Dr. Seuss Paid For His Darkest Secret

[Music] Dr Zeus's ailing wife took her own life after she found out he'd been having an affair with her friend as if that's not bad enough the note she left behind revealed the depth of his depravities it turns out the identity of Zeus's mistress was the biggest bombshell of all we wouldn't have the do Zeus that we know and love if his first wife Helen hadn't seen talent in him and pushed him to become an author he owed his career to her and that makes what he did to her so much more cruel Theodore Seuss

Gil was born and raised in Springfield Massachusetts the family owned a brewery so Teddy got to enjoy a nice stable upbringing until prohibition put an end to their business luckily Theodore senior had friends in high places so he landed on his feet but while the family had some friends they definitely had enemies as well at the outbreak of World War 1 the geel kids faced severe anti-german Prejudice from the other children at school Ted persevered through the torment eventually graduating and enrolling at Dartmouth and that's where he started getting into trouble Ted fit right in

at Dartmouth he quickly started writing for the school's Humor Magazine the Dartmouth Jacko Lantern he rose through the ranks and pretty soon he became the editor and chief his career was on The Fast Track and then a single mistake almost derailed [Music] everything between his fraternity and the magazine it's clear that Ted was very social in college and being social in college invariably means alcohol but Ted went to school during prohibition one night at Dartmouth School authorities busted into his room they found the dorm crowded with Ted and nine of his friends sitting around drinking

Jin the dean wanted to expel Ted but he offered the young writer a life raft he could stay at the school but he had to resign from all extracurricular activities all that time rising to editor and chief of the magazine and just like that he was being forced to quit but Ted geel wasn't going to go quietly he was going to keep writing for the magazine and he knew just how he was going to do [Music] it Ted's name was no longer appearing anywhere in the Dartmouth Jacko Lantern but devoted readers probably would have noticed

that some of the writing had his familiar flare but instead of his name at the bottom they'd find just a single enigmatic word [Music] Seuss after Dartmouth Ted enrolled at Oxford hoping to get a PhD in English it must have been overwhelming moving across the Atlantic so meeting a pretty girl from New York must have been just what the doctor ordered her name was Helen Palmer and she immediately saw something in Theodore geel before meeting Helen Ted was planning on becoming an English teacher he wanted to make a difference in young people's lives but when

Helen took one look at his notebooks she knew he was destined for something more in the early days of their romance Helen had a secret motive she was going to make sure that the world saw his drawings in 1927 with Helen's convincing Ted dropped out of Oxford moved back to the States and started trying to make it as an author the moment he got back to the US he started sending his writings and drawings to magazines Publishers and advertisers by July of that year he already had a nationally published cartoon under his belt the Saturday

evening post paid him $25 for his work and that alone was enough to convince him to move to New York City and do this thing for [Music] real Ted went from strength to strength by October he had landed a job as a writer and illustrator for The Humor Magazine judge he wasn't rich and famous yet but he had steady paychecks coming in with a little bit of stability he popped the question and he and Helen tied the knot in 1927 with a steady job and his new wife on his arm it seemed like Ted geel

had it all figured out there was just one thing missing he still signed his work with the mononym Zeus and it just had something missing so because his dad had always wanted him to go into medicine Ted decided to start calling himself Dr Zeus in the pages of judge judge was a steady paycheck but it wasn't what got Dr Zeus noticed that weirdly enough was bugs spray one of Zeus's early judge cartoons mentioned the popular bugspray brand flit one woman who enjoyed the cartoon also happened to be married to the executive in charge of advertising

for flit that was very good news for one Dr Zeus his first flit advert appeared in early 1928 and that gravy train continued until 1941 people loved the ads and the catchphrase quick Henry the flit quickly became the I'm loving it of its day so in a bizarre twist of fate a bug spray ad turned Dr Zeus into one of the most sought-after artists in America Helen clearly had a good eye for talent telling Zeus to quit Oxford and bet on himself paid off huge and the money was now rolling [Music] in the couple moved

into a nice new place in New York City and they were ready to start living the High Life Fame and Fortune meant that Zeus and his wife got to travel the world he never kept regular office hours with his success giving him the freedom to go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted without any children he and Helen were able to visit 30 countries together by 1936 they seemed like the perfect couple but it wouldn't last forever it's not just that their financial troubles were over becoming the world famous Dr Zeus open doors that are closed

to most people he and his wife started rubbing shoulders with New York's Upper Crust particularly becoming close friends with the incredibly rich and Powerful Vander lip banking family but while they were doing well neither of them had any clue what real success was just yet that was coming even today everyone knows the name Dr Zeus and not for bugspray ads sooner or later Dr Zeus was going to have to start writing books but there's a good chance you haven't heard of his first book it's called boners maybe it didn't become an instant classic but it

did become a best seller as did the sequel more boners but it was the next book where things finally clicked thinking back to what Helen first saw in him to begin with Zeus came up with an idea for a new book featuring very strange animals there was just one problem his new book was fictional boners had been non-fiction apparently that was a hurdle for Publishers despite the fame and success that preceded him suus couldn't convince anyone to take a chance on his strange animals depending on when he told the story his third book received anywhere

between 20 and 43 rejections from Publishers but he wasn't going to give up one day in 1937 Seuss happened to bump into an old classmate from his days at Dartmouth who just happened to now be an editor at Vanguard press Seuss finally found someone to publish his book he named it after a Street near where he grew up to think I saw it on mulbury Street became an instant classic he quickly published four more books and it looked like he was finally going to be a successful author just as Helen had envisioned but there was

one thing they didn't count on when World War II broke out Dr Zeus put his career on the back burner and devoted his efforts to political cartoons drawing over 400 in 2 years in these cartoons he denounced the axis leaders and criticized isolationists like Charles Lindberg who opposed the US joining the war those cartoons largely hold up today his cartoons about Japanese Americans not so much some of dror Zeus's cartoons denounced racism as prejudice against Jewish and black Americans would hurt the war effort unfortunately that tolerance didn't extend to all Americans one of his cartoons

featured caricatured Japanese Americans being handed explosives and told to wait for a signal from home the message was clear your Japanese American neighbors can't be trusted before the US entered World War II Dr Zeus was just a concerned citizen in 1942 he started supporting the war effort directly he enlisted but he wasn't heading to the front lines Zeus became the commander of the Army's first motion picture units animation department and once again he set his sites on the [Music] Japanese he eventually earned the Legion of Merit for the films he made during World War II

the most notable was our in Japan which after the war was expanded into the Oscar winning documentary designed for [Music] death while Dr Zeus was working directly for the war effort propaganda was the name of the game our job in Japan was a skewed description of Japanese culture designed to teach American soldiers that their Japanese enemies were vicious would never stop and had to be defeated at all costs perhaps World War II made Zeus want a little sunshine in his life because soon after it ended he and his wife packed up and moved to California

maybe Helen thought that this was going to be a fresh new start for them sadly it was the beginning of the end Zeus made movies during World War II so now that it was back to civilian life he tried his hand at making one for General audiences the final product was the 5,000 fingers of Dr T and it looks exactly how you'd expect a Dr Zeus movie to look unfortunately America wasn't ready for the seral imagery of the film and it was both a critical and financial disaster it was so bad that doctor Zeus never

made another movie again but while the movies didn't really work out his books were doing better than [Music] ever Dr Zeus wrote many of his most famous books in the 1950s including if I ran the zoo Horton Hears a Who and How the Grinch Stole [Music] Christmas but there was one book in particular that really sent Dr Zeus into the [Music] stratosphere a 1954 Life Magazine report report on illiteracy came to the conclusion that children weren't learning to read because their books were too boring an executive at Dr Zeus's publisher saw this report and gave

Zeus a challenge he compiled a list of 250 words he thought all first graders should know then he told Dr Zeus to write a book using only those words the book was the Cat in the Hat and it turned Dr Zeus from a success story into a legend his imaginative art and writing made the perfect combination with his Publishers simple language and The Cat in the Hat remains one of the most popular early Reader Books in the world for instance it sold 452,000 copies in 2009 over 50 years after its publication [Music] his follow-up educational

books green eggs and ham and one fish two fish redf fish blue fish only built on this success but as his career was peing his marriage was crumbling Helen even while shepherding her husband through his rise to Glory started feeling ill around the time of The Cat in the Hat publication the years began to pass and for some reason she simply couldn't seem to get better she persevered for years until 1967 when tragedy [Music] struck Helen took her own life in 1967 anyone who knew of her illness might have thought that it was the cause

but the truth is much darker she left her husband and note which offers insight into her pain dear Ted what has happened to us I don't know I feel myself in a spiral going down down down into a black hole from which There Is No Escape no brightness and loud in my ears from every side I hear failure failure failure I love you so much I'm too old and in mesed in everything you do and are that I cannot conceive of life without [Music] you no one will be surprised to learn the loss of Helen

hit Zeus hard he later wrote that he considered taking his own life or burning down their house and starting completely fresh somewhere else but it wasn't just heartbreak that hurt Zeus so much there was also the guilt over what he did to her Helen finished her note with a cryptic message my going will leave quite a rumor but you can say I was overworked and overwrought your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed sometimes think of the fun we had all through the years so why did she think her death would leave

a rumor why was his reputation threatened well after she was gone the truth finally came out eight months after Helen's passing Dr Zeus did something shocking he married a woman named Audrey Diamond if that seems like he's turning things around a little quickly well here's the thing Dr Zeus and his wife first met Audrey diamond and her husband at a party from the first moment they met Dr Zeus became infatuated with Audrey and she felt the same way about him they wasted little time making their relationship official after Helen's [Music] death Dr Zeus knew very

well what it looked like marrying his wife's friend so soon after she took her own life he wrote to his friends and begged for their understanding I'm 64 years old I'm marrying a woman 18 years younger I have not flipped my lid this is not a sudden nutty decision this is an inevitable inescapable concl conclusion all I can ask you is to try to believe in me Zeus and Audrey didn't invite a single friend to their wedding Audrey essentially abandoned her entire life to be with him she had two daughters but after she married Zeus

she immediately shipped them both off to boarding school as she put it they wouldn't have been happy with Ted and Ted wouldn't have been happy with them the only ray of light in this incredibly dark story is that Zeus and Audrey remained happily married for the rest of his life even if it looks bad it seems that Audrey gave him something that Helen couldn't with the 18-year age gap between them Audrey became Dr Zeus's caretaker as his body started to fail him especially when glaucoma started robbing him of his sight [Music] the couple remained together

until 1991 when cancer finally claimed Dr Zeus's life his Fantastical stories are Beloved the world over so it's easy to understand why this incredibly dark chapter of his life has mostly been erased but there's another part of his story that you probably don't know about and that's how to say his name turns out we've been saying it wrong this whole time according to the man himself Zeus actually RS with zo good to know but no one is ever going to pronounce it that way [Music] sorry if you enjoyed this video please give it a like

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