Interview of the Day

Miles Davis

Miles Davis spent two days in his New York home with author Alex Haley in 1962 for the first interview of Haley’s now-famous “Playboy Interview” series. Davis discussed his reputation for rude behavior and expressed his opinions on race. Note: The site contains links to adult content.

Davis recounted, “In high school, I was the best in the music class on the trumpet. I knew it and all the rest knew it—but all the contest first prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. It made me so mad I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn. If I hadn’t met that prejudice, I probably wouldn’t have had as much drive in my work. I have thought about that a lot. I have thought that prejudice and curiosity have been responsible for what I have done in music.”

He also told Haley, “You know the story the minute you meet some white cat and he comes off with a big show that he’s with you. It’s 10,000 things you can talk about, but the only thing he can think of is some other Negro he’s such close friends with. Intelligent Negroes are sick of hearing this. I don’t know how many times different whites have started talking, telling me they was raised up with a Negro boy. But I ain’t found one yet that knows whatever happened to that boy after they grew up.”

To learn more about Miles Davis, read his profile on findingDulcinea.

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger appeared on “The Mike Wallace Interview” on Sept. 21, 1957, to answer questions about her support for the birth control movement. She explained her motives for becoming an advocate, and defended the value of birth control as Wallace posed questions about its effect on population and morality, and the Catholic Church’s opposition.

Wallace asked about the Church’s position that birth control is a “violation of the natural law.” Sanger replied, “How do they know? I mean, after all, they’re celibates. They don’t know love, they don’t know marriage, they know nothing about bringing up children, nor any of the marriage problems of life, and yet they speak to people as if they were God.”

On whether she believed in the concept of sin, Sanger said, “I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world—that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they’re born.”

To learn more about Margaret Sanger, read her profile on findingDulcinea.

Edmund Hillary

Edmund Hillary appeared on the BBC’s “Hardtalk” in June 1999 to discuss the triumphs and tragedy in his life. He recounted his historic ascent to Everest’s peak, expressed his discomfort with fame and honors, and spoke candidly about the grief caused by his wife’s death.

“I didn’t have the complete conviction that we were going be successful,” he said. “My feeling generally was that we would give it everything we had and if all went well we might reach the summit. I was very of the fact that very good expeditions had attempted the mountain and had got very high, but had not succeeded. I just had a feeling that if we kept going and did the right thing we might get there.”

Asked if he said a prayer during the final climb, Hillary said, “I think I have sort of deep feelings urging myself on. I’ve always had the feeling that if you’re in a difficult or dangerous situation, that doing a little praying, probably you’re chickening out on the deal. I think it’s up to you to make the decisions and carry on if you want to successfully reach the top.”

Additional Interviews With Edmund Hillary
Hillary spoke at length about his life and the factors that made him a success in a Nov. 16, 1991, interview with the American Academy of Achievement.

Hillary expressed his distaste for the commercialization of Everest in a 2003 interview with the BBC’s Michael Peschardt.

A 1974 interview with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage can be downloaded for $6.45.

To learn more about Edmund Hillary, read his profile on findingDulcinea.

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was interviewed in the summer of 1956 by Marion Capron of The Paris Review. The famed Algonquin Round Table wit spoke about her writing career and her process, shared her opinions on other writers, and discussed the difference between humor and satire.

“I don’t want to be classed as a humorist,” Parker said. “It makes me feel guilty. I’ve never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn’t do it. A ‘smartcracker’ they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”

To learn more about Dorothy Parker, read her profile on findingDulcinea.

Vaclav Havel

Dissident Czech playwright Vaclav Havel spoke to Michel Bongiovanni on June 30, 1989, six months before he would be elected president following the overthrow of the communist government in the Velvet Revolution. In the interview, which took place “in semi-clandestine conditions” in Havel’s Prague home, Havel discussed his hopes for a free Czechoslovakia and the power of writers and intellectuals in changing society.

Asked how the role of intellectuals was different in the Communist Bloc than in the West, Havel first explained that totalitarianism destroyed political debate and culture. He continued, “But a strange thing happened. Politics, chased out of the door, came back in through the window. It suddenly invaded the whole spectrum of social life. Secretly, everything took on political significance: a concert, a mass, a fair … In such circumstances, the writer’s word acquires an extraordinary aura. Especially if he strives to tell the truth, without fear of the problems he is bringing down on his own head, if he ceases to be the docile interpreter of authority. Why is the writer so important? Because the tool with which he works is language, which calls a spade a spade, which asks questions. It is the quintessential tool of culture.”

Additional Interviews With Vaclav Havel
Then-President Havel was interviewed in October 1993 by Andrzej Jagodzinski of Polish newspaper Gazeta wyborcza. They talked primarily about personal issues; Havel touched on his childhood, his tastes in music, food and drink, and his need for women in his life.

Havel discussed “post-Soviet politics and the rise of Western democracy in his homeland” in a Sept. 13, 2000, appearance on “Charlie Rose.”

To learn more about Vaclav Havel, read his profile on findingDulcinea.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg conducted an oral history interview with the Dorothy Seckler of the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art on Dec. 21, 1965. He discussed his artistic influences, the conception and creation of many of his pieces, his role in artistic movements, his evolution as an artist, and many other topics.

He spoke of how living in New York as a struggling artist affected him. “I just don’t find it a very interesting motivation to work with the idea that things are difficult, or that I won’t accept the fact that things are easy. I think with affluence, which was very foreign to me during the period we’re talking about, there are new complications. If you don’t have trouble paying the rent, you have trouble doing something else; one needs just a certain amount of trouble. Some people need more trouble to operate and some people need less. And I felt very rich in being able to pick up Con Edison lumber from the streets and whatever the day would lay out for me to use in my work.”

Additional Interview With Robert Rauschenberg
Rauschenberg spoke with Paul Taylor, theater and art critic for British newspaper The Independent, for a 1990 piece in Interview Magazine. He touched on how an obsession with galleries and collecting has changed art. He said that people began to think, “Maybe I’ll get this one—a painting by this person—because it also might be very valuable someday,” and therefore, “People did not experience a painting on a one-to-one basis. That seems to have been lost in dollar signs and investment.”

Rauschenberg appeared on “Charlie Rose” on Feb. 27, 1998.

To learn more about Robert Rauschenberg, read his profile on findingDulcinea.

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman sat down in his home in Camden, N.J., in 1888 to speak with George Worman and Francis B. Lee, the two founders of The Signal, the student newspaper of the New Jersey State Normal and Model Schools (now The College of New Jersey). Worman and Lee asked Whitman to give advice for aspiring writers.

“Just this: Practice is the main thing at all times, and subservient to this but almost equal in importance, is the statement never be discouraged,” Whitman said. “Whack away at everything pertaining to literary life-mechanical part as well as the rest.”

The famed poet later offered some surprising guidance: “To young literateurs I want to give three bits of advice: First, don’t write poetry; second ditto; third ditto. You may be surprised to hear me say so, but there is no particular need of poetic expression. We are utilitarian, and the current cannot be stopped.”

The interview was uncovered in 2005 by TCNJ student Nicole Kukawski while she was searching The Signal’s archives. She described her discovery in an essay for TCNJ Magazine (PDF).

To learn more about Walt Whitman, read his profile on findingDulcinea.

Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson spoke to Larry Upton, a former minor league shortstop and Boston radio host, for an interview that aired on Oct. 18, 1972, just six days before his death of a heart attack. Robinson discussed The Sporting News’ list of the greatest sports stories of the prior 25 years, which placed his breaking of baseball’s color barrier first.

Robinson called his signing the “day that saved baseball,” but expressed concern that baseball was lagging behind other sports in terms of race relations. “I think baseball is still wallowing around in the 19th century, saying that blacks cannot manage, blacks cannot go to the front office and this kind of thing. I think it is wrong. I think what Mr. Rickey did should be expanded upon.”

Asked about his continuing struggle for civil rights outside of baseball, Robinson said, “When you see blacks and whites at each others throats, and you see the gap widening, you have to be concerned and you have to do whatever you possibly can. Blacks are no longer afraid of situations and it brings on a great deal on controversy, great deal of tragedy in this country. And I think we’ve got to extend ourselves, we’ve got to lend a helping hand wherever we possibly can. So while we may antagonize people in bringing out what’s going on, that’s what has to be done and if people don’t like it, it’s just too bad.”

Additional Interview With Jackie Robinson
Robinson was interviewed for a November 1945 edition of Yank, a weekly magazine put out by the U.S. Army, a month after he signed the contract with Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey that would lead to him breaking the color barrier in April 1947. Robinson spoke of his athletic accomplishments in college, his time in the Army, and his expectations for his baseball career.

“I realize what I’m going into,” he said. “I realize what it mean to me and my race and to baseball, too. I’m very happy for this chance and I can only say that I’ll do my best to make the grade.”

To learn more about Jackie Robinson, read his profile on findingDulcinea.

Barbara Walters

Barbara Walters spoke about her career in broadcasting with Don Carleton of the Archive of American Television on May 23, 2000. She explained her interviewing techniques and philosophies, and recounted many of her famous interviews with world figures.

On her difficult start with ABC, Walters said, “What saved me, if anything did, were letters primarily from women who said, ‘Hang in there. If you can do it, we can do it.’ And one telegram that I got one day, and this was somebody I hadn’t known, and I opened it up and it said, ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down.’ And it was signed ‘John Wayne.’ … But it was a terrible time. But again I say to young people, ‘Sometimes you have to go through something like this to know that it wasn’t all luck. And to know that you can work your way back at whatever it is, because I did, and it took years.’”

To learn more about Barbara Walters, read her profile on findingDulcinea.

Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl gave an interview in 1989 to author and screenwriter David Bishop, then a reporter for the New Zealand Herald. The 72-year-old Dahl expressed his distaste for most modern novels, told of his positive and negative experiences making movies, and spoke of the importance of encouraging children to read.

“The secret is to get children reading. As long as it’s not sex-laden or seditious or violent it doesn’t matter what they read. … I want them to be able to absorb books, not be frightened of them. If you can teach them that at ages eight, nine, ten or eleven, they have a great start. The contents of my books are not going to teach them anything at all, except to grip them by the throat and make them love to read. To me that’s very important. A non-book reader in this life is either going to finish up as a lavatory attendant, or a bricklayer, or worse.”

Additional Interview With Roald Dahl
Dahl recounted his life, explained what makes a short story, and described how he began writing children’s books in a 1974 interview with author Justin Wintle. “I said: Well, I must try and find some animals or creatures or something that are original,” Dahl detailed. “Everyone’s written about bunnies and ducks and bears and moles and rats and everything else, and Beatrix Potter’s done the lot. So I searched around, but there was precious little left. But I did try to pick something new—the earthworm, the centipede, the ladybug, the grasshopper and the spider. At first they didn’t look very attractive, but there was a chance I could make them amusing or interesting if one gave them character.”

To learn more about Roald Dahl, read his profile on findingDulcinea.