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These really are amazing.

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So they lay down a very long piece of electronic information.

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Are we rolling?

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We'll argue that on the next program.

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Where are we?

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You were telling me that I was going to ask you to say Otis Skinner read the Penrod stories in manuscript to you.

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Oh yeah.

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Otis Skinner was living in our house and Tarkington brought the manuscript out and he read it aloud to us.

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The question was, was it a good medium?

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Skinner said it was. It was great. We loved it, of course.

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We saw the play later on with Greg Kelly.

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You probably didn't know who Greg Kelly was, but Greg was a very well known actor in those days.

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So we thoroughly enjoyed the thing.

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So you were among the first people ever to hear...

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Of course, Penrod was written by people we knew.

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Herman Sherman and Vermin.

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That's part of Penrod.

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Well, that's all beside the point.

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We were talking about the environment.

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I think the environment was good because one, it left you to do what you wanted to do.

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There wasn't any particular encouragement, but there wasn't any discouragement.

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So if you had any particular talent, it would be quite apparent you'd begin to do it.

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And I think Ruth went her way, I went my way, and my older brother went the other way.

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He went into business down in Florida with Carl Fisher and people like that.

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The other advantage was that you had a chance during the course of your youth

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to make contact and get to know people that today you never could know.

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Never could know.

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As I look back on it, I have literally dozens of people that I met and knew slightly,

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so that if I ever wanted them or was interested in them, they would be glad to do something about it.

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I didn't have any feeling that they were celebrities and I couldn't speak to them like Anna Pavlova.

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Sure, I knew she was the madam and all that, but I felt perfectly free to talk with her and the rest of the company.

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So that was my contact with Ballet.

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I was always peripheral, but today I wouldn't think of going down there.

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They wouldn't think of, they'd wonder what's the doctor doing back here if somebody's sick.

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So that's one of the reasons.

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It was a quiet, peaceful atmosphere that allowed you to develop your own talents.

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I think there's much to be said for it.

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As I look at the day where these kids are shuttled around by their mothers,

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rushing from here to there and everywhere, all being taught tap dancing, jazz, ballet, this and that and the other,

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I wonder, you know, people don't learn things that way unless they want to.

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We were talking before about diet, you know.

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We've been talking about diet for 30 years and when you see what the kids are getting, being fed at noon by most of the schools,

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it makes you wonder, is it worth anything at all to try to teach people about diet?

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So that's the environment that Ruth was brought up in.

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So it was not unusual that she could go into professional ballet even though people,

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nobody ever knew anybody who went into professional ballet.

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So that when Baryshnikov and people like that came, they were coming into a world of their own.

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Once in a while, some of them would come and stay with Ruth until they could get established.

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And now they're big shots. So you don't get established anymore. You are the big ones.

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It has changed. Could you make sort of a little list of all of the people who surrounded you in your childhood?

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I know you've mentioned them, but so I could have them all in one place. James Woodcombe Riley and...

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Well, I suppose as I think of the actual where they lived, the one, Janet Flannery was the one right across the street.

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Farther up the line was Judge Elliott, subsequently the president of John Hancock and a very well-known judge.

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Then Meredith Nicholson, a well-known author. I guess Lou Wallace lived there.

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I don't think I remember him, although I'm told I do remember him, but I don't think I do.

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And then Bruce Hardingdon and then James Woodcombe Riley, who lived...

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You see, many of these people were patients of my father's, so that we got to know them quite well.

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Riley, we saw a good deal of him. He was a regular patient. I think he liked to come and just talk with father,

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because I couldn't imagine why he would always be showing up.

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But he gave me a teething cup. You know what a teething cup is?

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And it says, a couplet to a little page, which was the inscription on the thing, which was rather cute.

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But those were the people other than business people that were sort of in our circle of people that we knew.

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I don't think that the business people were quite as important in those days,

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because large sums of money didn't exist except with the Rockefellers and people like that.

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We got to sort of the tail end of that when we first went to Cleveland, where the Rockefeller influence was still present, but still very raw.

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A lot of people had been burnt by Mr. Rockefeller. They remembered him only too well,

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so they weren't too anxious to be full of praise for Mr. Rockefeller or oil or anything else.

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So that much of this sort of thing began during that period.

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Dr. Page, I wondered about it. It's all very well and good for you to say, well, it was just kind of an ordinary Midwestern childhood.

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Ordinary people. People came to the house. That's the way things were in those days.

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It seems to me that it's unlikely to be accidental that both you and your sister should both have turned out to be people

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who made very, very, very substantial accomplishments.

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Is there something that you've thought about that was part of your upbringing,

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something in your family that made you both so successful later in life?

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Well, you touched on a very difficult problem. How much is genetic and how much is environmental?

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And the scientific world is never going to solve that one, I don't think.

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So you just have to say, well, maybe we got good genes, but I suppose the only thing you can identify really is

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what was the environment that we lived in that allowed these genes, if indeed they were, is that good, to develop?

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That's the only thing that I can think of because I was born in the era when they weren't counting genes under the microscope.

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So that I'd have to say that I think it was the quiet, peaceful environment of a moderately intellectual world

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where we heard good music, mother played music, we were expected to go to Chicago Symphony Orchestra, came, we went to the symphony,

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we went to the theater, we got to know people in the theater, so none of these things were foreign to us.

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Today they're very foreign to people. I don't think many people, for instance, would know much about a symphony

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in the sense that they would know the timpani player, they'd know the conductor, they'd know the violinist. We do.

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That was so that we lived in a world where nothing was denied us, they weren't particularly paying any attention to us,

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we were just there, we were allowed to know these people. And I think that that and the peace and quiet were the things

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that allowed you to be more reflective. You thought about, little by little, perhaps we might say unconsciously,

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about what it is that you're going into. And my life has been just a series of strange events which I couldn't have anticipated,

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but on the other hand I wasn't unprepared. So that when, for instance, as an intern I was invited to form a department of brain chemistry

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in a German institute that I'd never heard of, and I didn't know what brain chemistry was, and yet there it was.

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And as I look back on it I think, you're a perfect idiot. Why would you accept a job like that? You didn't know anything about it.

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Of course I didn't know anything about it. But when I got into it I found that nobody else knew anything about it either.

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And that was where I was lucky. So in a sense I was the first brain chemist, but the rough part of it was when you try to sell yourself

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in those days as a brain chemist people said, I've never heard of such a thing. It's nonsense.

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You'd sound a bit like your sister describing when she was asked to come and be the choreographer for the Revinian opera.

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She said, well I didn't know anything about doing it, but I just sort of went ahead and did it and I was lucky. It all worked out.

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I don't think luck has much to do with it.

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Well, I don't know what you call it luck if you like, but I think it's more that you have learned to accept the changes in life

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which are unanticipated and they're very radical. And if you approach it without any fear you just say,

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well I didn't know anything about it but you asked me to do it so I'll do it.

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And then you get into it and you find out that nobody else was doing it either.

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And then as you look back on it 60, 70 years later you think, gee, believe it or not I was a pioneer.

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I didn't know I was a pioneer. But by that time nobody cares whether you're a pioneer or not so it's all right to say it.

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Can you describe for us the first time you saw your sister dance professionally and what you thought of her?

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Well, I honestly don't remember when I first saw her dance professionally.

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You see, she had been dancing professionally with Diaghilev and Pavlova and then Adolf Bohm.

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When I was in medical school and in Germany and I really had lost track of her as a dancer

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except that she would write me, will you go to a dance congress and meet your wife. So I did that.

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So that our relationship has been very nice, very undemanding.

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Ruth is a remarkably nice person to know because I never feel concerned even though I'm her brother.

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If she wants me she'll call me and if she doesn't, she doesn't call me.

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So we don't have to feel that we have to get in touch with you.

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But she's a very likeable person. I like Ruth. And we've gotten along.

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We've never quarreled over the years and we've always liked each other and that's about the way it's going.

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So that I don't remember, I suppose I saw her in the, what was the name of that thing again?

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It was Broadway MusiCal.

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Music Box Review.

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Music Box Review, yeah. I think that's the first time I saw her professionally.

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And I was so entranced by the Music Box Review itself that I didn't pay too much attention to Ruth.

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Although I do remember that she was a very beautiful person and I remember her big skirt.

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Did you hear about this? I'm sorry, go ahead.

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You know, I was trying to think of the name. Billy Gaxston was the comedian.

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Why I would remember that name when I can't remember the person I met yesterday I can't think of.

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But I think of these absolutely ridiculous things that come out of the recesses of your mind and what they're doing there.

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I haven't thought of Billy Gaxston since the Music Box Review in probably 1921.

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Something like that. I don't remember what.

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I can find the date.

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I don't know, I never met him. I laughed at him but that was all.

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You know, your sister's career, did you know about what happened with Frankie and Johnny that her ballet was nearly banned in Boston?

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Yeah, I sort of knew that. I didn't know too much about it.

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You know, Tom was a very domineering person in a sense.

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And he took charge of these things. Tom loved the aura and glamour of ballet.

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That was Tom's meat. He loved it.

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And Ruth was lucky in that sense because he was a very efficient businessman and lawyer.

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And very argumentative but he still, you know, he won his cases.

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And he took over all that aspect of Ruth's life.

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So I really heard very little of it. I didn't know much about it.

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I knew that she was looked upon as being a little peculiar in particularly putting on black ballets and things like that.

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Which I were not at that time considered the thing to do.

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Do you think that where does, is there a place that you can see in the background that you share that would make her sort of a trailblazer?

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Well, I think, again, I refer back to our environment.

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I think that we both came up in an environment which was calculated to let you take care of yourself.

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And Ruth, I don't think, ever worried about color or anti-Semitism or any, any, anything.

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She just was, if she thought it was the right thing to do, she just went ahead and did it.

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And seemed to be quite oblivious of criticism.

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And I can remember she sometimes said, well, you talk to Tom about it.

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I don't care whether these people think that or not. It doesn't bother me.

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I said, well, okay, if it doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother me either.

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So it was that sort of non-confrontational environment we lived in.

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You know, also it was an authoritative kind because you didn't sass your mother and your father.

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And we never even thought of doing it. That's the important thing.

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It wasn't, I never confronted my father, but I never thought of confronting him.

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When he said, you do this, I did it.

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And he was always fair, so was mother. And that was it.

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Ruth was brought under the same thing.

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She was never brought up to think she was a celebrity or anything great.

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She was just doing what she wanted to do and they were for it. And that was it.

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And yet, here we have her in 1924 leaving her husband on their honeymoon to go and dance with Diaghilev.

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A bit unconventional.

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Yeah, but I think Tom encouraged that.

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I mean, he, Tom was a very, well, I don't know quite the adjective to use.

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It's not broad-minded. This is just simply that he was very aware of Ruth's activities and he loved them.

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He loved the association so he could always talk.

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And whenever I was visiting them, it was always Ruth and Tom were doing the talking about it.

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I listened, and Tom felt that he was an expert on ballet.

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And he let you know it too.

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So I think that's what it was. I don't think she thought there was anything odd at all about it.

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Anything wasn't any different from when they left me in Indianapolis for two years alone.

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Just went off and did it?

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Just went off and did it. They never asked me, they never discussed it with me.

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Your mother and your sister just picked up and left?

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Yeah, and my father and my brother picked up and went to Europe for the war.

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So father was a major in the base hospital 32 and my brother was an artillery officer.

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So I was there.