Interviewee Tags Used in Events

Why organized it? Christianity doesn't need organizing according to the Master of it, the great master poet of all times didn't want it organized, did he?. Didn't Jesus say... that wherever a few are gathered in my name, there is my Church?

Well, that may be why I am building a synagogue in Philadelphia, a Unitarian church in Madison, a Greek Orthodox church in Milwaukee, and (CLEARS THROAT) a Christian Science church in California.

I've always considered myself deeply...

...religious

Yes, I go occasionally to this one, and then sometimes to that one, but my church I put a capital N on Nature and go there.

You spell God with a G, don't you?

I spell Nature with an N, capital.

I never think of it, if I can help it.

They're professional warriors, aren't they?

I'm against war. Always have been, always will be. And everything connected with it, is anathema to me. I have never considered it necessary. And I think that one war only breeds another. And I think I've been borne out by the reading of history, haven't I? One war always has in it, in its intestines, another, and another has another...

Why be for war? And if you are not for war, why are you for warriors?

I think it's... if it's mercy killing I am for it.

Well, I think, if killing is merciful why not kill.

But be sure that it is merciful.

I would never use the means of justification, no.

No. But I think if they were incurably ill, and suffering intolerable agony, and they could... and there was no possible hope for them, I think a mercy killing would be a mercy killing.

As for the right I do not know. Are you speaking legally?

Morally, I think he would have the right.

But morally isn't the question, my dear Mike. Morally isn't enough. There is a great difference between morals and ethics. The question is, ethically does he have the right, so far as I'm concerned. Morals are only those of the moment, the fashion of the day. What is a moral today, won't be moral the day after tomorrow and the day after that.

Ethically I would say he has the right to end intolerable suffering.

If there was no hope.

I'm not aware of it, if so.

Are you speaking of the common man?

He's the basis of it. I think the common man is responsible for the drift toward conformity now. It's going to ruin our democracy, and is not according to our democratic faith. I believe our democracy was Thomas Jefferson's idea. I mean I think Thomas Jefferson's idea was the right idea, but we were headed for a genuine aristocracy. An aristocracy that was innate, on the man, not of him ... not his by privilege but his, by virtue of his own virtue, his own conscience, his own quality, and that by that we were going to have a rule of the bravest and the best. But now that the common man is becoming a little jealous of the uncommon man, as H. I. Phillips wrote the other day, "It's getting to the point where" he said... "Well, what's the punk got we ain't got? He's just got the breaks that's all." Now that's going to ruin the common man, because the uncommon man is his vision. And I believe man who believes in nothing he can't see, and he can't see anything he can't put his hand on.

He's a block to progress.

I don't think they matter as far as I am concerned. I don't think they're for me, so why should I be for them?

Why not say Picasso, he's a good instance.

All those reactions, and don't you think we all see as we are. And our reactions will be that reaction which is most characteristic of us ourselves. And every time we express a reaction of this sort, we give ourselves away. Somebody said that the museum out here on Fifth Avenue looked like a washing machine.

That's one of my buildings. But I've heard a lot of that type of reaction, and I've always discarded it as worthless. And I think it is.

I think Salvador Dali is an immensely clever individual; he's artistic somewhat of an artist, not a great artist.

I think Picasso is a great artist.

Probably.

I don't think so. Because I've never cared very much which way the public was going, and what was the matter with it.

Well, now I think I never said it.

(LAUGHING) I know.

You know, I may not have said it, but I may have felt it.

But it is so unbecoming to say it that I should have been careful about it. I'm not as crude as I am generally reported to be. I believe, like this matter of arrogance. Now what is arrogance?

Arrogance is something a man possesses on the surface to defend the fact that he hasn't got the thing that he pretends to have.

He's a bluff in other words.

Well, it's a pretty brittle shell.

No, that's another one of those things. I never said it. And I don't think he'd had it. I think he was just plain... had great faith in himself that would pass for arrogance. And I think that any man who really has faith in himself will be dubbed arrogant by his fellows. I think that's what happened to me.

Yes.

Doesn't affect me particularly.

Not a bit. You always have to consider the source from which these things come. Now if somebody I deeply respected had said such a thing I would be worried. I would hurt... feel hurt. But as a piece in a newspaper, blowing into the gutters of the street the next day, I don't think it counts much.

I respect any man or woman who respects himself sufficiently to tell the truth no matter what or who it might hurt.

There are so many of those people.

Where would I begin?

I admired and respected my old master Louis Sullivan, despite of his faults. I think if you are going to admire and respect anybody you'll have to put up with a few faults, won't you?

I think there is no unremitted... unremitting consecration of opinion to any individual because we all have something to apologize for, don't you think?

For instance, that thing you have in your mouth now.

Is that something that you feel like apology... apologizing for?

That is just the point.

No thank you, I wouldn't know how to smoke it.

Yes, I've smoked about six months. (CLEARS THROAT) Well, I won't go through the story. This isn't cricket.

Let' leave the cigarette smoker his solace.

I did say that. And it's true. Having had now the experience going with the building of seven hundred and sixty-nine buildings, it's quite easy for me to shake them out of my sleeve, and it's amazing what I could do for this country. And some magazine has offered me the whole magazine if I design a new capital for the country. It ought to be done.

No. I don't think the mob knows anything about architecture, cares anything about it. I think it's going to be many, many years before the mob will ever get near architecture. I don't think architecture is for the mob; it certainly isn't for education. Education knows nothing of it. And very few architects in the world know anything about it.I've been accused of saying I was the greatest architect in the world, and if I had said so, I don't think it would be very arrogant because I don't believe there are many, if any. For five hundred years what we call architecture has been phony.

In the sense that it was not innate, it wasn't organic; it didn't have the character of Nature.

Passed the drawing board some time ago. (CLEARS THROAT)

And there it is...

Because they came to me and wanted me to do the highest... the highest television tower in the world supported by wires. And that was a silly thing, I thought. So being able to build a mile-high building, I said, "Why not build it?"

No, the television tower would be at the top, and here would be a great useful structure, which would make all these silly boxes, they're trying to make look, tall, foolish. You know they had to build two of them in Central Park to take the whole of New York in. And you could destroy all the rest of it, and plant green, plant grass there, and think what you could have in the way of a beautiful city. With two mile-high skyscrapers in Central Park, would it end the agony?

Nothing. Because an atomic attack would probably do less damage to the mile-high than to anything around the town now.

No, sir, scientifically. I never talk otherwise.

Not an end to cities, but an end to congestion, yes.

And this would help end congestion tremendously. And that was one of the ideas I had in planting one. And then having a great belt... commodity belt around it, where all the trucks and trucking, and commercialization of mankind would take place, say it a mile away. Where everybody would have room, peace, comfort, and every establishment would be appropriate to every man. It's an ideal that I think that goes with democracy, isn't it?

I do.

Why? Is the nation's youth a mob?

No. I believe that a teenager is a teenager, and I think that with him lies the hope of the future. Now architecture with us is a matter of the future. We don't have it now. We haven't had it yet, in any very great extent. But we've had letters from teenagers all over this nation, for five, six, seven years, from Maine to Seattle, all over. And they want to know, if... they say they've chosen this architecture I represent for their thesis, will we kindly send them some helpful material. So, we are getting out a little pamphlet now, where we can answer all these letters, and sending the pamphlet to them. Of course they want us to help them write their thesis, but why they have chosen this architecture?

Now when they are... a few years from now, fifteen, who are going to build the buildings of the country?

The teenagers. They're not the mob.

The Frank Lloyd Wright fans. Undoubtedly. Why? Because they're on the side of Nature, and the other fans are on the side of an artificiality that is doomed. Do you believe it? I do.

Its what?

Silence.

Who's writing?

I don't think it's true.

That's my new book? I haven't seen it.

How did you get it?

Oh well, well, let me see.

Not knowing Charlie Chaplin the man, and only knowing the comedian, I would say that he has given me more pleasant laughs in hours than any other individual living. It's as far as I've gone with him.

Er... briefly perhaps and vaguely. I don't... What do you mean by anti-Americanism? (CLEARS THROAT)

Anti-Americanism

Is there anything more anti-American than McCarthyism?

Anti-American than McCarthyism.

Why did he go away?

Was he abused or something?

I don't know the details. I wouldn't be able to say.

I always wondered why he left the country.

I think he is a heroic soldier.

Heroic soldier, not a hero ex-soldier.

Although hero ex-soldier might do.

I don't know him. I don't know the General.

That is not an allegation, and I refuse to marry that girl.

I don't like intellectuals.

Because they are superficial, they are up top. They're from the top down, not from the ground up. And I've always flattered myself that what I represented was from the ground up.

Does that mean anything?

(LAUGHS)

Well now, don't ask me as an intellect, because how would I know, but he's a hell of a nice fellow. And one of the nice things I know about him is that my wife voted for him and I voted for Adlai Stevenson.

It was against my conscience but I thought he was too good for the job. And I was glad he wasn't elected.

I voted for him because I thought he would make a good President, but against my conscience because I thought that he was too good for the job.

Why dream home?

Dream home?

Well, Mr. Arthur Miller has asked me if I'd be interested in designing a house for him, which would mean Mr. and Mrs. Miller, I imagine.

And for Mrs. Miller and Mr. Arthur Miller I'd be very happy to design a house, but they haven't asked me in so many words yet.

I think Ms. Monroe's architecture is extremely good architecture. And she is a very natural actress, and a very good one.

I don't... I don't think she was spoiled by too much training as an actress. Are you going to give me this book?

I never saw this before! How is it that my publisher gave it to you and didn't show me?

Mike, am I listening to my own epitaph?

Well, have I said change the way of life?

I think the way of life in which the country... to which the country is committed needs that change.

And I think it's taking place, and I see no reason why with intelligence we shouldn't plan it.

Not at all, not saying anything of the kind. It isn't their job to build, it's mine. And I think they should have a right to look to their architects to... for what they should build...

...and how they should build it.

I wouldn't like to change so much the way we live, as what we live in, and how we live in it.

We are shifting in what we live now; we don't really live in it. We don't really understand what it is to live in an organic building with organic character.

Well, let's say natural, would that suit you better?

I would like to make it appropriate to the Declaration of Independence, to the center line of our freedom; I'd like to have a free architecture, I'd like to have architecture that belonged where you see it standing, and as a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace. And the letters we receive from our clients tell us how those buildings we built for them, have changed the character of their whole lives and their whole existence. And it's different now than it was before. Well, I'd like to do that for the country.

Yes. I came by air.

Quite so.

It does not. Because it never was planned, it is all a race for rent, and it is a great monument, I think, to the power of money and greed trying to substitute money for ideas. I don't see an idea in the whole thing anywhere. Do you? Where is the idea in it? What's the idea?

But my dear Mike, there was a justification for that. When there was no other means of communication than by personal contact. That's when the plans for this city you are living in now originated, it originated back there in the middle ages when the only way you could have a culture, the only way you could get social distinction or any education from it was by ganging up, but if our...

...if our modern improvements, or what shall we call them, advantages are advantageous we can't get it here in the city anymore.

Well, I wouldn't be the judge, you are. What do you say?

That's what I thought.

How would I know? I can't be my own judge, can I?

I think everybody must speak sometimes for calculated effect, and I wouldn't deny so speaking. But, I have never misrepresented myself, anything in connection with me, consciously or deliberately.

Yes.

Nothing.

It would be wrong with you, rather than sex.

I believe in it. I think that's true. And I think that it is because we don't have a religion, we don't have an architecture, we don't have an art of our own, we have no culture of our own, that society is drenched as it is from the bottom up. Instead of getting something from the belt up.

We are not a culture, we are only a civilization.

I don't think we are too young because civilization was going a long time with everybody that ever got here. (CLEARS THROAT)

Why what?

I can't tell you that.

No.

I'm not particularly interested in that feature of human character or nature. I think I'll have to leave the upper region of the pantaloons to the people themselves. I've never been particularly interested in it.

I don't think I ever had an attitude towards it. (CLEARS THROAT) I don't think I've manifested an attitude toward it. I've taken it in my stride for what it was worth and it seems to me that's the way to take it.

Yes.

Good.

I think so.

Alexander was a good friend of... of our friend, the... the President.

Roosevelt. And Alec told me that the President had read what I wrote, and said my, "My sentiments exactly."

Yes.

Do you ever disassociate government and people?

I don't find it difficult. I find that government can be a kind of gangsterism and is in Russia. And is likely to be here if we don't take care of ourselves pretty carefully. A kind of gangsterism, and instead of being something from the bottom up, it's something from the top down again.

No. I don't think they do. I think the people are unaware of all these things that are happening to them. I don't think that they appraise them at their true value.

It should, but it doesn't. It hasn't in Russia, and it hasn't here, particularly lately. It doesn't grow out of the people's knowledge of what's good for them, and what is the nature of the thing they are in. They are without the intelligence Thomas Jefferson thought would be ours, and a democracy, we haven't manifested it. We can see now mediocrity rising into high places, we can see how Jefferson's unwillingness to... to qualify the vote has resulted in this mediocrity rising into high places.

We are responsible ourselves, but we don't wake up to the responsibility. We don't take it. Where in this... where do you know, and it goes for men or women, who are consciously aware politically, we'll say, are the principles which were declared by the Declaration of Independence, the responsibility for the development of a conscience that it places upon them. You don't find it anywhere, it doesn't manifest in the street, it doesn't manifest in the movies, it doesn't manifest... sometimes in the theater we see a little of it.

That is perfectly true that there will be no turn for the better until the people awaken to the nature of the thing that has them in thrall, but this matter is not a matter for a tinker, it's a matter of something that must be grown. And I don't see it growing as Thomas Jefferson thought it would grow by education. I think education has been lax in all this thing, I believe we haven't gone to school to learn about ourselves, we haven't gone to school to learn the nature of things; and until nature study is the basis of our education we'll continue to be in danger communism, of all the -isms and the -istics, and the -ites that you can name.

Communism is utterly, from my stand point, wrong, I am an individualist.

The whole world knows that.

That is right. I despise their government, and said so. I haven't had or heard a word from Russia all these years. And it would make them laugh, in Russia, if they ever heard of it, I don't suppose they have, that I've been accused of communistic sympathies in my own country.

Yeah.

That's what they're all asking me. And that's what I'm telling them, every Sunday morning, and all the time they are working with me. I don't put a line on a drawing board if the answer isn't there. And they are there, for the way of life we live which is the answer too to this very question you are asking. That's why these youngsters come to me from all over the world.

The answer is, within yourself. Within the nature of the thing that you yourself represent, as yourself. And Jesus said it, I think, when he said, "The Kingdom of God is within you." That's where architecture lies, that's where humanity lies, thats where the future were going to have lies.

If we are ever going to amount to anything it's there now, and all we have to do is to develop it.

Now I don't call that the mob. I call that human nature, and I call that humanity. Now humanity to me is not a mob. The mob is a degeneration of humanity, the mob is humanity going the wrong way.

Yes, it may. But that's our misfortune, and that's because they're not properly educated and don't have an opportunity to go right instead of left.

I attend the greatest of all Churches.

And I put a capital N on Nature, and call it my Church. And that's my Church.

That's what enables me to build churches for other people.

If I belong to any one Church, they couldn't ask me to build a church for them. And because my Church is elemental, fundamental I can build for anybody a church.

I think it's the cause of great shame.

Because it is a paragon monkey reflection and no reflection of religion.

Is that a little bit too fantastic?

You can take that to the Universities and take it to the kind of atmosphere in which they administer education for the young, and get exactly the same failure.

Sure it isn't an inferiority complex?

Yes.

I hope not.

Regret.

Because it isn't the thing that really represents the spirit of independence and the sovereignty of the individual which I feel should be represented in our edifices devoted to culture.

On the contrary, I feel large, I feel enlarged and encouraged, intensified, more powerful, that's...

And that's because, why? Because in the one instance you are inspired by nature, and the other instance you are inspired by an artificiality contrary to nature. Am I clear?

No, no, now you are on dangerous ground.

Maybe very bad, very bad. We are... Our natures are now so warped in many directions, we are so conditioned by education, we have no longer any straight, true, clean reactions that we can trust, and we have to be pretty wise and careful what it is we give up to, what it is we admire, what it is we are inspired by? I dare say that the stevedore's inspired by the prostitute whom he seeks, I dare say that all these things may be good so far as they go because they are necessary. But I wouldn't say that they are what should be, I wouldn't say that they are ideal.

I think the American Press, once upon a time, was characterized by individuals, great ones, strong men, men with great purpose, strong prejudices of course, but also strong loyalties and convictions. Today I can't see it. There is much trend in what we call the newspaper world. No, that isn't the word, what is the word for this, er... letter press life...

Which is... the whole country lives now in the newspaper. Everywhere you go, their nose is in something to read.

Well, how is it that we became so literate all at once? How is it now, that we are fed, spoon-fed, everything from A to Z, by reading this, and reading that, by this newspaper, that newspaper, this magazine, that one, we don't seem to have any life at all except by reading something. We learn nothing except by reading. What brought it about? I don't know.

To a certain extent I am, yes. I think you should not read spasmodically, I don't think you should read just for the sake of reading either. I think that if you are going to read, you should read something that'll feed you, build you up, strengthen you, and be what you need to know.

Almost none.

Truly.

Time was the one I got the most out of, for a long time.

I used to get the news from Time. But I don't think lately that it's... I've needed it. And I don't think I've read it much lately.

I don't feel that I need to get anything of that sort.

Only the general drift, the main substance of it, but particularities no.

That I'm more so. Only more quiet about it. (CHUCKLES)

Lauren McArthur, a very good friend of mine, once said to me, "Frank, here, you don't have to paint your shirt-front red and stand out on the street and holler about this," he said. And I began to think it over, and I think he is right. It is. You don't have to push hard, or talk loud, or in any way get up to defend what you believe in. If it is right, and if it is good, and it is sound it will defend you if you give it a chance. You don't have to push it. I've never pushed myself, I've never turned over my hand to get a client during my life; I have never sought publicity of any kind, I've yielded to it, because Duart Lewis came to me once when I was rolling a reporter down-hill in a kerosene barrel and doing all those things to get rid of him. "Frank" he said, "These boys have to live. Don't you understand? That you're bringing all this down on yourself just because you haven't got the as well as you do; and they are sent out here to get something, and if they don't get it, then they get fired." He said, "It takes all kinds, Frank, to make the world" And so I began to give. Here I am giving again.

Not at all. Walt Whitman is the guide on that; if you want to talk, to consult him -- read him.

Walt is a great friend.

Yes. You get so far, as I am immortal. I will be immortal. To me, young has no meaning, it's something you can do nothing about. Nothing at all. But youth is a quality, and if you have it, you never lose it. And when they put you into the box that's your immortality.

Well, you're welcome, I hope it's been of some interest...

...to whoever has been listening. But I don't know.

Don't you understand that? Any... any ham understands that. You know you very well understand that.

We're both hams, honey... we're both hams. And that was it -- how I got to be a ham -- born on a farm in Missouri I don't know... but I did. And it was the one thing I wanted... to be famous.

But I didn't know. I didn't know I was sacrificing... it was so important. You don't know at the time.

Yes.

You've worn me down, Mike.

Well, you had me on another time when you were local -- and I said that they had been enough. Now... I'm not so sure. I think you just wore me down.

Yes.

I really mean that I, I wonder about it... and I suppose I always did wonder about it. I suppose any woman wonders. But as you know, my life has changed somewhat. I had a business partnership that... well, that kept me going at the kind of thing I was doing. Made it possible. You know...I'm not a tough person.

I'm the kind of person, Mike, who absolutely says to you or anybody else what I really think at the time. And in business, and in television and in radio too... you don't... you say a dozen other things first...and then finally you come to whatever is your real answer. I don't know how to do that.

I think probably. But I think just the thought... you know Stella Karn fended off the blows, the things that you have to take...

Who died about two and a half months ago. And when I talked to you I knew she was very ill, but I didn't know that she was fatally ill -- I thought she'd beat the thing. She had cancer. And I was talking then about what I really love. I do love the job. I love interviewing people. I love those "love affairs" on the air.

Yes.

It was up to a point. Now I'm not sure. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm just in a very uncertain state of mind and I'm not sure whether -- I think that those twenty years when I was interviewing people...it was very worthwhile. I worked 'til all hours and people would pity me. They'd say, "Why do you do this? You never have any fun. Why don't you have fun --what's life for?" And I would kind of pity myself a little. I'd think Gee, why do I do this? And then one time I just analyzed it --and I suddenly knew this is what I like. I do this because it's the thing I like. I used to have my office in my home. I used to broadcast from my home. And it was wonderful for me when they all got out, and I was there alone with my books for the next day and... the guests. They weren't there, of course, in person, but they were there with me and for twenty-hours, they were my study. They were everything to me. And then I could put them on the air, and out there I knew were my real friends who wanted to hear about these people. They write me to this day, Mike, that they now know famous people better than they ever would have known them if I hadn't had 'em. Now, that means a lot to me.

Yes.

My dear Mike... that's unworthy of you. You know very well it isn't an act. Maybe I have some brains somewhere, but... if they don't show then maybe I haven't. I don't know

Oh, he always has fun. He says that he was really Mary Margaret McBride all these years. He said that the other day on the air. No, he's a comedian, you know. He writes funny columns. I think that everybody has tried to figure how I could do it. You read those early pieces --

-- about me. They called me a phenomenon and you could just tell that these sophisticated people were thinking: How does this female do it? Here she is really dumb, they thought...and she stutters and stammers around and stumbles all over the place; and yet, here are these women who buy these things she says for them to buy and they never took into account the men... and I had a lot of men listeners, too, doggone it...

What's happened?

Well...three years ago we gave up the interview programs and we didn't--

Because of Stella.

Because she was no longer able to fight as she'd been fighting to carry this on. And she didn't want to talk about it and I certainly didn't want to talk about it and people didn't know at all. They... we said that I was tired; that I'd been on the air twenty years -- and it was true; I was tired. I'd worked hard and I hadn't had very many vacations so that was the truth. But there was a deeper truth and I want to tell you that those three years were very difficult years. Because I am a ham and during those three years there were times when I couldn't turn on radio or television because I wanted so much to be part of it.

I asked Bob Ruark the other day if on the air too... whether he thought I would have to take the conflict out. I was thinking of you, of course, because you're supposed to be a person who needles and I never was supposed to needle. And yet there... you know... there are people who think we got somewhat the same results.

People often said things, but I didn't know they were going to say and that I'm sure they didn't know they were going to say. Is it because they forgot where we were, don't you imagine?

No.

Did you?

Hooray.

Yes... and you nearly ruined me in Missouri. There's a man out there... a very nice man indeed said quite seriously and soberly and sadly... that in one hour I tore down everything I had spent my life building up, because he thought it sounded so depraved.

No, of course it wasn't.

Well, I went to Rome and I met this nice man, um, Neapolitan and I fell a little in love with him. And it was about the period in my life when I decided that of everything in the world I'd rather have that I didn't have, it would be a daughter. So, I seriously considered marrying this man and I thought if I marry him in Rome I can -- well, get pregnant and go back to New York and have the baby and have it all to myself. This was my idea, but I assure you I meant to marry the man.

Yes I did. That was what I meant to do, but I didn't do it at all.

Well, he -- he seemed to have different ideas about marriage than I did.

Yes, Yes. And it was just about the time when Mussolini was going strong and I didn't think I'd like Rome.

Of course I don't. You know why I said that to you that night ... I just suddenly -- we'd been talking and I'd been, I'd been having fun and I just remembered how much fun it was when people said unexpected things and it just came to me and I said it. I've regretted it a few times.

Yes, I'm afraid it did.

Well, I think perhaps I told you that when I first came to New York, the people I liked -- did all sorts of things that I thought were almost wicked. And yet I thought, because these people did them, they're the things I must learn to do. And they gossiped and they were often unkind, they were sarcastic -- they were all kinds of things.

Mmm, I tried. I don't think I succeeded very well, because even then I had -- I have a guilty conscience.

I always feel guilty about things. And now I know that kindness and decency and -- that -- the kinds of things I was taught are the real things. As you get older you just know that. I don't care if I'm called corny now at all.

Yes.

That's right.

This is true. I think it's because -- I remember asking you this same question about religion --

-- and you said you don't go to church either and --

No? I -- I've -- I think I'm religious, but I -- I -- church ... I hate to say this because church is a comfort to a lot of people. And I - I'm not one to be copied in this respect at all, but for me, church doesn't help my religion. Now and then, yes. And if my - if I had a chance to go and hear my grandfather again in Salem, Missouri, I'd go in a minute. And I think I'd come away with something.

No, it doesn't.

Yes, I do.

Yes. I couldn't live without that.

Not any more.

Because I don't think that is prayer, really. Prayer is getting in touch with a power that's greater than you are and trying to get to the point where you can relax and lean back as if you were in a hammock and let things happen to you. Now don't think for a minute, that I have got to that point, because I haven't. But that -- that's what I'd like. Then I'd be the poised, serene, kind of person who wouldn't be second rate, ever. Wouldn't have a single second rate ambition. Because hams are second rate.

I have none.

I wouldn't know. I suppose psychiatrists would say it's something I've never resolved. Something that happened to me when I was young. We were poor, I worried about my mother, I worried about mortgages. I worried about everything. I was the oldest child in the family and the only girl. And I think that had a lot to do with it. I - I'm sure I told you that I - I always have the feeling that they'll find out that I'm not as good as they thought. And it'll all end. And it went on and on and they didn't. For a good while.

I'm afraid I do.

I think that honesty is the first principle of a commercial. Honesty. I could never talk about a product that I didn't believe in.

Well that's all right. I didn't say it couldn't be entertaining. I don't know what he's talking about. Did he go on and say what he...

Well lots of people think commercials are too long. I used to have a fine system with mine. Sometimes they were long. I've been known to do fifteen minutes of commercial all at one time. But then, the next day I might do one minute for seventeen products. So I kind of evened it up. I think it just depends ... but of course, I realize you can't do that and that's what's the matter. My old kind of thing, you can't do it now. You couldn't do that on television.

I could?

Oh!

Well, I went to one bullfight in Spain, and I'm afraid I got sick.

I can't see it. I can't even see hunting, Mike. And yet -- Bob Ruark, we certainly are giving him a lot of publicity -- he said: You eat steak, don't you? Which is the trite ... accusation.

I can't even look at that. Not, not until they told me that they don't really hurt each other.

Well, that's what somebody told me.

Oh. Well then I won't look at it.

Well -- I, I was in New York, you know, during prohibition and it's pretty awful. That bathtub gin that people went around drinking. The way everybody felt forced to drink. It was a matter of honor with them. No, I'm against prohibition. You - you'd think my grandfather's granddaughter would be for it, wouldn't you? But I'm against prohibition. It didn't prohibit, that's why.

I'm against that.

Well, I'm just against gambling.

Yes.

Well, I'm afraid it is. I think that, it was just that I -- we couldn't even play cards. We could play flinch and authors, which I found out later, resembled card playing, you know. And I couldn't dance. And I was very strictly brought up and a lot of it has stuck. And the gambling thing has stuck.

Yes.

Now, what a question to ask me. About all I know about them is that young girls look pretty in them, old ladies look horrible in them, and I could never wear one. How's that?

Well, don't you think that things have changed even in Paris, Missouri, now? Communications has done that. They know, they probably never sit next to each other anymore and a lot of things happen there, divorces happen there, all kinds of things happen there now that never happened when I was a little girl growing up.

Well, they mainly aren't in -- newspaper people, artists, a couple of artists who live -- well, you know the Haders. Bert and Elmer Hader. They've been my friends all these years since I've been in New York. I never, I never cultivated these love affairs that we talked about, that I had before the microphone. Someway there was never time. Sometimes people would ask you to do things and I would think it would be wonderful to do it, but my friends are the people that I've had all these years.

You certainly may. I think you're doing a wonderful job. I don't think this is the thing I'm permitted to say, but ...

I'm for you.

Not quite.

I want. I would like work that I love and that I enjoy doing and that would give service at the same time. I would like a personal relationship that would satisfy me. I think I would like to be very important to somebody. I think everybody wants to be very important to at least one person.

And I would like very much to be doing things that give, that help the world to be a little bit better place. As you get older, that matters to you. To my surprise, really.

Thank you.

Well, Mr. Wallace, it's hard to say that any one thing has made one do this or that. I think that from the very beginning -- I came from a large family, my mother died young, eleven children, that made an impression on me as a child. I was a trained nurse, went among the people.

I saw, women, who asked to have some means whereby they wouldn't have to have another pregnancy too early, after the last child, the last abortion, which many of them had. So there are numerous things that are, one after the other, that really made you feel that you had to do something.

She was born a Catholic, yes. In Ireland.

No I don't think I had anything of the kind in mind-- I was -- I was what I would call a born humanitarian. I don't like to see people suffer, I don't like to see cruelty even to this day, and in nursing you see a great deal of cruelty and unnecessary suffering. At that time, there was no opposition as far as the church was concerned, any church. It was mainly the law, the Federal Law and State Laws, that one had to--to think of. The church was not in my mind at all.

Well, I don't remember that letter -- (LAUGHS) -- how it was written, but I think it was not question of a -- a marriage at all, there's a certain satisfaction in a --doing something that is going to alleviate the sufferings of women, in particular, and I was quite a feminist, at the time.

...and a -- yes -- and a -- I naturally didn't want to see women take all the suffering of child-bearing and of pregnancies. So it was a pleasure in a sense to think that you were striking at an archaic law, which it was..

...it was put on the statute books by Anthony Comstock some years ago, and a no one had stood up against it and no one had--had tried to change the laws, and at that time not even a doctor had a right to use the United States Mail in common carriers for books, for learning, for anything that he had to do with this question. It was considered obscene. The whole question was considered obscene.

Well, not entirely, the population question is a great concern today and the a the rate at which the birth - births come-in to the a we're saving them now - at one time the children died…they didn't have the food. Today our population all over the world is getting certainly better consideration and better conditions than they had at the time when I was there. I went to every country because I was invited and a--I didn't spread--go into the country myself--I was invited to go to Japan and to speak there, have eight lectures on the question of Birth Control and Peace.

Say it again.

Well, I think that Birth Control--if you keep the population more or less static until you pick up your resources, certainly you'll-- keep--prevent their starving.

Well, picking up the resources there's just a limit to that too. There's just so much -- take Japan -- and she cannot feed they've had the best experts come there when MacArthur was there and the best experts would say that they have twenty million more people than they can feed; she's got to be fed outside in some -- in some way. She's got to have that kind of help if she's going to keep from fighting.

Oh, Mr. Wallace, you hear so many fantastic things what can happen, what may happen -- ah -- this and that --I've heard it for the last thirty years, at any rate, of what could be done but it's never done, and the thing is what is it now -- what have we got today…A very distinguished woman spoke to me about Arizona and she said I wish you wouldn't talk about population --she said all the population in the United States could be put in one state and I said what state -- she said Arizona.

I said did you ever hear of caliche--she didn't know if I was talking about a delicatessen or what. I said well, caliche is harder than any rock, and it's usually about three inches below the ground, where-- it looks beautiful it looks as if you could have food, it looks as if you could have corn or wheat or cotton--but as a matter of fact you have to dynamite caliche out of the ground again in order to have a little shrub have a little grass or a few flowers so many problems that-- when it comes to that. And the demographers, I never heard of any one that would agree with that. That we could have another in the world. Another, another third.

Well, I think that the opposition is mainly from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

The hierarchy...

They come to all of our clinics just the same as the non-Catholics do. Exactly the same.

Well, it's very wrong, it's not normal it's -- it has the wrong attitude towards marriage, toward love, toward the relationships between men and women.

I disagree with that a hundred percent.

My feeling is that love and attraction between men and women, in many cases the very finest relationship has nothing to do with bearing a child. It's secondary. Many, many times and we know that --you see your birth rates and you can talk to people who have very happy marriages and they're not having babies every year. Yes, I think that's a celibate attitude...

Oh, I certainly do take issue with it and I think it's untrue and I think it's unnatural.

... It's an unnatural attitude to take --how do they know? I mean, after all, they're celibates.They don't know love, they don't know marriage, they know nothing about bringing up children nor any of the marriage problems of life, and yet they speak to people as if they were God.

Not if they were intelligent people and they had some reason for thinking of children as a responsibility, or they -- some disease that they might have, that they wouldn't like to pass on to a child and I think it would be a very unselfish attitude for them to take if there is a disease.

I don't think it's a misuse. I think if they're intelligent adults that they must know what they want, they must manage their lives themselves and certainly there's nothing birth control--than there is in other things that you might deny yourself.

You'd have to ask a Catholic that, I couldn't say what their motive is.

Well, I don't have much to do with the--with the hierarchy and I know that the people that come to our organization and want to have the same methods, or whatever it is that one can have, to prevent a pregnancy that those women say to us--I, we ask their religion very often and they say, "I am a Catholic, I was raised in the Catholic Church, on this my Church is wrong, on this, this is the the one thing, I will never be anything else but my Church is wrong on this one thing" and that is said over and over and over again. So what the motive is...

I don't care to, thank you.

Well, simply because I don't think that a -- that the Church has changed in its attitude, some of the hierarchy have changed their attitude. You can't say the same thing that you might have said a year ago or two years ago as to your belief, as to your opinions. I'm not going to --

I've read it.

Well, if you read their papers, where they point out Boston, that that's what had happened in Boston in Massachusetts. They had simply out-bred the Protestants and they're -- they -- in Boston in Massachusetts they have control. I read that in their own papers

Alright, I have no quote what they do, so they...I think that the question in my mind is that they may do and order their own people to do as they wish but I object to their having the same rules for people who are not of the same religion.

I doubt it.

Certainly.

Where was it taken from.

I doubt it. I don't believe I ever made such a remark.

Well, there's many reasons of course -- if we had more records of it to go on with Christianity and I think I was speaking of Havelock Ellis as having clarified the question of homosexuals...making the thing a --not exactly a perverted thing, but a thing that a person is born with different kinds of eyes, different kinds of structures and so forth...that he didn't make all homosexuals perverts--and I thought he helped clarify that to the medical profession and to the scientists of the world as perhaps one of the first ones to do that. That was one of things that I meant in that.

That they have a right to say --

I suppose they have a right. And they certainly do it -- but so have the others and yet they're only 45% of the population -- and that is not the majority.

Certainly. I'd have no objection to their having a say about it--but I think we should have the same right. I say "we", I mean non-Catholics .

Honestly, -- where are these strange things coming from -- that I said them (LAUGHS)..I should like to know when.

Well, I don't think I put it quite that way.

Yes..

Well, I have a different attitude about--the divine--I feel that we have divinity within us, and the more we express the good part of our lives, the more the divine within us expresses itself. I suppose I would call myself an Episcopalian by religion and there's a--many other, if you travel around the world you get quite a bit of the feeling of all--all religions--have so much alike in the divine part of our own being. And I suppose you just couldn't just put that into a book or you couldn't put it to a phrase or a sentence.

I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world--that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin -- that people can -- can commit..

What-what would they be?

Well, I'm not going to specify what I think is a sin. I stated what I think is the worst sin.

I don't know about infidelity, that has many personalities to it--and what a person's own belief is--you can't, I couldn't generalize on any of those things as being sins.

Well, I naturally think murder, whether it's a sin or not, is a terrible act.

Well, as a great many of our clinics are including, in the work that they do in birth control clinics, having marriage counseling. So when the woman or the man come and complain that their marriage is on the skids--we invite them to come and have special talks with some of our psychiatrists or others who are making a study of that all over the country. Where we have about five hundred clinics -- they almost all include marriage counseling and marriage erection.

For different people, yes...it certainly was for me, and for my husband. We had a very happy marriage...he had different friends than I had and--I don't believe in forcing, after all we were two adults, forcing your friends on another person when they have an entirely different outlook--it worked out very well.

Would you like to see them?

(LAUGHS).

Five boys and a girl in that family.

Two girls.

And, Mr. Wallace, I've never smoked, but I'm going to begin and take up smoking and use Philip Morris as my... as the cigarette for me to take.

Because for this kind of eccentricities correspond with more important and the more tragical part of my life.

The more philosophical.

Because discover and make one tremendous speech, a most scientific in the Sorbonne in Paris... of what my discovering of the logarithmic curve of cauliflower.

logarithmic curve of cauliflower.

And if in time the logarithmic curve in the horns of rhinoceros -- in this time discover, this is a symbol of chastity, one of the most powerful symbols of modern times.

In my opinion it is the more... urgent and the more dramatic because the chastity represents the force of spirit.... chaste in any religion, you know because of promiscuity, the people make love, there is no more the spiritual strength, no more the spiritual thoughts.

Because I think there is nothing like it. The audience understand Dali when penetrate in the bottom of the sea...

Penetrate.

In the bottom of subconscient mean... sea... In-- inside the sea.

In the depth of the sub-conscious.

Exactly. The sea is one very clear symbol for arriving this stage of...

Because incidentally, make one movie in France, only it is movie of myself dance Charleston and my friends look this piece of movie at all, Dali in this part is much better than Charlie Chaplin. For me is very interesting...

...because you see in Dali is one marvelous painter, in living time is one marvelous clown... much more interesting for everybody

If it is possible, live two together is very good, you know. Charlie Chaplin is one genial clown but never painted like Dali, Charlie Chaplin's living times paint masterpieces. Or is thousand times much more important to Charlie Chaplin.

In many different fields, you know.

Yes.

The most important in my life, modern clown, modern painting, modern draftsmanship is my personality.

My personality?

My personality is more important than any of these little facets of my activities.

Is my personality.

The painting, the clowning, the showmanship, the technique - everything is only one manner for express the total personality of Dali.

This is very important because myself work constantly in the moment of sleep... Every of my best ideas coming through my dreams and the more Dalian activity consists in this moment of sleep.

The most important things happen in the moment of myself in sleep...

No, Dali. Of course, the cosmogony of Dali.

Cosmogony of Dali.

This is in advance of a new nuclear physics, because every of my paintings, everybody laugh in the moment of look for the first time but almost after twelve years every scientific people recognize the area of this painting is one real prophecy in the moment of painting my soft watches, the more rigid object for everybody, and myself paint these watches in the soft Camembert-- everybody laugh. The last development of nuclear physics proved to a new conception of space-time is completely flexible. Now it is in microphysics the time brought in reverse and this proved that this object of completely surrealistic approach of soft watches for what is completely true and scientific...

Every painter paints the cosmogony of himself.

Raphael paint because of the cosmogony of Raphael. Raphael is the Renaissance period. Dali paint the atomic age and the Freudian age nuclear things and psychologic things.

First Dali, after Dali, Picasso, after this, no others.

The two geniuses of modern painting.

Because luxury is one product of monarchy, and myself every day becoming more monarchy, not in a political way because never is Dali interested in political... but...

In the philosophical and cosmological...

Yes, because in the modern sense, the new discoveries of chromosomes and physics and biology, everything through the monarchy is the most luxurious things in life...

.....and the most perfect.

Because the little young peoples completely stupid, you know.

They all only believe geniuses are old people (like) Leonardo de Vinci or arrive at some real achievement.

Because in the modern physics everything is weak, every proton and neutron is surrounded of weakness, of nothing. In this moment the most fantastic thing in physics is le anti-matter. Every new physician talk about anti-matter, and Dali paint, 20 years ago, le first anti-matter angels.

This is one feeling everything is erotic in my opinion.

Erotic.

...is ugly, in the middle of everything ugly so arrive the feeling of death, everything becomes noble and sublime.

And beautiful. You know for instance, you, Micky Wallace, now is you a little good pay, a little handsome, but essentially, you becoming death, everybody tips his chapeau to you, you become fantastic man, everybody respects you a thousand times much better.

Exactly. See you make one strip tease, you become ugly in one second.

myself not believe in my death.

No, no believe in general in death but in the death of Dali absolutely not. Believe in my death becoming very -- almost impossible.

Yes.

Exactly......because Dali is contradictory and paradoxical man.

Because there is no sufficient convenience of my faith in religion. In the moment of myself believe more ?

Exactly.

This is true,

Because...perhaps it is my early intellectual training and information. But now every day is more approach of this real feeling of religion. Just one month ago-- is one tremendous operation of appendix - a broken appendix. After this operation becoming three times more religious than before.

Never remember exactly, but 54 or 53 or something.

Every day more, but is no sufficient...

Visionary things - but no supernatural.

Yes, because remind very very superstitious but this is- I'm sure is is common of every Spanish people, you know. Spanish people is very superstitious.

Yes, but no - not particularly care of this. Because, for me the important thing is look - the philosophical event of every moment. And now is absolutely sure for instance, monarchy is restored in Spain very shortly.

Prince Juan Carlos and Franco agree on its restoration. Is absolutely convincing the monarchy coming back in France very shortly after one military mayor or perhaps one De Gaulle or another....

Mr. Nixon. Yes, yes - but, but what is possible now - what is possible perhaps tomorrow you put this in quick question and...

My manner of expend my time - is the more joy, the more delightful is becoming every day - a little more - Dali.

Because in the beginning of my life, you remember in like at becoming Napoleon...

Cook and woman - one woman cooking.

Exactly ... a woman cooking. Second, like of becoming Napoleon.

A little one like it becoming Dali. And now is every day more Dali.

Well I remember very clearly many mansions. How so - not only in black and white but in glorious technicolor....technicolor.

At some phosphorous and x-luminous-x.....I told these visions to Doctor Freud in London. Freud tell me that it is absolutely true - is the region of intra-uterine memories. Probably my position - fetal position, my pupils is very hurt by my hands. Depend on my position.

Ah - it was completely paradise.

From this moment the more divine nature - in the moment of born is the moment of the paradise is lost. This is an ethereal ...

This is my hope. But is not absolutely sure. This is the trouble. You see, the death is again the regain of this paradise - this is excellent, but is not, not sure.

I enjoy my life every day more.

Every week more. Because of Sir Dali - and my admiration for Dali is becoming tremendous.

Every time is very agreeable and creative. The last dreams is about the anti-matter angels. Perhaps for five months only dream about archangels, angels, kings and the most beautiful spectacular.

I don't understand - mild?

Everybody love Dali very much.

But they pick on him.

Exactly. But this is my adolescence period. Now becoming much more quiet in these kind of sadistic things.

As a contrary - after my religious feelings becoming more strong - these sadistic things of my adolescence disappeared almost completely.

No - now every of this has disappear because every of my libido now is simply made in the religion and the mysticism.

Because in this moment of weakness in this moment Dali is true is almost crazy before met Gala. My, my brain is very close of one sick pathologic brain.

In this moment liked seduce Gala in the most terrific manner. I believe from the smell is a more attractive manner for seduce Gala. Gala becoming in love with me appears as probably the real ...Gala created the real mysticism or the real classicist of my adult life.

Oh perhaps 20 or more, but is still in love with Gala - more than in the beginning. That is something that nobody believe. Perhaps - Dali never make love avec one other woman than Gala.

And the people never believe because - everybody....

Yes, but there is no... you should believe - it's very frequent. But the other people don't think it's very exceptional.

And now my obsession is the chastity, because....

...is more important for religious belief.

Merci.