Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
International bestselling novelist known for "The Manchurian Candidate" and 22 other works; formerly in film industry, retired at 42.
On the island
Eight records
The g great Jack Teagarten playing his lovely trombone in Body and Soul
Well, th this this goes back to uh when I was 18. It's called Vals Vanite. And it's an alto saxophone performance.
Leopold Stokowski & The Philadelphia Orchestra
Now this goes back For me, uh to fantasia, it's called uh Night on Bear Mountain by M muzorke. And we're we're going to hear the Most despairing passage ever ever done. It's it's the Oboe from Night on Bear Mountain.
This is the master of all Francis Albert Sinatra singing Bad Bad Leroy Brown.
I wonder about this marvelous Ray Charles, who just about eight months ago appeared in the state legislature of the state of Georgia and sang this wonderful song.
But this time The Most adorable men of the century. The Beatles singing When I'm Sixty Four
Well, this is that marvelous married couple of Las Vegas, Nevada. Lulului Prema and Keely Smith singing Embraceable You.
Baubles, Bangles and BeadsFavourite
Robert Wright & George Forrest
The beautiful Peggy Lee singing baubles, mangles, and beads.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:55Do you think you might look forward to an exile on a desert island?
Oh, indeed, yes. We lived overseas for 27 years. I say overseas from New York, which was where we started from. And suddenly I got a perspective on my own country, just from being away from it, for months and months at a time. And I think to be on a desert island that same kind of objectivity would return to me.
Presenter asks
1:23Would the isolation equal inspiration for you?
No, I I don't believe in inspiration. It's really uh a motor habit. It's something that you do every day of your life. Now, I I work about uh seven and a half hours a day and uh I do that seven day days a week so that uh after twenty-nine years, if I'm not writing at the time of day when I uh usually am writing, I become very restive and very nervous … I I don't think you'd be able to pay the grocer if you if you relied on inspiration.
Presenter asks
3:42What sort of a family did you come from?
Well, my father was an attorney. He was also a captain in the United States Naval Reserve, which came directly out of World War One. And they were a comfortably placed middle class family who enjoyed wonderful harmony.
The keepsakes
The book
Boy Scouts of America
Well, it has an answer for every problem, mental, emotional, mechanical, or in terms of shelter. It's one of the soundest books and best reading that I've ever read.
The luxury
As the years go by, when you come to leap year, the watch now just leaps the time and it becomes the correct day, date and year. So I'd always know what year it is. That's kind of important.
Presenter asks
4:05How bad was [your stutter] when you were a child?
Until I was 18, I couldn't speak on the telephone. And then my mother took me to a gigantic hospital complex called the Neurological Institute, and they decided that I should have been left-handed instead of right-handed. So they invented a series of exercises which were to train my motor move move move move move movements with my brain. which was reading aloud for one hour each day, and writing down just the first letter of each word as I said it. After thir thirty days A motorhave habit was formed. So that when I spoke on the phone, I would write The first letter of each word I said on my Trouser-like. And it worked.
Presenter asks
16:27Why did you decide to retire [from the film industry] at the age of forty-two?
Well, I got three duodenal ulcers. All at the same time. And my wife, the sensible one in the family, said, Well, you can't go on with this kind of work. The only thing I knew how to do was spell, so I decided to take a shot at writing a novel.
Presenter asks
18:03Where did you get the idea [for The Manchurian Candidate] from?
At the time, the press was filled with stories about uh brainwashing. And the idea of people invading your mind was abhorrent to me, and I must have decided it would be to any reader. Then I began to think of all the ways we are brainwashed, positively instead of negatively … Brainwashing just fascinated me, and because I had learned about that from Korea in the Korean War, I set the opening of the book in Korea
“I don't believe in inspiration. It's really uh a motor habit. It's something that you do every day of your life.”
“Really the only word to describe those men is that they were unilateral. They only thought in terms of things that went into them, and they never thought in terms of things that that went out from them.”
“I always think of them as uh the owners of a country, and and they're the ones with the most at stake from their own subjective point of view. And uh the rest of the nation are their employees.”