Helen Geisel was unable to bear children, and Geisel did not father any children with his second wife Audrey, though he was a stepfather to her two daughters. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed.” 9. “My going will leave quite a rumor, but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. “I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you,” read her suicide note. Depressed by her worsening symptoms and possibly by suspicions of her husband’s affair with a close friend who would become his second wife, Helen took her own life in October 1967 at the age of 68. Helen Geisel struggled for more than a decade with partial paralysis from Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Seuss and his wife, Helen, used it as the basis for their screenplay for the 1947 documentary “Design for Death,” which earned an Academy Award. After General Douglas MacArthur suppressed his training film “Our Job in Japan,” Dr. animation directors Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng in creating cartoons featuring Private Snafu, a bumbling GI with the looks of Elmer Fudd and the voice of Bugs Bunny whose missteps were a warning to enlisted men. In 1943, Captain Theodor Geisel reported for duty with director Frank Capra’s Signal Corps and got to work producing animated training films, booklets and documentaries. Geisel poses with models of his characters in 1958. Between 19, Geisel drew over 400 editorial cartoons skewering isolationists at home and the Axis abroad for the liberal newspaper “PM.” These included stereotypical and inflammatory depictions of Japanese leaders and xenophobic cartoons portraying Japanese Americans as disloyal. I found myself drawing pictures of Lindbergh The Ostrich,” he said. “I found that I could no longer keep my mind on drawing pictures of Horton The Elephant. Seuss felt compelled to express his opposition to American isolationists, particularly aviation hero Charles Lindbergh. Seuss drew political cartoons for a left-leaning newspaper.Īs the Nazi tanks rolled into Paris in 1940, Dr. “If I had been going down the other side of Madison Avenue, I’d be in the dry-cleaning business today,” he later said. Within hours, the men signed a contract, and in 1937 Vanguard Press published “And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” which launched the extraordinary literary career of Dr. On Madison Avenue, however, he bumped into Dartmouth friend Mike McClintock, who that very morning had started a job as an editor in the Vanguard Press children’s section. Seuss walked dejectedly along the sidewalks of New York, planning to burn the book in his apartment incinerator. Seuss’ first children’s book.Īfter a 27th publisher rejected his first manuscript, Dr. Geisel with a copy of his book, “The Cat in the Hat,” in 1957. Seuss employed a madcap menagerie of beasts, such as the “Moto-raspus” and “Karbo-nockus” who appeared in Essolube motor oil ads. (“Quick, Henry, the Flit!” became one of the most memorable catchphrases of its time.) He also created advertising campaigns for various clients including Ford Motor Company, NBC and Narragansett Brewing Company.

Seuss achieved early success writing and illustrating humorous advertisements for Flit, a bug spray manufactured by Standard Oil. Seuss.” Geisel added the “Dr.” title a few years later. The dean ousted Geisel as editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth humor magazine, but in what he called a “corny subterfuge,” Ted continued to ink cartoons under several pen names, including “Seuss” and “T. It certainly wasn’t a scene out of “Animal House,” but on the night before Easter in 1925, the local police chief caught Dartmouth College senior Ted Geisel partying with his friends and a pint of bootleg gin. Seuss that he dreaded public appearances for the rest of his life.ģ. The president, however, was only given nine medals, and when he reached Geisel, Roosevelt gruffly bellowed, “What’s this little boy doing here?” Honor quickly turned to humiliation as the flustered scoutmaster whisked Ted off the stage. Before an audience of thousands, Ted was to be the last of 10 Boy Scouts to receive a personal award for his efforts from former president Theodore Roosevelt. Seuss with a permanent case of stage fright.Īffirming the loyalties of his German-American family during World War I, 14-year-old Ted Geisel was one of Springfield’s top sellers of war bonds. While the actual German pronunciation of “Seuss” rhymed with “voice,” the American pronunciation, rhyming with “juice,” stuck. Seuss’ real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel.Ī grandson of German immigrants, Theodor (without an “e”) was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 2, 1904.

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