Roald Dahl (43 page)

37
. AK, April 13, 1960.

38
. Letter from Hans Georg Heepe, of Rowohlt Verlag.

39
. AK, May 2, 1960.

40
. Ibid., July 11, 1960.

41
.
JGP
, p. 133.

42
. AK, July 5, 1960.

43
. Ibid., August 26, 1960.

C
HAPTER
8

Main sources

AK

Interviews with Annabella, Amanda Conquy, Camilla Corbin, Tessa Dahl, Betsy Drake, Virginia Fowler Elbert, Edmund and Marian Goodman, Angela Kirwan Hogg, Alice Keene, Patricia Neal, Gerald Savory, Kenneth Till

As I Am; Pat and Roald

For medical details in this chapter I am particularly indebted to my conversation with Kenneth Till, and to two notes by him published in
Lancet
, January 25, 1964, p. 202: “A valve for the treatment of hydrocephalus” and “Introducer for intraventicular catheter used in treatment of hydrocephalus.”

N
OTES

1
. Interview with Edmund and Marian Goodman.

2
. Letter from Patricia Neal.

3
. Interview with Patricia Neal.

4
. Interview with Angela Kirwan Hogg.

5
.
As I Am
, p. 216.

6
. Interview with Edmund and Marian Goodman.

7
. Interview with Kenneth Till, and his notes in
Lancet
, January 25, 1964, p. 202. See above.

8
.
As I Am
, p. 219.

9
. AK, January 28, 1961.

10
. Ibid., undated cutting.

11
. Ibid., April 17, 1961.

12
.
As I Am
, p. 245.

13
.
This Is Your Life
, 1978.

14
. CM, June 4, 1949; interview with Angela Kirwan Hogg.

15
. Interview with Kenneth Till.

16
. Ibid.

17
. AK, June 9, 1962.

18
. Interviews with Camilla Corbin and Amanda Conquy.

19
. Interviews with Patricia Neal and Alice Keene.

20
. AK, October 3, 1962.

21
.
As I Am
, p. 230.

22
. Dahl, quoted by Barry Farrell in
Life
magazine, 1966.

23
. AK, February 4, 1963.

24
.
As I Am
, p. 238.

25
. AK, April 19, 1963.

26
.
As I Am
, p. 239. One Christmas, several years afterward, their third daughter, Ophelia (then herself aged seven), asked him why God had allowed Olivia to die. Dahl said, “Have you ever thought that there might not be a God after all?” (“What I told Ophelia and Lucy about God,”
Redbook
, December 1971). Dahl was as contradictory in his disbelief as in other matters. On holiday in France in 1967, he put the case for faith to a depressed Patricia Neal and said that whenever he was in church he tried to commune with Olivia (
Pat and Roald
, pp. 207–207).

27
.
Interview with Gerald Savory. Savory had first met them when he directed a brief British run of Dahl's play
The Honeys
.

28
. Interview with Annabella.

29
. Interviews with Tessa and Lucy Dahl and Patricia Neal.

30
. AK, April 16, 1963.

31
.
Library Journal
, November 15, 1961.

32
. Boston
Herald
, November 19, 1961.

33
. AK, February 4, 1963; interview with Michael di Capua.

34
. AK, January 30 and February 7, 1963.

35
. Ibid., February 4 and April 19, 1963.

36
. Interview with Virginie Fowler Elbert.

37
. AK, April 26, 1963.

38
. Ibid., May 21, 1963.

39
. See p. 201f.

40
.
CCF
, p. 74.

41
. Ibid., p. 160.

42
. ABC interview with Terry Lane;
As I Am
, p. 251.

43
. Interview with Patricia Neal. Dahl himself told different versions of the story, the blandest of them to Barry Farrell: “He had sold his first original screenplay … in the month after Pat's stroke, but in his urgency had settled for half the money agreed upon, and the unpleasantness of that experience only confirmed his aversion to any dealings involving producers and directors” (
Pat and Roald
, p. 151).

44
.
As I Am
, p. 245.

45
. AK, June 17, 1964. The eventual film was
36 Hours
, directed by George Seaton.

46
. See p. 62.

47
.
Library Journal
, December 15, 1964.

C
HAPTER
9

Main sources

AK

Interviews with Annabella, Betsy Drake, Edmund and Marian Goodman, Valerie Eaton Griffith, Angela Kirwan Hogg, Patricia Neal, Dennis Pearl, Judy Taylor, Kenneth Till

As I Am; Pat and Roald

Valerie Eaton Griffith,
A Stroke in the Family
, 1975

———,
So They Tell Me:
An Encounter with Stroke, 1989

N
OTES

1
.
As I Am
, p. 238.

2
. Barry Farrell,
Life
magazine, October 22, 1965.

3
. Interviews with Angela Kirwan Hogg, Dennis Pearl, and others.

4
.
AK, May 12, 1964.

5
. Ibid., October 9, 1964.

6
. The history of Dahl's early dealings with British publishers over his children's books is set out in a letter asking for advice to Alfred Knopf's wife, Blanche: AK, November 27, 1964.

7
. AK, November 24, 1964.

8
. Ibid., December 4, 1964.

9
. Interview with Judy Taylor. She found Richard Adams, whose
Watership Down
she was also to reject, similarly imperious.

10
.
Daily News
, August 24, 1964.

11
. When he got into
Who's Who
, in 1976, he listed his recreations as “gaming, cultivating orchids (phalaenopsis only), drinking fine wine, collecting paintings, furniture and antique objects of all kinds.” The list changed in subsequent years, and the orchid house gave way to a guest wing.

12
. Interview with Angela Kirwan Hogg.

13
.
As I Am
, pp. 250–250.

14
. “The Last Act,”
Switch Bitch
, pp. 103–103.

15
. NY, April 21, 1965.

16
.
Switch Bitch
, pp. 105–105.

17
. Interview with Dennis Pearl.

18
. “The Bookseller,”
Playboy
, January 1987.

19
. Information from Alice K. Turner, fiction editor of
Playboy
.

20
. James Gould Cozzens, “Foot in It,”
Redbook
, August 1935; anthologized as “Clerical Error” in Ellery Queen, ed.,
The Literature of Crime
, 1950. Information supplied by Alice K. Turner, fiction editor of
Playboy
.

21
.
As I Am
, p. 252.

22
.
Pat and Roald
, p. 8.

23
. For this section I have depended on an article in the “Medicine” section of
Time
magazine, March 26, 1965, as well as Patricia Neal's own account in
As I Am
and Barry Farrell's in
Pat and Roald
. Some details are owed to interviews with Angela Kirwan Hogg and Kenneth Till.

24
.
Working for Love
, p. 49.

25
.
As I Am
, p. 261; interviews with Patricia Neal and Valerie Eaton Griffith.

26
.
As I Am
, p. 263.

27
. Interview with Angela Kirwan Hogg.

28
. Interviews with Betsy Drake and Angela Kirwan Hogg.

29
. Foreword to
A Stroke in the Family
by Valerie Eaton Griffith, 1975, p. 9.

30
. Interview with Patricia Neal.

31
. Interview with Valerie Eaton Griffith.

32
.
Pat and Roald
, p. 125.

33
. Article by Barry Farrell in TV
Guide
, December 5, 1981.

34
.
Pat and Roald
, p. 65.

35
. AK, April 5, 1965.

36
. Interview with Virginie Fowler Elbert.

37
. AK, April 5, 1965.

38
. Ibid., April 7, 1965.

39
.
Life
, October 22, 1965. The article was reprinted as part of the printed
program for “An Evening with Patricia Neal,” in behalf of the New York Association for Brain-Injured Children, March 12, 1967.

C
HAPTER
10

Main sources

AK

Interviews with Harold Jack Bloom, Amanda Conquy, Camilla Corbin, Tessa Dahl, Lewis Gilbert, Valerie Eaton Griffith, Ken Hughes, Patricia Neal, Alastair Reid, Mel Stuart

As I Am, Pat and Roald
, Powling

This chapter also draws on the cuttings files at the Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles, and on information in Leslie Halliwell's reference books,
Halliwell's Film Guide
(7th edition, 1989) and
The Filmgoer's Companion
(9th edition, 1988).

N
OTES

1
.
As I Am
, p. 291.

2
. AK, February 9, 1966.

3
.
Life
magazine, October 22, 1965; AK, December 14, 1967.

4
. AK, April 24, 1967.

5
. John Pearson,
The Life of Ian Fleming, Creator of James Bond
, 1966; 1989 edn., pp. 312, 323.

6
. See Steven Jay Rubin's
The James Bond Films
, 1981, and Sally Hibbin's
The Official James Bond Movie Book
, 1987.

7
. For example in
Playboy
June 1967, p. 86; and in Powling, p. 55.

8
. See note 6.

9
. Telephone interview with Lewis Gilbert.

10
. Telephone interview with Harold Jack Bloom.

11
.
Variety Weekly
, June 14, 1967.

12.
The New Yorker
, June 24, 1967.

13
. Interview with Patricia Neal.

14
. AK, May 2, 1966: in-house report on the TV program transmitted on April 25.

15
. Griffith,
A Stroke
, p. 12.

16
. Griffith,
So They Tell Me
, p. 4.

17
. Interview with Colin Fox.

18
. Conversation with Caroline Seebohm.

19
.
As I Am
, p. 277.

20
. AK, December 14, 1967;
Pat and Roald
, pp. 202f, 212f.

21
. Interview with Tessa Dahl. Nicholas Logsdail is now an art dealer.

22
. Interview with Valerie Eaton Griffith;
Pat and Roald
, p. 214.

23
.
Pat and Roald, p
. 209.

24
. Telephone interview with Ken Hughes.

25
.
The New York Times
, October 22, 1967.

26
.
The New Yorker
, January 4, 1969.

27
. For example to Powling, p. 58.

28
. Margaret Herrick Library folder on
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
.

29
. His copy of the screenplay, which is in the Richard Maibaum collection at the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles, gives visible evidence of the “retreading”: at least five different typewriters were used.

30
.
Pat and Roald
, p. 181.

31
. AK, April 2, 1968.

32
. Interview with Valerie Eaton Griffith.

33
. Interview with Alastair Reid.

34
.
The Hollywood Reporter
, January 12, 1971.

35
.
Variety
, January 12, 1971.

36
. Dennis Pearl strongly defends Dahl's behavior. “He was absolutely certain that the only way to restore anything like normality was to compel Pat to make unceasing efforts herself. This was not easy.… But he knew it was absolutely vital and that he simply must not let up. Some people … have been critical, but they knew nothing whatever about the subject.”

37
. Interview with Mel Stuart.

38
. Ibid.

C
HAPTER
11

Main sources

AK

Interviews with Lucy Dahl, Tessa Dahl, Robert and Maria Tucci Gottlieb, Valerie Eaton Griffith, Patricia Neal, Rayner Unwin

As I Am

N
OTES

1
. AK, March 31, 1968.

2
. Ibid., November 5, 1968.

3
. Interview with Rayner Unwin.

4
. Eg. in
The Times
, November 25, 1967.

5
.
The Bookseller
, December 2, 1967.

6
. AK, February 9, 1966.

7
. Ibid., March 22, 1968.

8
. Ibid., July 16, 1968.

9
. Ibid., April 6, 1968.

10
. Ibid., August 11, 1968.

11
. Ibid., July 17, 1968.

12
. Ibid., October 31, 1968.

13
. Ibid., November 20, 1968.

14
. Ibid., July 21, 1968.

15
.
Ibid., November 25, 1968.

16
. Interview with Tessa Dahl.

17
. Interview with Lucy Dahl.

18
. Interviews with Rayner Unwin and Tony Lacey.

19
. See p. 129.

20
. See p. 62.

21
.
The Horn Book
, October 1972, pp. 433–433. Reprinted in
Crosscurrents of Criticism:
Horn Book Essays, 1968–1968, selected and edited by Paul Heins, 1977.