Dr. Seuss`s wife gives new life to his works

Dr. Seuss never meant to invent the Grinch. He didn`t plan Sam I Am, or beseech the Sneetches to leap into the breach.

And as for the Whos who live in Whoville: Who knew?

"(Each character) was in his head, and he had to get it out of his head, in order to go on with the next thing that was going to be in his head," says Audrey Geisel, who was married for 23 years to Theodor Seuss Geisel.

"He just put it out there, and for some crazy reason, kids loved it. Understood. Became part of it.

"One thing he never did," she adds, "was talk down. `Course, when you look at the whole of his work, he isn`t talking up; he isn`t talking down. He`s talking sideways."

Up, down, sideways: That pretty much describes the many directions from which Seuss-inspired cultural events will careen toward audiences this fall.

In fact, so big is the impending explosion of all things Seussian that if it were a story by the revered children`s writer, it might be titled "Horton Hears a Ka-BOOM!"

"Dr. Seuss` How the Grinch Stole Christmas," a Universal Studios movie starring Jim Carrey and directed by Ron Howard, premieres Nov. 8.

The very next day sees the Broadway debut of "Seussical: The Musical," a melange of Seuss tales that began a preview run in Boston in August.

And on Nov. 19, the stage version of the Grinch story returns to the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, where it has had hugely popular runs the past two seasons.

Add to that the opening of Seuss Landing last year at Universal`s Islands of Adventure theme park in Florida, plus several other projects in the works, and one thing is clear: The Doctor is in the house.

Like the birth of the Seuss characters themselves, though, it wasn`t exactly planned that way.

"Somehow, they`re just tripping over each other, all of a sudden," Audrey Geisel says of the Seuss happenings, chatting in playful cadences that at times seem to take on a Seussian music.

She is holding forth over breakfast at the La Valencia Hotel, not far from the La Jolla, Calif., home she shared with her late husband.MOTHER SEUSS

Petite and perfectly turned out in a beige suit, she raises a toast with a glass of grapefruit juice, and kids about being an early-morning fixture at the cafe`s corner table ("They`re going to put up a plaque here for me," she jokes. "Nothing showy").

When "Ted" Geisel died in 1991, Audrey became the keeper of his legacy - of all the characters he created and all the books he wrote, from "The Cat in the Hat" to "Green Eggs and Ham" to "Oh, the Places You`ll Go!," nearly 50 books in all.

And it is she, as head of Dr. Seuss Enterprises, who presides over the licensing of all these works - for the new movie, for the musical and for any other uses of Seuss.

It is a huge job, because the work of Dr. Seuss only grows in popularity. In fact, Audrey Geisel says she was all but forced to begin licensing Seuss properties shortly after her husband`s death, when counterfeit Grinches and other items began to flood the market.

"I had to. Had to," says the 79-year-old Geisel, who became Ted`s second wife in 1968. "The first thing that alerted us was the fact that when you go to a rock concert, when you go to a sporting event ... there would be Seussian things sold. Just bootlegged.

"And we had to spend muy bucks to protect (the copyrights), because there are so many critters, and each one in all of the cultivated countries had to be protected. We had them all over. Oh!"PAST DEALS

The licensing is not an entirely new thing, notes Karl ZoBell, a lawyer and longtime Geisel adviser who is now vice president of Dr. Seuss Enterprises.

"What`s being done is really a continuation of what Ted did. I have file drawers here full of deals that he did," says ZoBell, who estimates the late author signed some 20 licensing agreements, "some for significant amounts of money."

The sticking point, ZoBell adds, was that Geisel`s "principal interest was his art and his books. He simply didn`t like devoting attention to merchandising."

Nonetheless, says ZoBell, "I`ve heard those suggestions that some kind of sacrilege is going on. I`m perplexed by that."

ZoBell declines to give specific figures on licensing income, past or present. But Business Week magazine estimated several years ago that licensing was bringing in $7 million to $10 million a year.

While ZoBell acknowledges that "there is a point at which something can be done excessively," he also speaks of the Seuss team`s vision for sustaining the legacy.

"We typically try to look out 50 years - (at) what`s the strongest likelihood of keeping the books alive and the characters alive so that they`ll be healthy 50 years from now," he says.

Audrey Geisel agrees that it all comes back to the books.

"All the Seussian critters - they`re not from a cartoon, they`re not from Hollywood. They`re from American literature. And they are here, period.

"And that`s why Ted`s work is different. It basically started from literature, and will go on in literature. ...

"Nothing changes at the core," she adds of her late husband`s work, which earned him a special Pulitzer Prize in 1984. "It stays the same. All this stuff around it, it can come and go."

But even she is not sure how to know when enough is enough - or whether, when it comes to Seuss, such a thing is even possible.

"We`ll just keep rolling along," she says. "There are so many Seussian critters, some that people say, `I never knew (about) that.` Some will become enlarged, and take center stage in their own time."

Among the "some" may be the Cat In the Hat, that signature Seuss character. "Negotiations are going on as we speak" for a movie version of the Cat`s life, she says.

"Oh, the Places You Go!" also could be a movie candidate, though "we`ve had a great deal of trouble getting it to go," she notes. "It`s been tried, and the drafts have been ... " she pauses ... "not acceptable. So it`s come home again."HORTON HEARS HOOPLA

But for now, the spotlight belongs to the Grinch - and, of course, to Horton, who is the centerpiece of "Seussical."

"This is Horton`s time," says Audrey Geisel with a smile. "And if there were one word I would use to describe the `Seussical,` I would say seamless."

She adds: "It`s really quite delicious. Everybody who has seen it, it knocks them out. It knocked me out, but then I`m prejudiced."

The musical, directed by Frank Galati, with music by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty of "Ragtime" fame, "is going to be magic onstage," says Geisel. "And it will run indefinitely."

Although her say in the play is now over, Geisel saw an early version of "Seussical" at a theater in Toronto.

She also will be treated to a screening of the "Grinch" movie, which is already humming with Jim Carrey-fueled buzz. For a while, the project was the center of a bidding war among as many as six studios, each of them dangling Carrey as the movie`s star.

Legend is that Carrey sold Geisel on himself as the Grinch with little more than a twist of his famously flexible face. Turns out, it`s not just legend.

"I kid you not," says Geisel, still marveling at the recollection. "I had (Karl ZoBell) there, and my assistant, and my New York lawyer-agent. And (Carrey) turned around - he had his hands on my shoulders.

"And his whole face, without any makeup, Grinchified. I said, `Oh my word, he`s the Grinch!` I don`t know what it is about the man, but he can do it. And he knew it! He knew it up front. There isn`t anybody who can Grinchify the way he did."

In turn, Geisel predicts, Carrey is going to "Grinchify" the world with the movie, whose cost has been estimated at some $100 million and which will feature Anthony Hopkins as the narrator.

But the Globe got a head start on that process, when it debuted its "Grinch" two years ago.

"It`s wonderfully successful," says Geisel of the Globe show. "And what (artistic director) Jack O`Brien has done is literally put the book on the stage. You open the covers and that`s what the stage curtains are, and you walk right into the absolute `Grinch` as written.

"He didn`t allow himself any vagaries of any sort. And the colors: White, black and pink. Which sounds absolutely idiotic, but it`s gorgeous."GRINCH SPINOFFS

When the Grinch movie debuts, so will a host of related products - everything from plush toys to Who shoes to Oreos with Grinchy green filling.

Geisel calls Universal`s lineup of Grinch spinoffs "humongous." Even so, Seuss side products aren`t as widespread as they could be, she maintains.

"A great many products never hit the pavement that were supposedly going to," she says. "Everyone likes to use something. Environmental organizations, if they give out an award, want it to be the Lorax Award (for a famous pro-ecology book by Seuss).

"And we really have to kind of curtail that. If you don`t, you`re in danger of too much proliferation of your own trademarks and copyrights."

ZoBell, asked about what the new movie`s product line might mean to Seuss Enterprises, declines to specify what percentage the concern might take in for such "ancillary rights" and for the movie`s gross receipts.

He does say the deal is "probably far beyond anything anyone`s ever done for a book of this sort," and that it`s likely comparable to what a top director or actor would receive.

"It recognizes the value of the underlying material," he adds. "I think it`s a good deal."

That comes on top of the upfront fee for the rights to the book, which has been widely reported at some $5 million, a figure ZoBell does not dispute.

Much of that money, both ZoBell and Geisel say, will flow to charitable causes, of which Geisel is a well-known supporter.

"It`s a very, very healthy source of revenues for certain charities," ZoBell says. "Mrs. Geisel is extremely generous. Sometimes it`s known and sometimes it`s not known."

Her best-known gesture has been her donation of some $20 million to UC San Diego in 1995. Its distinctive library - a building, Geisel notes, that her late husband once said he might have dreamed up had he become an architect - now bears his name.

She also has been a strong supporter of literacy, and of such cultural institutions as the San Diego Symphony.

Of the philanthropy, Geisel says: "Just routinely, if it comes in here, I put it out there. I`m hard-pressed to think of an organization that I`m not funding in some way (in San Diego).

"I`m very simple," she adds. "I have one house. My car is going on 14 years of age. So I don`t buy planes and I don`t buy boats. I don`t do any of those things.

"It`s much more fun to have a hand in everything else that`s going on, as you do when you invest in (the community)."

That car - an early `80s-model Cadillac - happens to be parked just outside the hotel. It`s the one with license plates that read, simply, "GRINCH."

Like the story behind that name, and all the other stories that make up the world according to Seuss, it just keeps rolling along.

"When it extends from one generation to the next, then you know you`ve got something," Geisel says of how the Seuss legacy has been handed down. "And it will not go away. It will just become a part of that time in your life that was happy.

"Closeness. Family. Happiness. And that`s something you just don`t get, ordinarily."

(c)Copley News Service

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Author: James Hebert