Becoming Dr. Seuss

by Brian Jay Jones

  Big X

  Little x

  X . . . x . . . X

  Someday, kiddies, you will learn about sex!48

  Once again, the editorial team was paying attention, and Geisel submitted a rewritten entry for X.

  Geisel’s contempt for the word list was on open display in Dr. Seuss’s ABC—perhaps a deliberate thumb in the eye of Phyllis Cerf—as Dr. Seuss rolled out a menagerie of animals found nowhere on the word list, including alligator, camel, kangaroo, and ostrich. For perhaps the first time in a Dr. Seuss book, Geisel had intentionally populated his pages with real animals—yaks, hens, goats, foxes—as he made his way through the alphabet, giving young readers familiar-looking animals to match with the appropriate letters of the alphabet. Ted’s ability to draw recognizable animals was the subject of some debate in the Geisel household. “If I draw what I think a kangaroo looks like, that seems to turn out all right. But if I go to the zoo and look at a real kangaroo and try to figure out what his legs do, it comes out all wrong,”49 said Ted. “Even now, none of my animals are really animals. They’re all people, sort of.”50 Helen, however, was more to the point. “Ted never studied art or anatomy,” she told The Saturday Evening Post. “He puts the joints where he thinks they should be.”51

  Both Hop on Pop and Dr. Seuss’s ABC had a fan in the novelist and short-story writer Shirley Jackson, whose short story “The Lottery” had rocked readers and literary critics alike on its publication in 1948. Jackson, who had recently written her first children’s book, 9 Magic Wishes, took to the newspapers to share her enthusiasm for the seemingly effortless skills of Dr. Seuss. “I’ve lost count of how many books Dr. Seuss has written, but I do know that his books are one of the rare bright spots in children’s literature today,” she wrote. “Dr. Seuss’s ABC along with Hop on Pop will give young readers a head start on reading for the sheer joy of it, which is no small accomplishment.”52

  Beginner Books was publishing plenty of other quality children’s books, too—1963 would see the release of Helen’s latest, the photo book Do You Know What I’m Going to Do Next Saturday? as well as Alice Low’s Summer—but the imprint had become synonymous with the name of Dr. Seuss. Even Geisel’s distinctive color and design sense were beginning to be felt across the imprint, sometimes confusing readers who picked up a book with Seussian lettering on the cover only to discover it wasn’t an actual Dr. Seuss book. Clearly, Beginner Books was Geisel’s imprint—and Ted wasn’t going to let Phyllis forget it. The relationship between Ted Geisel and Phyllis Cerf was nearing a critical mass.

  The phone calls between Geisel and Cerf had become louder and more heated. “[Phyllis and Ted] simply could not work together because Ted has to have his own way,” said Bennett Cerf. “He was out in California and they would talk for an hour on long distance and Phyllis would usually end up in tears because neither would give in. They would fight over a single word for three hours. I used to go crazy listening.”53 Helen, in an effort to arbitrate, encouraged her husband to extract himself from Beginner Books and let her handle the editorial duties while he went back to just being Dr. Seuss. But Ted refused to let anything go. He was convinced Phyllis was trying to outmaneuver him with Bennett Cerf, and even canceled another long vacation with Helen in order to keep an eye on Phyllis. Finally, an exasperated Bennett Cerf brought in Bob Bernstein to mediate the dispute, telling him in frustrated tones that he had “better do something.”

  “Bob Bernstein was not supportive of me,” Phyllis said later. “His role was to keep Ted happy. He didn’t need to keep me happy.”54 The relationship was so irreparably damaged that even the normally cool Bernstein got dragged into the fray, arguing furiously with Phyllis even as he tried to keep Ted at arm’s length. It was all too much. For the good of Beginner Books, Bernstein recommended to Bennett Cerf that Phyllis be dismissed entirely from the imprint.

  Cerf, bracing himself for what would surely be a long evening, exhaled slowly. He was going to sign off on firing his own wife in order to keep Geisel happy. “Do whatever you have to,” he told Bernstein, “but don’t talk to me about it.”55

  “It ended up with Phyllis absolutely furious [and] cutting off their friendship,” said art director Michael Frith, who would mark his first day at Random House by walking right into the middle of the Geisel/Cerf feud.56 Phyllis, however, wasn’t going to go away entirely. Almost immediately, she would start another imprint at Random House, this one aimed at slightly older readers, called Step-Up Books—and it was unclear whether the title of the new imprint was meant as a veiled screw you to Ted Geisel. Over the next decade, Step-Up Books, with Phyllis as its president, would publish more than thirty books, including nature books like Birds Do the Strangest Things and biographies of notable Americans, like Meet Abraham Lincoln, lusciously illustrated by Jack Davis. There would be none written or illustrated by Dr. Seuss.

  Later, Phyllis tried to view their falling-out pragmatically. “It wasn’t really Ted,” said Phyllis. “It was his maleness of not wanting to be bossed by all women. He had an agent [Phyllis Jackson], he had a partner [Phyllis Cerf], he had a wife—you know, he was surrounded by women telling him what to do. And he really was the genius—none of us were. But I think that we all guided him to where he needed to go.”57 That was likely true—but when this factor was combined with Geisel’s inherent tendency to believe his opinion mattered the most, it made a genuine partnership nearly impossible. Bennett Cerf, who knew and understood Ted well, later admitted he thought the partnership had likely been doomed from the very start. “Ted is not used to being crossed,” said Cerf.58

  CHAPTER 13

  STINK. STANK. STUNK.

  1963–1967

  Phyllis Cerf was out.

  And when Jan Berenstain heard the news from Ted, she made what she called “the Eisenhower face”—the downturned mouth and skeptical sideways eyes a photographer had caught on General Eisenhower when he learned President Truman had relieved General MacArthur of duty. The Berenstains loved working with Geisel, but they also knew Phyllis had been their constant advocate and defender, gently but persistently nudging Geisel to let the Berenstains pursue their gentler, family-friendly stories, rather than writing the wackier, more outrageous books Ted tended to prefer. “You guys’ll be working directly with me from now on,” Geisel told the Berenstains.1 Jan wasn’t so sure—but then Ted informed her that he had a big idea for a brand-new kind of children’s book, and he “definitely” wanted the Berenstains in on it.

  Geisel’s new project was an imprint called Bright and Early Books, “for younger and younger readers.” It was a concept he and Phyllis had been kicking around for some time before her dismissal, based on feedback from educators and parents who loved Beginner Books but wanted books that could be read by new readers who might not have the vocabulary skills needed for a Beginner Book, even with its limited word list. “I realized that there was a level below Beginner Books,” said Geisel, “so we began making things simpler and simpler.” Hop on Pop and Dr. Seuss’s ABC had each been a dry run for the imprint, phonics-focused books with large, easy-to-read print—and based on the success of those books, Ted was right to believe that the new imprint could be “even bigger than Beginner Books.”2

  Geisel wanted a new look and feel for Bright and Early Books, starting with a lower page count—twenty-six pages versus the sixty-four for Beginner Books—which also meant faster-paced stories or narratives. There would be a word list, certainly, probably similar to the abbreviated one Geisel had relied on for Green Eggs and Ham—but Ted naturally wasn’t going to be quite the stickler for the list that Phyllis had been. The point was simply to make each word work in perfect sync with illustrations—and if a word like clown wasn’t actually on the word list, that was okay; it could be used so long as it was adjacent to a drawing that was unmistakably a clown.

  The Berenstains were intrigued by the idea and promised to come back to Geisel with a story outline
(Ted’s only condition: no bears this time). Meanwhile, Geisel, too, would start doodling around, understanding full well that when he launched the Bright and Early Books imprint, it would be expected to have at least one, if not two, Dr. Seuss books to offer.

  Apart from the new imprint, there were other big changes at Random House; for one thing, Ted’s reliable editor Louise Bonino was ailing, and had stepped aside from her editorial responsibilities, which were then assumed by juvenile editor Walter Retan. Bob Bernstein had also designated his own personal assistant, Anne Marcovecchio, as the Geisels’ personal handler, funneling all correspondence, requests, and anything requiring Ted’s attention through her—and then routing all responses back out through her again. Similarly, back in La Jolla, the Geisels had hired twenty-five-year-old Julie Olfe to manage the stacks of mail that flooded into the Tower every week. This put two much-needed gatekeepers between Geisel and potential Beginner Books authors, sparing Ted the need to reject manuscripts personally. With Marcovecchio and Olfe on hand to break the bad news to would-be authors, Ted could finally retire Outgo Schmierkase as well as Grimalkin, Drouberhannus, Knalbner and Fepp.

  There was also Michael Frith, the funny and talented young art director who had been friends with the Cerfs’ oldest son, Christopher, at Harvard, where they’d worked together at Harvard Lampoon. Frith had arrived in the middle of the Geisel/Cerf blowup, and on one of his first days at Random House, he’d been warned by a still-smarting Phyllis Cerf to never speak with the Geisels. “If you see Ted or Helen in the elevator, don’t even say ‘hello’ to them,” she told Frith. “You’re not allowed to talk to them.”3 And yet Frith would manage to successfully straddle the battle lines, becoming a trusted colleague both to Phyllis at Step-Up Books and to Ted at Beginner Books, where he would fill the role vacated by Cerf and serve as the imprint’s editor in chief. Geisel, of course, would remain as president—and now the final arbiter of everything.

  Unshackled from Phyllis, Geisel began recruiting Beginner Books authors from among his friends in La Jolla—a practice Phyllis had vetoed earlier, reminding him that his neighbors “weren’t professional writers.”4 But Ted was optimistic that all it took was a little training, coaching, and careful editing—at least among his friends who had some experience writing technical or scientific papers. Fred Phleger, for instance, was a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography whose major published work was Ecology and Distribution of Recent Foraminifera. Under Geisel’s guidance, Phleger would author a number of moderately successful Beginner Books, including the ecologically themed The Whales Go By and You Will Live Under the Sea.

  In the thirty years since Ted and Helen had first selected La Jolla as their home, the community had quickly grown into one of the wealthiest in California—and the Geisels, despite their general modesty, fit right in. At a time when the average annual income in the United States hovered around $4,400, Ted was earning more than $200,000, about $1.6 million today. Although he still tried to live within the self-imposed limits of a $5,000 annual salary, he could always withdraw against his royalties when needed—a luxury that had allowed the Geisels to easily renovate the Tower and travel widely.

  The newly established University of California at San Diego (UCSD), too, had made La Jolla an even more desirable place to live—and Geisel thought the presence of the university had improved more than just property values. One of the most active advocates for the establishment of the university in the area was the noted climate change scientist Roger Revelle, who made it clear to the community that the anti-Semitic housing policies of the local La Jolla Real Estate Brokers’ Association did not make for the kind of environment in which to establish a university. Local leaders, he said, would have to “make up their minds whether they wanted a university or an anti-Semitic covenant. You couldn’t have both.”5

  More inclusive heads had prevailed, and since 1960, UCSD had been attracting residents who were intellectual and socially progressive—and Geisel, who often felt like the only Democrat in a sea of conservative Republicans, welcomed the company. At dinner parties, he would often get a laugh by telling the story of trying to register as a Democrat in La Jolla and having the registrar ask him if he was joking. “During a political campaign, my La Jolla friends all try to convert me,” he said later, “but on election day I manage to be out of town.”6 Eventually, his Mount Soledad neighborhood would be populated by multiple Nobel Prize winners—“and that makes for some pretty stimulating get-togethers,” said Ted.7

  Such get-togethers, however, still fell under Helen’s jurisdiction. Of the two of them, Helen was still the more social, as well as an active member of the La Jolla community, serving on boards and committees, recalled neighbors, “with a determination of an army general when it came to a favorite cause.”8 Besides assuming oversight of the Seuss Foundation, Helen was also active with the La Jolla Museum—she would be elected its president in 1966—and served as secretary of the advisory board at Scripps Memorial Hospital. Ted, meanwhile, would quickly lose interest in foundations and boards, attending only a smattering of meetings before deciding community advocacy turned the gears of change too slowly. “This isn’t going anywhere,” he would say in frustration, and wheel out of the room. “He wanted the results,” said Judith Morgan, whose husband, Neil, had served with Geisel on several boards. “It had to be worth that two hours away from his desk, because he loved that room. It was his life.”9

  When he wasn’t sitting at the desk in that room, Geisel could be found more and more standing at an easel, dabbing at gigantic ink and watercolor paintings. Lately, too, he had begun to work in the new medium of oil paint, producing paintings with titles like Plethora of Cats, Venetian Cat Singing Oh Solo Meow, and I Dreamed I Was a Doorman at the Hotel del Coronado—“serious examples of Seuss art,”10 he said with mock solemnity, though he admitted that “some people say I should throw out the paintings and keep the titles.”11 For painting, too, he still generally preferred working after midnight, when he had put aside his latest book and could paint at the canvas quietly—though, as Helen groaned, never neatly. “Paint seems to land on everything from chairs to tables to sofa covers to his own hair,” she said.12

  Invitations to receptions at the Tower or to Helen’s annual Christmas party were some of the most coveted in the region. “A cocktail party is something you invite people to that you don’t like well enough to invite to dinner,” Ted joked—but the Geisels also hosted a sit-down dinner at least once a week, with nearly thirty invited guests. “[Helen] had her way of disciplining time for social things and giving parties,” Judith Morgan remarked later. “I think she believed, truly, it was good for Ted to stop work for a while—and he might not have done it [otherwise].” As a couple, they were good hosts, playing to each other’s strengths as they worked a room or presided over a large dinner table conversation. “Helen was the social one,” remembered Morgan. “She was outgoing, [though not] in the outburst way Ted was. He would burst out and everything would be terribly funny, and then he’d withdraw, and she would carry on.”13

  While old Army buddies like Meredith Willson—whose latest musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown had just been made into a film for MGM—and polio pioneer Jonas Salk could sometimes be found at the Geisel dinner table, Ted and Helen were spending more and more time with Grey and Audrey Dimond. Ted liked Grey, a dashing figure who looked as if he had stepped out of a Hollywood medical drama. “Grey was really a handsome rogue,” said Morgan, “certainly kind of suave.”14 Prior to relocating to La Jolla, Dr. Dimond had served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and then as the head of the Department of Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center. But under the intimidating job titles and serious demeanor was a droll sense of humor that Ted appreciated, and the two of them enjoyed teasing each other “like fraternity mates,” Morgan recalled.15

  But Ted was even more taken with Audrey, who could be unabashedly silly and never minded being the center of at
tention. Born in Chicago and raised in New York City, Audrey had been the child of a broken marriage and had been raised by a single mother; she was determined that her own two daughters would not share a similar fate. From a young age, she thought she had her future “all figured.” After graduating from Indiana University with a nursing degree, “I would marry a doctor,” explained Audrey later. “I would have two children. They would both be girls. They would take care of me. And they would not be alone as I was with my mother. That was it.” So far she had followed her own plan to the letter, as she and Grey lived with their two daughters, Lark and Leagrey, near the base of Mount Soledad on the quaintly named Ludington Lane. “Then life just came along,” Audrey added, “and changed everything.”16

  The Dimonds would often pick up the Geisels and drive them to parties together—a wise decision, given Ted’s driving—where Ted and Audrey would amuse themselves braiding the fringe on their hostess’s expensive draperies, or Ted would watch with obvious glee as Audrey joined a rambunctious group gathered around the piano, where she would whistle along loudly instead of singing. Other times, they would all spend their evenings at the Tower, cocktails in hand, talking late into the night. Ted had even let the Dimonds into his studio to examine the early drafts of a book he had pinned to the corkboard—the Beginner Book Fox in Socks—and was delighted when Audrey recited every tongue twister in the book quickly and without a single mistake. “Audrey was always bubbly and merry and he loved that,” recalled Judith Morgan.17

  Helen could sense a change in the group dynamic, even if she couldn’t yet pinpoint exactly what it was. “I don’t know how it happened,” she told Morgan, “but suddenly we four have to go everywhere together.”18