As fans honor his 100th year, some fear Seuss' charm may be lost

March 1, 2004

By NANCY CHURNIN / The Dallas Morning News

When kids think of The Cat in the Hat, do they think of Dr. Seuss' mischievous, rhyming feline with the long neck and the big red bow tie? Or of cereal-box promotions, credit-card ads and a suggestive, smarmy Mike Myers character?

It's a matter of much concern to many who are celebrating today's "Seussentennial" – the 100th anniversary of the birth of Theodor Seuss Geisel, the man who gave us Horton, the Grinch and many more of the most magical figures in children's literature.

Since his death in 1991 at age 87, adaptations of Dr. Seuss works have included two live-action movies, a Broadway musical and a television show. His characters have hawked everything from candy to cleaning services.

Some see it as a battle between arts and business for the soul of Dr. Seuss. Many are eager to speak for him now that he's gone. But there isn't much consensus about what he would have wanted.

"I would say that the mass marketing of his material will eventually have the same effect as the mass marketing of anything with intrinsic artistic value: It will get dumbed down to the point where it is simply another vehicle for corporate brand-building and celebrity showboating," says Todd Pinsky, author of Homedaddy: Little White Lies and Other Tales From the Crib, and father of two Seuss fans, ages 5 and 3.

Or as Ty Burr of the Boston Globe put it in the review of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat, starring Mr. Myers: "If the producers had dug up Ted Geisel's body and hung it from a tree, they couldn't have desecrated the man more. ... This isn't about adapting a book ... it's about leveraging a brand."

But those who support current merchandising efforts point to all the products Dr. Seuss approved in his lifetime. And the very books fans want to preserve have benefited from the recent attention.

Artistic purity?

Not all the adaptations are bad or can be avoided, says Charles Cohen, author of The Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel (Random House, 2004).

"It's a question of how well people accomplish what they're trying to do," Dr. Cohen says.

He points out that Mr. Geisel, who spent years in advertising (devising the slogan "Quick, Henry, the Flit!"), collaborated on many animated versions of his books in his lifetime. And many of those adaptations, now considered classics, departed from his books both in words and look.

"What color is the Grinch?" Dr. Cohen asks rhetorically, as he describes the book and the animated special. "In 1957, when Ted drew it, it was a black and white Grinch with pink eyes and a red suit. When Chuck Jones did it, it was green. That wasn't a bad idea. You can change things if you do them well."

Of course, Mr. Geisel was alive then to approve those changes even if, according to his biographers, he and Mr. Jones sometimes argued heatedly about them.

Today, the entity in charge of the Geisel legacy is Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which is run by his widow, Audrey Geisel, 82.

It's a huge enterprise. Dr. Seuss published 44 children's books, selling more than 500 million of them worldwide. The demand is high for licensing his products. And so are the profits.

Between September 2002 and September 2003, Dr. Seuss Enterprises earned $16 million, according to Forbes magazine's Web site. Forbes also noted that this year's tally would probably go up with the royalties of the live- action version of The Cat in the Hat, which opened in November and grossed more than $100 million at the box office.

But money or no, Ms. Geisel may have her own concerns about how the characters have been adapted.

She recently told The Associated Press that Mr. Myers' portrayal of the Cat went too far. As a result, she says she will put a halt to future live-action films. Herbert Cheyette, a member of the board of directors of Dr. Seuss Enterprises, declined to comment on her statement. Speaking through her representatives last week, Ms. Geisel said she was too busy preparing for the Seussentennial to comment.

That still leaves a long line of Seussian merchandise and spin-offs Ms. Geisel has authorized, including the live-action Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a Muppet version of the Cat in The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss television show, Seussical the Musical, the Seuss Landing at Universal's Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando, and many commercial tie-ins.

Such commercialization can be a turnoff for devoted fans such as Nancy Goldberg, 38, of Highland Park.

The mother of three children – Owen, 1, Henry, 6, and Emily, 8 – even named her dog Sam-I-Am, after the character in Green Eggs and Ham. But she was put off by the flood of products in the wake of The Cat in the Hat movie.

"It was too much," she says.

But she says she feels she can shield her children from it. She explained that they weren't going to see the movie because it was a bad movie, and they accepted that.

"I just hope no one gives us the DVD as a gift."

Diluted quality?

The uneven quality of recent Seuss projects can be attributed to the fact that it's much more difficult than it seems for even well-meaning imitators to copy the genius of Dr. Seuss, says Philip Nel, an assistant professor of English at Kansas State University and author of Dr. Seuss: American Icon.

Dr. Nel believes adaptations can be good. But what upsets him and other critics is that recent adaptations don't challenge audiences the way Dr. Seuss did.

Mr. Geisel was a socially aware writer who hated prejudice, hypocrisy and most forms of authority. He used The Sneetches as a way of railing against prejudice, something he saw firsthand in his early years in La Jolla, Calif., when no one would sell homes to Jews or blacks in his seaside community.

Yertle the Turtle was an attack on Hitler. The Butter Battle Book mocked the nuclear arms race. And The Lorax pointed a finger at greedy manufacturers.

But Mr. Cheyette believes that those themes are the reason that Dr. Seuss' image will endure no matter how his works are adapted.

"I think Ted is going to be remembered as one of the great writers of the 20th century without question," he says. "He's left a lasting legacy in his books that had a formative influence on the attitudes of generations of Americans. The merchandise won't change the books any more than all the varied productions of Shakespeare can change Shakespeare."

No bane, a boon

The marketing efforts some disdain have turned the public's attention back to Dr. Seuss books, says Judith Haut, executive director of publicity for Random House. The release of both the live-action version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (which earned $260 million domestically) and The Cat in the Hat propelled Dr. Seuss' Grinch and Cat books to The New York Times best seller list.

"We saw an extraordinary increase in sales for the books when the movies came out," she says.

Such sales help more than 100 medical, cultural and socially active institutions supported by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, Mr. Cheyette says.

And controlled marketing may also help his heirs protect the Seuss image.

Mr. Cheyette says that if you don't use it, you lose it when it comes to keeping the rights to characters. After Mr. Geisel's death, there was a flurry of counterfeit Dr. Seuss products, including a T-shirt with the Cat in the Hat smoking marijuana.

If you don't use trademarks by attaching them to products, they can fall into the public domain, Mr. Cheyette says. It was a lesson that had come up once before in 1968, when Mr. Geisel lost a court case against a company that created dolls based on cartoons that he had published in a magazine. The judge determined that Dr. Seuss did not have the exclusive rights to the name Dr. Seuss.

Mr. Geisel had been creating and authorizing Dr. Seuss toys as early as 1959, Dr. Cohen says.

"He took an active role in the manufacture of the toys – sometimes an intimate one," Dr. Cohen said. "Not only did he create and oversee some of them, but it was he who proposed some of them in the first place."

In the 1970s, he authorized a wide variety of items, including a Sears bedroom set, watches, dolls, puppets and even paint. He signed a deal with Coleco Industries for a reported $10 million in 1983 for more toys, games, dolls, board games, video games and computer software.

But he was also proud of the offers he turned down.

Mr. Cheyette recalls that he once tried to talk Mr. Geisel into working with a television advertiser who offered a lot of money for the right to use a character in a holiday message. Mr. Geisel didn't want to do it.

Mr. Cheyette pointed out that since the advertisement was less than a hundred words, Mr. Geisel could go into The Guinness Book of World Records as "the writer who was paid the most money per word."

Mr. Geisel thought about it and said, "I'd rather go into The Guinness Book of Records as the writer who refused the most money per word."

Researcher Molly Motley contributed to this report.