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"Eight drafts!" says Geisel. "There was much I didn't like." On her no-no list was what she calls "sexual" humor that showed up in some drafts. Like what? "Oh, creating a furball," she answers, so disgusted by the notion that she refuses to elaborate. "She was really tough on me for a year and a half," says Grazer, "and I wanted to please this woman." Finally, when Geisel saw the finished film, she spoke to the producer with tears in her eyes: "Ted would have loved it so much."
In fact, Geisel seems to be a fan of all things Seuss. She rhapsodizes about the Florida theme park, and has raved about the Broadway show. "If Ted were here," she told the cast after a workshop of Seussical, "his heart would've grown three sizes today." But, of course, he isn't here. He's at home in La Jolla. And there, when movie stars and moguls aren't answering to the widow, she must answer to him. "He has to be here where he's always been," says Geisel, running her fingers across the loping Seussian figures carved into the wood of the hutch on which he rests. "The essence is there. He's just in a different form." --With reporting by Amy Lennard Goehner/New York and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles