THE ENORMOUS CROCODAHL
Inside Roald Dahl’s ‘cruel’ real life ahead of new film To Olivia
TO his millions of young fans Roald Dahl is the creator of chocolate rivers, fantastic foxes and big friendly giants.
But behind closed doors, the children’s author displayed some of the ugly behaviour associated with his more cruel and twisted characters The Twits.
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New movie To Olivia, out today, hints at the Jekyll and Hyde nature of Dahl, who could be every bit as nasty as the baddies in his much-loved books.
The author — played by Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville, 57 — is shown jealously undermining his film star wife and hitting out at those around him following the death of his seven-year-old daughter Olivia from measles in 1962.
Dahl, who hosted ITV’s Tales Of The Unexpected — based on his dark short stories — from 1979-85, was also known to have made anti-Jewish remarks, once saying, “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity”.
In December the official Dahl website issued an apology for his anti-Semitism.
In the film, the writer’s first wife, Patricia Neal, played by Keeley Hawes, 45, informs him she wants to return to acting, with a role in 1963 Paul Newman movie Hud.
He dismisses the idea, telling her, “They won’t even notice you’re not there”. Patricia did, however, take the role — and went on to win a Best Actress Oscar for it a year later.
The towering 6ft 5in author behind children’s favourite The Enormous Crocodile is also shown having a meltdown when Patricia tries to praise the first draft of his famous Willy Wonka book.
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The film is based on An Unquiet Life — a biography of Patricia by her friend Stephen Michael Shearer.
Stephen, who describes Dahl as “rough and uncontrollable”, believes that while the author was jealous of his wife’s career, he also needed the money she earned from being a Hollywood star.
He told The Sun: “He was undermining her because he had an ego. Roald Dahl’s ego was much larger than Patricia Neal’s. He was a complicated man, definitely.”
When Welsh-born Dahl met Patricia in the US, she was a film star in the golden age of cinema. She had dated Ronald Reagan and had an affair with a married Gary Cooper.
Best known at that point for sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still, Patricia could earn in one week what struggling writer Roald would get paid in a whole year.
Patricia first considered him to be rude but eventually fell for the dashing ex-RAF pilot, who had a reputation as a ladies’ man. After marrying in 1953, the couple moved from the US to Great Missenden, Bucks, to bring up a family.
The film shows that Dahl was a devoted father who loved to tell their five children colourful tales.
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He once wrote his children’s names in the lawn using weed killer and convinced them the next morning it was the work of fairies. Stephen, who spoke to all of the couple’s surviving children, said: “He loved his children, because they were part of him. All of the children loved their daddy very, very much.”
But when firstborn Olivia was so cruelly taken away from him, he could not cope — and he increasingly turned to alcohol.
Stephen explained: “Any man would grieve the loss of a child, but his took on mammoth proportions.
“His daughter Tessa said that Patricia held them together as a family as best she could because Roald couldn’t show his grief.
“Pat would tear up sometimes about the loss of Olivia. She was a bright, bright little girl.
“She would write poetry and make up songs.”
Looking after their son Theo was particularly challenging as he had been hit by a taxi in New York while in his pram, shattering his skull.
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As a result, Theo had fluid on the brain and needed a special device, partly designed by his dad, to alleviate his suffering.
While Dahl’s books have now sold over 250million copies, in 1961 his most recent, James And The Giant Peach, had shifted just a few thousand.
So in 1962 when Patricia was offered £25,000 to play the housekeeper in Hud, she accepted.
Stephen said: “She told me that when she read the original script she instinctively knew that character.
“But she told me Roald didn’t think it was worth her time.”
In 1965, a year after her Oscar for that film, it seemed her career was over when she suffered a stroke during her fifth pregnancy.
She was left in a coma for three weeks and her condition was so bad that one newspaper incorrectly announced her death. But she learnt to walk and talk again, thanks in part to her husband’s tough love.
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Stephen said: “Pat told me, ‘In many ways he did help my recovery from a stroke’. She respected him as a man and a writer.
“Roald raised their children after her illness because she was totally incapable of being the mother she once was.”
His regime of therapy, which was immortalised in the 1981 Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde TV movie The Patricia Neal Story, confounded the doctors.
But Stephen added: “I find a lot of the motivation behind her recovery in the mid-60s was because he wanted to get her back working. They definitely needed that income.”
Those years may have been hard, but it was Dahl’s betrayal in the bedroom that ended their marriage.
For more than a decade he had been having an affair with Patricia’s friend Felicity Crosland.
After finding out, Patricia divorced him in 1983.
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That same year, Dahl married Felicity and they stayed together until his death, aged 74, in 1990.
Stephen said: “Pat made a lot of tapes during the divorce in the 1980s.
“She was consumed with anger. She was able to let out that hatred because of the affair.”
It was after the divorce that Dahl’s book sales really took off and he became a wealthy man. Classics including Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, The Witches, Danny, The Champion Of The World and The BFG, have all been made into major films.
And characters such as Matilda and The Enormous Crocodile are school Book Week favourites.
Dahl dedicated much of his later life to children’s charities and was a keen advocate for vaccination programmes — because a jab would have saved Olivia’s life.
After Patricia recovered from her stroke, she got her career back on track in the US and befriended Stephen, later encouraging him to write her biography.
But it was only when it was clear her ex-husband was dying of cancer that Patricia managed to forgive Roald for the hurt he had caused. Their children had asked her to visit him in his final months at his beloved home in Great Missenden.
Stephen revealed: “They made amends shortly before his death. She went over and literally was by his bedside.
“Patricia wanted to share the goodness in his final days — she did it more for her children.”
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Heavy smoker Patricia, who never remarried, lived another 20 years, eventually dying from lung cancer at the age of 84 in 2010.
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Stephen concluded of his friend: “It was a life touched by highs and lows that most of us will never know.”
- To Olivia is available on Sky Cinema and Now TV.
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