Comprehensive Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel

Early years

Childhood

Theodor ("Ted") Seuss Geisel was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Though his German-immigrant father and grandfather ran a successful brewery, during Prohibition and World War I the Geisel's were targets for many slurs regarding both their heritage and livelihoods.

Despite some financial hardship the Geisels encountered due to Prohibition, Ted enjoyed a fairly happy childhood -- reading comic strips, writing humorous poems, and drawing his own cartoons. His mother, Henrietta Seuss Geisel, had worked in her father's bakery before marrying Ted's father, and to memorize the names of the pies she "chanted" them to customers. If Ted had difficulty getting to sleep, she would often recall her "pie-selling chants." As an adult, Ted credited his mother "for the rhythms in which I write and the urgency with which I do it." (Morgan, p.7)

Dartmouth

Ted attended Dartmouth College, where he was the editor-in-chief of Jack-O-Lantern, Dartmouth's humor magazine. His reign as editor, however, came to an abrupt end when Ted and his friends were caught throwing a party that did not coincide with school policy. Geisel continued to contribute to Jacko , merely signing his work as "Seuss," which was both his middle name and his mother's maiden name.

Oxford

In early 1925, as graduation from Dartmouth approached, Ted's father asked him what he was going to do after college.

Ted claimed to have been awarded a fellowship to Oxford University, and the elder Geisel reported the news to the Springfield newspaper, where it was published the following day. And though Ted later confessed the truth -- Oxford had denied his fellowship application -- Mr. Geisel, who had a great deal of family pride, managed to scrape together funds to send him anyway. Ted left for Oxford intending to become a professor because he couldn't think of anything else to do with an Oxford education.

Sitting in class, Ted's doodling caught the eye of a fellow American student named Helen Palmer, who suggested that he should become an artist instead of a professor. He took her advice, took to her, and eventually married her.

Early career

Judge, Standard Oil/Advertising

Before he could marry Helen, Ted needed to earn a living. He decided that he could do so as a cartoonist and was thrilled when one of his submissions was published in the Saturday Evening Post. His work caught the eye of the editor of Judge, a New York weekly, and Ted was offered a staff position. Many of the characters from his Judge sketches resemble the more familiar characters of his books: Horton-esque elephants, turtles that look like Yertle, Nizzard-like birds, etc.

Standard Oil recognized Ted's talents and offered him a job in their advertising department to promote Flit. Flit's competitor, Fly-Tox, offered Ted a simliar contract, and in true Ted Geisel form, he flipped a coin to make the decision. In all, Ted spent over 15 years in advertising, primarily with Standard.

World War II

From early 1941 to early 1943, Ted Geisel drew editorial cartoons for the leftist New York newspaper PM, which backed intervention in the war in Europe. Geisel, who didn't agree with a lot of their political policies, joined up with them because he felt, "I had one purpose: I wanted to, wherever I could at this particular time, point out as strongly as I could that the United States was going to get involved in this war." (Interview by Edward C. Lathem, 1976, Dartmouth College Archives.)

At 38, Ted was too old for the draft, and so decided to serve in Frank Capra's Signal Corps (U.S. Army), making movies relevant to the war effort. He was introduced to the art of animation and developed a series of animated training films, and also wrote scripts for live-action films for American military forces. Two of these films were later developed into Academy Award winning documentaries, Hitler Lives and Design for Death.

Publishing

In 1931, Ted was contributing to publications such as  Life, Vanity Fair, and Judge when an editor at Viking Press tapped him to illustrate a collection of children's sayings called Boners. Ted's illustrations were critically well received; he considered the work his first official "big break" in children's literature. (Morgan, p. 72)

Ted was making a good living as an illustrator and cartoonist -- but he also enjoyed writing. While traveling on the luxury liner M.S. Kungsholm, Ted became bothered by the rhythm of the ship's engines. At Helen's urging, he applied the incessant rhythm to his first children's book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.

Though Mulberry Street is a delightful peek into the vivid imagination of a child, publishers in 1937 were not receptive: Ted presented his manuscript to 27 publishing houses and received 27 rejections. But then Ted bumped into an old Dartmouth friend who worked at Vanguard Press, a divison of Houghton Mifflin, and Vanguard published Mulberry Street, which was well received by librarians and reviewers.

By 1939, Ted had left Vanguard for the rapidly growing Random House. Over the next two decades, he wrote 11 books, including Bartholomew and the Oobleck and Horton Hears a Who. He garnered excellent reviews and three Caldecott Honor Awards, but it was the 1957 publication of The Cat in the Hat that catapulted Ted to celebrity.

John Hersey, author of the article "Why Johnny Can't Read," was outraged with the reading primers of the day, calling them "antiseptic" and the children in them "unnaturally clean." He called for illustrations "that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words," and concluded that the work of artists like Geisel and Walt Disney would be more appropriate. (Morgan, pp 153-54)

So in an unusual act of sharing an author, Houghton Mifflin and Random House asked Ted to write a children's primer using 220 new-reader vocabulary words. The end result was The Cat in the Hat . While schools were hesitant to adopt it as an offical primer, children and parents swarmed for copies.

Random House publisher Bennett Cerf was the mastermind behind the sharing agreement with Houghton Mifflin and perhaps the most influential figure in Ted's early publishing career. It was he who wagered that Ted couldn't write a book using 50 words or less, prompting Ted to write Green Eggs and Ham. Cerf had the vision to see that Ted was going to turn the children's book industry upside down, and he definitely wanted to be a part of it, so he, along with his wife Phyllis, Ted, and Helen, created Random House's Beginner Books division, one of the most innovative and successful ventures in children's publishing.

Personal life and interests

Art

A doodler at heart, Ted often remarked that he never really learned to draw, but he took his painting very seriously; it relaxed him. Using watercolor, gouache, ink, or casein, Ted would create vivid scenes with skewed, nonsensical perspectives and images. He would often contrast bright colors against a much darker background, creating an illusion of the subject popping out of the painting. While he longed for critical recognition that he was an artist, Ted would not sell his paintings out of fear of critics' rejection.

Helen Palmer Geisel

While Ted's wife Helen was a tremendous support editorially, artistically, and administratively during much of Ted's career, she was an accomplished author, too. One of her books, Do You Know What I'm Going to Do Next Saturday? was listed as one of the best juveniles by The New York Times in 1963. (Morgan, p. 182) Later in her life, Helen suffered from frail health dying on October 23, 1967.

The Tower/Writing Habits

In 1948, Ted and Helen purchased an old observation tower in la Jolla (la-HOY-yah), California. "The Tower," as it soon became known, was to remain the primary Geisel residence for the remainder of their lives. It was there that Ted worked his creative magic, locked in the studio within The Tower for at least eight hours each day, and very often, much longer than that.

Janet Schulman of Random House Books for Young Readers admits that Ted's actual writing process was a bit of a mystery. "He was so private about it," she explains. "When he was working on a book, he always had a general idea of what the book was going to be, but he put these pieces of paper on the wall, and there would be 'holes' within the sequence that usually belonged to the transitional points."

Others recall Ted putting on a "thinking cap" from his amazing hat collection and wearing it to help lighten the stress of creative blocks.

Ted enjoyed writing entertaining books that encouraged children to read. There are several -- his later books, in particular -- that were, in fact, inspired by current events or his own personal concerns.

The Butter Battle Book, perhaps the most controversial of all his books, was written in response to the nuclear arms race. Published in 1984, Butter Battle sheds light on the growing threat of war between the Yooks and the Zooks. The threat stems solely from the way Yooks and Zooks choose to eat their bread: butter-side up and butter-side down, respectively. The story ends with a blank page, leaving a cliffhanger ending that is open to interpretation. When Ted presented this particular project, Random House saw a red light!

For six months, Butter Battle remained on The New York Times Bestseller List -- for adults. In 1990, when the televised version of The Butter Battle Book was shown in the U.S.S.R., Ted bragged that the country began "falling apart." Indeed, the Soviet Union was crumbling at that time, but Ted's message reached a much broader audience -- and challenged readers to answer the question, how does it all end? (Morgan, p. 255)

Later years

Audrey Geisel

Audrey and Ted had been friends for a long time before they married on June 21, 1968. She brought order and stability to his life at a time when Ted's popularity was pulling him in various directions.

With Audrey's encouragement and inspiration, his imagination soared to new heights. This new "spark" certainly influenced Ted's work! Some of his most critically acclaimed and socially conscious books were written during this period, and Ted began experimenting with the color palette once again. Audrey would often suggest unexpected, unusual color combinations that complemented more meaningful manuscripts, such as The Lorax, The Butter Battle Book, and You're Only Old Once!

Never one to interfere directly with her husband's affairs, Audrey -- a former nurse -- saw her role as that of a caretaker and chief supporter, a role she continues to this day as the head of Dr. Seuss Enterprises.

Ted had no children, but his marriage to Audrey brought two step-daughters.

Other media

In 1966, Ted received a call from his old friend Chuck Jones, now a successful animator. Jones convinced Ted to adapt How the Grinch Stole Christmas for television. It was a painstaking task, as Jones used the full-animation technique that had been popular at Disney. The idea behind full animation is that one could follow the story, with or without the benefit of narration. With full animation, a half-hour television program would require approximately 25,000 drawings -- over 12 times as many drawings as most animations of equal length.

The length of the story, the color of the Grinch, and the development of a script that did not end on a trite or overly religious note also had to be addressed.

Again, Ted was always very particular about colors, and it took some convincing by Jones for Ted to concede to paint the Grinch green with evil red eyes. The songs were a collaborative effort between Ted and composer Albert Hague. To resolve Ted's concern that the story end in a way that was not trite or overly religious, the script called for a star to rise to the heavens (rather than drop from the sky) to emphasize the power of the heart.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas aired in time for the 1966 holiday season and it still ranks high in viewer ratings 25 years later. Nearly 30 of Ted's Dr. Seuss books have been adapted for television or video.

Legacy

Ted Geisel died in his sleep on September 24, 1991, at his home in La Jolla, California. He was 87 years old.

At the time of his death, some 200 million copies of his books, translated into 15 different languages, had found their way into homes and hearts around the world. Since then, sales continue to climb, estimated at more than 22 million since 1991.

Fast facts on Theodor Seuss Geisel (GUY-zel)

Also known as:
Dr. Seuss; also, Theo Le Sig, Rosetta Stone

Date of birth:
March 2, 1904

Place of birth:
Springfield, Massachusetts

Date of death:
September 24, 1991

Place of death:
La Jolla, California

Married to:
Helen Palmer Geisel, 1927-1967
Audrey Stone Geisel, 1968-1991

Education:
B.A., Dartmouth College, 1925
Oxford University (no degree)

Awards:
Academy Award for Gerald McBoing-Boing (Best Cartoon, 1951); two Emmys for Halloween is Grinch Night and The Grinch Grinches the Cat (Best Children's Special, 1977 and 1982, respectively); a Pulitzer Prize (1984); a Peabody for the animated specials How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and Horton Hears a Who! (1971); a New York Library Literary Lion (1986); Caldecott Honor Awards: McElligot's Pool (1947), Bartholomew and the Oobleck (1949), and If I Ran the Zoo (1950); the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award -- the American Library Association's special award given to an author or illustrator whose books have made a substantial contribution and lasting impact on children's literature (1980).

The question Ted Geisel most dreaded:
"Where do you get your ideas?"

Bibliography of Theodor Seuss Geisel

*****

Sources

This biography is adapted from "Dr. Seuss' Biography" at www.seussentennial.com which also credits:

Cohen, Charles. Personal Interview. August, 2001.

Dr. Seuss from Then to Now. San Diego: San Diego Museum of Art, 1986.

Morgan, Judith & Neil. Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995.

Dr. Seuss. The Lorax. New York: Random House, 1971.