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Dr. Seuss’ real name was Theodor Geisel. Dr. Seuss was just one of his nom de plumes though. The others were Rosetta Stone, Theo LeSieg and Dr. Theophrastus Seuss.
While Dr. Seuss is most famous for his beloved children’s books, he actually did much more than just write and illustrate books for kids. He also worked on several advertising campaigns as an illustrator. Probably the most well-known of those would be for Standard Oil and Flit.
He also worked as a political cartoonist in New York City for PM (a newspaper). In WWII he did work in the animation department of the Army. His work for the Army included his writing of a documentary movie called Design for Death. This film won him the Academy Award in the Documentary Feature category in 1947.
Dr. Seuss was also a perfectionist and as such he threw away around 95% of his work while trying to decide on themes for books.
So where did the Dr. Seuss name come from? In college Geisel worked on the Dartmouth Jack-o-Lantern (a humor magazine) at Dartmouth where he attended. He eventually became its editor in chief. However, he was caught drinking with nine of his buddies and the dean forced him to stop all extracurricular activities including the magazine. In order to continue with the magazine without the dean’s knowledge he started signing his name as Seuss.
He really was a doctor in that he attained a PhD from Lincoln College in Oxford in English literature.
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