May 7, 2020 • 29 mins
Today, Curious George is a world-famous star of children's books -- but back in the day, his name was Fifi, and his creators, the Rey couple, were desperate to flee France as Nazi forces pushed ever closer to Paris. Tune in to learn how Curious George saved his own creators not once, not twice, but three separate times.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always for
tuning in. What are your favorite children's books. I'm a
Roll Doll scary stories to tell in the dark kind
of guy myself. What about you, man? Yeah, Nol was
my name, and I too, as a Roll Doll fan,
I ate that stuff up and it sounds cliche, but
those really were the books that kind of taught me
(00:49):
how to love to read, because he's just such He's
such a I don't know, what do you call it,
like a fabulous like his stories just have so many
great characters, and they always go somewhere interesting and there's
like a morality tale kind of but it's not too
heavy handed, and I don't know, it's a little trippy
and and there's darkness and there's steaks, you know what
I mean. I just I loved Roll Doll so much.
(01:11):
Oh yep, that's right. I forgot. I'm ben Bowen that
I still have a name in the times of quarantine. Uh,
And I am with you. There No one thing that
I thought was so interesting as a kid is that
I always, for years thought Roll Doll's name was misspelled.
It was a typo. I thought it was Ronald Doll
uh and that was missing. But there is this great
(01:32):
darkness to his work. Shout out to George's Marvelous Medicine.
I believe it is the title. The entire story is
about this kid who has to give his grandmother medicine
while his parents are away at the market or something
for a day, and the whole book is about how
he plans to kill her through poison. It is fantastic.
I reread it still holds up. Yeah, I mean the
(01:54):
Witches is genuinely terrified. But we're not talking about roll
Doll today. We already did that episode, remember when he
was like a badass fighter pilot and possibly the real
life um guy that James Bond was based on, because
he definitely hung out with Ian Fleming. Uh. That's a
really good one from the back catalog, folks. If you
haven't heard that one, I definitely would check it out.
(02:14):
Today we're talking about a markedly less dark beloved piece
of children's literature about a monkey and a man in
a in a yellow hat. Yes, an inquisitive man. Uh,
an inquisitive monkey and a tolerant authoritarian. How about that
before we be getting shout out. Of course they're super producer.
(02:35):
Casey Pegrum's still rocking that retro windows background. How you doing,
case I'm just I'm just loving this green field and
in blue sky. You know, it's there's nothing better, So
I'm just gonna I'm just gonna roll with it. Is
there like vapor wave of music playing on repeat, just
like dripping from the clouds and coming up from there
the green grass. Absolutely, it's uh, it's it's it's quite
(02:57):
a thing. You guys have to experience it firsthand. Yeah,
it looks pretty pretty trippy, my friend. Yeah, they're better
be some vape way of going on over there. Yes,
this is a story about Curious George. About the creators
of Curious George. You know, as you said, no, that's
an inquisitive little primate. Uh. Now he is famous, especially
in the West. He's known the world over. Uh. He
(03:19):
was the brainchild of a Jewish German couple named Hans
and Margaret Ray. That's right, um, Hans and Margaret Ray.
Hans being the illustrator and Margaret being the writer, lived
in Rio de Janeira in the nineteen thirties and there
they had two pet monkeys, um, and those pet monkeys
(03:40):
became the inspiration for a character they created named FIEFI,
who has described in a Lovely Mental Phloss article as
an impish, inquisitive monkey. I love impish, I also like puckish.
But they eventually moved to Paris to when the Nazis
were occupying France and they were wars to flee for
(04:01):
their lives, carrying with them the manuscripts for the story
that we now know and love and and we couldn't
picture a world without Curious George UM tucked under their
arms and and escaping for freedom. Uh. This is the
story of how that story Curious George came to be
(04:22):
and kind of morphed from their original concept, and how
the Rays made that intensely dangerous and brave escape from
Nazi occupied France. Yes, yeah, and we're we're going to
uh start with some background. Let's start in lighter times, right,
(04:42):
less heavy hearted times. Hans Augusto Ray was born in
September in Hamburg, Germany. He grew up by the way
near the Hagenbeck Zoo and this gave him to lifelong loves.
Loved animals and he loved drawing a woman who would
become his wife. Margaret Elizabeth Waltstein was born in Hamburg
(05:05):
in nineteen o six. This is this is a neat
little rom com moment for them because they met just
briefly when Margaret was a young girl before she left
Hamburg to study art uh and they have one of
those beautiful relationships where they can remember all the significant moments.
So he remembers first seeing her at a party at
(05:27):
her dad's house in Germany. She was sliding down the banister.
So fast forward a little bit, Hans moves in ninety four.
That's that's where he ends up in Brazil and Rio
de Janeiro. After he served in World War One. He
was sketching, he was painting. Who was also he was
a roving plumbing fixtures salesman. He was going, this is
(05:51):
so weird. It sounds like something from a Kurt Vonnegut
or Donald Barthelmey story. He was writing up and down
the Amazon, selling plumbing fixtures as part of his family business.
I missed the old days of the traveling salesman. Don't
you been? Feels like a bygone era? You know, yeah, yeah,
Do you guys ever see that documentary about the globesmen. No,
(06:12):
it's this documentary about these guys who you know. I
can't remember if I'm thinking of the documentary version or
the mockumentary version with Fred Armison. But there's there's some
great documentaries and documentaries out there about the harrowing life
of traveling salesman. It's often not a very glamorous life,
even in the heyday. But check out documentary now if
(06:35):
you haven't seen it, it's, uh, it's fantastic. Have you
guys seen that? It seems like you would have. I've
seen I've seen multiple episodes. I haven't seen that one.
My favorite one is the one that makes fun of
Stephen Sondheim, the musical one looks like in the seventies
and they're like, you know, just feverishly smoking cigarettes like
in the in the studio and making these kind of
very baroque and um rapid fire lyric kind of like
(06:58):
Broadway type pieces with uh, what's his name, John Mulaney
playing like the Stephen Sondheim type character. It's yeah, so
oh yeah, so to the point he's he's living this
salesman life for about ten years, right. But then in
Rio de Janeiro, um Hans had moved there and was
selling bathtubs now and Margaret was making her first escape
(07:19):
from the just awful situation in Germany, UM, where she
was obviously very unsafe and needed to flee. UM. She
convinced Hans to get out of the family bathtub selling
business UM and they started to join forces on uh,
some creative projects together. They actually opened an advertising agency,
(07:44):
which there hadn't been one up to that point in
Rio de Janeiro, UM. And that is you know, I
always think of this era of like madmen, like those
really beautiful illustrated advertisement posters kind of you know, and
that's kind of worked that Hans did. That was very
That was how you made money as an artist in
those days, and that was kind of how he got
(08:05):
his start. And Margaret wrote the ad copy. So they
were kind of a dynamic duo from the start YEP
and they married that same year. They reunited August of
All of the contemporary accounts of them are very kind
add a very nice, uh you know, affectionate relationship, and
(08:26):
people unanimously agreed that they were very well matched couple.
It's funny because you know, picture, dear listeners, the face
of Curious George in your head. There are people who
were friends with them at the time who will swear
up and down that Hans modeled the face of Curious
(08:48):
George after the face of his wife. Uh. Now, on
the offset, you know, that might sound a little bit insulting,
but it was. It was a cute thing. And if
that's indeed what he intend did to do, then surely
he intended it as an homage rather than some kind
of weird joke. Hey man, monkeys are cute. I I
see no problem with that, and Curious George is probably
(09:12):
the quintessential cute cartoon monkey. Because some of them are
like aggressive and they like throw a poop at you
or something. Curious George is an absolute sweetheart, and he
might have gotten into some mischief, sure, but he always
had the best of intentions, didn't He had a heart
of goal that Curious George. Um So, yeah, it makes
perfect sense that he he probably felt that the goodness
(09:34):
of the character mimic the goodness that that shown from
within his his lovely wife. Um. So they were initially
going to spend a honeymoon in Paris and Ny six uh,
and they ended up staying for four years. I heard
that story before, and they were in fact Brazilian citizens
with passports and everything. Uh. And they took up residence
(09:57):
and they I don't know, I'm gonna get you to
help me with this casey the Terra hotel double R
double S. Yeah, I think it's I think it's Terras.
Let's say also hotel Casey on the case uh and
that would be on the rue uh yoursef de Maestra.
Let's yeah, I guys, I butchered that one M A
(10:18):
I S T R E. Yeah. Yeah, that means the
Joseph the Master. Uh. And they stayed in apartment five five.
What what a romantic time period. It reminds me of
that movie Midnight in Paris, that Woody Allen movie, um,
where you know, all of the Gertrude Stein and Hemingway
and all the you know, the dead uh Fitzgerald exact,
(10:41):
Scott Fitzgerald come back and they're kind of like Dolly
or like haunting Paris. But that era where you could
take up residents in a pretty decent hotel, you know, uh,
in in Paris. That's that's it. Pre sounds like a
pretty cool adventure. So what happened next? So they they
(11:03):
were living, um a pretty pretty bucolic, nice existence. They
wrote and illustrated children's books, but in a very lighthearted
version of Heath Ledgers The Joker, it wasn't about the money,
it was about sending a message. Uh. This is where
Hans publishes his first children's book, Uh, this sweet story.
(11:24):
He drew some newspaper cartoons of a giraffe. French publisher
asked him to expand on this drawing, and that's how
we got Rafi and the Nine Monkeys. So he was
always into monkeys as a children's author, and this eventually
marks the debut of the breakout character that we know
(11:45):
today as Curious George. After they published Raffie in the
Nine Monkeys, they decided that George needed a book all
his own. So they started working on this and they said,
you know, let's just describe him as Curious, let's make
it part of his name. But as you know historians,
during the late nineteen thirties and the forties, things were
(12:07):
very tense in Europe and before their manuscript what would
become the Curious George Book, before it could be published,
the Rays, because they both were of German Jewish extraction,
found themselves in a terrible situation. The Nazi Party was
tearing through Europe and they had a laser focus on France.
(12:27):
They were in fact going to take Paris as far
as people at the time could tell. And they were
already starting to get uncomfortable because you know, news of
the war is sort of on the distant horizon and
it's getting closer and closer and closer. So to be safe,
they flee their apartment in Paris and they go to
(12:47):
a chateau in the countryside. This is cool. It's an
old castle owned by some friends of theirs. We have
a letter from Hans where he said, quote, it feels
ridiculous to be thinking about children's but life goes on.
The editors edit, the artist draw, even during wartime, and
then things start to go south. Yeah, it's it's that
(13:10):
kind of situation, you see. And I think there's a
there's a German film about this period called The Lives
of Others. I want to say, where people are being
like informed upon by you know, it's like total ninety
four type material, or even like people's kids are informing
on their parents and you know, horrible stuff like that,
and there's like surveillance going on, um, and you know,
(13:32):
there's just this air of suspicion um that's just like
taking you know, the city by storm. And there are
some suspicious villagers that report uh, this very strange couple
with the strange German accents, gasp, living in this old castle,
and they're reported to the Gestapo. Yes, this is an
(13:54):
incredibly paranoid time. Any student of history can see how
quickly people will turn on one another, especially if they
feel like turning on someone will help them in their
own mission of self preservation. The authorities weren't going there
because they thought they were going to arrest people of
Jewish heritage. They were going there because they thought they
(14:16):
were going to discover French resistance members, you know, people
with the materials and they know how to make bombs.
Hans assured the police. Hey, me and my wife, we're
just here writing children's books. Hey, check this out. I
mean they sound like the nicest people, don't they. He's like, hey,
look at look at these sketches. Check out look at
(14:38):
my monkey. Did you think it looks kind of like
my wife? I? Hey, it's sweet, sweet ye, And I'm
sure that I'm sure the Nazis thought that too. Yeah,
now they didn't. Um, but now they they definitely didn't
get like executed summarily or anything. They were able to
more or less convince the authorities that they were just
writing these lovely works of children's fixed at the time
(15:01):
was known as The Adventures of Fife, which detailed the
adventures and misadventures of uh, you know, the in the
titular inquisitive monkey. Um. And so they were like, oh,
these guys are clearly idiots. They're they're not sleeper agents.
And I'm kidding, I'm just I'm trying to think get
inside the head of a Nazi. They're just so mean.
(15:22):
They just think things like that about lovely people. Um.
But they took off right, and the Rays were able
to you know, live to sketch and write another day.
But this did prove to not be the last run
in that they had, and they and they realized that
this was not going to be a tenable situation. Yeah exactly.
(15:44):
They said, you know, that was kind of a close call.
How how many more close calls can we expect? We
have to go back to Paris. So they went back
to Paris and they started trying to emigrate from France,
but you can only imagine in the paperwork. It's already
difficult to immigrate from a country during peacetime, so this
(16:05):
is much more difficult. And add to this the fact
that more and more refugees are mobbing into the city
and all they can do is hope that they get
their paperwork in line in enough time to leave before
the fall of France, before the Nazis take over. And unfortunately,
on May tenth, Adolf Hitler sent three million troops into France.
(16:32):
People were fleeing by the thousands. The Germans on June fourteenth,
I believe captured Paris. I can't even fathom that kind
of force. It makes me think of like the Orcs
and Lord of the Rings or something. I mean, it
is just like an unstoppable like wall of of humans
with guns and intent on doing horrible things to uh,
(16:54):
incredibly innocent people. Um terrible time to be alive, but
they were very, very lucky they were able to plot
this escape. That sounds like again, like something out of
a Kurt vonn and get book, or like some sort
of steampunk adventure novel, or have you ever seen the
movie The Triplets of Belleville, which reminds me of that
(17:15):
kind of whimsical stuff. So good. But they were able
to get some money from selling that first manuscript for
for the Adventures of Fifi, and the publishers gave them
enough loot to fund their escape, so they were able
to really squirrel that away. And uh, they spent uh
what would have equalled an entire month of rent on
(17:39):
um a bunch of bicycle parts that they were able
to get from a bicycle shop that had sold out
of actual bicycles because people people were just trying to
flee in any way they possibly could, and they were
able to kind of, you know, ramshackle together these two
sort of improvised bikes. And in their bicycle baskets uh,
(18:02):
and true Parisian form, they carried bread like probably a
giant baget I hope, cheese, and water and five of
their manuscripts, including Fifi Um. And they escaped Paris in
the early morning hours of June twelfth of nineteen forty,
just before the Nazis captured the city, yep, just two
(18:25):
days before. I want to emphasize that point. They did
not escape with clothing. They did, you know, extra clothing.
They did not escape with medical supplies. They literally had
enough food to eat for some short amount of time
and their books. The first day they rode thirty miles south,
they hid in a farmhouse. Think about this. You go
(18:46):
from living a relatively beautiful existence in an old castle.
Now you're on the run and some mcgivered bicycles and
you're sleeping in barnes. They could still from thirty miles away.
Here the Germans shelling the city. The next day they
made another twenty miles. They went south again and they
(19:07):
slept in a barn. They continue, and you know, they
find a train on June when they're about seventy five
miles south of Paris, and they say, hey, if we
hop this train, we can get to the Spanish border.
And they were very very lucky. As they rode the
(19:29):
train that night, bombs fell on more and more cities
behind them. And this is interesting because okay, so Fifi,
the book that we know of as the debut of
Curious George, has already saved them twice, right, once uh
from suspicion of the local authorities, right and then once
(19:50):
giving them enough money to get those bike parts and escape.
Fifi came through for them again, right because once again
somebody thought, Hey, is this delightfully whimsical couple actually a
pair of spies? Yeah? Once again mental flush for the
wind and their breakdown of this, uh this incredible story.
One of the officers believe that they were smuggling some
(20:15):
kind of government secrets uh in in that dossier, you know,
which obviously, as we know, just contained their manuscripts um
and he insisted that they open up the folder or
the briefcase I guess is what it looked like to them,
and and show them what they had. And then, just
like the first time monkey books, you know, that's all,
(20:37):
that's all. They are pretty pretty innocuous. I'd love to
show you my sketches. Officer, tell me, who do you
think this monkey looks like? Who did Margaret? Come here?
Come here? Margaret stand next to the stand next to you. Guys,
don't want to see it, you can read it. I
love it. This feels there's almost a um Wes Anderson
vibe to this escape. You know, it's certainly sarend Opetus
(21:00):
is all get out. They keep lucking out. They escape
Paris two days before the bombing, you know, and obviously
you know I'm sure, the reality of this was a
lot less charming than cobbling together bicycle pieces and some
jewels verne kind of like contraption or whatever is what
I'm picturing. And then their bike baskets overflowing with breads
and cheeses. And I mean this was like undercover of dark,
(21:22):
you know, escaping with your lives at the last minute,
you know, from the jaws of of horrible death. Uh.
And every time you got stopped by one of these officers,
you were narrowly you know, you you were in at
risk of of being found out and being just executed
or taken to one of the camps, you know, I
mean just I can't even imagine the amount of pressure
(21:45):
they must have felt. It, just the amount of like
constant stress and never feeling safe and always having to
keep moving. You know. One interesting thing too about that
third close brush with arrest or discovery is that this time,
this third time, the authorities suspected them of being German spies,
(22:08):
because we have to remember they had German accents. Yeah,
I'm surprised that they kept leaning on this notion that
they were spies and not just you know, accused them
of being Jews and just like, you know, be done
with it, because I'm sure Nazi officers have done far,
far worse. But they once again escaped. They were handed
back their manuscripts and sent on their merry way. Yeah,
(22:30):
but once against super narrow escape. And then eleven days
later they arrive in Lisbon, Portugal. I always wanted to visit.
They wait for months and months, they crossed the Atlantic
to Brazil, and then eventually they sail for New York City,
where a friend of theirs named Grace Hogarth has just
(22:51):
been hired as a children's book editor at Houghton Mifflin,
the publishing house still around today, and she loved the book,
so she didn't just sign them on for you US contract.
She signed them on for a four book contract, and
they decided to rename Fifi to George. They felt George
was a little more masculine. We we have also, you
(23:16):
know publicity brochure from Hotan Mifflin that shows the publishers
leaned into the biography of the authors, you know what
I mean. They were using it as a way to
sell the book. Uh. And it was all true, and
I don't think it was exploitative, but it definitely helped
with the debut of Curious George and the States. Yeah,
(23:39):
and this is powerful stuff. In June and I rainy
morning before dawn, a few hours before the Nazis entered,
we left Paris on bicycles with nothing but warm coats
and our manuscripts, Curious George among them, tied to the
baggage racks and started peddling south. We finally made it
to Lisbon by train, having sold our bicycles to customs
officials the French Spanish border. After a brief interludeing Rio
(24:01):
de Janeiro, our migrations came to an end one clear
crisp October morning in when we saw the Statue of
Liberty rise above the harbor of New York, and we
landed in the USA. We took a small apartment in
New York's Cranwich Village, rolled up our sleeves, and we're
ready to start from scratch. That's pretty I mean, that's
if that's not like an immigration success story, I don't
(24:25):
know what is. I mean, obviously, they just they had
this dream. They knew what they had, they knew how
precious those manuscripts were. They protected them with their lives,
you know, I mean, they they were more concerned with
bringing those and and and being careful, you know, to
have them not be damaged or taken. Then they were
about bringing more warm clothes and things like that. So
(24:45):
uh really really, it's it's so amazing to see when
someone really knows, um that they're onto something and and
of course they absolutely were. And you can confirm this
first thanks to uh lit hub, where you can read
German Jewish refugees who created Curious George. But you can
also find the gritty, day by day meticulous notations of
(25:08):
their of their escape in the collection at the University
of Southern Mississippi. It's the h A and Margaret Ray Collection.
This is the basis for a book by Louise Borden
called The Journey That Saved Curious George. You can also
see a documentary about this journey, which was in twenties seventeen.
(25:33):
And now you know, we we reach um sort of
the conclusion of today's episode. But of course you want
to know how Curious George is doing right. Uh, this
is an award winning series. They continue to write, they
had a beautiful relationship. There was a little bit of
(25:54):
misogyny for a second, though not on Hans's part. But
they for a time, Uh, Margaret's name was not appearing
on the first I think the first few books because
publishers thought too many women were writing children's books, so
a guy's name would sell better. Tut tut, yikes, no good.
(26:15):
But now we remember both of these incredible humans for uh,
not only their harrowing escape from Nazi occupied Paris, but
for the amazing work that they brought into the world.
I mean, it's been made into you know, every every
generation grows up with Curious George. You know, I remember
was I grew up in Germany, and I remember the
books were huge, so I read the German language versions.
(26:38):
Um and uh, then when I was a little older,
there was a cartoon version. And then when my daughter
was growing up, there were movies. Uh that brought Jack
Johnson back into the public eye with his delightful Curious
George soundtrack. UM. So thanks to the raise for for
bringing Jack Johnson back into my life. And you'll be
(26:59):
happy to know their legacy continues. There's seventy five million
copies of Curious George out there in the world. They've
been sold in over a dozen languages. Uh. And you know,
Curious George went on to have many other close calls
that were thankfully fictional. Thanks, as always for tuning in.
We hope you enjoyed this episode. And we want to
(27:20):
hear about your favorite children's stories or young adult books.
Uh and you know, maybe there's an interesting story behind
their evolution and origin as well. Let us know. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter.
You can find us on Instagram, not just as a show,
but as individuals. That's right. You can find me in
(27:41):
my quarantine adventures or misadventures sort of like a Curious Monkey, UM,
only locked in like a three bedroom house in uh
in Atlanta. UM that is at how now Noel Brown
on Instagram, And you can find me at ben bullin
hs W on Twitter. You can find me at Bolan
on Instagram. You can you know I'm around. You can
(28:05):
find me somewhere on the internet. And you can also
find on the internet our pal slash Nemesis the Quister
a k a. Jonathan Strickland, who assures us that he
will be making an appearance soon. But you all longtime
listeners know the game. He's not going to tell us
when it happens. He's just going to show up and
ruin the ending of a perfectly good episode. Yeah, it's
(28:27):
gonna be one of those zoom bombs we keep hearing
so much about. You know, he's just gonna come in
and wreck the party. Hues Thanks to super producer Casey Pegram.
As always, thanks to Alex Williams for composing our theme.
Christopher hacionis here in zoom spirit. Thanks as always to Rule,
Dull Shell Silverstein, Hans and Margaret Ray and Hey Dolt.
(28:47):
Thanks to you and you as well, Ben. We'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always for
tuning in. What are your favorite children's books. I'm a
Roll Doll scary stories to tell in the dark kind
of guy myself. What about you, man? Yeah, Nol was
my name, and I too, as a Roll Doll fan,
I ate that stuff up and it sounds cliche, but
those really were the books that kind of taught me
(00:49):
how to love to read, because he's just such He's
such a I don't know, what do you call it,
like a fabulous like his stories just have so many
great characters, and they always go somewhere interesting and there's
like a morality tale kind of but it's not too
heavy handed, and I don't know, it's a little trippy
and and there's darkness and there's steaks, you know what
I mean. I just I loved Roll Doll so much.
(01:11):
Oh yep, that's right. I forgot. I'm ben Bowen that
I still have a name in the times of quarantine. Uh,
And I am with you. There No one thing that
I thought was so interesting as a kid is that
I always, for years thought Roll Doll's name was misspelled.
It was a typo. I thought it was Ronald Doll
uh and that was missing. But there is this great
(01:32):
darkness to his work. Shout out to George's Marvelous Medicine.
I believe it is the title. The entire story is
about this kid who has to give his grandmother medicine
while his parents are away at the market or something
for a day, and the whole book is about how
he plans to kill her through poison. It is fantastic.
I reread it still holds up. Yeah, I mean the
(01:54):
Witches is genuinely terrified. But we're not talking about roll
Doll today. We already did that episode, remember when he
was like a badass fighter pilot and possibly the real
life um guy that James Bond was based on, because
he definitely hung out with Ian Fleming. Uh. That's a
really good one from the back catalog, folks. If you
haven't heard that one, I definitely would check it out.
(02:14):
Today we're talking about a markedly less dark beloved piece
of children's literature about a monkey and a man in
a in a yellow hat. Yes, an inquisitive man. Uh,
an inquisitive monkey and a tolerant authoritarian. How about that
before we be getting shout out. Of course they're super producer.
(02:35):
Casey Pegrum's still rocking that retro windows background. How you doing,
case I'm just I'm just loving this green field and
in blue sky. You know, it's there's nothing better, So
I'm just gonna I'm just gonna roll with it. Is
there like vapor wave of music playing on repeat, just
like dripping from the clouds and coming up from there
the green grass. Absolutely, it's uh, it's it's it's quite
(02:57):
a thing. You guys have to experience it firsthand. Yeah,
it looks pretty pretty trippy, my friend. Yeah, they're better
be some vape way of going on over there. Yes,
this is a story about Curious George. About the creators
of Curious George. You know, as you said, no, that's
an inquisitive little primate. Uh. Now he is famous, especially
in the West. He's known the world over. Uh. He
(03:19):
was the brainchild of a Jewish German couple named Hans
and Margaret Ray. That's right, um, Hans and Margaret Ray.
Hans being the illustrator and Margaret being the writer, lived
in Rio de Janeira in the nineteen thirties and there
they had two pet monkeys, um, and those pet monkeys
(03:40):
became the inspiration for a character they created named FIEFI,
who has described in a Lovely Mental Phloss article as
an impish, inquisitive monkey. I love impish, I also like puckish.
But they eventually moved to Paris to when the Nazis
were occupying France and they were wars to flee for
(04:01):
their lives, carrying with them the manuscripts for the story
that we now know and love and and we couldn't
picture a world without Curious George UM tucked under their
arms and and escaping for freedom. Uh. This is the
story of how that story Curious George came to be
(04:22):
and kind of morphed from their original concept, and how
the Rays made that intensely dangerous and brave escape from
Nazi occupied France. Yes, yeah, and we're we're going to
uh start with some background. Let's start in lighter times, right,
(04:42):
less heavy hearted times. Hans Augusto Ray was born in
September in Hamburg, Germany. He grew up by the way
near the Hagenbeck Zoo and this gave him to lifelong loves.
Loved animals and he loved drawing a woman who would
become his wife. Margaret Elizabeth Waltstein was born in Hamburg
(05:05):
in nineteen o six. This is this is a neat
little rom com moment for them because they met just
briefly when Margaret was a young girl before she left
Hamburg to study art uh and they have one of
those beautiful relationships where they can remember all the significant moments.
So he remembers first seeing her at a party at
(05:27):
her dad's house in Germany. She was sliding down the banister.
So fast forward a little bit, Hans moves in ninety four.
That's that's where he ends up in Brazil and Rio
de Janeiro. After he served in World War One. He
was sketching, he was painting. Who was also he was
a roving plumbing fixtures salesman. He was going, this is
(05:51):
so weird. It sounds like something from a Kurt Vonnegut
or Donald Barthelmey story. He was writing up and down
the Amazon, selling plumbing fixtures as part of his family business.
I missed the old days of the traveling salesman. Don't
you been? Feels like a bygone era? You know, yeah, yeah,
Do you guys ever see that documentary about the globesmen. No,
(06:12):
it's this documentary about these guys who you know. I
can't remember if I'm thinking of the documentary version or
the mockumentary version with Fred Armison. But there's there's some
great documentaries and documentaries out there about the harrowing life
of traveling salesman. It's often not a very glamorous life,
even in the heyday. But check out documentary now if
(06:35):
you haven't seen it, it's, uh, it's fantastic. Have you
guys seen that? It seems like you would have. I've
seen I've seen multiple episodes. I haven't seen that one.
My favorite one is the one that makes fun of
Stephen Sondheim, the musical one looks like in the seventies
and they're like, you know, just feverishly smoking cigarettes like
in the in the studio and making these kind of
very baroque and um rapid fire lyric kind of like
(06:58):
Broadway type pieces with uh, what's his name, John Mulaney
playing like the Stephen Sondheim type character. It's yeah, so
oh yeah, so to the point he's he's living this
salesman life for about ten years, right. But then in
Rio de Janeiro, um Hans had moved there and was
selling bathtubs now and Margaret was making her first escape
(07:19):
from the just awful situation in Germany, UM, where she
was obviously very unsafe and needed to flee. UM. She
convinced Hans to get out of the family bathtub selling
business UM and they started to join forces on uh,
some creative projects together. They actually opened an advertising agency,
(07:44):
which there hadn't been one up to that point in
Rio de Janeiro, UM. And that is you know, I
always think of this era of like madmen, like those
really beautiful illustrated advertisement posters kind of you know, and
that's kind of worked that Hans did. That was very
That was how you made money as an artist in
those days, and that was kind of how he got
(08:05):
his start. And Margaret wrote the ad copy. So they
were kind of a dynamic duo from the start YEP
and they married that same year. They reunited August of
All of the contemporary accounts of them are very kind
add a very nice, uh you know, affectionate relationship, and
(08:26):
people unanimously agreed that they were very well matched couple.
It's funny because you know, picture, dear listeners, the face
of Curious George in your head. There are people who
were friends with them at the time who will swear
up and down that Hans modeled the face of Curious
(08:48):
George after the face of his wife. Uh. Now, on
the offset, you know, that might sound a little bit insulting,
but it was. It was a cute thing. And if
that's indeed what he intend did to do, then surely
he intended it as an homage rather than some kind
of weird joke. Hey man, monkeys are cute. I I
see no problem with that, and Curious George is probably
(09:12):
the quintessential cute cartoon monkey. Because some of them are
like aggressive and they like throw a poop at you
or something. Curious George is an absolute sweetheart, and he
might have gotten into some mischief, sure, but he always
had the best of intentions, didn't He had a heart
of goal that Curious George. Um So, yeah, it makes
perfect sense that he he probably felt that the goodness
(09:34):
of the character mimic the goodness that that shown from
within his his lovely wife. Um. So they were initially
going to spend a honeymoon in Paris and Ny six uh,
and they ended up staying for four years. I heard
that story before, and they were in fact Brazilian citizens
with passports and everything. Uh. And they took up residence
(09:57):
and they I don't know, I'm gonna get you to
help me with this casey the Terra hotel double R
double S. Yeah, I think it's I think it's Terras.
Let's say also hotel Casey on the case uh and
that would be on the rue uh yoursef de Maestra.
Let's yeah, I guys, I butchered that one M A
(10:18):
I S T R E. Yeah. Yeah, that means the
Joseph the Master. Uh. And they stayed in apartment five five.
What what a romantic time period. It reminds me of
that movie Midnight in Paris, that Woody Allen movie, um,
where you know, all of the Gertrude Stein and Hemingway
and all the you know, the dead uh Fitzgerald exact,
(10:41):
Scott Fitzgerald come back and they're kind of like Dolly
or like haunting Paris. But that era where you could
take up residents in a pretty decent hotel, you know, uh,
in in Paris. That's that's it. Pre sounds like a
pretty cool adventure. So what happened next? So they they
(11:03):
were living, um a pretty pretty bucolic, nice existence. They
wrote and illustrated children's books, but in a very lighthearted
version of Heath Ledgers The Joker, it wasn't about the money,
it was about sending a message. Uh. This is where
Hans publishes his first children's book, Uh, this sweet story.
(11:24):
He drew some newspaper cartoons of a giraffe. French publisher
asked him to expand on this drawing, and that's how
we got Rafi and the Nine Monkeys. So he was
always into monkeys as a children's author, and this eventually
marks the debut of the breakout character that we know
(11:45):
today as Curious George. After they published Raffie in the
Nine Monkeys, they decided that George needed a book all
his own. So they started working on this and they said,
you know, let's just describe him as Curious, let's make
it part of his name. But as you know historians,
during the late nineteen thirties and the forties, things were
(12:07):
very tense in Europe and before their manuscript what would
become the Curious George Book, before it could be published,
the Rays, because they both were of German Jewish extraction,
found themselves in a terrible situation. The Nazi Party was
tearing through Europe and they had a laser focus on France.
(12:27):
They were in fact going to take Paris as far
as people at the time could tell. And they were
already starting to get uncomfortable because you know, news of
the war is sort of on the distant horizon and
it's getting closer and closer and closer. So to be safe,
they flee their apartment in Paris and they go to
(12:47):
a chateau in the countryside. This is cool. It's an
old castle owned by some friends of theirs. We have
a letter from Hans where he said, quote, it feels
ridiculous to be thinking about children's but life goes on.
The editors edit, the artist draw, even during wartime, and
then things start to go south. Yeah, it's it's that
(13:10):
kind of situation, you see. And I think there's a
there's a German film about this period called The Lives
of Others. I want to say, where people are being
like informed upon by you know, it's like total ninety
four type material, or even like people's kids are informing
on their parents and you know, horrible stuff like that,
and there's like surveillance going on, um, and you know,
(13:32):
there's just this air of suspicion um that's just like
taking you know, the city by storm. And there are
some suspicious villagers that report uh, this very strange couple
with the strange German accents, gasp, living in this old castle,
and they're reported to the Gestapo. Yes, this is an
(13:54):
incredibly paranoid time. Any student of history can see how
quickly people will turn on one another, especially if they
feel like turning on someone will help them in their
own mission of self preservation. The authorities weren't going there
because they thought they were going to arrest people of
Jewish heritage. They were going there because they thought they
(14:16):
were going to discover French resistance members, you know, people
with the materials and they know how to make bombs.
Hans assured the police. Hey, me and my wife, we're
just here writing children's books. Hey, check this out. I
mean they sound like the nicest people, don't they. He's like, hey,
look at look at these sketches. Check out look at
(14:38):
my monkey. Did you think it looks kind of like
my wife? I? Hey, it's sweet, sweet ye, And I'm
sure that I'm sure the Nazis thought that too. Yeah,
now they didn't. Um, but now they they definitely didn't
get like executed summarily or anything. They were able to
more or less convince the authorities that they were just
writing these lovely works of children's fixed at the time
(15:01):
was known as The Adventures of Fife, which detailed the
adventures and misadventures of uh, you know, the in the
titular inquisitive monkey. Um. And so they were like, oh,
these guys are clearly idiots. They're they're not sleeper agents.
And I'm kidding, I'm just I'm trying to think get
inside the head of a Nazi. They're just so mean.
(15:22):
They just think things like that about lovely people. Um.
But they took off right, and the Rays were able
to you know, live to sketch and write another day.
But this did prove to not be the last run
in that they had, and they and they realized that
this was not going to be a tenable situation. Yeah exactly.
(15:44):
They said, you know, that was kind of a close call.
How how many more close calls can we expect? We
have to go back to Paris. So they went back
to Paris and they started trying to emigrate from France,
but you can only imagine in the paperwork. It's already
difficult to immigrate from a country during peacetime, so this
(16:05):
is much more difficult. And add to this the fact
that more and more refugees are mobbing into the city
and all they can do is hope that they get
their paperwork in line in enough time to leave before
the fall of France, before the Nazis take over. And unfortunately,
on May tenth, Adolf Hitler sent three million troops into France.
(16:32):
People were fleeing by the thousands. The Germans on June fourteenth,
I believe captured Paris. I can't even fathom that kind
of force. It makes me think of like the Orcs
and Lord of the Rings or something. I mean, it
is just like an unstoppable like wall of of humans
with guns and intent on doing horrible things to uh,
(16:54):
incredibly innocent people. Um terrible time to be alive, but
they were very, very lucky they were able to plot
this escape. That sounds like again, like something out of
a Kurt vonn and get book, or like some sort
of steampunk adventure novel, or have you ever seen the
movie The Triplets of Belleville, which reminds me of that
(17:15):
kind of whimsical stuff. So good. But they were able
to get some money from selling that first manuscript for
for the Adventures of Fifi, and the publishers gave them
enough loot to fund their escape, so they were able
to really squirrel that away. And uh, they spent uh
what would have equalled an entire month of rent on
(17:39):
um a bunch of bicycle parts that they were able
to get from a bicycle shop that had sold out
of actual bicycles because people people were just trying to
flee in any way they possibly could, and they were
able to kind of, you know, ramshackle together these two
sort of improvised bikes. And in their bicycle baskets uh,
(18:02):
and true Parisian form, they carried bread like probably a
giant baget I hope, cheese, and water and five of
their manuscripts, including Fifi Um. And they escaped Paris in
the early morning hours of June twelfth of nineteen forty,
just before the Nazis captured the city, yep, just two
(18:25):
days before. I want to emphasize that point. They did
not escape with clothing. They did, you know, extra clothing.
They did not escape with medical supplies. They literally had
enough food to eat for some short amount of time
and their books. The first day they rode thirty miles south,
they hid in a farmhouse. Think about this. You go
(18:46):
from living a relatively beautiful existence in an old castle.
Now you're on the run and some mcgivered bicycles and
you're sleeping in barnes. They could still from thirty miles away.
Here the Germans shelling the city. The next day they
made another twenty miles. They went south again and they
(19:07):
slept in a barn. They continue, and you know, they
find a train on June when they're about seventy five
miles south of Paris, and they say, hey, if we
hop this train, we can get to the Spanish border.
And they were very very lucky. As they rode the
(19:29):
train that night, bombs fell on more and more cities
behind them. And this is interesting because okay, so Fifi,
the book that we know of as the debut of
Curious George, has already saved them twice, right, once uh
from suspicion of the local authorities, right and then once
(19:50):
giving them enough money to get those bike parts and escape.
Fifi came through for them again, right because once again
somebody thought, Hey, is this delightfully whimsical couple actually a
pair of spies? Yeah? Once again mental flush for the
wind and their breakdown of this, uh this incredible story.
One of the officers believe that they were smuggling some
(20:15):
kind of government secrets uh in in that dossier, you know,
which obviously, as we know, just contained their manuscripts um
and he insisted that they open up the folder or
the briefcase I guess is what it looked like to them,
and and show them what they had. And then, just
like the first time monkey books, you know, that's all,
(20:37):
that's all. They are pretty pretty innocuous. I'd love to
show you my sketches. Officer, tell me, who do you
think this monkey looks like? Who did Margaret? Come here?
Come here? Margaret stand next to the stand next to you. Guys,
don't want to see it, you can read it. I
love it. This feels there's almost a um Wes Anderson
vibe to this escape. You know, it's certainly sarend Opetus
(21:00):
is all get out. They keep lucking out. They escape
Paris two days before the bombing, you know, and obviously
you know I'm sure, the reality of this was a
lot less charming than cobbling together bicycle pieces and some
jewels verne kind of like contraption or whatever is what
I'm picturing. And then their bike baskets overflowing with breads
and cheeses. And I mean this was like undercover of dark,
(21:22):
you know, escaping with your lives at the last minute,
you know, from the jaws of of horrible death. Uh.
And every time you got stopped by one of these officers,
you were narrowly you know, you you were in at
risk of of being found out and being just executed
or taken to one of the camps, you know, I
mean just I can't even imagine the amount of pressure
(21:45):
they must have felt. It, just the amount of like
constant stress and never feeling safe and always having to
keep moving. You know. One interesting thing too about that
third close brush with arrest or discovery is that this time,
this third time, the authorities suspected them of being German spies,
(22:08):
because we have to remember they had German accents. Yeah,
I'm surprised that they kept leaning on this notion that
they were spies and not just you know, accused them
of being Jews and just like, you know, be done
with it, because I'm sure Nazi officers have done far,
far worse. But they once again escaped. They were handed
back their manuscripts and sent on their merry way. Yeah,
(22:30):
but once against super narrow escape. And then eleven days
later they arrive in Lisbon, Portugal. I always wanted to visit.
They wait for months and months, they crossed the Atlantic
to Brazil, and then eventually they sail for New York City,
where a friend of theirs named Grace Hogarth has just
(22:51):
been hired as a children's book editor at Houghton Mifflin,
the publishing house still around today, and she loved the book,
so she didn't just sign them on for you US contract.
She signed them on for a four book contract, and
they decided to rename Fifi to George. They felt George
was a little more masculine. We we have also, you
(23:16):
know publicity brochure from Hotan Mifflin that shows the publishers
leaned into the biography of the authors, you know what
I mean. They were using it as a way to
sell the book. Uh. And it was all true, and
I don't think it was exploitative, but it definitely helped
with the debut of Curious George and the States. Yeah,
(23:39):
and this is powerful stuff. In June and I rainy
morning before dawn, a few hours before the Nazis entered,
we left Paris on bicycles with nothing but warm coats
and our manuscripts, Curious George among them, tied to the
baggage racks and started peddling south. We finally made it
to Lisbon by train, having sold our bicycles to customs
officials the French Spanish border. After a brief interludeing Rio
(24:01):
de Janeiro, our migrations came to an end one clear
crisp October morning in when we saw the Statue of
Liberty rise above the harbor of New York, and we
landed in the USA. We took a small apartment in
New York's Cranwich Village, rolled up our sleeves, and we're
ready to start from scratch. That's pretty I mean, that's
if that's not like an immigration success story, I don't
(24:25):
know what is. I mean, obviously, they just they had
this dream. They knew what they had, they knew how
precious those manuscripts were. They protected them with their lives,
you know, I mean, they they were more concerned with
bringing those and and and being careful, you know, to
have them not be damaged or taken. Then they were
about bringing more warm clothes and things like that. So
(24:45):
uh really really, it's it's so amazing to see when
someone really knows, um that they're onto something and and
of course they absolutely were. And you can confirm this
first thanks to uh lit hub, where you can read
German Jewish refugees who created Curious George. But you can
also find the gritty, day by day meticulous notations of
(25:08):
their of their escape in the collection at the University
of Southern Mississippi. It's the h A and Margaret Ray Collection.
This is the basis for a book by Louise Borden
called The Journey That Saved Curious George. You can also
see a documentary about this journey, which was in twenties seventeen.
(25:33):
And now you know, we we reach um sort of
the conclusion of today's episode. But of course you want
to know how Curious George is doing right. Uh, this
is an award winning series. They continue to write, they
had a beautiful relationship. There was a little bit of
(25:54):
misogyny for a second, though not on Hans's part. But
they for a time, Uh, Margaret's name was not appearing
on the first I think the first few books because
publishers thought too many women were writing children's books, so
a guy's name would sell better. Tut tut, yikes, no good.
(26:15):
But now we remember both of these incredible humans for uh,
not only their harrowing escape from Nazi occupied Paris, but
for the amazing work that they brought into the world.
I mean, it's been made into you know, every every
generation grows up with Curious George. You know, I remember
was I grew up in Germany, and I remember the
books were huge, so I read the German language versions.
(26:38):
Um and uh, then when I was a little older,
there was a cartoon version. And then when my daughter
was growing up, there were movies. Uh that brought Jack
Johnson back into the public eye with his delightful Curious
George soundtrack. UM. So thanks to the raise for for
bringing Jack Johnson back into my life. And you'll be
(26:59):
happy to know their legacy continues. There's seventy five million
copies of Curious George out there in the world. They've
been sold in over a dozen languages. Uh. And you know,
Curious George went on to have many other close calls
that were thankfully fictional. Thanks, as always for tuning in.
We hope you enjoyed this episode. And we want to
(27:20):
hear about your favorite children's stories or young adult books.
Uh and you know, maybe there's an interesting story behind
their evolution and origin as well. Let us know. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter.
You can find us on Instagram, not just as a show,
but as individuals. That's right. You can find me in
(27:41):
my quarantine adventures or misadventures sort of like a Curious Monkey, UM,
only locked in like a three bedroom house in uh
in Atlanta. UM that is at how now Noel Brown
on Instagram, And you can find me at ben bullin
hs W on Twitter. You can find me at Bolan
on Instagram. You can you know I'm around. You can
(28:05):
find me somewhere on the internet. And you can also
find on the internet our pal slash Nemesis the Quister
a k a. Jonathan Strickland, who assures us that he
will be making an appearance soon. But you all longtime
listeners know the game. He's not going to tell us
when it happens. He's just going to show up and
ruin the ending of a perfectly good episode. Yeah, it's
(28:27):
gonna be one of those zoom bombs we keep hearing
so much about. You know, he's just gonna come in
and wreck the party. Hues Thanks to super producer Casey Pegram.
As always, thanks to Alex Williams for composing our theme.
Christopher hacionis here in zoom spirit. Thanks as always to Rule,
Dull Shell Silverstein, Hans and Margaret Ray and Hey Dolt.
(28:47):
Thanks to you and you as well, Ben. We'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
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