How Curious George Escaped the Nazis

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Subscribe now to Variety Confidential, wherever you get your podcasts. And we continue with our American stories. The idea for Curious George began in the creators Margaret and H.A. Rey's earlier book about a lonely giraffe named Raffi, who befriends nine monkeys, the youngest of which is called Fifi. Eventually, the Rays decided to develop a story just about Fifi. This was one of the stories they smuggled out of France just before the Nazi invasion during World War II, only to learn when they got to the US that American publisher Houghton Mifflin had doubts about the name Fifi for a boy monkey.

And so Fifi became George. Here is Louise Borden with the story. Louise is the author of The Journey That Saved Curious George, The True Wartime Escape of Margaret and H.A.

Rey. Let's take a listen. Welcome to all who enjoy our American stories. I'm the author of many books for young readers, and my subjects range from kindergarten to the Holocaust.

When I find a real event that inspires me, like the wartime escape of Margaret and H.A. Rey in 1940, I begin a winding road of research. A few years ago, an Ohio kindergartner told his librarian before my visit to their school, Louise Borden is a studier. The librarian corrected him and said, You mean Louise Borden is a student? And the kindergartner stated again, No, she's a studier.

I love that term, studier. A project may take five or even eight years until I hold a bound book in my hands, and I'm just the first person of a publishing team who will create that new book, whether it's 32 pages or 200. Six of my books are set during World War II. I tell young readers that I didn't live through World War II.

My sisters and I were born after the war occurred, but our father served in the U.S. Army Air Forces in the Pacific and returned home, while his brother, a naval officer, did not, when his submarine was lost in 1944. I've honored my uncle by writing Across the Blue Pacific, illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker. When kids read our book and say they're inspired by Ted Walker's wartime story, it's very moving to me. Some years ago, I was asked to speak at an event whose theme was Telling the American Story. Besides my uncle, I've written about other inspiring Americans, the Wright brothers, Bessie Coleman, the first African American to earn a pilot's license, the children of Boston on the eve of the American Revolution. So I'm pleased to join in a podcast with the title Our American Stories and tell you the story behind what I think is my most important book, The Journey That Saved Curious George, The True Wartime Escape of Margaret and H.A. Ray, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Join me on two journeys, My Own Journey as a Writer and Amateur Detective, and The Journey of the Rays, who brought the story of a monkey and his friend, the man with the yellow hat, to the United States. The famous book, Curious George, created by H.A. and Margaret Ray, is now 80 years old.

But George is ever young. Whenever Americans watch tragic events on TV and see refugees around the world leaving their homes to avoid hurricanes or earthquakes or war, I'm struck by the parallels to June 1940 with an exodus from Paris and other French cities when almost 10 million people were on the roads. What if you had to flee from your home or town right now? What would you take with you as you traveled into the unknown along unfamiliar roads?

And what would you leave behind? When I was growing up, I knew those yellow Curious George books on the shelves of my school library, but I knew nothing about the author, H.A. Ray, whose name appeared on the covers.

I had no clue what the H and the A stood for. But I was a reader, and I loved social studies, and later, on my sixth grade report card, my teacher Mrs. Rieser wrote, quote, I think Louise will enjoy research all her life. Bon voyage!

When I see her words now, decades later, I know wise Mrs. Rieser would be pleased that her prediction came true. Here's a bit of background for my journey. Years ago, on a college study trip to Europe with fellow history students, my sister and I were on our own for several days, and we bicycled along country roads in Holland with just a few items in the baskets on our bikes. I never imagined then how this experience would help me when I wrote about Margaret and Hans Ray decades later. My senior research at Denison University was the European response to Hitler, focusing on resistance movements and ordinary citizens set against the canvas of wartime events. Ever since, I've held a lifelong interest in World War II. My first book for young readers was published in 1989, and at the time, I was part owner of an independent bookstore and subscribed to a trade journal, Publishers Weekly, often called PW, to learn more about the industry of books. Later, I left my bookseller job to pursue the writing life, but continued to read PW. After publishing six or seven picture books, I began The Little Ships, the heroic rescue at Dunkirk. From my college studies, I knew about the exodus of refugees from Paris to escape from the German invasion, and the plight of British and French soldiers trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk. One day at my desk, surrounded by research for The Little Ships, I paged through that week's Publishers Weekly and noticed a short autobiographical sketch of Margaret and H.A.

Ray. And in this snippet, Margaret Ray said, In June 1940, on a 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 pedaling south. We finally made it to Lisbon by train, having sold our bicycles to customs officials at the French-Spanish border.

Our migrations came to an end one clear, crisp October morning in 1940, when we saw the Statue of Liberty rise above the harbor of New York and we landed in the U.S.A. Wow. How amazing. Bicycles.

That's quintessential Curious George. Instantly, I wanted to know more. I found a map of France and traced a line from Paris to the Spanish border. Hundreds of miles.

Where did they take a train? I had an image in my head of Margaret and Hans, unknown artists in a sea of refugees, an image I would carry with me over the next years of trying to find their story. I kept marveling to myself. What an incredible journey. I assumed there must be a book about this, a book I wanted to read.

But there wasn't. No one had dusted off the history until a seed of wonder and curiosity was planted that morning when I read Publishers Weekly. I labeled my first folder of notes June 1940.

This file would grow to dozens of folders and boxes of information scattered across two rooms of our house in Cincinnati. I emailed Houghton Mifflin to ask if anyone there knew details about the race escape. No one did. And you've been listening to Louise Borden, who a student, a young student, I think aptly called her a studier. Because that's in the end what she was and is.

She's a studier of other people, a researcher, a fancier word, but I like studier. And this story is as much about her as it is about Margaret and H.A. Ray's story. In fact, they intersect. I had an image of Margaret and H.A.

Ray as unknown artists in a sea of refugees. She tracked that bicycle trip. She looked at it. What was that like? What an adventure. She tracked that train ride. She was trying to walk in the shoes of another.

And that's what studiers do when we come back. More with Louise Borden, studier, historian and just straight up great storyteller here on Our American Stories. Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring. Laundry?

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I can't cure this. And, you know, I'll take my treatment day by day. But I want to try to be engaged, be involved or be as helpful as I feel I can with the limitations I have of working full time to children. So I participate in market research to provide information to hopefully benefit others, because it's a small margin of people that have the myasthenia. But then to get pregnant, it's an even more narrow margin and you can never have too much information as an epidemiologist.

Yeah, exactly right. Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we continue with Our American Stories and with Louise Borden, author of The Journey That Saved Curious George. We last left off with this remarkable and young artistic couple landing at the shores of New York. Let's continue with Louise Borden. I emailed Houghton Mifflin to ask if anyone there knew details about the Ray's escape.

No one did. But I was pointed to Le Le Ong, the executor of the Ray estate. Margaret Ray had died recently at the age of 90. Oh, how I regretted never being able to meet her.

And H.A. had passed away in the late 1970s. Le Le, living in Boston, would become an early and steady encourager of my vision for a book. She told me she just shipped dozens of boxes from the Ray's long creative lives to the de Grumman collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. So I called the de Grumman's curator at the time and asked her to look for any envelopes with a return address in Paris.

And she called me back. The Taras Hotel, 12 Rue Joseph de Maistre. Off I went to Paris to find the Taras Hotel. But on my first visit there, yes, it still existed and was beautiful. The owner and the manager were away.

No one could help me with any information. Back home in Ohio, I found some biographical facts about the Rays. I learned the H stood for Hans and the A stood for Augusto and that Hans's last name was Reiersbach. Hmm. Why did H.A.

change his name to Ray and when? I learned Margaret and Hans were both German Jews who'd grown up in Hamburg. I learned Hans was born in 1898 and Margaret was born in 1906. That their families knew each other in Hamburg. That Hans, who loved animals and could imitate the sounds of many, lived near the Hagenbeck Zoo and served in World War I in the German Army and was a self-taught artist. That after the war, due to hard economic times, he left Hamburg to live in Rio, Brazil.

Soon I had folders labeled Hamburg and Brazil. I learned that Margaret, Margaret Waldstein, had attended art school and was a photographer and artist. And ten years later, in 1935, after Hitler came to power in Germany and began his Nazi laws against Jews, Margaret also left Hamburg and went to Rio. There she connected with her family friend, Hans Reiersbach, who was to shorten his name to Ray. And the two artists were married in August of 1935.

Very importantly, as German-born Jews, they became Brazilian citizens. And in 1936, they sailed to Europe, taking pet marmosets with them aboard their ship and traveled on to Paris to spend their honeymoon. The images for a book for young readers were all there.

Here was the larger story beyond their escape on bicycles. Without a contract from any publisher, I headed to the de Grumman collection early on a dark, rainy Ohio morning. Leaving my house at 5.30 a.m., the same time I would learn the rays left Paris.

When I finally arrived in Gulfport, I rented a car and drove 60 miles north to Hattiesburg, where the de Grumman collection is located. Most of the documents were in black and white, but scattered across my work table were the colors of the books created by Margaret and H.A. and their now iconic illustrations.

I was instantly drawn to Hans' first book, published in France and also in England, titled Raffi and the Nine Monkeys, with its bright green cover about a giraffe and nine little monkeys, including the youngest, named Fifi. I spotted a telegram among some papers, have had a very narrow escape, baggage all lost, asking for money to be wired to the rays, signed Ray. Thankfully, the rays were sabers and kept everything from their publishing lives. Royalty statements, editorial letters, drafts, ideas, sketches, proofs, and black and white photos taken by Margaret in the 1930s and 1940s. I came home from this first trip to the de Grumman with hundreds of xeroxed copies. I would later enlarge these tiny pages and translate them with the help of my sister Cindy in Missouri, and in Cincinnati, my former high school French teacher, Renee Lowther, who'd lived through the German occupation of France. I recall the day Cindy and I, with pages strewn across her dining room table, read the June 12, 1940 entry in Hans' calendar, written in French. Left Paris at 5.30 a.m. by bicycle.

We realized then that H.A. was going to tell us where he and Margaret went on the two bicycles that he'd assembled from spare parts in a Paris bike shop the day before the rays left the Terrasse Hotel. I soon had folders of maps of France, Spain, and Portugal. I made tracking calendars for the years 1936 to 1940, writing on various dates where they were, including a chateau in 1939 where the rays visited friends for three months, working on art for a book about a curious monkey named Fifi. And I added Hans' diary entries onto my 1940 tracking calendar.

Each day he'd scribbled a few words about their journey south from Paris. Then I began working on an early draft. When writing for children, I'm always thinking about the structure of the book. How can a long-ago time and complicated political era best be shown to young readers, and what will expand the text in meaningful ways? I was enchanted by a small watercolor painting at the de Grumman that Hans had made in Hamburg at the age of eight. Bingo, I said to myself. That's where I'll begin this story, in Hamburg with Hans as a kid.

Here's the opening text. In 1906, Hans Augusto Reiersbach was a boy growing up in Hamburg, Germany, a port city with canals and a thousand bridges, and the river Elbe that ran to the North Sea. At the age of eight, Hans spent many hours in the cold breeze near Hamburg's docks, watching foreign ships and barges move along the Elbe.

For the rest of his life, Hans would love boats and rivers and the sea. I took more research trips, returning to Paris to stay in a balcony room at the Terrasse Hotel, just as the Reys had stayed in a balcony room, where they spent their honeymoon in 1936. But instead of staying for a few weeks, the two artists ended up living at the Terrasse for four years. On that trip, I rented a car and drove out of Paris, gripping the wheel. I headed south along country roads to Etamp, Tours, and Orléans, using a 1940s map of France, following the bicycle footsteps that Hans had noted in his calendar diary. Then, in Orléans, I veered off their escape journey's route and took a train south to find the chateau near Lec Tour, the owners, a British couple who became as amazed by the Reys' lives as I was when I explained Hans and Margaret's years in France, their months working on book projects in a tower room of this very chateau, and later their escape from Paris. And you've been listening to Louise Borden, and indeed, Studier is becoming more and more, well, what she was, Tracker. I mean, imagine, from Hattiesburg to Paris, and then using a 1940s map, retracing the steps of this remarkable couple, these artists. When we come back, more of Louise Borden's trek to discover the real-life story and escape of Margaret and H.A.

Ray from the Nazis, here on Our American Stories. Throwdown on big matchups with DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NFL. This week, new customers can bet just five bucks and score 150 instantly in bonus bets. Download DraftKings Sportsbook now with code DK1.

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I can't cure this. And, you know, I'll take my treatment day by day, but I want to try to be engaged, be involved or be as helpful as I feel I can with the limitations I have of working full time to children. So I participate in, like, market research to provide information to hopefully benefit others, because it's a small margin of people that have the myasthenia, but then to get pregnant, it's an even more narrow margin. And you can never have too much information as an epidemiologist.

Yeah, exactly right. Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Abusers in Hollywood are as old as the Hollywood sign itself. Underneath it lies a shroud of mystery. From Variety, Hollywood's number one entertainment news source and iHeart podcast, comes Variety Confidential. I'm your host, Tracy Patton, and in Season 1, we'll focus on the secret history of the casting couch. So join us as we navigate the tangled web of Hollywood's secret history of sex, money and murder.

Subscribe now to Variety Confidential wherever you get your podcasts. Music And we continue with our American stories and the story of Louise Borden in many ways and her journey to find out about the journey that saved Curious George, and that would be Margaret and H.A. Ray's journey and how these two journeys in the end intersect. Let's pick up with Louise Borden, where we last left off. This was in the late days of cassette tapes, and when I was in my car alone, driving hours to travel to schools for author talks, I often listened to an audio recording I'd found at the de Grumman collection.

Here's a clip from a WGBH Boston radio interview of the Rays in May 1966. This recording brought me closer to the artists I was trying to write about. We were living in France when we did the first Curious George. George was really born in France. As a matter of fact, I tell you a little more precisely, we did a book about a giraffe, and the giraffe took nine little monkeys in, and one of those little monkeys was George. And then a while later, we thought of a book about a monkey, and we did this first Curious George. Never thought of a series. And then, over the years, we get so many letters from children saying, what can George do next, and won't you do another book? So then we did another book. Tell us about Curious George in the hospital. Did it start because you had a child who had to go to the hospital? No, we really don't have children. But you have Curious George instead. Yes, it is sort of a child, and it's one of the children who take care of their parents, you know.

We are in the monkey business, you might say. Tell us about your background. We're both from Germany, but my husband left in Germany in 1925, where I left it much later, and we met again in Brazil in the 30s. You mean you knew each other in Germany? We knew each other a little bit in Germany. I knew her when she was a child at her father's house, and she doesn't remember it. She came sliding down the banisters, and I was standing downstairs with her older sister, and there she came. That's how I met her.

Aren't those voices so wonderful to listen to? After Journey was published at his office in New York, I met André Schifrin, the son of Jacques Schifrin, Hans' editor at Gallimard, and showed him his father's letters to A.J. André's fifth birthday was the day the Germans marched into Paris.

The Schifrin family would also leave France due to the German invasion and because Jacques, who was Jewish, had lost his job. Jacques was the editor who'd first encouraged H.A. Rey to write for children and published Raffi and the Nine Monkeys. He would settle in New York City, like his friends the Reys, and become a founder of the publishing house Pantheon Books.

The seven original Curious George books have now been printed in the millions and are published in many languages. I signed two book contracts with Houghton Mifflin, and Amy Flynn became my editorial guide for both the book about the Reys and the book about Ted Walker, my uncle. My first visit to her Houghton Mifflin office in Boston was on an October day. I walked up Boylston Street with my manuscript, The True Escape of Curious George, tucked in my backpack, and it was snowing. October.

The calendar month that the Reys arrived in the United States. I'd recently written a book called Sleds on Boston Common, published by Simon & Schuster, and so I told myself, Don't be nervous. I love snow, and today will be a great day to discuss my heroes Margaret and H.A., who for years had walked on snowy Boston sidewalks headed to Houghton Mifflin to discuss their Curious George projects. At some point, Amy and I began to discuss who would illustrate the text, and I'd admired the work of Alan Drummond. We structured the book with two parts, two artists and Escape from Paris, and after Alan finished his illustrations, they seemed to me to be as iconic as H.A.

's book characters. Whenever I open The Journey That Saved Curious George, I love seeing Alan's watercolor map of the route the Reys followed from Paris on those bicycles before they boarded a train in Orleans and continued on to the French border and then on through Spain and Portugal, carrying with them a few possessions and precious manuscripts, including one about a curious monkey named Fifi, who had a friend, the man with the yellow hat. After spending weeks in Lisbon, called the City of Refugees at the time, the Reys took a ship, the Angola, and sailed across the Atlantic to Rio, holding those important Brazilian passports. Then, with visas to travel on to the U.S., they boarded a ship in Rio and sailed into New York Harbor on October 14, 1940.

Hans stated in a letter in the archives, one never forgets the day you arrive in America. Alan's wonderful map at the end of the book shows these sea voyages. Now kids can join the journey, too. I want them to know those roads the Reys followed and the courage it took to travel them. Now kids can be inspired by the sea journey of Margaret and Hans and the artistic talent they brought to America. Kids can also find in an in-section of the book some of the photographs that helped me as a detective.

I want them to see, as I did in Mrs. Rieser's class, that research is intriguing and fun, not boring. Imagine our world without Curious George. In late September 1940, three months after the Reys' escape from Paris, a Nazi ordinance required all foreign Jews living in the occupied zone of France to register at police stations. Beginning in June 1941, thousands of foreign Jews were deported. Margaret and Hans would no doubt have been on one of those trains to Hitler's camps. Have had a very narrow escape, Hans wrote on that long-ago telegram to relatives.

A very narrow escape. Isn't that always George? George gets into mischief because of his antics and his curiosity, but then in each book with those familiar yellow covers gets out of trouble for a happy ending. One of my favorite illustrations from the first of the seven original Curious George books shows the man with the yellow hat walking down a ship gangplank and ahead of him is George holding a passport. Today George is our ambassador for reading around the world and also for curiosity. Since the publication of The Journey That Saved Curious George, there have been exhibits across the U.S. and even an animated documentary about Margaret and Hans. As H.A.

stated in the recording I listened to on that cassette tape years ago, we are in the monkey business. Isn't this the quintessential American story of two artists who fled wartime Europe and arrived in the U.S. bringing their ideas and art? The light of the illustrations created by H.A., a man born in 1898, still shines across libraries and bookstores in our 21st century. When I'm typing away at my desk, the courage and optimism of Margaret and Hans are always steady inspiration to me. H.A.

once said, let's think of the future. That's where we shall spend the rest of our lives. How lucky we are that the Rays and their stories and their ever young book character George are still with us. Because of an escape on bicycles, because of help along the way, because Margaret and H.A.

sailed into New York Harbor, because they became proud U.S. citizens six years later. What a wonderful ending and also a wonderful beginning to this beautiful American story. Now George belongs to all of us. So it's our story, too. And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler and a special thanks to Louise Borden for sharing her story with us. And she is the author of The Journey That Saved Curious George, the true wartime escape of Margaret and H.A.

Ray. And my goodness, no truer words could ever be said on October 14, 1940. This couple comes to the New York Harbor. One never forgets the day you arrive in America. My grandparents both told me that again and again. Let's think of the future, H.A.

told his bride. That's where we'll spend the rest of our lives. And that's why people come here, too. Not for the past.

They're escaping that. They're coming for the future and for future generations. The story of Louise Borden, the story of H.A. and Margaret Ray, the story of two artists escaping from the Nazis. And best of all, the story of this character, George, who made the world a more beautiful place. Here on Our American Stories. History of the casting couch.

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