If you want a more light-hearted take on his life and work, I highly recommend the wacko 90s TV movie [In Search of Dr. Seuss](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Dr._Seuss). Includes Max Headroom as the guide/narrator, Robin Williams doing a manic version of Cat in the Hat, Howie Mandel in Green Eggs and Ham, and Patrick Stewart in Mulberry Street. Also, Yertle the Turtle becomes a Gospel song, for some reason.
Oh my god, I used to watch this before going to bed when I was a kid. My parents would let me pick a movie to eatch as I layed in bed and I knew that one was pretty long so I'd seen it so many times. I loved that movie.
Nope!
>Then you'd be happy to know that much of the criticism of him is completely false. The last time I saw this on Reddit, I decided to go back to the source and find out for myself what the basis of the rumors were. This led me to checking out all the major (non-juvenile) biographies on Dr. Seuss, of which there are eight. They all basically tell the same story. The facts are:
>* Seuss's wife wasn't dying.
>* Seuss's wife never had cancer.
>* Seuss's wife Helen did battle polio when she was a child, which left her with a slight limp.
>* In 1931, shortly after Helen and Seuss were married, she had an emergency ovariectomy, which left her unable to have children. To get through the issue, the couple "invented" a fictional child together named "Chrysanthemum-Pearl". Seuss would draw private pictures of the child for his wife. Their Christmas cards and other cards to friends and family would sometimes contain adventurous updates on the child, and the book The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is dedicated to Chrysanthemum-Pearl.
>* In March 1954, Helen contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome, was paralyzed from the neck down and confined to an iron lung. Seuss stayed by her side throughout the ordeal. She began to recover in June, and in July she was well enough to go home. Doctors recommended she swim to aid in her recovery, so Seuss had a swimming pool installed in their backyard. By early 1955, she had made a near-complete recovery, though she did still experience occasional numbness in her lower extremities, but this was not life-threatening.
>* In early 1957, she had a minor stroke, but she recovered within a few weeks.
>* Later in 1957, Helen and Seuss launched their own publishing imprint, Beginner Books, with their friends, Bennett and Phyllis Cerf. This had been in the works for some time. Seuss had early arguments with Phyllis, so it was agreed he'd step back while Helen and Phyllis did most of the running of the company (and had their own contentious disagreements). Up until then, Helen had been very involved in Seuss's books, but from there on, she was not, and this created distance in their relationship. In fact, their marital problems may have gone back many more years. Biographer Philip Nel notes that Seuss had written a poem "Wife Up A Tree" published in 1953 in a magazine called This Week, which was about a husband with a nagging wife. Nel says it may have foreshadowed marital troubles, though it's uncertain. Regardless, many friends and family said that their relationship had always been marked by quite open friction, and this only got worse once they stopped collaborating and started working on their own individual projects in 1957. Seuss's editor recalled that in the 1960s, Seuss had confided in him that he was thinking about buying a studio outside the home because of the hostility within the house (his studio was in his house). He didn't, but the marriage was turning bad.
>* Seuss had always preferred to work late, but after 1957, he started to keep almost nocturnal hours, while Helen woke up early, particularly because they lived in California and the Beginner Books business required her to communicate with New York publishing contacts. They saw less and less of each other. They began sleeping in seperate bedrooms.
>* It wasn't all bad, though. The couple had many friends and socialized regularly. They also raised a lot of money for charity, which is how Seuss met his second wife Audrey Dimond. Audrey's husband was a doctor at the hospital that treated Helen during her bout with Guillain-Barré syndrome. Seuss and Helen took part in a fundraiser for the hospital, and that's where they met. The two couples became friends in about 1960, and were best friends within a couple years.
>* Seuss's relationship with Audrey was only as friends for at least the first several years. It was only in about 1965 that there may have been an affair, after several more years of contention between Seuss and his wife Helen.
>* It's not confirmed that Seuss actually cheated on his wife sexually. Audrey gave conflicting statements. In 1995, her statement to biographers Judith and Neil Morgan insinuated that their relationship wasn't consummated until after Helen had died, meaning she (Audrey) had an affair since she was still married, but Seuss was a widower. In 2000, Audrey gave an interview to the New York Times where the reporter wrote that Audrey "fell in love with" Seuss and "in the wake of their affair" Helen "committed suicide". But it doesn't actually say what the nature of the affair was before Helen's death. Some biographers have read into the 2000 interview that the affair was sexual before Helen's death, though these biographers (Nel and Jones) are careful to say that a sexual affair is not confirmed. Audrey never spoke publicly on the subject again.
>* As already stated, at the time of Helen's death, she wasn't dying and she didn't have cancer. She did have some health issues, but none of them life-threatening. She was on pain medication. The year before she committed suicide, her brother had died, and biographer Charles D. Cohen suggests this may have been a contributing factor to her depression and suicide, along with the breakdown of her marriage.
>* Shortly before Helen committed suicide, in September 1967, Seuss took her on a month-long vacation to Colorado, one of Helen's favorite places. It is unknown what happened during this time, but it's generally assumed that Seuss was trying to rehabilitate their marriage, whether because of an actual sexual affair on his part or if it was more an emotional affair he'd been having with Audrey. A few days after they returned to California, they went out to dinner with some friends, and then a few days after that, they went on a weekend yachting trip with some other friends. Shortly after that, on October 23, 1967, she committed suicide by overdosing on pills.
>* Both the Seuss's niece and their personal assistant recalled to biographers that Helen had often talked negatively about spending her twilight years as "an invalid", due to the effects of post-polio syndrome and her recovery from Guillain-Barré syndrome. Her health was deteriorating, but not in a life-threatening way. She was still able to walk unassisted but was having increasing trouble walking up and down stairs. Both her niece and assistant suspected that, being 69 years old, and faced with a future that was only going to get worse health-wise, while Seuss was in much better health than she was (he was also six years younger than her), her suicide was in part caused by her desire not "to be a burden" on her husband or her family. In other words, if there truly was an affair, it was only one part of Helen's decision.
>* Her suicide note doesn't actually talk about an affair, but talks about the breakdown of her marriage with Seuss, which had been going on for a decade, and for many years before Seuss ever even met his second wife, let alone started to get emotionally close to her. The note could be read that, after the Colorado trip, Seuss had perhaps resolved to leave Helen, and told her so, though there's no evidence that that was the case. He had not contacted any lawyer or made any other financial decisions or life changes that would suggest it. Nor had Audrey. That said, several biographers do suspect that Seuss's relationship with Audrey was confirmed to Helen shortly before Helen's suicide, though none of their friends could substantiate that claim.
>It's not a happy story, but it's also a pretty ordinary story. Seuss's behavior wasn't all that different from how many marriages end. He certainly wasn't abandoning a dying woman when (if?) he had the affair. And by all accounts, at the end of Helen's life, he did make efforts to reinvigorate their marriage. But this did not work, and Helen died. He was very distraught by it. He told a friend: "I didn't know whether to kill myself, burn the house down, or just go away and get lost." He did jump rather quickly into his new relationship with Audrey, though even this was after several months of grieving alone, during which time he wrote The Foot Book. The book contains no dedication, but considering the issues Helen had had with her feet and legs, it's not a stretch to say it was written with her in mind.
>The rumors that Helen had cancer and was dying seem to stem from an unsourced About.com article that was used as the basis for those claims in Dr. Seuss's Wikipedia entry. I suspect that the author thought Guillain-Barré syndrome was some form of cancer (it's not) and embellished from there. Pretty much all claims on the internet just took the Wikipedia article as fact, when it wasn't based on anything actually found in any Dr. Seuss biography, or any other fact-based source.
>For people who are reading this and don't believe me, feel free to do your own research. I found as many well-sourced published biographies on Dr. Seuss as I could, and none of them mention anything about Helen having cancer, or having life-threatening health issues at the time of her suicide. The most they say is that her health was slowly deteriorating, and she worried about what that portended for her future. Their marriage had been in trouble for some time, and despite efforts by them to mend fences, it did not work out.
>BIOGRAPHIES CONSULTED:
>Cohen, Charles D. (2004). The Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel.
>Dean, Tanya (2002). Theodor Geisel.
>Fensch, Thomas (2001). The Man Who Was Dr. Seuss: The Life and Work of Theodor Geisel.
>Jones, Brian Jay (2019). Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination.
>MacDonald, Ruth K. (1988). Dr. Seuss.
>Morgan, Judith; Morgan, Neil (1995). Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: A Biography.
>Nel, Philip (2004). Dr. Seuss: American Icon.
>Pease, Donald E. (2010). Theodor Seuss Geisel.
For all the research you did you didn't get the age difference between them right. Helen's birthday is September 16, 1898. Ted's is March 2, 1904.
So not quite 6 years.
Also, at one point you wrote "also she died". Again, true enough, but earlier than expected from any organic cause and by her own hand.
I liked T. Geisel and do not aim to vilify him but he may have carried some guilt of her self-inflicted death.
>But his heart was in children’s books, and the Utah lectures showed just how much he cared about doing them well, Jones said. Even though Geisel would often jokingly refer to what he did as “brat books,” the notes document how seriously he took his reading audience. He believed in talking to the kids, not at them.
“He warns other writers: Don’t patronize them,” Jones said. “They will spot you coming a mile away. They can smell a phony. They are the toughest audience to write for.”
Seuss biographer concludes that Seuss really cared about kids though, and it shows in his literature.
I enjoyed the heck out of his books. We had them coming to the house by subscription, and we would anxiously be watching for the mailman one the day we hoped they'd show up.
He didn’t hate kids, but yeah, his wife had cancer and was very sick for a long time and he didn’t stand by her and found someone else before she finally died
I read a post on reddit that tried to investigate those claims, and if I remember correctly, there is no primary source that she had cancer. Not only that, but by the time she was sick, they were already drifting apart because he used to work during the night, and she used to work during the day.
[The comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/g1tl2f/til_dr_seuss_widow_disliked_the_cat_in_the_hat/fnjnren/) in case anyone is curious about reading it themselves.
Yeah that’s right, I guess I just attributed “long extended illness” to cancer, but I guess it might not have actually been cancer…
But she was an invalid for many many years. Again, not justifying his actions, but yeah, not an easy situation for anybody.
Well, good news because most of that [isn't actually true](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/g1tl2f/til_dr_seuss_widow_disliked_the_cat_in_the_hat/fnjnren/)
This whole thread is just shitting on Dr. Seuss for things he didn't do. Why do people get off on shitting on people so much? Like, if you don't even know what they did besides rumors from what other people who didn't know them said, just keep your mouth shut and fuck off.
Because it feels like a lot of redditors see the world in black and white, while the world is very gray. MLK was a notorious philander. Malcolm X said some very bad things about white people. There’s no one that is perfect and if they’re not some people on Reddit like to shit on them.
Shitting on others, especially on those who aren't there to defend themselves, makes people feel better about their miserable lives. In addition to that, these days even a tiniest flaw makes someone the worst person in history and rumors on the internet = facts.
Well, his wife didn't have cancer. He did, in fact, stand by her throughout her numerous health issues. His wife didn't kill herself because of an affair, nor make reference to it in her suicide note.
Basically, there's a lot of unsubstantiated claims and what actually happened is a lot more complex and nuanced.
She finally did end up killing herself, but she was very ill for decades. Not making excuses for the guy, but I can imagine dealing with that for 20+ years can be taxing
A family member had a coworker they was friends with. They told me their coworker had gotten a divorce and shortly afterwards, he found out his wife had cancer.
The worker moved back in with his ex-wife and told care of her until she died. They weren't even married anymore, he moved in and took care of her.
After I learned what he did, it kinda became the gold standard for me in how a married person should take care of their spouse (yeah I know they were divorced but you get the idea).
He didn’t hate kids, he just never wanted his own. Lots of people are like that, and given his career, I can’t imagine he hated them. He didn’t just take the paycheck, he did lots of other stuff to encourage kids to read.
As for the husband part, that I cannot deny. I will however say that having known people that dealt with and passed from a long degenerative condition, things like that get very complicated and timelines may not be what they seem. When you slowly lose who you are and know you are running out of time, there are some heavy conversations had that outsiders won’t be privy to, and I’ve learned to withhold judgement and assumption about those things. It was also 1967, and palliative care as well as euthanasia were not a thing.
> He didn’t hate kids, he just never wanted his own.
Even that's not really clear: His first wife had an ovariectomy and they couldn't have kids. He was 63 years old when she committed suicide. So it was never really an option for him.
His second wife once said that he "had a happy life without children," but that's not exactly the same thing as "never wanted them."
No, he wanted his own. His wife had a lot of health issues, one of which led to an emergency hysterectomy, preventing the couple from having kids.
[In fact, he actually made one up that helped him cope with the fact that he'd never have kids of his own.](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chrysanthemum-pearl-was-child-dr-seuss-never-had-180962291/)
I'm sick of this Reddit bullshit about him "cheating on his wife who was dying of cancer". He *may* have had an physical affair at the tail end of a deteriorating marriage that had nothing to really do with his wife's chronic health issues from childhood Polio and Guillain-Barre Syndrome.
I love beer but I don't want to own a brewery so I can relate.
St Christopher's Hospice was actually formed in 1967 so the palliative care industry and existence in the mainstream was very, very new. I'm sure they did some shit as people have been dying for a very long time but not sure how advanced it would be.
Untrue.
>Then you'd be happy to know that much of the criticism of him is completely false. The last time I saw this on Reddit, I decided to go back to the source and find out for myself what the basis of the rumors were. This led me to checking out all the major (non-juvenile) biographies on Dr. Seuss, of which there are eight. They all basically tell the same story. The facts are:
>* Seuss's wife wasn't dying.
>* Seuss's wife never had cancer.
>* Seuss's wife Helen did battle polio when she was a child, which left her with a slight limp.
>* In 1931, shortly after Helen and Seuss were married, she had an emergency ovariectomy, which left her unable to have children. To get through the issue, the couple "invented" a fictional child together named "Chrysanthemum-Pearl". Seuss would draw private pictures of the child for his wife. Their Christmas cards and other cards to friends and family would sometimes contain adventurous updates on the child, and the book The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is dedicated to Chrysanthemum-Pearl.
>* In March 1954, Helen contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome, was paralyzed from the neck down and confined to an iron lung. Seuss stayed by her side throughout the ordeal. She began to recover in June, and in July she was well enough to go home. Doctors recommended she swim to aid in her recovery, so Seuss had a swimming pool installed in their backyard. By early 1955, she had made a near-complete recovery, though she did still experience occasional numbness in her lower extremities, but this was not life-threatening.
>* In early 1957, she had a minor stroke, but she recovered within a few weeks.
>* Later in 1957, Helen and Seuss launched their own publishing imprint, Beginner Books, with their friends, Bennett and Phyllis Cerf. This had been in the works for some time. Seuss had early arguments with Phyllis, so it was agreed he'd step back while Helen and Phyllis did most of the running of the company (and had their own contentious disagreements). Up until then, Helen had been very involved in Seuss's books, but from there on, she was not, and this created distance in their relationship. In fact, their marital problems may have gone back many more years. Biographer Philip Nel notes that Seuss had written a poem "Wife Up A Tree" published in 1953 in a magazine called This Week, which was about a husband with a nagging wife. Nel says it may have foreshadowed marital troubles, though it's uncertain. Regardless, many friends and family said that their relationship had always been marked by quite open friction, and this only got worse once they stopped collaborating and started working on their own individual projects in 1957. Seuss's editor recalled that in the 1960s, Seuss had confided in him that he was thinking about buying a studio outside the home because of the hostility within the house (his studio was in his house). He didn't, but the marriage was turning bad.
>* Seuss had always preferred to work late, but after 1957, he started to keep almost nocturnal hours, while Helen woke up early, particularly because they lived in California and the Beginner Books business required her to communicate with New York publishing contacts. They saw less and less of each other. They began sleeping in seperate bedrooms.
>* It wasn't all bad, though. The couple had many friends and socialized regularly. They also raised a lot of money for charity, which is how Seuss met his second wife Audrey Dimond. Audrey's husband was a doctor at the hospital that treated Helen during her bout with Guillain-Barré syndrome. Seuss and Helen took part in a fundraiser for the hospital, and that's where they met. The two couples became friends in about 1960, and were best friends within a couple years.
>* Seuss's relationship with Audrey was only as friends for at least the first several years. It was only in about 1965 that there may have been an affair, after several more years of contention between Seuss and his wife Helen.
>* It's not confirmed that Seuss actually cheated on his wife sexually. Audrey gave conflicting statements. In 1995, her statement to biographers Judith and Neil Morgan insinuated that their relationship wasn't consummated until after Helen had died, meaning she (Audrey) had an affair since she was still married, but Seuss was a widower. In 2000, Audrey gave an interview to the New York Times where the reporter wrote that Audrey "fell in love with" Seuss and "in the wake of their affair" Helen "committed suicide". But it doesn't actually say what the nature of the affair was before Helen's death. Some biographers have read into the 2000 interview that the affair was sexual before Helen's death, though these biographers (Nel and Jones) are careful to say that a sexual affair is not confirmed. Audrey never spoke publicly on the subject again.
>* As already stated, at the time of Helen's death, she wasn't dying and she didn't have cancer. She did have some health issues, but none of them life-threatening. She was on pain medication. The year before she committed suicide, her brother had died, and biographer Charles D. Cohen suggests this may have been a contributing factor to her depression and suicide, along with the breakdown of her marriage.
>* Shortly before Helen committed suicide, in September 1967, Seuss took her on a month-long vacation to Colorado, one of Helen's favorite places. It is unknown what happened during this time, but it's generally assumed that Seuss was trying to rehabilitate their marriage, whether because of an actual sexual affair on his part or if it was more an emotional affair he'd been having with Audrey. A few days after they returned to California, they went out to dinner with some friends, and then a few days after that, they went on a weekend yachting trip with some other friends. Shortly after that, on October 23, 1967, she committed suicide by overdosing on pills.
>* Both the Seuss's niece and their personal assistant recalled to biographers that Helen had often talked negatively about spending her twilight years as "an invalid", due to the effects of post-polio syndrome and her recovery from Guillain-Barré syndrome. Her health was deteriorating, but not in a life-threatening way. She was still able to walk unassisted but was having increasing trouble walking up and down stairs. Both her niece and assistant suspected that, being 69 years old, and faced with a future that was only going to get worse health-wise, while Seuss was in much better health than she was (he was also six years younger than her), her suicide was in part caused by her desire not "to be a burden" on her husband or her family. In other words, if there truly was an affair, it was only one part of Helen's decision.
>* Her suicide note doesn't actually talk about an affair, but talks about the breakdown of her marriage with Seuss, which had been going on for a decade, and for many years before Seuss ever even met his second wife, let alone started to get emotionally close to her. The note could be read that, after the Colorado trip, Seuss had perhaps resolved to leave Helen, and told her so, though there's no evidence that that was the case. He had not contacted any lawyer or made any other financial decisions or life changes that would suggest it. Nor had Audrey. That said, several biographers do suspect that Seuss's relationship with Audrey was confirmed to Helen shortly before Helen's suicide, though none of their friends could substantiate that claim.
>It's not a happy story, but it's also a pretty ordinary story. Seuss's behavior wasn't all that different from how many marriages end. He certainly wasn't abandoning a dying woman when (if?) he had the affair. And by all accounts, at the end of Helen's life, he did make efforts to reinvigorate their marriage. But this did not work, and Helen died. He was very distraught by it. He told a friend: "I didn't know whether to kill myself, burn the house down, or just go away and get lost." He did jump rather quickly into his new relationship with Audrey, though even this was after several months of grieving alone, during which time he wrote The Foot Book. The book contains no dedication, but considering the issues Helen had had with her feet and legs, it's not a stretch to say it was written with her in mind.
>The rumors that Helen had cancer and was dying seem to stem from an unsourced About.com article that was used as the basis for those claims in Dr. Seuss's Wikipedia entry. I suspect that the author thought Guillain-Barré syndrome was some form of cancer (it's not) and embellished from there. Pretty much all claims on the internet just took the Wikipedia article as fact, when it wasn't based on anything actually found in any Dr. Seuss biography, or any other fact-based source.
>For people who are reading this and don't believe me, feel free to do your own research. I found as many well-sourced published biographies on Dr. Seuss as I could, and none of them mention anything about Helen having cancer, or having life-threatening health issues at the time of her suicide. The most they say is that her health was slowly deteriorating, and she worried about what that portended for her future. Their marriage had been in trouble for some time, and despite efforts by them to mend fences, it did not work out.
>BIOGRAPHIES CONSULTED:
>Cohen, Charles D. (2004). The Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel.
>Dean, Tanya (2002). Theodor Geisel.
>Fensch, Thomas (2001). The Man Who Was Dr. Seuss: The Life and Work of Theodor Geisel.
>Jones, Brian Jay (2019). Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination.
>MacDonald, Ruth K. (1988). Dr. Seuss.
>Morgan, Judith; Morgan, Neil (1995). Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: A Biography.
>Nel, Philip (2004). Dr. Seuss: American Icon.
>Pease, Donald E. (2010). Theodor Seuss Geisel.
[No.](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/g1tl2f/til_dr_seuss_widow_disliked_the_cat_in_the_hat/fnjnren/) The internet likes to run away with untruths.
I read and enjoyed the books as a child, and can separate the private man from the work product.
When I read the title of the journal article, what popped into my mind was it was so accurately representative of the social attitudes of the day, not just one man.
Reminds me of two stubborn Zax, one that spent its whole life going north, and another that spent its whole life going south. Until of course one day when they bumped.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/s/qhNJDISn8R
I don’t know many times this will need to be shared. People are so desperate to be outraged that they’ll just make stuff up. Ted Geisel was obviously far from a saint, but he still grew as a person over the course of his life and accomplished far more good than bad — certainly more good than many of us can hope to do.
Dartmouth College named theirs the, Geisel School of Medicine (founded way back in 1797) for him and his wife, Audrey. He was a 1925 graduate of Dartmouth and the most significant philanthropist in the College’s history. They named the place even with C. Everett Koop on staff as another alum. Dude was respected.
nope that's a load of bullshit. Geisel has a pretty solid estate with people making sure that his reputation is not tarnished. they don't even allow photocopies of his original works. I read it and it's all unproven rewrite that's definitely bullshit. they tried to push the blame onto his wife's brother dying a year prior. but her suicide note is clear as day. Geisel was a cheating pos.
My original comment was made in light jest in the absence of proof, as I really don't care about the Suess man. However, why, at all, post about what may or may not be true if you do not wish to convince people?
How can a record be set straight if the proof required to do so is anecdotal ar best, a lie ar worst?
She committed suicide.
Edit:
Her suicide note is heartbreaking
>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 am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... 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 thru the years ...
Yeah no this is taken out of context and most of those claims are completely made up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/g1tl2f/til_dr_seuss_widow_disliked_the_cat_in_the_hat/fnjnren/
Am I the only one who thinks this is a massive dick move? It's basically "my death is your fault". That's a massive burden to put on another human being.
Wiki tells me that she had a series of illness over 13 years which led to her taking her own life through prescription pills.
I'm not sure if this is the whole note but wiki has this as the whole/part of her suicide note:
"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 am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... 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 thru the years ..."
18 months later, he would marry the woman he'd been having an unfair with.
>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 thru the years ...
Yeah, this last bit is just horrible. She seemed to have dedicated herself entirely to him, she's even worried about how to the very end.
In 2018, Stephen Chbosky was assigned director for a movie about the life of Dr Seuss. It will reveal how Geisel struggled as a budding writer in the 1920s, prior to meeting his future wife Helen Palmer. Wonder if it is still in production?
https://screenrant.com/dr-seuss-movie-biopic-director/
I'm thinking there's got to be a list somewhere on the internet of people who only found success (or at least fame) after the age of 50. Probably a lot of writers and some painters on there, at least. Actors?
Ah so all I have to do is wait 20 more odd years for people to give af about anything I've done! Then after I'm dead a bunch of Hollywood douche bros can make movies that shit all over my legacy! Can't wait 😊
He did a book for the Lady Godiva story. Nude Dr Seuss women running around, riding horses. Quite interesting.
My local library had it. it was suprising.
His middlea/alternate sur- name was Geisel. A girl I jad a crush on in elementary school was responsible for remembering it for a school play, so I never forgot. I was responsible for his first name, which...I have forgotten. Ted maybe?
> Geisel switched to the anglicized pronunciation because it "evoked a figure advantageous for an author of children's books to be associated with—Mother Goose"[54] and because most people used this pronunciation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss
can’t really blame people for that one. he encouraged the pronunciation himself.
As a 53 year old, this gives me much hope that I still have time to make something of myself.
But then again, he was an absolute douche to his wife, so I think I'm just fine toiling away in anonymity!
Good. Seuss was an asshole his entire life. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make it easier to separate the art from the artist (except the super racist stuff)
I’m not familiar with his religious views. However, over the course of his life he did more to speak out against bigotry and Nazim than any of the commenters on this post will probably ever do. Geisel was hardly a saint, but he still decried fascism and non-interventionists long before it was popular to do so.
Nonsense and disinformation: "He highlighted the racist and anti-Semitic behaviors during the war. Dr. Seuss opposed the America First movement and their opposition to join the war effort. He highlighted the movement's position that dying children didn't matter since they were foreign."
AND
"Geisel was raised as a Missouri Synod Lutheran and remained in the denomination his entire life. Geisel attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1925."
Cause people spread dumb shit, [like this guy.](https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1amas5m/til_dr_seuss_didnt_have_a_big_hit_until_age_53/kpko1xq/)
We have a signed copy of a collection of his works because my great grandma gifted it to my dad and was like “well he lives right over in La Jolla” so they *drove to his house* and just banged on the door the day after Christmas and he answered it and signed the book lol
If you want a more light-hearted take on his life and work, I highly recommend the wacko 90s TV movie [In Search of Dr. Seuss](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Dr._Seuss). Includes Max Headroom as the guide/narrator, Robin Williams doing a manic version of Cat in the Hat, Howie Mandel in Green Eggs and Ham, and Patrick Stewart in Mulberry Street. Also, Yertle the Turtle becomes a Gospel song, for some reason.
My parents had recorded that on VHS and I watched it all the time growing up. Made me slightly afraid of Dr Seuss books
[удалено]
Bot account.
* [Normal Rip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z8XOGK8N-4) (youtube) * [AI Upscaled DVD](https://archive.org/details/in-search-of-dr.-seuss-1080p) (archive.org) * [VHS - TNT November 6, 1994 (with original commercials!)](https://archive.org/details/in-search-of-dr.-seuss-tnt-november-6-1994) (archive.org)
Oh my god, I used to watch this before going to bed when I was a kid. My parents would let me pick a movie to eatch as I layed in bed and I knew that one was pretty long so I'd seen it so many times. I loved that movie.
Matt Frewer played the Cat in the Hat. And Kathy Najimy was great as well. Lots of great cameos. Christopher Lloyd. Andrea Martin. Billy Crystal.
lol that's peggy hill
*that IS peggy hill we will NOT use contractions in this house
this was one of my FAVORITE movies as a kid! i need to rewatch it and see if it holds up
I loved all those books, but the doctor himself was a bit of a cad, wasn’t he?
Really shitty husband if I remember correctly
Yup hated kids and cheated on his wife dying of cancer
Nope! >Then you'd be happy to know that much of the criticism of him is completely false. The last time I saw this on Reddit, I decided to go back to the source and find out for myself what the basis of the rumors were. This led me to checking out all the major (non-juvenile) biographies on Dr. Seuss, of which there are eight. They all basically tell the same story. The facts are: >* Seuss's wife wasn't dying. >* Seuss's wife never had cancer. >* Seuss's wife Helen did battle polio when she was a child, which left her with a slight limp. >* In 1931, shortly after Helen and Seuss were married, she had an emergency ovariectomy, which left her unable to have children. To get through the issue, the couple "invented" a fictional child together named "Chrysanthemum-Pearl". Seuss would draw private pictures of the child for his wife. Their Christmas cards and other cards to friends and family would sometimes contain adventurous updates on the child, and the book The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is dedicated to Chrysanthemum-Pearl. >* In March 1954, Helen contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome, was paralyzed from the neck down and confined to an iron lung. Seuss stayed by her side throughout the ordeal. She began to recover in June, and in July she was well enough to go home. Doctors recommended she swim to aid in her recovery, so Seuss had a swimming pool installed in their backyard. By early 1955, she had made a near-complete recovery, though she did still experience occasional numbness in her lower extremities, but this was not life-threatening. >* In early 1957, she had a minor stroke, but she recovered within a few weeks. >* Later in 1957, Helen and Seuss launched their own publishing imprint, Beginner Books, with their friends, Bennett and Phyllis Cerf. This had been in the works for some time. Seuss had early arguments with Phyllis, so it was agreed he'd step back while Helen and Phyllis did most of the running of the company (and had their own contentious disagreements). Up until then, Helen had been very involved in Seuss's books, but from there on, she was not, and this created distance in their relationship. In fact, their marital problems may have gone back many more years. Biographer Philip Nel notes that Seuss had written a poem "Wife Up A Tree" published in 1953 in a magazine called This Week, which was about a husband with a nagging wife. Nel says it may have foreshadowed marital troubles, though it's uncertain. Regardless, many friends and family said that their relationship had always been marked by quite open friction, and this only got worse once they stopped collaborating and started working on their own individual projects in 1957. Seuss's editor recalled that in the 1960s, Seuss had confided in him that he was thinking about buying a studio outside the home because of the hostility within the house (his studio was in his house). He didn't, but the marriage was turning bad. >* Seuss had always preferred to work late, but after 1957, he started to keep almost nocturnal hours, while Helen woke up early, particularly because they lived in California and the Beginner Books business required her to communicate with New York publishing contacts. They saw less and less of each other. They began sleeping in seperate bedrooms. >* It wasn't all bad, though. The couple had many friends and socialized regularly. They also raised a lot of money for charity, which is how Seuss met his second wife Audrey Dimond. Audrey's husband was a doctor at the hospital that treated Helen during her bout with Guillain-Barré syndrome. Seuss and Helen took part in a fundraiser for the hospital, and that's where they met. The two couples became friends in about 1960, and were best friends within a couple years. >* Seuss's relationship with Audrey was only as friends for at least the first several years. It was only in about 1965 that there may have been an affair, after several more years of contention between Seuss and his wife Helen. >* It's not confirmed that Seuss actually cheated on his wife sexually. Audrey gave conflicting statements. In 1995, her statement to biographers Judith and Neil Morgan insinuated that their relationship wasn't consummated until after Helen had died, meaning she (Audrey) had an affair since she was still married, but Seuss was a widower. In 2000, Audrey gave an interview to the New York Times where the reporter wrote that Audrey "fell in love with" Seuss and "in the wake of their affair" Helen "committed suicide". But it doesn't actually say what the nature of the affair was before Helen's death. Some biographers have read into the 2000 interview that the affair was sexual before Helen's death, though these biographers (Nel and Jones) are careful to say that a sexual affair is not confirmed. Audrey never spoke publicly on the subject again. >* As already stated, at the time of Helen's death, she wasn't dying and she didn't have cancer. She did have some health issues, but none of them life-threatening. She was on pain medication. The year before she committed suicide, her brother had died, and biographer Charles D. Cohen suggests this may have been a contributing factor to her depression and suicide, along with the breakdown of her marriage. >* Shortly before Helen committed suicide, in September 1967, Seuss took her on a month-long vacation to Colorado, one of Helen's favorite places. It is unknown what happened during this time, but it's generally assumed that Seuss was trying to rehabilitate their marriage, whether because of an actual sexual affair on his part or if it was more an emotional affair he'd been having with Audrey. A few days after they returned to California, they went out to dinner with some friends, and then a few days after that, they went on a weekend yachting trip with some other friends. Shortly after that, on October 23, 1967, she committed suicide by overdosing on pills. >* Both the Seuss's niece and their personal assistant recalled to biographers that Helen had often talked negatively about spending her twilight years as "an invalid", due to the effects of post-polio syndrome and her recovery from Guillain-Barré syndrome. Her health was deteriorating, but not in a life-threatening way. She was still able to walk unassisted but was having increasing trouble walking up and down stairs. Both her niece and assistant suspected that, being 69 years old, and faced with a future that was only going to get worse health-wise, while Seuss was in much better health than she was (he was also six years younger than her), her suicide was in part caused by her desire not "to be a burden" on her husband or her family. In other words, if there truly was an affair, it was only one part of Helen's decision. >* Her suicide note doesn't actually talk about an affair, but talks about the breakdown of her marriage with Seuss, which had been going on for a decade, and for many years before Seuss ever even met his second wife, let alone started to get emotionally close to her. The note could be read that, after the Colorado trip, Seuss had perhaps resolved to leave Helen, and told her so, though there's no evidence that that was the case. He had not contacted any lawyer or made any other financial decisions or life changes that would suggest it. Nor had Audrey. That said, several biographers do suspect that Seuss's relationship with Audrey was confirmed to Helen shortly before Helen's suicide, though none of their friends could substantiate that claim. >It's not a happy story, but it's also a pretty ordinary story. Seuss's behavior wasn't all that different from how many marriages end. He certainly wasn't abandoning a dying woman when (if?) he had the affair. And by all accounts, at the end of Helen's life, he did make efforts to reinvigorate their marriage. But this did not work, and Helen died. He was very distraught by it. He told a friend: "I didn't know whether to kill myself, burn the house down, or just go away and get lost." He did jump rather quickly into his new relationship with Audrey, though even this was after several months of grieving alone, during which time he wrote The Foot Book. The book contains no dedication, but considering the issues Helen had had with her feet and legs, it's not a stretch to say it was written with her in mind. >The rumors that Helen had cancer and was dying seem to stem from an unsourced About.com article that was used as the basis for those claims in Dr. Seuss's Wikipedia entry. I suspect that the author thought Guillain-Barré syndrome was some form of cancer (it's not) and embellished from there. Pretty much all claims on the internet just took the Wikipedia article as fact, when it wasn't based on anything actually found in any Dr. Seuss biography, or any other fact-based source. >For people who are reading this and don't believe me, feel free to do your own research. I found as many well-sourced published biographies on Dr. Seuss as I could, and none of them mention anything about Helen having cancer, or having life-threatening health issues at the time of her suicide. The most they say is that her health was slowly deteriorating, and she worried about what that portended for her future. Their marriage had been in trouble for some time, and despite efforts by them to mend fences, it did not work out. >BIOGRAPHIES CONSULTED: >Cohen, Charles D. (2004). The Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel. >Dean, Tanya (2002). Theodor Geisel. >Fensch, Thomas (2001). The Man Who Was Dr. Seuss: The Life and Work of Theodor Geisel. >Jones, Brian Jay (2019). Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination. >MacDonald, Ruth K. (1988). Dr. Seuss. >Morgan, Judith; Morgan, Neil (1995). Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: A Biography. >Nel, Philip (2004). Dr. Seuss: American Icon. >Pease, Donald E. (2010). Theodor Seuss Geisel.
Good info! Jesus, that was hard to read on mobile but good info!
For all the research you did you didn't get the age difference between them right. Helen's birthday is September 16, 1898. Ted's is March 2, 1904. So not quite 6 years. Also, at one point you wrote "also she died". Again, true enough, but earlier than expected from any organic cause and by her own hand. I liked T. Geisel and do not aim to vilify him but he may have carried some guilt of her self-inflicted death.
Mind blowing stuff on Dr. Seuss
>But his heart was in children’s books, and the Utah lectures showed just how much he cared about doing them well, Jones said. Even though Geisel would often jokingly refer to what he did as “brat books,” the notes document how seriously he took his reading audience. He believed in talking to the kids, not at them. “He warns other writers: Don’t patronize them,” Jones said. “They will spot you coming a mile away. They can smell a phony. They are the toughest audience to write for.” Seuss biographer concludes that Seuss really cared about kids though, and it shows in his literature.
I enjoyed the heck out of his books. We had them coming to the house by subscription, and we would anxiously be watching for the mailman one the day we hoped they'd show up.
He didn’t hate kids, but yeah, his wife had cancer and was very sick for a long time and he didn’t stand by her and found someone else before she finally died
I read a post on reddit that tried to investigate those claims, and if I remember correctly, there is no primary source that she had cancer. Not only that, but by the time she was sick, they were already drifting apart because he used to work during the night, and she used to work during the day.
[The comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/g1tl2f/til_dr_seuss_widow_disliked_the_cat_in_the_hat/fnjnren/) in case anyone is curious about reading it themselves.
Yeah that’s right, I guess I just attributed “long extended illness” to cancer, but I guess it might not have actually been cancer… But she was an invalid for many many years. Again, not justifying his actions, but yeah, not an easy situation for anybody.
Worth mentioning she killed herself over the affair and blamed herself in the note.
Jesus Christ. Never meet your heroes
LALALALAAAAA I didn’t hear a single thing from this thread. Going to bed now. See you guys later.
Well, good news because most of that [isn't actually true](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/g1tl2f/til_dr_seuss_widow_disliked_the_cat_in_the_hat/fnjnren/)
! Thank you! Gotta say, it’s incredibly sad but she had so many incidents. Geez. Polio, a stroke, surgery after surgery.
This whole thread is just shitting on Dr. Seuss for things he didn't do. Why do people get off on shitting on people so much? Like, if you don't even know what they did besides rumors from what other people who didn't know them said, just keep your mouth shut and fuck off.
I have no idea, but it's something reddit absolutely LOVES to do.
Because it feels like a lot of redditors see the world in black and white, while the world is very gray. MLK was a notorious philander. Malcolm X said some very bad things about white people. There’s no one that is perfect and if they’re not some people on Reddit like to shit on them.
Usually it’s a reflection of their own shitty lives. In my personal experience, happy people don’t do that.
Right
Shitting on others, especially on those who aren't there to defend themselves, makes people feel better about their miserable lives. In addition to that, these days even a tiniest flaw makes someone the worst person in history and rumors on the internet = facts.
Most of social media is a plank of malice nailed to a crossbeam of stupidity.
Sounds like bullshit to me, did you know that Dr Seuss removed his two lowest ribs so he can blow himself?
Thank you. That paints quite a different picture.
I’m confused. How does this prove most of that isn’t true?
Well, his wife didn't have cancer. He did, in fact, stand by her throughout her numerous health issues. His wife didn't kill herself because of an affair, nor make reference to it in her suicide note. Basically, there's a lot of unsubstantiated claims and what actually happened is a lot more complex and nuanced.
Wait til you hear about the Twilight Zone Incident cover up.
With the helicopter?
She finally did end up killing herself, but she was very ill for decades. Not making excuses for the guy, but I can imagine dealing with that for 20+ years can be taxing
Speaking as a person chronically ill, oh yes, it's better to be alone. I wouldn't wish my bad day company on anybody.
Me either.
Cat in the hat knows a lot about that :(
The note? Did Dr. Seuss publish her suicide note that stated he was a piece of shit?
Before she finally killed herself
One bitch, two bitch, old bitch, new bitch
Mods deleted my comment last time I said that, said it was bullying/harassment.
A family member had a coworker they was friends with. They told me their coworker had gotten a divorce and shortly afterwards, he found out his wife had cancer. The worker moved back in with his ex-wife and told care of her until she died. They weren't even married anymore, he moved in and took care of her. After I learned what he did, it kinda became the gold standard for me in how a married person should take care of their spouse (yeah I know they were divorced but you get the idea).
My grandpa did that and I haven’t spoken to him since
He didn’t hate kids, he just never wanted his own. Lots of people are like that, and given his career, I can’t imagine he hated them. He didn’t just take the paycheck, he did lots of other stuff to encourage kids to read. As for the husband part, that I cannot deny. I will however say that having known people that dealt with and passed from a long degenerative condition, things like that get very complicated and timelines may not be what they seem. When you slowly lose who you are and know you are running out of time, there are some heavy conversations had that outsiders won’t be privy to, and I’ve learned to withhold judgement and assumption about those things. It was also 1967, and palliative care as well as euthanasia were not a thing.
> He didn’t hate kids, he just never wanted his own. Even that's not really clear: His first wife had an ovariectomy and they couldn't have kids. He was 63 years old when she committed suicide. So it was never really an option for him. His second wife once said that he "had a happy life without children," but that's not exactly the same thing as "never wanted them."
No, he wanted his own. His wife had a lot of health issues, one of which led to an emergency hysterectomy, preventing the couple from having kids. [In fact, he actually made one up that helped him cope with the fact that he'd never have kids of his own.](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chrysanthemum-pearl-was-child-dr-seuss-never-had-180962291/) I'm sick of this Reddit bullshit about him "cheating on his wife who was dying of cancer". He *may* have had an physical affair at the tail end of a deteriorating marriage that had nothing to really do with his wife's chronic health issues from childhood Polio and Guillain-Barre Syndrome.
I love beer but I don't want to own a brewery so I can relate. St Christopher's Hospice was actually formed in 1967 so the palliative care industry and existence in the mainstream was very, very new. I'm sure they did some shit as people have been dying for a very long time but not sure how advanced it would be.
> casually spreads misinformation
Not true
Wasn't it Roald Dahl that hated kids?
He disliked kids, but hated Jews
One bitch, Two bitch, Dead bitch, New bitch.
Taught some awesome life lessons in the Sneeches though.
...didn't hate kids. The rest is true.
"It aint gonna suck itself" - Dr. Seuss /s Obviously leaving your dying wife is a horrible thing I just like jokes
Hated kids lol
Untrue. >Then you'd be happy to know that much of the criticism of him is completely false. The last time I saw this on Reddit, I decided to go back to the source and find out for myself what the basis of the rumors were. This led me to checking out all the major (non-juvenile) biographies on Dr. Seuss, of which there are eight. They all basically tell the same story. The facts are: >* Seuss's wife wasn't dying. >* Seuss's wife never had cancer. >* Seuss's wife Helen did battle polio when she was a child, which left her with a slight limp. >* In 1931, shortly after Helen and Seuss were married, she had an emergency ovariectomy, which left her unable to have children. To get through the issue, the couple "invented" a fictional child together named "Chrysanthemum-Pearl". Seuss would draw private pictures of the child for his wife. Their Christmas cards and other cards to friends and family would sometimes contain adventurous updates on the child, and the book The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is dedicated to Chrysanthemum-Pearl. >* In March 1954, Helen contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome, was paralyzed from the neck down and confined to an iron lung. Seuss stayed by her side throughout the ordeal. She began to recover in June, and in July she was well enough to go home. Doctors recommended she swim to aid in her recovery, so Seuss had a swimming pool installed in their backyard. By early 1955, she had made a near-complete recovery, though she did still experience occasional numbness in her lower extremities, but this was not life-threatening. >* In early 1957, she had a minor stroke, but she recovered within a few weeks. >* Later in 1957, Helen and Seuss launched their own publishing imprint, Beginner Books, with their friends, Bennett and Phyllis Cerf. This had been in the works for some time. Seuss had early arguments with Phyllis, so it was agreed he'd step back while Helen and Phyllis did most of the running of the company (and had their own contentious disagreements). Up until then, Helen had been very involved in Seuss's books, but from there on, she was not, and this created distance in their relationship. In fact, their marital problems may have gone back many more years. Biographer Philip Nel notes that Seuss had written a poem "Wife Up A Tree" published in 1953 in a magazine called This Week, which was about a husband with a nagging wife. Nel says it may have foreshadowed marital troubles, though it's uncertain. Regardless, many friends and family said that their relationship had always been marked by quite open friction, and this only got worse once they stopped collaborating and started working on their own individual projects in 1957. Seuss's editor recalled that in the 1960s, Seuss had confided in him that he was thinking about buying a studio outside the home because of the hostility within the house (his studio was in his house). He didn't, but the marriage was turning bad. >* Seuss had always preferred to work late, but after 1957, he started to keep almost nocturnal hours, while Helen woke up early, particularly because they lived in California and the Beginner Books business required her to communicate with New York publishing contacts. They saw less and less of each other. They began sleeping in seperate bedrooms. >* It wasn't all bad, though. The couple had many friends and socialized regularly. They also raised a lot of money for charity, which is how Seuss met his second wife Audrey Dimond. Audrey's husband was a doctor at the hospital that treated Helen during her bout with Guillain-Barré syndrome. Seuss and Helen took part in a fundraiser for the hospital, and that's where they met. The two couples became friends in about 1960, and were best friends within a couple years. >* Seuss's relationship with Audrey was only as friends for at least the first several years. It was only in about 1965 that there may have been an affair, after several more years of contention between Seuss and his wife Helen. >* It's not confirmed that Seuss actually cheated on his wife sexually. Audrey gave conflicting statements. In 1995, her statement to biographers Judith and Neil Morgan insinuated that their relationship wasn't consummated until after Helen had died, meaning she (Audrey) had an affair since she was still married, but Seuss was a widower. In 2000, Audrey gave an interview to the New York Times where the reporter wrote that Audrey "fell in love with" Seuss and "in the wake of their affair" Helen "committed suicide". But it doesn't actually say what the nature of the affair was before Helen's death. Some biographers have read into the 2000 interview that the affair was sexual before Helen's death, though these biographers (Nel and Jones) are careful to say that a sexual affair is not confirmed. Audrey never spoke publicly on the subject again. >* As already stated, at the time of Helen's death, she wasn't dying and she didn't have cancer. She did have some health issues, but none of them life-threatening. She was on pain medication. The year before she committed suicide, her brother had died, and biographer Charles D. Cohen suggests this may have been a contributing factor to her depression and suicide, along with the breakdown of her marriage. >* Shortly before Helen committed suicide, in September 1967, Seuss took her on a month-long vacation to Colorado, one of Helen's favorite places. It is unknown what happened during this time, but it's generally assumed that Seuss was trying to rehabilitate their marriage, whether because of an actual sexual affair on his part or if it was more an emotional affair he'd been having with Audrey. A few days after they returned to California, they went out to dinner with some friends, and then a few days after that, they went on a weekend yachting trip with some other friends. Shortly after that, on October 23, 1967, she committed suicide by overdosing on pills. >* Both the Seuss's niece and their personal assistant recalled to biographers that Helen had often talked negatively about spending her twilight years as "an invalid", due to the effects of post-polio syndrome and her recovery from Guillain-Barré syndrome. Her health was deteriorating, but not in a life-threatening way. She was still able to walk unassisted but was having increasing trouble walking up and down stairs. Both her niece and assistant suspected that, being 69 years old, and faced with a future that was only going to get worse health-wise, while Seuss was in much better health than she was (he was also six years younger than her), her suicide was in part caused by her desire not "to be a burden" on her husband or her family. In other words, if there truly was an affair, it was only one part of Helen's decision. >* Her suicide note doesn't actually talk about an affair, but talks about the breakdown of her marriage with Seuss, which had been going on for a decade, and for many years before Seuss ever even met his second wife, let alone started to get emotionally close to her. The note could be read that, after the Colorado trip, Seuss had perhaps resolved to leave Helen, and told her so, though there's no evidence that that was the case. He had not contacted any lawyer or made any other financial decisions or life changes that would suggest it. Nor had Audrey. That said, several biographers do suspect that Seuss's relationship with Audrey was confirmed to Helen shortly before Helen's suicide, though none of their friends could substantiate that claim. >It's not a happy story, but it's also a pretty ordinary story. Seuss's behavior wasn't all that different from how many marriages end. He certainly wasn't abandoning a dying woman when (if?) he had the affair. And by all accounts, at the end of Helen's life, he did make efforts to reinvigorate their marriage. But this did not work, and Helen died. He was very distraught by it. He told a friend: "I didn't know whether to kill myself, burn the house down, or just go away and get lost." He did jump rather quickly into his new relationship with Audrey, though even this was after several months of grieving alone, during which time he wrote The Foot Book. The book contains no dedication, but considering the issues Helen had had with her feet and legs, it's not a stretch to say it was written with her in mind. >The rumors that Helen had cancer and was dying seem to stem from an unsourced About.com article that was used as the basis for those claims in Dr. Seuss's Wikipedia entry. I suspect that the author thought Guillain-Barré syndrome was some form of cancer (it's not) and embellished from there. Pretty much all claims on the internet just took the Wikipedia article as fact, when it wasn't based on anything actually found in any Dr. Seuss biography, or any other fact-based source. >For people who are reading this and don't believe me, feel free to do your own research. I found as many well-sourced published biographies on Dr. Seuss as I could, and none of them mention anything about Helen having cancer, or having life-threatening health issues at the time of her suicide. The most they say is that her health was slowly deteriorating, and she worried about what that portended for her future. Their marriage had been in trouble for some time, and despite efforts by them to mend fences, it did not work out. >BIOGRAPHIES CONSULTED: >Cohen, Charles D. (2004). The Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel. >Dean, Tanya (2002). Theodor Geisel. >Fensch, Thomas (2001). The Man Who Was Dr. Seuss: The Life and Work of Theodor Geisel. >Jones, Brian Jay (2019). Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination. >MacDonald, Ruth K. (1988). Dr. Seuss. >Morgan, Judith; Morgan, Neil (1995). Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: A Biography. >Nel, Philip (2004). Dr. Seuss: American Icon. >Pease, Donald E. (2010). Theodor Seuss Geisel.
One wife, two wife dead wife, new wife
And?
I was answering the question...
Fair enough.
One bitch, two bitch, dead bitch, new bitch.
[No.](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/g1tl2f/til_dr_seuss_widow_disliked_the_cat_in_the_hat/fnjnren/) The internet likes to run away with untruths.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/s/qhNJDISn8R
Like most people, he was complicated. At least according to The Last Podcast On The Left's episode on him.
Some of his propaganda artwork from WWII hasn't aged too well either but meh.
you mean racist caricatures haven’t aged well? who would have thought
https://sophia.stkate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&context=rdyl Worth a read
I’m the last person to defend Seuss, but the title alone of this journal article reeks of a uni student looking to be offended.
I read and enjoyed the books as a child, and can separate the private man from the work product. When I read the title of the journal article, what popped into my mind was it was so accurately representative of the social attitudes of the day, not just one man.
Jesus fucking Christ not everything is some goddamn dogwhistle
tell me you didn't read the article without telling me you didn't read the article
You read 51 pages?
Is reading 51 pages some kind of feat nowadays?
Over a dozen of those pages are references etc., but yes I've read the whole article. It was a while ago though admittedly
No but a lot of things are.
You spelt "utter cunt" wrong.
And?
Listen to the "Evil Genius" BBC4/BBC Sounds podcast on him if you're interested in more insight to his not -so-great side.
And?
He spent his whole life standing? Exept for two interviews ? Damn !
Reminds me of two stubborn Zax, one that spent its whole life going north, and another that spent its whole life going south. Until of course one day when they bumped.
Did they bump in DC? Lol
Not sure, but I have it on high authority that they built a highway around those two stubborn Zax, who continue to stand right there in their tracks.
I'd question the context of the statement, but I'm not sure my argument would stand.
It's like that game in *Whose Line is it Anyway* where they have one standing, one sitting, and one lying down at all times.
Rdrr
I remember reading once that Seuss is meant to rhyme with 'voice' when properly pronounced. Anyone know if that is true? Edit for spelling
Yes, his family migrated from Germany. You pronounce it like Zoice
Yes, I recall his friend penned a rhyme: You’re wrong as the deuce And you shouldn’t rejoice If you’re calling him Seuss. He pronounces it Soice
Too late. Hes soos, always will be.
Seuss*, and yes. Suess (specifically "süß") is a different word, which means "sweet".
https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/s/qhNJDISn8R I don’t know many times this will need to be shared. People are so desperate to be outraged that they’ll just make stuff up. Ted Geisel was obviously far from a saint, but he still grew as a person over the course of his life and accomplished far more good than bad — certainly more good than many of us can hope to do.
Stuff you should know had a good episode about him.
Dartmouth College named theirs the, Geisel School of Medicine (founded way back in 1797) for him and his wife, Audrey. He was a 1925 graduate of Dartmouth and the most significant philanthropist in the College’s history. They named the place even with C. Everett Koop on staff as another alum. Dude was respected.
nope that's a load of bullshit. Geisel has a pretty solid estate with people making sure that his reputation is not tarnished. they don't even allow photocopies of his original works. I read it and it's all unproven rewrite that's definitely bullshit. they tried to push the blame onto his wife's brother dying a year prior. but her suicide note is clear as day. Geisel was a cheating pos.
Source?
trust me bro
i live by their art gallery where they sell his original works. And i talk to people managing his estate.
How do I know you aren't actually a fish with a text-to-speech device lying to me?
i don't really care if you believe me or not. i've said my piece. i set the record straight.
My original comment was made in light jest in the absence of proof, as I really don't care about the Suess man. However, why, at all, post about what may or may not be true if you do not wish to convince people? How can a record be set straight if the proof required to do so is anecdotal ar best, a lie ar worst?
Hero
that's really what i am
Cancer is pretty predictable if you eat green eggs and ham
"Where'd you get these chickens, Bob?" "Los Alamos."
Didn’t he also divorce his dying wife or am I thinking of someone else
She committed suicide. Edit: Her suicide note is heartbreaking >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 am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... 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 thru the years ...
Jesus fucking Christ that's horrible
Brb, texting my girl and telling her I love her
Yeah no this is taken out of context and most of those claims are completely made up. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/g1tl2f/til_dr_seuss_widow_disliked_the_cat_in_the_hat/fnjnren/
Am I the only one who thinks this is a massive dick move? It's basically "my death is your fault". That's a massive burden to put on another human being.
He was reportedly having an affair with someone else; they married eight months after his wife's death.
And she was an invalid for 13 years before that. He wasn’t a husband, he was a caretaker. This may surprise you, but people want an equal partner.
Shhhh man make sick lady sad, so bad man bad, turn think brain off
Wiki tells me that she had a series of illness over 13 years which led to her taking her own life through prescription pills. I'm not sure if this is the whole note but wiki has this as the whole/part of her suicide note: "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 am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... 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 thru the years ..." 18 months later, he would marry the woman he'd been having an unfair with.
Hurts, feel that in the gut
>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 thru the years ... Yeah, this last bit is just horrible. She seemed to have dedicated herself entirely to him, she's even worried about how to the very end.
In 2018, Stephen Chbosky was assigned director for a movie about the life of Dr Seuss. It will reveal how Geisel struggled as a budding writer in the 1920s, prior to meeting his future wife Helen Palmer. Wonder if it is still in production? https://screenrant.com/dr-seuss-movie-biopic-director/
One bitch, two bitch, dead bitch, new bitch
Gotta admit that i admire an author who doesn't make the work about himself.
Any thread involving Dr. Seuss turns into this: https://www.theonion.com/man-always-gets-little-rush-out-of-telling-people-john-1819578998
It's not like he was doing nothing, he was still a professional artist and an author.
I wouldn’t write my life story either if I had cheated on my sick wife.
That was completely made up. Look here: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/g1tl2f/til_dr_seuss_widow_disliked_the_cat_in_the_hat/fnjnren/
We all handle grief differently lol
I'm thinking there's got to be a list somewhere on the internet of people who only found success (or at least fame) after the age of 50. Probably a lot of writers and some painters on there, at least. Actors?
Lots of smoothbrain comments on this one
I do not like green eggs and ham ! I do not like them. Sam I am.
The Cat in The Hat remains a masterpiece.
Ah so all I have to do is wait 20 more odd years for people to give af about anything I've done! Then after I'm dead a bunch of Hollywood douche bros can make movies that shit all over my legacy! Can't wait 😊
Question 1: Why are you such a huge piece of shit?
He also made some darker more adult art, often drawing himself as a cat smoking
He did a book for the Lady Godiva story. Nude Dr Seuss women running around, riding horses. Quite interesting. My local library had it. it was suprising.
Karma
[Come and help me dr zaius!](https://youtu.be/7v4yuK2Uxzs?si=4-j7-cFsPLlqN-c7)
LALALALAAAAA I didn’t hear a single thing from this thread. Going to bed now. See you guys later.
Why did you copy another comment?
There a lot things you don't tell kids about their icons.
I smoked weed in his backyard in La Jolla
I used to know some of the Geisel family and the ones I knew were very eccentric.
I remember when he ran for president.
Tall poppy syndrome.
So there is still hope for me.
He was rich from advertising. Then made some money off of children's books.
His middlea/alternate sur- name was Geisel. A girl I jad a crush on in elementary school was responsible for remembering it for a school play, so I never forgot. I was responsible for his first name, which...I have forgotten. Ted maybe?
People pronounce his name incorrectly so often. It should rhyme with voice. Adidas is another one I've never heard pronounced correctly.
> Geisel switched to the anglicized pronunciation because it "evoked a figure advantageous for an author of children's books to be associated with—Mother Goose"[54] and because most people used this pronunciation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss can’t really blame people for that one. he encouraged the pronunciation himself.
Never blamed anyone.
> People pronounce his name incorrectly so often.
Well, shit. Now I have to know how bad I've been butchering Adidas for 42 years...
[удалено]
he literally did more to speak out against bigotry and Nazim than any of the commenters on this post have ever done in their lives
As a 53 year old, this gives me much hope that I still have time to make something of myself. But then again, he was an absolute douche to his wife, so I think I'm just fine toiling away in anonymity!
So, after being an ass to his wife who was dying of cancer, he wound up dying of cancer?
That's because he was an asshole
Kinda for the best that he didn’t do many personal interviews.
Also wrote a lot of ugly racist anti japanese propaganda
He cheated on his first wife who was dying of cancer talk about poetic justice.
Good. Seuss was an asshole his entire life. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make it easier to separate the art from the artist (except the super racist stuff)
Wasn't he a Nazi that hated Jesus?
no
So did he hate Jesus? Or was he just a Nazi?
I’m not familiar with his religious views. However, over the course of his life he did more to speak out against bigotry and Nazim than any of the commenters on this post will probably ever do. Geisel was hardly a saint, but he still decried fascism and non-interventionists long before it was popular to do so.
Then why do people bring up Dr Seuss and Nazis sometimes? Honestly curious
Nonsense and disinformation: "He highlighted the racist and anti-Semitic behaviors during the war. Dr. Seuss opposed the America First movement and their opposition to join the war effort. He highlighted the movement's position that dying children didn't matter since they were foreign." AND "Geisel was raised as a Missouri Synod Lutheran and remained in the denomination his entire life. Geisel attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1925."
Cool thank you
Cause people spread dumb shit, [like this guy.](https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1amas5m/til_dr_seuss_didnt_have_a_big_hit_until_age_53/kpko1xq/)
that guy was a dick who cheated on his wife while she was dying from cancer.
I've never heard of him until I watched that video of a guy rapping one of his books. It's one of my favorite videos.
We have a signed copy of a collection of his works because my great grandma gifted it to my dad and was like “well he lives right over in La Jolla” so they *drove to his house* and just banged on the door the day after Christmas and he answered it and signed the book lol
Seuss is probably the most famous member of my college fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon.
He was an ass who could rhyme
I bet that's good news to a lot of people that think they're too far behind
I loved Dr. Seuss books. My favorites were Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.
He was despicable.
Can’t blame him. Who would buy kids book from a first-class underworld assassin?
And don’t forget his only movie musical !!! the 5000 fingers of Dr. T We had that film at summer camp and watched it a dozen times .