Speaker 1: Here's what sometimes happens in Hollywood. It's a cautionary tale
Speaker 1: that we've all heard in a million books and movies
Speaker 1: and pop songs. A young, sometimes talented actor filmmaker goes
Speaker 1: out to LA to pursue their dream, gets seduced by
Speaker 1: the flash and glamour of the industry before they've done
Speaker 1: the hard work of mastering their craft. And what does
Speaker 1: it always lead to? They get chewed up and spit out.
Speaker 1: There's a reason the cliche exists. Roll Doll is twenty six.
Speaker 1: He has one published story to his name, one he's
Speaker 1: never read a screenplay before, let alone written one. But
Speaker 1: the most successful producer in Hollywood history, more than him
Speaker 1: in a sec has just flown Doll all the way
Speaker 1: from DC to Beverly Hills, where he throws a lavish
Speaker 1: welcome party in Doll's honor. The guest list is like
Speaker 1: the front row at the Oscars. Giant movie stars, beautiful actresses,
Speaker 1: all looking ridiculous because they're dressed up as tiny green creatures.
Speaker 1: Why you ask, because those are the main characters in
Speaker 1: dull short story, The Gremlins. Imagine the head trip for
Speaker 1: Dahl seeing all this, just strolling through the party, champagne
Speaker 1: in hand, looking at his boyhood heroes and his greatest
Speaker 1: fantasies in these ridiculous costumes based on creatures he thought
Speaker 1: up sitting in his underpants in his tiny walk up
Speaker 1: apartment in DC. He doesn't know whether to laugh hysterically
Speaker 1: or cry at the absurd sight. A powerful producer throws
Speaker 1: his beefy arm around Doll's shoulders. The producer ushers Doll
Speaker 1: through the party and guides him over to a little
Speaker 1: man who's currently delighting a whole circle of giggling women
Speaker 1: by the bar. The producer wants to introduce Dall. The
Speaker 1: little man turns around, sees that the producer is giving
Speaker 1: him the eye, looks Doll up and down, then winks
Speaker 1: at him, followed by an exaggerated theatrical bow, as if
Speaker 1: welcoming the young writer into a secret society like everybody else.
Speaker 1: The little man is dressed up as a green monster,
Speaker 1: but despite the costume, Doll recognizes him. Of course he does.
Speaker 1: He's the most beloved man in the country. What the
Speaker 1: hell is happening? When we talk in future episodes about Dolls,
Speaker 1: sometimes bomatic Ego try to remember that he's twenty six
Speaker 1: years old with zero produced credits to his name. When
Speaker 1: a starry Hollywood party is thrown in his honor and
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin bows at his feet, what chance did the
Speaker 1: poor guy have? As we discussed in previous episodes, Dahl
Speaker 1: packed a lot into his twenties and thirties. He was
Speaker 1: starting to figure out where his passions lie. He suspected
Speaker 1: they were somewhere in the dark, twisty short stories he
Speaker 1: was writing, which leads to the next completely crazy and
Speaker 1: intoxicating chapter that he wills into the story of his life.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Hollywood for my hard podcast, Imagine entertainment and Parallax.
Speaker 1: I'm married, Tracer, and this is the secret world of
Speaker 1: Roald Dahl. Episode three. Imagine for a second that you're
Speaker 1: a young, ambitious short story writer being praised for the
Speaker 1: originality of your voice and your clever to steddings. And
Speaker 1: imagine that you've just spent years as a spy learning
Speaker 1: how to seduce and manipulate and lie your way into
Speaker 1: the highest echelons of power. If you were such a person,
Speaker 1: where would you go when the war ends? Of course,
Speaker 1: you would pack up and take your talents to the movies.
Speaker 1: The dream is intoxicating, especially back in that era. Oh y, look,
Speaker 1: Hollywood's out there. Like countless writers before him, Doll is
Speaker 1: blinded by the promise of celebrity, money and mingling with
Speaker 1: the tan and beautiful, and honestly, after years in spycraft,
Speaker 1: where he lived in a world of smoke and mirrors,
Speaker 1: transitioning to another world of illusions does make some sense.
Speaker 1: Succeeding in Hollywood and succeeding in espionage require many of
Speaker 1: the same skills, like manipulation and seduction for starters. Plus,
Speaker 1: after all, the daily adrenaline he's become used to from
Speaker 1: flying aerial missions then spying on the rich and powerful.
Speaker 1: I think it would have been too difficult for Dol
Speaker 1: to transition directly to the sedentary life of a novelist,
Speaker 1: which is what he really wanted to be. Screenwriting is different, beast.
Speaker 1: It's an adrenaline roller coaster. I've been doing it since
Speaker 1: right out of school. There are crazy high highs and
Speaker 1: awful lo those and every day is different. So Doll
Speaker 1: tries on yet another mask as he attempts to figure
Speaker 1: out who he is now. He'll see if this one
Speaker 1: fits better than businessman, fighter, power or spy. This one
Speaker 1: is Hollywood power Player. The short story directly responsible for
Speaker 1: bringing Dall to La is the one about the Gremlins,
Speaker 1: those menacing little green creatures destroying RAF planes, The one
Speaker 1: Eleanor Roosevelt likes so much she invited Doll to the
Speaker 1: White House. The hero of Doll's story, Gus, is an
Speaker 1: RAF pilot who's playing crashes because of a Gremlin. He
Speaker 1: learns that the little creatures are avenging the destruction of
Speaker 1: forests where they live to make way for British airfields.
Speaker 1: Gus heroically convinces the gremlins to redirect their energy into
Speaker 1: helping the war effort instead of sabotaging it. The Gremlins
Speaker 1: become allies of the Brits, using their expertise to repair
Speaker 1: planes and even make them faster. Dall thought of the
Speaker 1: story as just a silly fairy tale about quote little
Speaker 1: creatures with horns and long tails who walk about on
Speaker 1: the wings of your aircraft urinating in your fuse box,
Speaker 1: So all this hoopla around the story is kind of
Speaker 1: hard for him to believe. At the time Dahl writes
Speaker 1: the story, all the big Hollywood movie studios are on
Speaker 1: the lookout for patriotic films. Unlike the First World War,
Speaker 1: when the industry was still in its infancy and there
Speaker 1: was more ambiguity about the conflict, this war offers the
Speaker 1: opportunity for big, noisy, nationalistic movies to feed an existentially
Speaker 1: terrified audience. This war is tailor made for the movies.
Speaker 1: It's an easy to digest good versus evil storyline, those
Speaker 1: who love freedom versus fascists trying to conquer the world.
Speaker 1: Here's Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator.
Speaker 2: The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and
Speaker 2: the power they took from the people will return to
Speaker 2: the people. And so long as men die, liberty will
Speaker 2: never perish.
Speaker 1: All working as a spy for the Regulars when he
Speaker 1: writes The Gremlins, his employment requires him to run any
Speaker 1: story he wants to publish by the British government first,
Speaker 1: so they can pass judgment and be sure no national
Speaker 1: secrets are being spilled. The government reader assigned to Doll's
Speaker 1: story happens to be a very well connected businessman with
Speaker 1: a passion for film, Sidney Bernstein. Bernstein is a devout
Speaker 1: anti fascist desperately trying to help Jewish actors and filmmakers
Speaker 1: get the hell out of Germany right now. He's also
Speaker 1: a producing partner of Alfred Hitchcock. When Bernstein reads The
Speaker 1: Gremlins ahead of its publication, he instantly sees the potential.
Speaker 1: It's a little diamond of a story instead of just
Speaker 1: straight propaganda, which can be heavy handed and boring. Doll
Speaker 1: story is full of clever, inventive details, but is still
Speaker 1: an inspiring tale of US and British cooperation to defeat fascism.
Speaker 1: Bernstein has just come off a consulting gig on Missus Miniver,
Speaker 1: William Wiler's Best Picture winner, about how an unassuming British
Speaker 1: housewife is affected by the war of the.
Speaker 2: People, of all the people, and it must be fought
Speaker 2: in the home and in the heart of every man,
Speaker 2: woman and child who loves freedom.
Speaker 1: Missus Miniver is also the highest Christman film of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two. With its huge success, Bernstein can kind of
Speaker 1: write his own ticket and get any material he wants
Speaker 1: into the hands of practically anybody he wants. He could
Speaker 1: have decided to give Doll's story in Hitchcock and potentially
Speaker 1: saved all decades of pushing a boulder up a hill. Instead,
Speaker 1: he goes in a different direction, he decides the perfect
Speaker 1: fit for Doll's Gremlins. Is a charismatic producer in his
Speaker 1: early forties who happens to be on a hot streak.
Speaker 1: His name is Walt Dissey.
Speaker 2: Animal anatomy is a thing that is not taught properly
Speaker 2: in the art school.
Speaker 3: So I started the special course in animal anatomy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Walt Disney with weirdly specific insight into the
Speaker 1: kind of small details that differentiate his technique. Disney is
Speaker 1: only a handful of years removed from his giant, industry
Speaker 1: changing success with snow White. In just the past couple
Speaker 1: of years, he's made Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make you stop and think about that for a second.
Speaker 1: When people debate the best run by an American filmmaker ever,
Speaker 1: some argue for Hitchcock's six year period of nine absolute
Speaker 1: bangers ending with Psycho, or Billy Wilder's decade long run
Speaker 1: of eight classics starting with Cells at Boulevard and ending
Speaker 1: with the Apartment. Personally, I advocate for Rob Reiner in
Speaker 1: the late eighties, who had a string of five perfect
Speaker 1: movies and six years with When Harry met Sally's Smack
Speaker 1: in the middle. Disney produces rather than directs, but he's
Speaker 1: the creative force behind his films, so you've got to
Speaker 1: put his miraculous period just before meeting Dol up there
Speaker 1: with anyone. Like seemingly everyone who meets young Doll, Disney
Speaker 1: takes right to him. He loves the Gremlin story, which
Speaker 1: somehow blends fantasy and horror with patriotism and heroics without
Speaker 1: feeling it all manipulative. Disney see's serious promise in the
Speaker 1: Young Writer, just like Ces Forster had, so he takes
Speaker 1: Doll under his wing to show him how movies are made,
Speaker 1: which is pretty nuts. Doll is twenty six. He's trying
Speaker 1: to make a career out of writing, and specifically, at
Speaker 1: this moment, screenwriting. When a typical young writer goes to
Speaker 1: Hollywood and gets really lucky, maybe a junior development exac
Speaker 1: at a mid sized production company lets him be an intern,
Speaker 1: offering pointers while making him carry his golf clubs at Hillcrest.
Speaker 1: But if you've learned anything about Roll Dall by this
Speaker 1: point in our season, it's that normal rules just don't apply.
Speaker 1: Dall's introduction to Hollywood is getting mentored by the most
Speaker 1: creative and arguably the most successful producer the town has
Speaker 1: ever known. Right at the moment of his peak creativity,
Speaker 1: Disney puts the Gremlin story right into development, and rather
Speaker 1: than hire a professional screenwriter to come adapt it an adult,
Speaker 1: he decides he wants to keep Doll's unique voice. Here's
Speaker 1: Doll talking about it on Desert Island discs.
Speaker 3: That went out to Hollywood at his expense with raf
Speaker 3: permission on the stain of the car provided by Walt.
Speaker 3: This silly young man in the RIF uniform staying in
Speaker 3: the suite in the bevel Hill's Hotel.
Speaker 1: It's the same swanky hotel that's about to be a
Speaker 1: favorite of Mariel Monroe, Howard Hughes, and Frank Sinatra. And
Speaker 1: it's Disney who throws Doll that welcome party where everyone
Speaker 1: dresses as a gremlin. From the top of this episode.
Speaker 1: According to writer Matthew Denison, a Disney illustrator who meets
Speaker 1: Doll at the time, all the girls in Hollywood went
Speaker 1: crazy for Doll, and he basically starts dating all of
Speaker 1: them and flirting with alist actresses like Ginger Rogers and
Speaker 1: Marlene Dietrich. Heard here in Angel in Paris.
Speaker 4: Well, we must see that you have a very amusing time,
Speaker 4: So down, please have you been in Paris before?
Speaker 1: Those are Doll's evenings. During the days, he and Disney
Speaker 1: spend long hours in story conference, working with illustrators and directors.
Speaker 1: Disney is crazy about Doll, though he has a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble pronouncing his first name, so instead, in very
Speaker 1: Disney fashion, he calls this tall protege Stocky. As Walt
Speaker 1: and Stocky continue to break story for the Gremlins, Disney
Speaker 1: does what he's learned to do best, active the publicity machine.
Speaker 1: He puts the little Green creatures into advertisements and even
Speaker 1: creates a comic strip around them. Disney is basically willing
Speaker 1: the film into the public consciousness well before the screenplay
Speaker 1: is finished, where Craft Services has laid out a single cracker.
Speaker 1: At first glance, Dall and Disney seem to be total opposites.
Speaker 1: Dall's work, even at the beginning, is dark and subversive,
Speaker 1: often satirical. Disney's is bright and idealistic. Doll's stories have
Speaker 1: a creepy edge and explore greed and cruelty and the grotesque,
Speaker 1: leaving the reader with moral ambiguity. Disney makes movies with
Speaker 1: clear moral lessons and usually happy endings, aiming to inspire joy.
Speaker 1: It's the difference between the dark, all skater kid in
Speaker 1: high school who listens to a lot of Billie Eilish
Speaker 1: and Old Cure albums and the upbeat, preppy cheerleader who
Speaker 1: loves Ariana Grande. As for their take on childhood, which
Speaker 1: is a key subject for both men, Dall sees it
Speaker 1: as an existential battle against cruel adults. For Disney, it's idyllic,
Speaker 1: filled with wonder and innocence, sir, and the two men
Speaker 1: do share a bunch of things in common. For starters,
Speaker 1: both create trippy, fantastical worlds, and both champion the underdog,
Speaker 1: big time Doll's Matilda, Charlie and James overcome huge challenges.
Speaker 1: So do Disney Cinderella, snow White and Dumbo. All of
Speaker 1: them rise above adversity, screaming at the world that I
Speaker 1: better not overlook them.
Speaker 2: Like Disney's Pinocchio, I'm am real, I'm a real boy
Speaker 2: here life, you are a real boy.
Speaker 1: The biggest difference between dal and Disney, and what's going
Speaker 1: to lead to their undoing, is they're very different approaches
Speaker 1: to work. Dall is a writer's writer in the mode
Speaker 1: of great novelists. He likes to work alone, doing battle
Speaker 1: with the page, fulfilling his very personal vision. Disney is
Speaker 1: the ultimate collaborator. He works with teams of writers, directors, animators,
Speaker 1: and musicians to bring ideas to life in a communal environment.
Speaker 1: So it's not a surprise that dal and Disney begin
Speaker 1: butting heads. Dall is just not capable of letting go
Speaker 1: of his vision at this point in his life. He
Speaker 1: doesn't understand or doesn't care, that filmmaking is collaborative. The
Speaker 1: screenplay is just a blueprint for a structure that will
Speaker 1: be built by lots and lots of people. For his
Speaker 1: entire career, Dall will have a hard time with anyone
Speaker 1: who dares to edit or change his vision. His ego
Speaker 1: just always gets in the way, and right now, because
Speaker 1: of his success with the Gremlin short story, he is
Speaker 1: quote more arrogant than ever, according to his buddy Antoinette Marsh,
Speaker 1: So of course he believes there's no need to change
Speaker 1: anything he doesn't want to, even if Walt Disney, the
Speaker 1: King himself, is the one asking. Eventually, inevitably, Disney decides
Speaker 1: the collaboration or black thereof just isn't working, and there
Speaker 1: are about a million other stories he could be working on. So,
Speaker 1: after all the time, money, and advanced publicity he's poured
Speaker 1: into this thing, Disney pulls the plug. Doll is furious
Speaker 1: at first, then maybe a little embarrassed. He quickly he
Speaker 1: tries to find another producer. But the war has wound down.
Speaker 1: Audience's tastes of bevan to change. Troops are coming home
Speaker 1: completely traumatized. Two world changing nuclear bombs have been set
Speaker 1: off Audiences they don't want a story like The Gremlins anymore,
Speaker 1: a story that highlights cooperation and camaraderie. People start demanding
Speaker 1: more challenging, more morally ambiguous movies like film noir. Dahl
Speaker 1: is incredibly disappointed, but self aware enough to realize he's
Speaker 1: just gotten a crash course in Hollywood's inner workings from
Speaker 1: one of its all time master craftsmen. He's determined not
Speaker 1: to let that go to waste. He decides to keep
Speaker 1: at it. Dahl's decision to keep fighting that uphill battle
Speaker 1: of a Hollywood career could have been game over. There
Speaker 1: are so many stories of gifted writers coming out to
Speaker 1: La and falling on their faces. William Faulkner comes to mind,
Speaker 1: Aldois Huxley, Truman, Capodi. Maybe the most interesting and most
Speaker 1: tragic is f Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald had every reason to
Speaker 1: think he'd be a success in the movies. He was
Speaker 1: maybe the most gifted novelist in an era that included
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of gifted novelists, and he
Speaker 1: loved film. He didn't just come to Hollywood for the
Speaker 1: paycheck like so many others. Part of what makes Fitzgerald's
Speaker 1: attempts at screenwriting so sad is that he seemed to
Speaker 1: put as much effort into it as he put into
Speaker 1: Tender as the Night or The Great Gatsby. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons we only have four and a half novels
Speaker 1: by Fitzgerald, each a masterpiece is because he spent some
Speaker 1: of his prime years trying to break into movies. He
Speaker 1: blamed his failure on the studio system, which is always
Speaker 1: totally demeaned writers. Here's Robertson Eiro as a studio head
Speaker 1: and Jack Nicholson as a union organizer from Fitzgerald's unfinished
Speaker 1: novel The Last Tycoon.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you three things. All riders are children. Fifty
Speaker 2: percent of drunks, and up till very recently, writers in
Speaker 2: Hollywood were gag men.
Speaker 4: Most of them still are a gagman, but we call
Speaker 4: them writers.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: But there's still the farmers in this business.
Speaker 3: They grow the grain, but they're not in at the feast.
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald's pal, Billy Wilder, compares him to a great sculptor
Speaker 1: who's hired to do a plumbing job. Fitzgerald simply didn't
Speaker 1: know how to connect the pipes so the water could flow.
Speaker 1: In his entire Hollywood career, Fitzgerald only got a single
Speaker 1: screenwriting credit, and even on that one, he was totally
Speaker 1: rewritten by the producer Lake Dahl with his gremlins. Many
Speaker 1: of Fitzgerald's projects were scrapped or he got fired off them.
Speaker 1: By the time Hollywood kicked him out, Fitzgerald was broke alone,
Speaker 1: his body ravaged by alcohol, and years of his talent
Speaker 1: completely wasted. That's the potential future that awaits Doll. Whenever
Speaker 1: there's a forking path and the universe splits in two directions,
Speaker 1: the path Doll goes down as always, always the more
Speaker 1: interesting one. I want to jump forward to several years
Speaker 1: after the Disney debacle, Dall is still trying without success
Speaker 1: to get a movie made. His agent brings him an
Speaker 1: offer from United Artists to write a screenplay called wait
Speaker 1: for It, Oh Death, Where is thy Sting? A Lingling?
Speaker 1: The reason Doll is interested in it, aside from the
Speaker 1: hefty check, is that it's based on a story by
Speaker 1: a very talented, very eccentric, young director, Robert Alman. Here's
Speaker 1: Alman on The Dick Cavit Show from nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: on starting new projects.
Speaker 4: No matter how easy it seems, is always impossible, and
Speaker 4: there's a thousand things to get in the way, and
Speaker 4: then you go into making the picture, and then finishing
Speaker 4: the thing, and then going through this business of getting
Speaker 4: it opening and seeing properly, and luckily the cycle. About
Speaker 4: the time you really get bored and tired with one thing,
Speaker 4: the next one comes up and you get a kind
Speaker 4: of a whole new shot of enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Alman will bring that enthusiasm to some of the defining
Speaker 1: films of the nineteen seventies that he directs, like Mash mckayban,
Speaker 1: Missus Miller, and Nashville. The idea for single Lingling centers
Speaker 1: on a raid by World War One fighter pilots on
Speaker 1: the German Swiss border. Doll, of course, has first hand
Speaker 1: experience as a pilot in a world war, and he
Speaker 1: sees promising Alman seems like a fet he takes the gig.
Speaker 1: United Artists loves the script all rights, but they do
Speaker 1: not want Altman to direct it. Almond's too stubborn to
Speaker 1: avant garde for the studio system, which he freely admits
Speaker 1: here on the Charlie Rose Show.
Speaker 4: I think that had I had to always make successful films,
Speaker 4: I would have failed.
Speaker 1: But Almond is so angry at getting booted that he
Speaker 1: tries to get the entire project scrapped, which really angers Dahl,
Speaker 1: who's desperately trying to get his first movie made. Dall
Speaker 1: hires a famous pit bull of a Hollywood agent, Swifty Lazaar,
Speaker 1: to fight for him, and eventually all Men gives him.
Speaker 1: A new director is brought on, and filming in the
Speaker 1: movie actually begins with Gregory Peck, the legendary Starve to
Speaker 1: Kill a Mockingbird and Roman Holiday in the lead. Dahl
Speaker 1: seems to have finally done it after several failed attempts.
Speaker 1: He's finally going to have one of his screenplays produced.
Speaker 1: The Curse of f Scott Fitzgerald be damned. But then
Speaker 1: during the shoot, the head of United Artists watches the
Speaker 1: footage and doesn't like what he's seeing. He pulls the
Speaker 1: plug in the middle of production, just shuts the whole
Speaker 1: thing down. According to Doll, two million dollars had already
Speaker 1: been spent, Just like with the Gremlins, Doll's left with
Speaker 1: yet another abandoned project and more of his heart fought
Speaker 1: writing that will never see the light of day. It's
Speaker 1: devastating for Doll. He was so close he could taste it.
Speaker 1: Cameras were rolling, a movie star was saying his words,
Speaker 1: and then nothing. He's ready to give up, to abandon
Speaker 1: this insane business that just keeps delivering heartbreak. But after
Speaker 1: some sleepless nights with that awful three am wake up
Speaker 1: where you feel trapped wondering if you're wasting your life
Speaker 1: on something that will never ever happen, Doll does an
Speaker 1: amazing thing. He walks it off. He puts the rejection
Speaker 1: behind him, chalking it up to an industry that is
Speaker 1: very much not a meritocracy, and decides to keep trying.
Speaker 1: Producers and agents, after all, keep telling him how talented
Speaker 1: he is and cs Forrester asked him if he knew
Speaker 1: he was a writer, he'll crack the code eventually, he
Speaker 1: has to, too many people are telling him he will.
Speaker 1: Dall becomes the living embodiment of my favorite quote about
Speaker 1: the industry from our greatest film critic Paulin and Kale.
Speaker 1: Hollywood is the only place where you can die of encouragement.
Speaker 1: So he soldiers on. He doesn't know it yet, but
Speaker 1: his script for that abandoned film will eventually do more
Speaker 1: for his career and for his finances than any other
Speaker 1: script he'll ever write. We'll come back to that. Over
Speaker 1: the next few years, Doll has a number of other
Speaker 1: projects fall apart. Revered director Howard Hawks wants to work
Speaker 1: with him, but it comes to nothing. Dall supposedly wins
Speaker 1: an incredible assignment to adapt the classic dystopian novel A
Speaker 1: Brave New World, but again it doesn't work out. He
Speaker 1: also apparently tries his hand at adapting Moby Dick No Dice. Then,
Speaker 1: in the late fifties, Dall finally hooks up with the
Speaker 1: person who feels like the platonic ideal of a collaborator
Speaker 1: for him, very much as long lost spiritual brother and
Speaker 1: sometimes that's all it takes. Hitchcock started making movies in
Speaker 1: America in nineteen forty. Fifteen years later, near the beginning
Speaker 1: of that wild six year run of Classics, he somehow
Speaker 1: finds the time to host, produce, and occasionally direct an
Speaker 1: anthology TV series on CBS. The show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Speaker 1: is made up of thrillers, mysteries, and creepy stories of
Speaker 1: all kinds. Here's the man himself. Do you Believe in?
Speaker 3: Ghost of I Knew?
Speaker 1: The show is hugely successful and becoming a major influence
Speaker 1: on series like The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror. Now.
Speaker 1: While most of Hitch's films are written by great playwrights
Speaker 1: like Thornton Wilder or novelists like John Steinbeck, or established
Speaker 1: Hollywood heavy rats like Ben Hecht, John Michael Hayes and
Speaker 1: Ernest Lehman, hitch needs way more writers and way more
Speaker 1: material for a weekly show. Skimming through Collier's Magazine one
Speaker 1: week on the lookout for new blood, hitch comes upon
Speaker 1: a story called The Smoker, by a writer with a
Speaker 1: very unique name, dlor Is, about a man who gambles
Speaker 1: with strangers the stakes of the bet they're pinky fingers.
Speaker 1: If they lose, they have the chop theirs off and
Speaker 1: hands it over Dolls sadistic hero a mass is a
Speaker 1: disgusting collection. Hitch reads the story in one sitting and
Speaker 1: is completely tickled. It's just his blend of dark and
Speaker 1: funny and sadistic. Hitch buys the rights to the story
Speaker 1: immediately and asks what other tales mister Doll has.
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: You have to remember that TV in the late fifties
Speaker 1: and early sixties is not what it is now. Prestige
Speaker 1: TV was an oxymoron. The year Alfred Hitchcock presents First Heirs.
Speaker 1: The top rated series are all inane variety in talk shows.
Speaker 1: Number one in the nation The sixty four thousand Dollars
Speaker 1: Question before the massive scandal that revealed it was totally rigged.
Speaker 1: Others in the top ten the Ed Sullivan show, You
Speaker 1: Bet Your Life and I've Got a Secret. Hitchcock looks
Speaker 1: at the TV landscape and sees an opportunity for sophisticated
Speaker 1: scripted drama. He adapts Dolls stories into episodes for three
Speaker 1: different seasons of his show, Watching Them Now. It's obvious
Speaker 1: the filmmaker and writer are a perfect match. Both delve
Speaker 1: into dark, unsettling themes. Both love twist endings that throw
Speaker 1: their audience for a loop. They both create morally corrupt protagonists.
Speaker 1: Today we call them anti heroes. Decades before, The Sopranos
Speaker 1: and Breaking Bad did the same thing, and people called
Speaker 1: it the Great American art form. Hitch is the collaborator
Speaker 1: Doll has been waiting for. He made no sense with Disney.
Speaker 1: Hitch is his destiny. It says a lot about Doll's
Speaker 1: range by the way that he could write movies for
Speaker 1: both of those men. He's the only person on history
Speaker 1: to do it. One of Doll's stories option by Hitch
Speaker 1: is called Lamb to the Slaughter, which centers on a
Speaker 1: wife who kills her husband with a frozen leg of
Speaker 1: lamb and then serves the murder weapon his dinner to
Speaker 1: the investigators searching for the killer. The story shares a
Speaker 1: lot in common with hitches, dial and for Murder, and
Speaker 1: even more blatantly rope, where chilling murders are committed by
Speaker 1: killers arrogant enough to keep the evidence right beneath the
Speaker 1: nose of the lead investigator. We've always said you and
Speaker 1: I that moral concepts of good and evil and right
Speaker 1: and wrong don't hold for the intellectually superior. Remember Rupert, Yes,
Speaker 1: I remember. Hitch and Dahl also shared an interest in
Speaker 1: the psychological depths of their very flawed heroes. Jimmy Stewart
Speaker 1: in Hitch's Vertigo, is obsessed with transforming a new woman
Speaker 1: in his life into his deack girlfriend. In Doll's The
Speaker 1: Way Up to Heaven, he creates a hero who's just
Speaker 1: as manipulative a Stuart's character, taking pleasure and tormenting the
Speaker 1: woman in his life. Dall has such a good experience
Speaker 1: with Hitch's show that he's inspired to create his own
Speaker 1: anthology series near the end of his life called Tales
Speaker 1: of the Unexpected. Dahl takes a page r Hitch and
Speaker 1: introduces the stories on screen himself, though in his case
Speaker 1: he sits in a cozy armchair by a crackling fire,
Speaker 1: with his writing board on his lap and a pencil
Speaker 1: in his hand. The image screams kindly, grandfather and I, which,
Speaker 1: of course is smartly undermined by the utter creepiness of
Speaker 1: his plots. Here's a typical clip from dolls opening.
Speaker 3: If a bucket of paint falls on a man's head,
Speaker 3: that's funny. If the bucket fractures his skull at the
Speaker 3: same time and kills him. That's not funny, it's tragic.
Speaker 3: And yet if a man falls into a sausage machine
Speaker 3: and is sold in the shops at so much a pound,
Speaker 3: that's funny. It is also tragic.
Speaker 1: The show becomes a rare Hollywood success for Doll, one
Speaker 1: that took him decades to achieve. Doll's show runs almost
Speaker 1: as long as Hitchcock's Dead, nine full seasons, and Doll
Speaker 1: becomes famous as his host. The years before he conceives
Speaker 1: of that show, Doll's still chasing his dreams of getting
Speaker 1: a movie made. You've got to admire his persistence and
Speaker 1: his hutzpah. Dolls on the lookout for a project with
Speaker 1: even greater auspices than Disney or All Men or Peck,
Speaker 1: something even less likely to fall apart. What's most amazing
Speaker 1: is he actually finds it in an assignment that he
Speaker 1: feels downright destined for.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Whenever I pitch a TV show or future I spend
Speaker 1: at least a minute at the very limited time you're
Speaker 1: given trying to explain why I'm the guy to write
Speaker 1: this particular project. Writers joke about this. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a silly thing. Buyers want to know that if they're
Speaker 1: giving you all this money to write a script, it's
Speaker 1: got to be something you are the perfect fit for.
Speaker 1: What goes unsaid, of course, is that you're a working
Speaker 1: writer who needs to pitch a new idea at least
Speaker 1: a couple times a year, and they can't all be
Speaker 1: perfect fits for his next project, though Dall didn't need
Speaker 1: to do much convincing. In nineteen sixty six, Albert Broccoley
Speaker 1: and Harry Saltzman, producers and owners of the James Bond franchise,
Speaker 1: approached All with an offer. They want him to write
Speaker 1: the fifth Bond movie, You Only Live Twice. The producers
Speaker 1: had read and loved Doll's script for O Death Where
Speaker 1: Is Thy Stingling a Ling Sorry, and they had heard
Speaker 1: about Doll's life as a British spy, possibly from Bond
Speaker 1: creator himself, Ian Fleming. Fleming passed away in his mid
Speaker 1: fifties from a heart attack, two years before Dahl joined
Speaker 1: the franchise he created. Dahl and Fleming, you may remember,
Speaker 1: were buddies in DC in their twenties, both writers, both
Speaker 1: working in espionage, both uncommonly handsome and charming, though Dall
Speaker 1: never felt comfortable around Fleming. Fleming was always too cool,
Speaker 1: too cosmopolitan, two above it all. Dall always felt like
Speaker 1: his raggedy younger brother. But now Fleming is gone and
Speaker 1: Dall has seemingly been tapped to succeed him. While Dall
Speaker 1: is privately thrilled about the opportunity to rate Bond, he's
Speaker 1: a little embarrassed at how far away it is from
Speaker 1: his ambition to write great novels. As writer Matthew Denison
Speaker 1: points out, while in public, Dall maintains a snobby detachment
Speaker 1: toward Bond, like in a letter to a friend where
Speaker 1: he refers to the movie as quote my silly James
Speaker 1: Bond film, or when he tells his book publisher that
Speaker 1: he finds the whole enterprise exceptionally distasteful. This is a
Speaker 1: theme that will recur throughout Dahl's professional life. He becomes
Speaker 1: successful in something, but it's not the right thing, like
Speaker 1: later killing it in children's literature, and he'd rather be
Speaker 1: writing for adults. But Doll's drawn to the glitz and
Speaker 1: glamour of Hollywood, and there is no glitzier franchise than
Speaker 1: James Bott. It clearly feeds his ego to have a
Speaker 1: rolls Royce and to his writing studio to ferry new
Speaker 1: drafts of his script to London. And remember, Doll is
Speaker 1: still desperate to finally actually get a movie made now
Speaker 1: with any script, even with the greatest auspices attached or
Speaker 1: based on a popular piece of intellectual property, there is
Speaker 1: no such thing as a sure thing. A friend and
Speaker 1: I were once assigned to write the TV adaptation of
Speaker 1: the board game Risk, a beloved game with international name
Speaker 1: recognition but no human characters. We still came up with
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea, but the project fell apart. There
Speaker 1: are no guarantees in this business. But for Dall being
Speaker 1: presented with the fourth sequel to a cultural touchstone and
Speaker 1: money printing franchise starring the same A list actor in
Speaker 1: what appeared to be his final time as the title character,
Speaker 1: that is as close to a sure thing as Hollywood
Speaker 1: ever has to offer. And even though Dall despises being
Speaker 1: rewritten himself, he doesn't seem to have any qualms about
Speaker 1: totally rewriting his old pal Ian Fleming. Honestly, it feels
Speaker 1: as if Dahl didn't even bother to read the book
Speaker 1: he's adapted on the film's release, New York Times critic
Speaker 1: Bosley Crowther says it is notable that only Bond, the
Speaker 1: title and the location of an Ian Fleming book have
Speaker 1: been used by mister Dahl in writing his screenplay, which
Speaker 1: is maybe for the best. Fleming's novel is kind of dreadful,
Speaker 1: which Doll takes his license to create his own, completely
Speaker 1: Banana's story. In the film, we follow Bond as he
Speaker 1: fakes his own death and goes under cover to Japan,
Speaker 1: who investigate the disappearance of American and Soviet spaceships which
Speaker 1: are threatening to ignite World War three. Along the way,
Speaker 1: Bond trains with Ninja's infiltrates a secret layer that's housed
Speaker 1: inside a working volcano seriously and encounters one of Bond's
Speaker 1: greatest villains, Blofeld, who makes his first full appearance. And
Speaker 1: you only live twice. Here's Blowfeld himself, complete with his
Speaker 1: blue eyed Persian life.
Speaker 2: You will see that my piranha fish get very hungry.
Speaker 3: Zay can't strip a man to the bow, I mean
Speaker 3: thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: And if that all sounds incredibly silly, it is ten
Speaker 1: times sillier when you watch actors try to pull it
Speaker 1: off with a straight face. There are lines in the
Speaker 1: movie like bad News from Matter Space and Welcome to
Speaker 1: My Ninja Training School, which I transcribed I kid you
Speaker 1: not from the same scene. But that's the contract the
Speaker 1: audience signs with the Bond movie when they buy a ticket.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: The zaniness isn't a defect, it's built in. Dol knows
Speaker 1: that and he delivers. You can just tell how much
Speaker 1: fun Doll is having while writing. He revels in the
Speaker 1: playfulness of Bond, even more than the screenwriter of the
Speaker 1: earlier four films. Of course, there are some problematic elements
Speaker 1: in the film too, which is partly due to it
Speaker 1: being nineteen sixty seven, partly due to it being James Bond,
Speaker 1: and at least partly because it's from the mind of
Speaker 1: Roll Doll. For instance, Bond's opening line in the film,
Speaker 1: why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?
Speaker 1: Or the long section when Bond disguises himself as a
Speaker 1: Japanese fisherman yellow face and all. Though it should also
Speaker 1: be mentioned how many Asian characters and therefore Asian actors
Speaker 1: have major roles in the film, which is very unusual
Speaker 1: for a major Hollywood movie. At the time, and as
Speaker 1: for the typical Bond womanizing, there's a lot, which of
Speaker 1: course is baked into the franchise, though Doll has to
Speaker 1: take some of the blame for not even bothering to
Speaker 1: give Bond's love interest and name much less a personality.
Speaker 1: Watching the movie now knowing its screenwriter was very much
Speaker 1: a real life James Bond, makes the espionage plot a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. Dall was clearly drawing on his own experiences.
Speaker 1: Much of the film is set in a foreign country
Speaker 1: for the hero, where he has to immerse himself in
Speaker 1: the culture in order to stop a world war, and
Speaker 1: he seduces influential women as he goes, just like Dahl
Speaker 1: had to navigate the elite social circles of DC in
Speaker 1: New York to extract information, build alliances, and do a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot of seducing during his World war.
Speaker 1: The producers took a big gamble bringing Doll into the franchise.
Speaker 1: The first four Bond films had all been hugely successful.
Speaker 1: Doctor No introduced the series from Russia with Love outperformed
Speaker 1: it at the box office, which is super rare. Goldfinger
Speaker 1: came next and became a cultural phenomenon. Then Thunderball, the
Speaker 1: fourth in the series, which is still the biggest box
Speaker 1: office hit of any Bond ever adjusted for inflation, so
Speaker 1: expectations are sky high for the next one. What's more,
Speaker 1: each of the first four are co written by Richard Maybom.
Speaker 1: Maybom is the one who established the formula of Bond,
Speaker 1: and when franchises are working, you do not change writers
Speaker 1: mid stream. Just look at the Harry Potter films, where
Speaker 1: seven of the eight movies were adapted by a single writer,
Speaker 1: Steve Cloves. But while Maybom will stay with the franchise
Speaker 1: until his death, you got to wonder if the producers
Speaker 1: are growing tired of him or not sure he's up
Speaker 1: to the challenge of the fifth film, which is especially
Speaker 1: difficult because of how terrible the source material is and
Speaker 1: because there's now tons of competition from Bond knockoffs. The
Speaker 1: real test for Doll and all of this is whether
Speaker 1: or not he's learned to collapse. His inability to do
Speaker 1: so destroyed his film with Disney and contributed to his
Speaker 1: failures with Altman. But by this point Dahl has learned
Speaker 1: his lesson and become a great generous collaborator. Just kidding,
Speaker 1: collaboration is antithetical to Doll's nature, so he takes another
Speaker 1: path when the producers of Bond bring in a second screenwriter,
Speaker 1: Harold Jack Bloom. Bloom is a veteran TV writer who
Speaker 1: comes in and basically rewrites all of the action scenes
Speaker 1: in the movie. Dahl is furious about this. He tries
Speaker 1: to completely rewrite Bloom until all Bloom's action scenes are gone,
Speaker 1: and through sheer force of will, Bloom's credit drops from
Speaker 1: the prestigious screenplay by to the sort of embarrassing additional
Speaker 1: story material by. It'll be the first time on any
Speaker 1: Bond movie that a writer has received solo written by credit,
Speaker 1: and in the end, whether or not, Bloom deserves more
Speaker 1: credit than he got, the film does feel very dollian like,
Speaker 1: with a villain Earns Blofeld who becomes iconic in Doll's
Speaker 1: hands and calls to mind Doll villains like Miss trench
Speaker 1: Bowl and mat Hilda and the Grand High Witch and
Speaker 1: the Witches. The whole vibe of the movie reminds you
Speaker 1: of Doll's children's books, with a playful tone mixed with
Speaker 1: existential cruelty and danger. Dahl calls Bond the best experience
Speaker 1: of his Hollywood career. After many failed or aborted attempts,
Speaker 1: Dahl has finally achieved his goal. He's the writer of
Speaker 1: a major Hollywood hit. Here he is again on Desert
Speaker 1: Island Discs, discussing the experience.
Speaker 3: That was fun. That's the only only one I've had
Speaker 3: any real fun doing. And it was Connray Sean Connery's
Speaker 3: last one. Yeah, he did. And we went to Japan.
Speaker 3: And you you live in such luxury when you do
Speaker 3: a book and you're going helicopters everywhere, tops of mountains
Speaker 3: and everything. It's en almost fun.
Speaker 1: The film does not receive raves, but Bond movies aren't
Speaker 1: made for critics, and some reviewers do actually love it.
Speaker 1: Bosley Crowther, again in The New York Times, writes, this
Speaker 1: way out adventure picture should be the joy and delight
Speaker 1: of the youngsters and give pleasure to the reasonable adults
Speaker 1: who can find release in the majestically absurd, which kind
Speaker 1: of doubles is a pretty good summation for all of
Speaker 1: Doll's children's books. Actually. Pauline Kale enjoys the film too,
Speaker 1: comparing it favorably to Stanley Kubrick. Kale writes, there was
Speaker 1: a little pre title sequence and You Only Live Twice
Speaker 1: with an astronaut out in space, a daring little moment
Speaker 1: that I think was more fun than all of Kubrick's
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. It had an element of the unexpected,
Speaker 1: of the shock of finding death in space lyrical. Even
Speaker 1: more important than critical reception for Doll is the film's
Speaker 1: box office, which is huge to this day. Twenty seven
Speaker 1: movies in You Only Live Twice is the fourth highest
Speaker 1: grossing Bond film ever adjusted for inflation, and in no
Speaker 1: small part because of that. It's a turning point in
Speaker 1: Doll's career. After Bond, he never has to worry about
Speaker 1: money again. But of course it's a bit of a
Speaker 1: double edged sword. He's gotten the film made, but it's
Speaker 1: not the serious literature he still aspires to. Dolls massively
Speaker 1: conflicted and doesn't quite know where to turn next. Producers
Speaker 1: have an idea. As soon as Bond is completed, they
Speaker 1: bring Doll on to write another Ian Fleming adaptation. But
Speaker 1: rather than another Bond, which plays into Doll's real life experiences,
Speaker 1: this new project takes advantage of Doll's recent success with
Speaker 1: children's stories. The film is Chitty Chitty Bang, Bang starring
Speaker 1: Dick Van Deng. What an Unusual Cop That's a curious
Speaker 1: name for amoto car. The movie centers on an eccentric
Speaker 1: inventor who transforms a broken down car into something that
Speaker 1: can fly. And while people still adore the film today,
Speaker 1: Dall found it a terrible experience. It permanently soured him
Speaker 1: on filmmaking. He had a very difficult relationship with the
Speaker 1: film's director, Ken Hughes, who dared rewrite Doll's script, which
Speaker 1: again veered far from Fleming's novel. Doll is still struggling
Speaker 1: with what kind of writer he wants to be. He'll
Speaker 1: soon find that Hollywood actually kind of gives him a roadmap.
Speaker 1: Doll's experiences in La directly lead to the success he'll
Speaker 1: find writing for children. You could call it a necessary
Speaker 1: step in his evolution. His work with Disney two Light
Speaker 1: Chitty Chitty two, Saccharine Hitchcock Perfectly Dark help him find
Speaker 1: the sweet spot that will define his children's books, dark themes,
Speaker 1: packaged and accessible, entertaining ways. It also helps him realize
Speaker 1: where his strengths and interest really lie. For one thing,
Speaker 1: in creating original worlds rather than adapting other people's work,
Speaker 1: and it teaches him the importance of creative control and autonomy.
Speaker 1: During all of Dall's adventures in the screen trade, he
Speaker 1: becomes notorious for dating beautiful actresses. Doll is thirty six
Speaker 1: when he's invited to a dinner party one night at
Speaker 1: Lillian Hellman's house. Hellman is one of the most respected
Speaker 1: playwrights and screenwriters in the country. Also invited to the
Speaker 1: party is twenty six year old Patricia Neil, a confident, beautiful,
Speaker 1: redheaded movie star currently cast in one of Hellman's plays.
Speaker 1: Here she is years later in her most famous film,
Speaker 1: Breakfast Aatifanies.
Speaker 2: I am a very stylish girls. What are you doing
Speaker 2: writing a check? Don't look so bewildered.
Speaker 4: Surely you've noticed me writing checks before.
Speaker 1: Dahl will marry Neil. I'll have five children together. Their
Speaker 1: experiences during the marriage, writing bestsellers, winning oscars, and enduring
Speaker 1: some of the most devastating traumas and tragedies imaginable, will
Speaker 1: make all of Doll's exploits so far look like child's play.
Speaker 1: Doll's life with Neil is eventful, emotional, and shocking enough
Speaker 1: to fill several books and movies, which it does, But
Speaker 1: this is not your typical love story. As Neil reveals
Speaker 1: in her memoir written thirty five years later, even on
Speaker 1: the day of their marriage, she knew she didn't love him.
Speaker 1: The reason for this She's in love with someone else,
Speaker 1: and this other man, this rival for Doll, happens to
Speaker 1: be the most famous man in the world. The Secret
Speaker 1: World of Role Dahl is produced by Imagine Audio and
Speaker 1: Parallax Studios for iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by me
Speaker 1: Aaron Tracy, produced by Matt Schrader, post production by wind
Speaker 1: Hill Studios, with editing, scoring, and sound design by Mark
Speaker 1: Henry Phillips. Editing by Ryan Seton, music by APM Executive
Speaker 1: producers Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, and
Speaker 1: Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark Henry
Speaker 1: Phillips and Eleven Laps. If you enjoyed this episode, be
Speaker 1: sure to rate and review The Secret World of Roll
Speaker 1: Doll on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Copyright twenty twenty six Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and Parallax