WEBVTT - Holden Caulfield Goes to War 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:07.960 Why Uzzy Media Productions. John Lennon is dead. Police have 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:11.360 a suspect in custody whom they describe only as a 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:16.000 local screwball. He is Mark David Chapman, who came to 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:19.520 New York a week ago. I left the hotel room, 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:21.440 I brought a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:26.320 Signed it to Holding Caulfield. From Holding Caufield, I'm not 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:28.800 going to tell you my whole goddamn autobiography or anything. 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:31.480 I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:33.600 to me around last Christmas, just before I got pretty 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:35.239 run down and had to come out here and take 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:49.120 it easy. That was the holiday season for soldiers. The 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.040 Catcher in the Rye. They have influenced Mark David Chapman 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:54.680 when he killed John Lennon, But the novel had a 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:57.640 very different purpose for the man who wrote it. It 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:00.840 was a means of survival for J. D. Salinge. On 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:03.120 the surface, the Catcher in the Rise of story about 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.720 a teenage protagonist, Holden Caulfield, who spends a few days 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:09.440 in New York City after getting kicked out of boarding school. 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:12.800 Take a little deeper, and the story behind Catcher in 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:15.759 the rye, and you'll find it's darker and more complex 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:19.400 than people realize. This is the day for which three 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:28.000 people long have waited. This is D Day. Salinger wrote 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:32.400 that when he stormed the beach of Normandy on D Day, 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:36.600 he had with him on his person six chapters of 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:40.200 The Catcher on the Rock. No one else had copies. Kinselinski, 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:43.360 author of J. D. Salinger A Life. In other words, 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:49.880 if something were to happen to Salinger, holding Calfield would die, 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:56.840 Salinger would survive, but only after witnessing and enduring unimaginable suffering. 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:05.360 Why Lord, why must I learn to testify when all 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:09.160 alone to bees do is to Catcher and the Rock. 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:16.040 I'm Sean Braswell And This is the Thread a podcast 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:19.000 from Assi Media where we examine the interlocking lives and 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:22.480 events of history. We turned back the clock, one story 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.000 at a time to reveal how various strands are woven 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:29.720 together to create a historic figure, big idea, or an 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:33.400 unthinkable tragedy. This season, we start with the death of 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:36.799 rock star John Lennon and over the course of five episodes, 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:41.639 actually connected back to communist leader Vladimir Lenin. Along the way, 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.560 we meet some of the twentieth centuries greatest artists and writers. 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:47.360 We explore how each of their stories hinge on the 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:51.920 past and influence the future. If you are listening for 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:54.480 the first time, please go to episode one to start 0:02:54.480 --> 0:03:03.959 our interconnected story from the beginning in The Catcher in 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:08.799 the Eye exploded into American bookstores, the funny rye iconoclastic 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:12.520 figure of Holden Caulfield would influence generations of young people. 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.079 On the fiftieth anniversary of its publication, Louis Manand wrote 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:20.560 in The New Yorker, Salinger is imagined to have given 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:24.120 voice to what every adolescent thinks but is too inhibited 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:27.880 to say. The whole emotional burden of adolescence is that 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.480 you don't know why you feel unhappy, or angry or 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.400 out of it. The appeal of The Catcher in the Rye, 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:36.000 what makes it addictive, is that it provides you with 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:41.160 a reason. It gives content to chemistry. Catcher has now 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.840 sold more than sixty five million copies, and even more 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:48.200 than half a century after its publication, it still sells 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.000 around a quarter of a million books each year, and 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:53.120 while it never reached number one on the best seller 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.400 lists at the time of its release, Catcher caught Fire, 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:00.920 thrusting the lanky, handsome and dark haired Salinger, still only 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:05.440 thirty two, into the public spotlight. It was something of 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:11.520 a cult novel almost immediately, and the attention of the press, 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:16.480 the attention of the media, the attention of fans was 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:20.640 something that Salinger could not deal with, and so he retreated. 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:25.640 He retreated to someplace where he could write in solitude 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:29.400 and keep to himself and for the most part, keep 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:33.760 the world at bay. Salingers withdrawal from society made Holden's 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:38.120 fictional protestations against modern life and phonies seem all the 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:42.400 more real, and catapulted Catcher to even higher levels of popularity. 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:45.880 Salinger would go on to publish many stories in the 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.799 decade or so after Catcher, building worlds of damaged characters 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:53.760 and families, including the highly precocious children of the Glass family, 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:58.039 But all the while he retreated further and further from 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:02.599 society until he sides he's never going to publish again, 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:06.960 and he doesn't. He publishes his last story in nineteen, 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:12.279 but he never stopped writing. The mysterious genius crafting unknown 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.240 masterpieces was just too much for the public to resist. 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.080 Salinger was stalked by media and fans throughout his time 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:22.320 and seclusion. Those who ventured after him in the ensuing 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:26.080 decades would encounter wall upon wall around the literary giant, 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:29.640 from no trespassing signs to a phalanx of lawyers ready 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:33.400 to challenge any unauthorized use of his works or stories. 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:37.600 For more than half a century, he declined interviews and 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:41.880 shunned photographers. This evening, one of the world's great entertainers 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.760 and musicians, John Lennon of the Beatles, were shot outside 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:49.359 his New York home. Slwinski says it's likely that Lennon's 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:52.200 murder at the hands of Mark David Chapman only made 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:55.680 Salinger's paranoia worse. I think he had to have been 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:59.520 aware that if one crazy fan of mine committed this 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:04.240 murder and killed this very famous person, I could be next. 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:07.760 Sounder's withdrawal from the world was all the more striking 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:11.440 given his tremendous ambition as a young man, his dreams 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:15.119 of becoming exactly what he became, a world famous writer. 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:18.480 How could a man turn his back on fame, How 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.440 could he turn his back on fortune? How could he 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:26.240 stop publishing? If you have a talent, are you not 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:31.800 obligated to share it with the world. So why did 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:33.720 he turn his back on the world just as he 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:38.239 was achieving his dreams. Sounder's retreat began well before Lennon's 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:42.040 death and even before Catcher made him famous. It wasn't 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:45.159 just to avoid the media or his fans. Like many 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:49.240 war veterans, Salinger was retreating from his own past and 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:57.760 the devastating trauma of combat. The Second World War is, 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:03.599 without a doubt, the pivotal event of Salinger's life. Whereas 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:07.320 before the war all he wanted was his fame and 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:14.360 fortune and recognition. After the war, he's very leary of people. 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:18.960 He's very leary of crowds. He's sort of cowering from 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:23.040 the world. Salinger didn't write much about World War Two, 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:25.680 but one of the unpublished short stories he wrote about it, 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:30.800 The Magic Foxhole, is mesmerizing. In it, Salinger describes the 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:34.119 scene he must have encountered on D Day. There wasn't 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:36.560 nothing on the beach but the dead boys of A 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:40.720 and B company, and some dead sailor boys and a 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:44.960 chaplain that was cooling around looking for his glasses in 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:48.720 the sand. He was the only thing that was moving, 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:53.320 and shows were breaking all around him, and there he 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:57.320 was cooling around on his hands and knees, looking for 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:01.960 his glasses. He got knocked off. That's what the beach 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:05.520 was like when I came in. Sunder was drafted after 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:09.160 Pearl Harbor and assigned to the fourth Infantry Division. In 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:12.840 January nine, he left for England, where he joined tens 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:16.520 of thousands of American soldiers preparing for the Allied invasion 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:21.000 of Europe. When D Day came, Sergeant Salander crowded into 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:23.920 a landing craft with thirty men and launched with the 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.520 second wave for Utah Beach just after six thirty a m. 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.920 On June six. Within an hour of landing, his division 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:35.080 was moving inland, and from that point on Salinger found 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:39.040 himself in near continuous battle for the next eleven months. 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.160 All the while Sounder carried those first six chapters of 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:45.960 the Catcher in the Rye. And he carried these six 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:50.199 chapters throughout the war as if, I think, as if 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:55.400 there were sort of talus, as if he a derived 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:59.160 strength from them. For months at a time. Salinger had 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:02.960 no breaks, no rest, He did not bay their change clothes. 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:06.640 The twenty five year old regiment suffered more casualties than 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:09.320 any other American regiment in the war, and the young 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.599 writer witnessed the deaths of countless friends and fellow soldiers. 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:17.920 Salinger's division was also one of the first to enter Germany, 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:19.880 where he ended up in the middle of the bloodiest 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:23.600 fighting of the war, including the infamous Battle of Hitkin Forest. 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:27.560 Hrdkin entailed perhaps the most senseless carnage of the whole war, 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:32.120 historians considered a big strategic blunder and waste of human life. 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:35.120 Men fought from tree line to tree line in the 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.240 dark forest and froze to death in the bitter cold 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.800 foxhols they slept in. Most of the soldiers the challenge 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:46.480 served with died, and most of them died not from 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:51.680 battle wounds, but from disease and from the elements, and 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:56.240 from frostbite and cold. And he was very nearly one 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:01.520 of those numbers. There were more than three thousand soldiers 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:04.800 and Sunder's regiment that went to Hoodkin. Just over five 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.800 hundred survived. Sunder was one of the lucky ones, but 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:12.080 his fighting was not over. Next came the Battle of 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:16.480 the Bulge, the costliest engagement in US Army history, where 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:21.480 over one hundred thousand American soldiers were killed, more fighting 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:25.840 in the forest, more sleeping in frigid conditions. The high 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:30.320 tide of this German attack was reached two days after Christmas. 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:37.480 That was the holiday's season for soldiers ninety four. In April, 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:42.640 the winter thought and Sounder's division sighed with relief. It 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:46.160 appeared the worst was behind them. Then they came upon 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:50.720 the concentration camps at Dachau. Salinger in his division flung 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.679 open the gates and prisoners emerged, wearing black and white 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:58.640 striped suits and caps like skeletons and rags. You could 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:01.800 live a lifetime salon your later, told his daughter, and 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:04.480 never really get the smell of burning flesh out of 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:09.360 your nose. To see that level of depravity, that level 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:13.240 of evil in the world has got to rock you, 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:17.160 has got to change you. He used writing throughout the 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:21.600 war as a sort of self therapy, as the way 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.760 of dealing with the horrors that he he was witnessing 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:28.120 and what he was going through. It was almost as 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:32.319 if he was clinging to writing as if it were normalcy. 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:35.679 It was something normal to him in a world that's 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:40.160 gone insane. Souder wrote a handful of unpublished war stories, 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:42.720 but he promised himself that he would not write about 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:45.360 the war if he escaped alive. It was a vow 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:49.160 he kept, but the war still infused his work. Take 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:51.880 this well known line from the final chapter of The 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.880 Catcher in the Rye about all I know is I 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:59.360 sort of missed everybody I told about. It's funny. Don't 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.760 ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.240 The angst of Catcher, which would influence millions of readers, 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:10.720 including Mark David Chapman, may not have been the words 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:13.160 of a troubled young man trying to make his way 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.040 in the world so much as a grown man trying 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:19.880 to hold his together. Like everything that Salinger wrote after 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:24.520 World War Two, the war simmers just beneath the surface. 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:29.280 World War Two might have destroyed point of Salinger, but 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.480 it made him a writer. There would be no catch 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:34.640 on the right were not for the certain World War. 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:38.240 The character of Holding Caulfield might have matured in the 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:41.280 bloody battlefields of Europe, but he was born before the 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:49.240 war in a Manhattan hotel room. Up next, Salinger collides 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:51.920 with the world of the Phonies, the upper crust of 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:55.200 New York's elite society and the girl that broke his heart. 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:07.880 The threat is brought to you by Azzy Fest. Azzi 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:12.400 Fest brings together incredible music, provocative ideas, laugh out loud comedy, 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:15.360 and mouth watering food in New York City's Central Park. 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:18.920 Check it out at ausi dot com slash Azzi Fest. 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:26.839 Young Jerry Salinger grew up like Holden Caulfield on the 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:30.800 Upper East Side, easily the postoust area of Manhattan because 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:34.959 it's not no as kid. Plainly put, he had an ego. 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:37.480 Even as a child, he had a great ego. He 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:42.360 was convinced that he was destined for greatness. He bragged 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:45.240 to his friends even as a teenager, that he would 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:48.560 one day write the great American novel. Salinger published his 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:51.240 first short story just after his twenty one birthday in 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:56.080 nineteen He promptly dropped out of Columbia University, convinced that 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:58.760 this was the first step in a dazzling writing career. 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:03.960 For several months afterwards, he couldn't sell another story. Rejection 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:07.320 after rejection piled up. I wondered if I was a 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:16.120 has been at twenty one, He later said, he spent 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:18.520 the summer of nineteen forty one with friends on the 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:21.520 Jersey shore. There he hung out with the privileged young 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:23.680 people that he had made fun of in his stories. 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.920 One of them was the dazzling and very famous Una O'Neill. 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:33.800 Salinger was taken with Una almost immediately. She was literary royalty, 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:37.280 the daughter of the Nobel Award winning playwright Eugene O'Neil, 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:43.280 and at sixteen years old, Una was captivating, was stunning 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:48.000 in her beauty. She was absolutely gorgeous, She was vivacious, 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:53.080 she was young, she was witty. But on the other hand, 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:58.840 there was something privilege about Una O'Neill. Salinger was crazy 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:02.240 about her. Here's how he describes when such love struck 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:06.840 encounter and catcher. She knocked me out. I mean it. 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:09.400 I was half in love with her by the time 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.640 we sat down. That's that's the thing about girls. Every 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:14.600 time they do something pretty, even if they're not much 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:16.680 to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:18.240 you fall half in love with them, and then you 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.320 never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ, 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.720 they can drive you crazy, they really can. Salinger meets 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:31.040 O'Neill and he's just head over heels and he's probably 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:34.160 walking on clouds when he returns home to New York 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:36.920 at the end of the summer. It was a romance 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:40.960 that would impact Salinger for years. He was obsessed with Una. 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:44.000 He bragged about her to all his friends and family. 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:49.239 Problem was he had trouble keeping up. His parents were wealthy, 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:52.040 but he didn't have an allowance. Now, Salezer was a 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:55.800 no one. He's a broke no one too, and he's 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:59.520 dating this this famous woman with a very famous father, 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:04.520 and the paparazzi following them around. And here's Jerry next time. 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.960 And he's trying to date this woman and take up 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.520 to these places that he can barely afford. Salinger wasn't 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.760 the only one in love with Una O'Neill. Many older, 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:20.359 more sophisticated, and much wealthier men wanted Una on their arm. Salinger, 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:25.960 he has this aversion to what famously will become known 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:28.800 as phoniness. And all of these people are about his phonies. 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:33.000 You're going to get So he has the simmering musentment 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:37.680 for all of these people who were surrounding Una, and 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:41.280 she craves that attention. Salder knew he couldn't keep this 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:44.680 up long. He had to be a published author, published 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:46.520 in the likes of The New Yorker if he had 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:49.800 any chance of keeping Una. The New Yorker was the 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:54.960 epitome of success or any writer of short stories, and 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:57.440 Salinger wanted to be published in The New Yorker more 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.240 than anything else. So when it comes time to right 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:02.720 at the end of the summer, he doesn't just go home. 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:05.639 He checks into a hotel room in New York and 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:09.080 begins to type out a short story. This story, A 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:13.240 Slight Rebellion off Madison, is the first appearance of Holden Caulfield. 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:17.080 That's where Holding and the Catching the Rye are actually 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:23.800 born out of sallengers, meaning with As the fall of 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:27.480 forty one went on, Salinger felt Una slipping away, which 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.879 added to the urgency of getting published. The New Yorker 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:34.720 had rejected seven of Salinger's stories, but finally A Slight 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:37.880 Rebellion was accepted. It was scheduled to run and it's 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:46.800 Christmas issue. And then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor yesterday 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:57.720 the summus some nineteen, a date which will live in infamation. 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:01.439 The New Yorker put his story on hold, and in 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:05.600 April nineteen two, Salinger received his draft notice and reported 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:08.439 for boot camp at Fort Dix in New Jersey. That 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:11.880 same month, Una received her own designation from New York 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:17.920 Society Debutante of the Year. Just a few months later, 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:20.600 Una left New York City to be a movie star 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:24.479 in Los Angeles. He knew he was losing her affections her, 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:30.040 he was losing her attention, and one day, while Salinger 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:32.560 was still at boot camp, he saw in the news 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:38.320 purpose that Na O'Neil had married Charlie Chaplin. And that's 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:40.399 how we found out that the love of his life, 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:44.840 at least at that time, had left him. Charlie Chaplin, 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.520 world famous movie star and more than thirty years her senior. 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:53.760 On June sixte the eighteen year old Una had the 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:56.680 fifty four year old Chaplain at a Justice of the Piece. 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:01.360 She was his fourth wife. Salinger was freshed more than 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:05.520 anything else. He's humiliated because he has bragged to his family, 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:08.480 he has bragged to his friends and Una O'Neill, the 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:13.159 famous Una O'Neill is his girlfriend. A man scorned is 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.840 worse than a woman scorned. This is James Scoville, Una 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:23.399 O'Neill biographer. When she married Chaplain, he sent a letter 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:29.880 was awful letter. And it's this vicious, really vicious um 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:34.960 satire of how he imagines Una and Charlie Chaplin's wedding night, 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:43.160 complete with illustrations. It was a notorious, notorious letter. When 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.000 lashing out didn't make him feel any better, Salander took 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:50.440 another tax is. He feigns this sort of romantic apnesia. Oh, 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:54.200 I never loved Una, he says, I've forgotten all about Una. 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:58.040 Will Of course that's not the truth, because only weeks 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:01.960 before he told if friend, I would marry Una tomorrow, 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:06.040 if only she would have me. One year after Salinger 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:08.639 found out about UNA's wedding, he was fighting for his 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:15.080 life on the beaches of Normandy. Una was the great 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:19.000 romantic tragedy of Salinger's life. She played a huge role 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:22.240 in the birth of Holding Caulfield and Salinger's tirade against 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:26.119 the phoniness of New York haised society. Without his heartbreak, 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:29.480 without his battle fatigue, could Salinger have written The Catcher 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:33.200 in the Rye without Holding Caullfield to channel with Mark 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:39.040 David Chapman had gone over the edge. In our next episode, 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:42.720 we pick up the thread with Una O'Neil Chaplin. She's 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:44.400 not nearly as well known as some of the men 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:49.800 whose lives she touched, including Truman, Capodi, Orson Wells, Charlie Chaplin, 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:53.679 and of course J. D. Salinger. Soon you'll hear her 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:57.600 whispering in the background of America's greatest masterpieces, from The 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:05.280 Catcher in the Rye to Breakfast at Ephanis, Let's Learn 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:10.440 the Test and by when All I want to be 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:16.639 just a Catcher and the Threat is produced by Meredith 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:20.399 hot Nut, Laby Coleman, and me Sean braswell. Our editors 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:23.800 are Carlos Watson and Samir Rao. Meredith hot Knot engineered 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:26.560 our show with mixing and sound design from James Rowland's 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:30.399 and Chris Hoff. Special thanks to Cindy Carpi and David Boyer, 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:35.440 Tracy Moran, Sean Colligan, Sun, Jeeve Tandon, Jeremy Williams, Cameo, George, 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.840 and k A. LW. This episode featured the song Catcher 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:43.040 in the Rye by Sammy Walker. Check us out at 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:46.119 ausy dot com, that's o z y dot com, or 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.119 on Twitter and Facebook. To learn more about the thread, 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:52.440 visit ausi dot com. Slash the thread all one word, 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:56.080 and make sure to subscribe to the thread on Apple Podcasts. 0:21:56.560 --> 0:21:59.919 If you love surprising, engaging stories from history like this one, 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:04.080 look no further than the flashback section of Ozzie. Thanks 0:22:04.160 --> 0:22:11.119 for listening. H