Beat the Devils: A Memoir

By John R. David

About the Book
Beat the Devils is a memoir of the life of John R. David, which includes his research, discovering one of the first cytokines MIF (Migration Inhibitory Factor), a proinflammatory cytokine critical in autoimmunity and sepsis. John also worked on parasites affecting humans with new diagnostics and treatments.
Read Beat the Devils and learn about John and his wife of 62 years, Roberta, working together; Lisa, his daughter, COO of Planned Parenthood and now CEO of Public Health Solutions; Joshua, his son, who started the High Line in NYC; John’s director father, who married Deana Durbin; how John sent 200,000 condoms twice to prevent HIV/AIDS at the Carnival in Salvador, Brazil; and much more.

About the Author
John R. David practices the piano for three hours a day and records duets with his wonderful composer/cellist/piano teacher, Andrea Casarrubios. John’s son and daughter live five minutes away and his two granddaughters, Nathalie and Claudia, are 25 minutes away, which he loves. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Science, and American Association of Immunologists. John attended Hollywood High School and the University of Chicago for college and medical school.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Jun 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888127025

Book preview

1. THE FRENCH CONNECTION

Late in the evening on February 14, 1930, a doctor dressed in his tuxedo came to a house named Y in Eastcote, Middlesex, an uninteresting suburb just outside London. He had been called away from a party because my mother was in labor. Sometime early in the morning of February 15, 1930, I was born. Terese Louise David, né Israel, was related to her husband, Charles Heinz David. Charles’ mother, Lina, and Terese’s father, Adolf Israel, were brother and sister.

My mother had played Mozart’s clarinet quintet many times while she was pregnant with me, having been told that the fetus might hear it. For whatever reason, it is among my favorite pieces.

At the time Charles was 23 (born May 4, 1906) and had started a knickers underwear business in Hinkley, in the Midlands. Terese was two years younger, born September 14, 1908. Charles had gone to Czechoslovakia to buy the necessary machines and the business had made a profit the first year, something that was most unusual. A friend of his, Roger Woog, was working in Paris at the movie studio Pathé, which was in serious financial trouble. Roger recommended that they look at this wise CEO, who had made a profit the first year. Getting a pair of glasses to look older, Charles went to Paris and got the CEO job.

Just when we moved to Paris, I do not know, but it was probably in my first year. We lived first in an apartment on Quai d’Auteulle until at least 1933, as my sister Kitty was born while we were there. She was named after Kitty Layton, a previous girlfriend of Charles’. I remember once going punting on the Thames with her. We frequently traveled to London and stayed with my grandfather and grandmother, Katie né Lazarus, who lived at 22 Hollycroft Avenue in Hampstead, not a far walk from Hamstead Heath. Both Adolf Israel and Katie Lazarus came from a large family each, with eleven children.

I remember little of those early days except that I had a very beautiful Norwegian babysitter called Usser. I remember the photos and her grabbing me out of the sea when I thought I was drowning. And there are a lot of early photos of us at the beach along with my cousins Pat and Diana, Terese’s brother Leslie’s two daughters.

I am told that around this time, they decided to take me to the zoo at Vincennes, which was special as the animals were not in cages but in more natural habitats with walls to keep them from escaping. Presumably, I spent the morning looking and saying nothing. As we were leaving, I am reputed to have suddenly got all excited and shouted, Au recarde, un moineau! (Oh, look, a sparrow!) We did not return to the zoo until much later.

Sometime after 1934, we moved to a large house in St. Maur des Fossé in the east of Paris. The house had belonged in the past to Frédéric Bartholdi and contained a huge living room, where he had sculptured the model for the Statue of Liberty. In the corner of this room was a large black iron door that had come from the Bastille. Disregarding the original and depressing look of this door, my father had painted it white along with the rest of the living room and attached a trapeze to the very high ceiling. It is in this house that I remember my early life in Paris.

At the end of a large wooded garden was the River Marne, and on the other side a club that on weekends would play loud music all day. My father, whom I called Gall, as it was said (I could not pronounce Karl or Charles), gave the club many popular records that he liked to play instead of theirs, which they then played much of the time. It was a better solution than just complaining. We had a white goat, the Mekamek, who often ate the mail, leaving just a few torn stamped envelopes to my father’s great frustration when he came home and saw all the scraps on the floor. We also had a large black Belgium Shepard named Randy.

Charles and Terese wanted me to appreciate bright prime colors, so they had large blocks made, the largest about 30 inches square, the others slightly smaller so they could fit into each other like those classic Russian dolls. The sides were painted different colors, bright letter-box red, blue, yellow, green, and white and the sixth side of the smallest block was black. The largest could be used as a table, a smaller one as a bench and others to store our toys. You can imagine Charles’ chagrin when he heard a friend ask me, What is your favorite color? and I answered, Mauve. But I was not denied my mauve-striped pajamas.

Numerous people working with my father at Pathé would frequently come to our house for lunch or dinner. Jacques and Pierre Prévert were frequent visitors. Once when Jacques saw me pushing a toy firetruck shouting, Pan-pom, pan-pom, pan-pom, he came and said that was wrong, I should shout instead, Mon-cul, mon-cul, mon-cul. I learned a lot of expletive-type slang from the Préverts. Jacques made a collage of me in a room with some cats, which I still have. He became a famous poet and writer of song lyrics, including Autumn Leaves.

I went to the maternel (kindergarten) nearby and then to the first grade.

Pierre Prévert once offered to take me to school. We walked there hand in hand and I told him I did not really want to go to school. So we sat on a bench outside and watched all the children go into the school, and then he took my hand and we walked home. The next day, however, he took me again, and I went to school.

My sister Kitty really knew how to get to me. The two occasions I remember best concerning this in St. Maur des Fossé are the following. I was taken to a movie early on, I think the first movie I ever saw was called Tiger Shark with Edward G. Robinson, directed in 1932 by Howard Hawks. In it a shark bites off a man’s leg. The next day, after telling Kitty about the movie, she started asking me, Tu veu que le roquin me mange? (You want the shark to eat me?) Non, I replied. Si, tu veu que le roquin me mange. Non, I replied again, and this went on and on at least ten times when in exasperation I said, Oui!! whereupon Kitty ran to Maddeux (what I called Terese, as again I could not pronounce Mother), crying and screaming, John dit qu’il veu que le roquin me mange!! Luckily Terese had heard Kitty’s earlier questions and my answers, so nothing happened.

Another time, one of Charles’ business friends, Lucaschevitch, came back from Czechoslovakia with a large blue enamel box of chocolates with a chrome anchor on the cover for me and a box of Czechoslovakian colored pencils for Kitty. I really wanted the pencils and asked Kitty if we could trade. She said no. We discussed this further, and I offered to trade her the box of chocolates and would do anything she wanted for the day if she would give me the colored pencils. After a little thought, she said yes. I spent the day doing little things she wanted done while she ate the chocolates. Just before we went to bed, she said, Now give me back the pencils.

A deal was a deal and she got them back.

Many decades later, when Kitty returned to the U.S. from a trip to Prague, she brought me a box of the same-colored pencils, which I still have and treasure.

We had a good cook from Brittany. One day she came to my room and saw the poster Lou Chimoukof had made for me of some people riding a donkey, orange on green background, titled Féte Brettone. She found it highly insulting to her province and immediately quit. Lou also made me some three-inch cubes with all kinds of interesting things under glass on the sides, including trains, bugs, little metal doodads.

I was given The Story of Babar, about an elephant. I tore the first page out of the book because it showed his mother being killed. That was just too much for me at the time. I loved many books, including The Funny Thing and Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag. Also, The Story of Ferdinand, the Bull Who Didn’t Want to Fight by Munro Leaf and The Story of Ping.

I remember being taught to swim in the Marne on the opposite bank by the club. When I wanted to show off to Charles, I jumped in from the dock but found I could not swim at all; my instructor had to jump in fully clothed to save me.

During this time Pathé produced numerous movies under Charles’ guidance. The first was L’Affaire est dans le Sac with the Préverts, whom he had hired, and others including Marcel Duhamel, who later edited La Serie Noir, a French detective series of books, and Lou Chimokov. The film poked fun at everything—the rich, the church, the rightists. For example, a beret at the time was (and maybe still is) a sign of being on the political right as opposite from a cap like workmen wore, which was more leftist. An obvious rightist comes into a shop to buy a beret. The owner has none but sells him a cap, which he puts on backwards, the guy goes out happy until he realizes what has happened. A priest played by Marcel Duhamel finds a person lying in the streets. He lays a bible on him, takes the person’s money from his pocket, and goes on his way. The result was that there was a riot the first night the film was shown, and the audience destroyed the theater.

Another movie was Drole de Drame, or Bizarre Bizarre, with an incredible list of actors including Michel Simon, Françoise Rosay, Louis Jouvet, Jean-Louis Barrault (his first film), Jean-Pierre Aumont, and Nadine Vogel (on whom I had a crush when she came to St. Maur, I thought her so very pretty). Kitty and I were in a scene when the Bishop of Bedford, played by Louis Jouvet, sits at a table with his more than a dozen children. It lasts only a few seconds. In the movie, Louis Jouvet goes out at night disguised as a Scotsman in a kilt with a bright red jacket, like the kind a person would wear in a marching band with gold tassels and buttons. We got that uniform and I brought it back from England after the war on one of my summer trips and had it at the University of Chicago. On one occasion when I was taking the El Capitan from Chicago to Hollywood for Xmas vacation, I brought it along, and a half an hour before arriving, knowing Charles would be at the station to meet me, I went to the bathroom and changed into it. The whole deal included a kilt, a Scottish hat, a furry sporran, socks, and the red-and-gold jacket. This was in 1949, a time when a man in kilts in the U.S. was most unusual and needless to say, it caused quite a stir in the train. As soon as I got out of the train car, I saw Charles away in the distance, laughing his head off as he came towards me.

When I was four, Terese, Kitty, and I went to Switzerland to ski. Charles met us there at the end of the week. The first time was in Kitzbul. Three older village boys took me under their wing and by the end of the week, I was skiing without them holding me. I never had lessons and so I dashed down the hills not looking very good. We went skiing every winter and I remember the smell of the ski wax being put on skis, a smell that always takes me back to those early days, my Proust’s madeleine.

Around 1937, it became clear that terrible things were happening in Nazi Germany and Charles decided that it would be best to leave Europe. He got together with a group of friends, including Rouben Englestein, a lawyer and one of his best friends in Sarrguemines (he was a school friend of Charles and is the source of my middle name), some doctors, artists, and they all decided to emigrate to Canada and start a commune, or kibbutz-like place. It should also be noted that although a leftist, the purges in Russia had disillusioned Charles completely about Communism. That did not stop him from being friends with Bertold Brecht and Hans Eisler (though leftists neither were ever in the Communist party). Indeed, at some point, he made a documentary on the building of the dykes in Holland, with Eisler’s music, and at the end of the horrific difficulty in building the dykes you see the sowing of the land and fields as far as the eye can see full of wheat blowing in the wind. The documentary ends with dissonant Eisler music on a scene in Australia, where the wheat fields are being burned to keep the prices up.

This was also the time of the Spanish Civil War and I remember two young girls about my age, Lila and Begonia, who came and stayed with us in St. Maur des Fossé. They were very thin and terribly scared. Every time they heard a plane fly overhead, they would jump and duck under a table. I do not know what ever became of them.

Another friend of Charles’, Edouard (Eddie) Corniglion Molinier, was a pilot and one of the producers of Drole de Drame. He was one of only three pilots who flew and fought in both WW1 and WW2 and also flew for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, usually accompanied by Andres Malraux. He flew with Malraux, looking for lost cities in the deserts of the Middle East. He got lots and lots of medals and by the end of WWII was a general who had fought in the resistance. After the war, he was in the government, in the senate, and held various cabinet positions. He was always a friend of Charles’. When Charles was an interpreter in the RAF, he was able to get his secret code and where he was and phoned him at the RAF airbase. The commander was going to punish Charles for giving out this secret information until he learned that Eddie had used his illustrious position to obtain that information. You can see more about him by going to the web: http://www.ordredelaliberation.fr/fr_compagnon/234.html.

But getting back to our hope to emigrate to Canada. Charles went several times to the Canadian consulate to get the necessary visas to emigrate there. On the last encounter, the Consul started asking some questions about his father and various others because he was Jewish. Canada was rather anti-Semitic at that time. Charles ended up furious and told him just where he could shove Canada. This ended by the Davids being put on a list of undesirables which, as you will see, had an unpleasant effect subsequently.

Sometime in 1937, we went back to England.

2. BACK TO ENGLAND

We went back to London and got an apartment at 7 Lindhurst Gardens. I remember that the whole apartment was newly painted and had rather nice bumpy-lumpy-type wallpaper in the living room. Sometime early during the stay, I took my bow and arrow in the living room and by mistake shot an arrow into the new wallpaper just above the couch, making an obvious quarter-inch hole. I never said a word, and whether they saw it or not, no one else mentioned it either. I remember one day, Kitty and I were playing in our room and smelled something burning. We started shouting at Irma, the maid, that she must be burning something in the kitchen. She ran to our room only to find that we had pushed the cupboard door onto the electric heater, and the door was in flames. She put the fire out with a rug.

Charles had heard of Kurt Hahn, who had started a boarding school in Scotland. It was called Gordonston. Hahn was a German Jew who had been an early admirer of Hitler until a young Communist student was shot by the SS. Hahn made several speeches against the SS and Hitler and was arrested but freed after the Prime Minister of Britain, Ramsay MacDonald, had pleaded for his release. Kurt Hahn then emigrated to Scotland and founded Gordonston, with a great emphasis on the outdoors, an inspiration to Outward Bound-type institutions. Charles thought this might be a good experience for me, so with Terese we took the train to Scotland. I remember being very impressed by the fish market in Aberdeen that had the largest variety of species of fish I had ever seen and only saw more many years later in the fish market in Manaus, by the Amazon in Brazil. I remember the long train ride and getting at Gordonston in time for dinner. When we walked down the staircase into the huge dining room, one like King John’s in the movie Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, all the boys (ages six to eighteen years) stood up, all in their grey flannel shorts and white shirts, and waited until we took our seats. It was incredibly embarrassing. The only thing I remember about the trip is the formality of the dining room and the afternoon play. The lower school was playing The Tempest at an outside theater, which was in the forested garden of the school. After about a quarter of an hour, it started to rain. They continued as if nothing had happened. Then it started to really pour so they decided to go inside and finished the play in a cavernous room without sets. I do not recall anything else, but the outcome of the whole venture was that Charles decided it might not be the best school for me. I believe Kurt Hahn thought the same and told him so.

So instead, I went to St. Mary’s School in London, in a uniform consisting of a blue blazer, grey flannel shorts, and a cap with the school emblem. I had not been in school for more than a week when I wanted to pee, and so I asked where the bathroom was. That was a mistake; I should have asked for the toilet or WC. They gave me the directions, and I ended up in a small room with only a bathtub and sink. So I got into the bathtub and peed.

The only other thing I remembered about that school was that we started history with Julius Caesar; it seemed every school I ever went to I had to start again with Julius Caesar. Also, in French class, having just come back from Paris I greatly annoyed the teacher, as I could not understand what she was saying with her terrible English accent, which resulted in my getting an F for the course.

Once a week I would walk to Aunty Sophie’s apartment in Cholmondeley Gardens (pronounced Chumley) at lunchtime and we would have a sandwich and play war and she would keep the two decks of cards at the end of the session so we could start off at that point the next time. She had several pictures of Indians made with the blue butterfly wings that you see in Brazil and a huge diorama of Moses parting the Red Sea.

I remember that we were still very much concerned about the Spanish Civil War. Kitty and I took most of the money we had saved to go to Hamleys (the most luxurious four-story toy store in London), sent it to Cadbury Chocolate company (it was only about ten pounds), and asked if they would use it to send chocolates to some Spanish children who were refugees from the civil war. A few weeks later, a wooden box four feet long and two feet high and wide came full of chocolate for us to send, and a huge box for us. The Cadburys, I believe, were Quakers and have always been against war.

That Xmas, Terese decided it would be a good idea if we chose one gift that we had been given by the family and gave the rest to needy children (this did not count the presents Charles and Terese would give us). So as we went around to all our aunts and uncles and cousins and friends, Kitty and I gave each other sly smiles when we received various things that we both knew would go into the trunk for the needy children. We also did not want anything made in Japan, and I remember Kitty pulling back the collar of the doll’s dress and screaming, I don’t want this doll; it says ‘Made in Japan’! to the great embarrassment of the aunties.

We used to go to my grandparents’ house at least every week for Sunday lunch. This was usually the most delicious roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and at least four desserts, including a hot deep-dish apple pie, some Jell-O, and a trifle, which was the best I have ever tasted, never come close since. Nannie Rankin, who had been Terese’s and Leslie’s nanny, was often there and would sometimes take care of us. She was a short portly woman right out of Dickens with a round face like the Queen of Hearts in Alice and Wonderland, big bosom and rounded below and a good sense of humor, although she was quite old-fashioned. We often went to visit the rest of the family, including Auntie Annie (she was the oldest of Katie’s sisters over 90) and her husband, Uncle Sam; Auntie Theresa, who lived in Lancaster House, a hotel/apartment building; and her daughter Louise, who never got married. Auntie Hettie was also unmarried. The man she had loved got killed in WWI. Auntie Sophie was the youngest and had no children. She was married to Uncle Felix, who at one time tried to seduce Hettie but was rejected by her. This will be more important as you will see subsequently. Then there were cousins, Louis, who had a son Michael (we correspond now), and there were more cousins.

Religion played no role at all in our lives. Indeed, for a long time, on Sundays we went to the zoo. This was an almost weekly event during the time the zoo had put a baby gorilla and baby chimpanzee in the same cage. For a short while, they played together almost as equals. After a while, the gorilla was just slower, and the chimp jumped around much more. Several months later, the gorilla became so much stronger that they had to separate them, and this ended our weekly trips to see how the two had evolved with each other.

When it rained, Charles several times would take us on a walk in the living room on the Peter Bruegel Summer painting, where three women are walking to the left on a road and a horseman and several others are walking the other way. We would walk around the people gathering hay and then into the background going to houses, meeting people, and walking further and further into the distance as the people got smaller and smaller. Charles had the five-season paintings of Bruegel and one with the dinners and those coming from outside to that house. They were prints made from copper plates in Vienna and were gorgeous reproductions. Those plates were melted by the Germans to make arms during WWII.

Sometime in 1937-’38, Charles was working for Alexander Korda and went to the Khartoum to produce the part of The Four Feathers that was on location. Zoltan Korda was the director. I can only recall a few of the wonderful stories he would tell us about the time he was in Sudan. On one occasion, they needed to take a shoot of a large group of vultures for the scene after one of the big battles and Charles went to Zoli (as Zoltan Korda was called) and told him that today would be terrific as they were hundreds of vultures all around. Zoli said no, they would film them after the battle. They had a huge battle, lots of noise from shouts, rifles, and artillery, after which there were no vultures anywhere. They had to go over a hundred miles away to find some to film. Charles made friends with one of the fuzzywuzzies by ordering him a bicycle in exchange for a very nasty-looking simitar, a curved dagger. Another time, some of the fuzzywuzzies wanted dates. Charles ordered a huge amount, only to be told by the fuzzywuzzies that they were not the right kind. At the time, the movie was in color and at the end of every day, they had to pack the film tins in ice and fly it back to London. Earlier in his career, Zoli had directed Sanders of the River somewhere in Central Africa. The British had taken years to subdue several warring tribes and were finally pleased that there was peace in this region. They told Zoli in no uncertain terms that he should not have these tribes fight each other for the movie even if in jest. Zoli did not appreciate being bossed around by some dumb British military bureaucrats, so he did not listen to their warning and staged a huge battle between these two tribes that had been pacified. The result being that he was kicked out of the country.

At one point, Charles went to New York on business and came back on the Ile de France. I remember boarding the ship at Plymouth and sailing the rest of the way to France with him. He was in first class and had caviar omelets for breakfast. He brought me some wonderful books with photos of skyscrapers in New York.

Sometime around when I was