemail. I
Speaker 1: took the elevator up with Bono. Bono knows who I am,
Speaker 1: and it was just a delight. So we would always
Speaker 1: tell you everything, or I got to get another reward.
Speaker 1: But one day he saw saving Private Ryan and he
Speaker 1: calls me up and he says, get over here, get
Speaker 1: over here. Now, I got to talk to you. And
Speaker 1: I thought I had to do with the recent cancer diagnosis,
Speaker 1: and so I rushed over and he said, you ever
Speaker 1: see Private Ryan. I went, yeah, I did. He goes,
Speaker 1: you know I fought in the war, and I realized,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm kind of a history buff. I never
Speaker 1: really thought about him, even in a uniform, let alone
Speaker 1: on the way. I just never thought about it. And
Speaker 1: he goes on to tell me about this night that
Speaker 1: he and another person in his platoon whose masculinity was
Speaker 1: also in question, and they were humiliated and mocked in
Speaker 1: their group. They were called the gold Dust twins, and
Speaker 1: he tells about a knight in the Arden Forest during
Speaker 1: the Battle of the Bulch where his platoon retreats under
Speaker 1: fire and they both see two wounded American soldiers, not
Speaker 1: even from their platoon, behind enemy lines and counts this
Speaker 1: incredible night and how scared he was, but how brave
Speaker 1: he was. And then he takes out this metal and
Speaker 1: he goes, you know, your old man won the bronze Star.
Speaker 1: That was another moment. And what it struck me is
Speaker 1: it's like, that's character. That's the real shit that he
Speaker 1: kept to himself.
Speaker 5: That he didn't need to brag, he didn't need to named,
Speaker 5: he didn't need because that that fucking happened, and he
Speaker 5: wanted me to know. And like many veterans of that time,
Speaker 5: like many veterans of ward, it'll take a certain thing
Speaker 5: that to loosen it up, this memory, and it was
Speaker 5: in this case it was private Ryan, but it was
Speaker 5: also just something that was real that he kept to himself.
Speaker 3: There are secrets we keep, the ones that shape us
Speaker 3: and those who love us. But then there's also a
Speaker 3: kind of quiet, knowing a moral rectitude, one that bides
Speaker 3: its time. Can we ever know another human being? No?
Speaker 3: Matter how close to us a parent, a lover, a child.
Speaker 3: We can valiantly try, we can let people in, open
Speaker 3: ourselves to others, but ultimately our inner worlds are like
Speaker 3: those nested Russian dolls that are nestled one inside the
Speaker 3: next until we get to the tiniest one, hard as
Speaker 3: a kernel, a piece of bedrock, truth, a gift. Here's
Speaker 3: Griffin reading one last passage from his marvelous memoir.
Speaker 2: Dad took inventory of the ongoing disrepair in his ex house.
Speaker 2: The green satin sofa they bought New York as newlyweds
Speaker 2: was stained with red wine, and the white drapes hid
Speaker 2: Bosey's dried turs and smelled of cat piss. And the
Speaker 2: painted flats of the English gardens, left over from the
Speaker 2: Black and White Ball, still hung in our picture window,
Speaker 2: their colors long since washed out by the sun. He
Speaker 2: looked as sad as a bankrupt earl watching tourists parade
Speaker 2: through this castle. Clinging to small talk, he asked me
Speaker 2: how school had been, and I considered telling him how
Speaker 2: I had been flogged and fondled, but didn't have the
Speaker 2: heart in Dunn family tradition. I kept it pleasant and
Speaker 2: my Secrets.
Speaker 3: Close Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Accur
Speaker 3: is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 3: If you have a family seat you'd like to share,
Speaker 3: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 3: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 3: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 3: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
Speaker 3: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 3: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.