Dali was addicted
to controversy. If life got too quiet,
he'd invent something. He was the first acid
trip for everybody, even if you weren't doing acid. Dali y Gala. Gala was the power
and the terror. He was a great
painter, genius. They were a secret
society of two. He worshipped her. AMANDA LEAR: Everybody was
saying, now what's going on? I mean, he's still
married to her but he's going out
with this young girl. Who's doing what to whom? [music playing] NARRATOR: Spanish
painter Salvador Dali was the richest and most famous
artist of the 20th century, and the most outrageous. A master of self promotion, Dali
was the ultimate performance artist. He shot to fame as the
king of surrealism. But Dali was even more
bizarre than his art. His twisted vision of the
world extended to every medium he touched-- jewelry, set design,
sculpture, and film. Nothing was off limits. In America in 1973, rock
and roll caught his eye. He summoned heavy metal
legend Alice Cooper to appear before him. I was nervous. I mean, I had met the Beatles
and Elvis and everybody, but this was Salvador Dali. This was like my history. Alice Cooper had created
this incredible personality with all the makeup and
the snakes and everything. We were immediately
his favorite band because we not only were loud
and obnoxious and in your face, but we were really creepy. Our stage show was
very surrealistic. I think it kind of reminded
him of his paintings. NARRATOR: 30 years
before rock and roll hit the scene, Salvador Dali,
a young Spanish painter, was shocking audiences
around the world with his surreal canvases. His astonishing career
spanned half a century. But perhaps Dali's greatest
work of art was himself. He created elaborate
living tableaus in which he was surrounded
by fabulous creatures. Few lasted as long
as Ultraviolet, a stunning French aristocrat who
was by his side for a decade. If you want to be famous, you
need a certain definite look. So if people have seen you
once, they shall remember you. He walked in the room
and he was wearing-- --giraffe skin
pants, Aladdin shoes that came up like
this, a pair of socks that Elvis gave him,
these purple socks. A giraffe-skin coat and his
sideburns were in pin curls. The Dali is here. So the look was the mustache. I mean, who else do you know
that had a mustache that sometimes went all
the way to the eye. And then in the heyday, those
beautiful black hairdo, the way he dress. He speaks one word in
French, one word in Portuguese, one word in English,
one word in Spanish. So you're only picking
up every fifth word. You have no idea what
he's talking about. But Salvador Dali's grand
performance was only an act. Behind that big public image,
which was very much something he consciously cultivated, was
a much smaller, shyer nervous person that he never
wanted you to see. He was not a courageous
person, I would say. He was rather on
the frightened side, you know, afraid that you might
be sick, afraid that this might happen to him. NARRATOR: Dali only allowed
one person behind the scenes, his wife Gala. He took care of art,
she took care of life. She was his stage manager. Gala was the brains. Gala was the money. She was, you know-- she ran the business. He couldn't do a third of what
he achieved if he hadn't got Gala. NARRATOR: 10 years his senior,
Gala was his wife, muse, and business manager
for over 50 years. She was much more the
power behind the throne. NARRATOR: It was Gala
who transformed Dali from a penniless Spanish
artist into a multimillionaire. Though tiny in stature,
she dominated every aspect of his life. Gala had called our office
and said that he wanted to work with me as a model. I did this hologram where
I was wearing a $2 million tiara and $3 million
necklace sitting on this pedestal with a Venus
de Milo as a microphone-- --singing into it, kind of
like eating this thing also. Well, he shot it. It took three days to shoot. NARRATOR: The final part
of Dali's performance was to alert the world's media. ALICE COOPER: The press
asked me, they said-- they said what is it
like working with Dali? And I said I have no idea, I
said because I don't understand a word he's saying and I
don't know what he's doing. And Dali jumped up
and he says perfect, he says confusion is the
greatest form of communication. NARRATOR: Confusion
was Dali's facade. It gave him a license
to do anything. But then in 1965, real
life came crashing through. Dali fell in love. Amanda Lear was a
26-year-old catwalk model in London and Paris. It was the beginning
of a big love affair. It lasted I think,
what, 15, 16 years. NARRATOR: Ever the showman,
Dali had no interest in a conventional relationship. He wanted hallucination,
he wanted vision. He wanted everything theatrical. He didn't want the real thing. NARRATOR: But though Dali was
now living out his fantasies, he was still deeply
dependent on Gala. He was terrified to exist
without her protection, without her management. NARRATOR: To the outside
world, they were still the perfect partnership. But privately,
Gala feared she was losing control of her creation. If she wanted something,
she had to have it. And if she couldn't have
it, she was quite spiteful. You know, she'd bite people. People were terrified of
Gala, absolutely terrified. Whenever she would walk into
the room, she was that high, you know, but whenever she
walked into a room, it would be, [gasps],, Gala is here,
oh, god, god, god, you know, and cigarettes went out. She bit people, she kicked
them, she spat at them. She was very violent. There was a tremendously
violent kind of side to her character
began to emerge. In a way, she made Dali
and she destroyed Dali. She made Dali because
when she met him she was truly alone as a genius. And he was oftentimes,
they cannot function. You know, they don't know
how to make a phone call. They don't know if a dollar bill
is higher or lower than $10. I've seen Dali in a taxi giving
$100, not knowing what it was. NARRATOR: This astonishing
double act enchanted critics and audiences alike. But when it turned
bad, Dali's life would become as dark
and haunted as his art. In 1904, the artist
Salvador Dali was born in the small town of
Figueres in Northeast Spain. His father was a
well-off notary who was both strict and domineering. His mother was a devout
Catholic who doted on her son. But Salvador Dali
was born twice. The first Salvador Dali died
at the age of 22 months. Nine months later Salvador
the artist was born. His mother dressed and treated
him like a replacement son and gave Dali an identity crisis
that would mark him for life. To Dali, the death
of his elder brother, also called Salvador,
was deeply significant because the three-year-old child
was taken to see the grave with his name on it. He was telling me that the
photo of the dead brother was above his father
and mother's bed, you know, in the bedroom. And Dali was terrified
by this photograph. Because every time they
were referring to Salvador, he wasn't sure if they were
talking about the dead Salvador or Salvador, the one alive. Dali was a very shy,
rather sickly child who rapidly developed
a persona rather like a kind of hermit crab. He had this shell that concealed
the kind of timorous little person beneath. NARRATOR: Dali started
drawing at the age of three, but his shyness masked a
deep craving for attention that grew alongside his talent. By the age of 10, he was
already an accomplished painter and his mother sent
him to art school. 30 years later, Dali's good
friend, the budding artist Antonio Pitxot, shared
the same teacher and would hear stories
of Dali's early antics. [speaking spanish] INTERPRETER: The young
Dali would suddenly start running around. And he'd run towards one of the
marble columns in the school and he'd slam his head into it. And then he'd start bleeding. NARRATOR: Dali's behavior would
stop everyone in their tracks. INTERPRETER: And they'd ask
him, what happened to you, why did you do that? And he looked at them and
said because no one was paying any attention to me. NARRATOR: Dali's
disturbing performance was a sign of things to come. Art may have been his
passion, but attention was his lifeblood. And then when he was 16, Dali's
beloved mother died of cancer. It was a devastating blow
to his self-confidence. The following year in 1922, Dali
attended art school in Madrid. His talent was undisputed. But when he refused to take
his final exams on the grounds that no teacher knew as much
as he did, he was expelled. In 1926, Dali left
Spain for Paris, where he would join
an art movement that was the perfect expression
of his personality-- surrealism. Dedicated to exploring the world
between reality and dreams, surrealists believed
artists had an obligation to shock and disturb. And then in 1929, Salvador
Dali met the woman who was to change his
life forever, Gala. When they met, Gala
was 36 and Dali was 25. She was already a well-known
figure on the surrealist scene. To him Gala was more than
just a beautiful, sexy girl. It was [gasps],, the Madonna,
I mean the vision, what he's been waiting all his life,
a mother, everything. Gala arrived in Paris
in 1916 after fleeing the Russian revolution. She married the surrealist
poet Paul Eluard and had a young daughter. But Gala was always
on the lookout for new artistic genius. She had some special
quality that inspired artists to do great work. She liked to be the
muse of artists. She wasn't artistic herself, and
she ran through the surrealists in Paris like a fox
through a hen run. When one of them did a
particularly good piece of work, they'd say ah, yes,
bet he was having an affair with Gala at the time. I think she thought that
an artist was a better bet than a poet, long term. And of course, he was
tremendously romantic looking and wild and sort of exotic. What she recognized
in Dali, I think, was that he was a genius, that
he was the most brilliant, and that he would do the
most brilliant things. NARRATOR: Gala abandoned her
husband and young daughter to be with Dali, and she set
to work honing his skills. Dali then was
painting on whatever, on the sand, on
paper, on cardboard. I mean, he was not disciplined. So she said you have
to go back to painting like the old masters, on
canvas, with proper oil, like in the old days,
you know, do it properly. NARRATOR: And she succeeded. Dali developed a unique
style that showed dark images from his subconscious
painted in perfect detail. The critics loved it,
but no one was buying. And then began a period
of really appalling poverty, and yet at the same time, he was
becoming very, very well known. She was going around Paris
with Dali's watercolors and drawings and painting under
her arm, taking the underground and going from one
gallery to the other, would you like to buy
my husband's painting? So she really made
Dali completely. Dali and Gala, I think it
didn't make any difference between fame and money, one
went exactly with the other. If you're famous, you're rich. If you were rich,
you were famous. They were married in 1934. The artist and his
muse had become one. Dali began signing his
name Gala Salvador Dali. Estoy pintando Gala
y Dali, Dali y Gala. NARRATOR: But Paris was no
place for a penniless artist and his ambitious wife. United States appealed
to Dali and Gala for one spectacular reason-- money. NARRATOR: Under Gala's
careful management, Dali would achieve
fame and fortune beyond his wildest dreams. But having made Dali,
could Gala keep him? WOMAN: (SINGING)
You came along out-- NARRATOR: In 1939, the
Spanish artist Salvador Dali and his wife Gala arrived in
New York to seek their fortune. WOMAN: (SINGING) You came
along to answer my call. America loved Dali
because he was fun. He was larger than life. NARRATOR: Dali and
Gala understood that to find fame
in their new home, they needed to make a splash. They set to work organizing
an elaborate costume party. It will be held in California
and they would invite all the movie stars of the day. NARRATOR (ON FILM): Mr.
Salvador Dali gives a party. The Spanish painter
of surrealism dresses Mrs. Dali in a unicorn's
head just to start things off. NARRATOR: America was in
a period of prosperity, and Dali's surrealist
antics were a huge hit. NARRATOR (ON FILM): And costumes
are supposed to represent the guest's bad dreams. NARRATOR: And while
Hollywood fell at his feet, Dali's first exhibition
of paintings in New York was a critical success. With Dali if he would have
been an average painter, everybody would have said, well,
he was good and he was fun, but he was kind of a joke. Let's not forget
something about Dali, this is the time of his
greatest surrealist works. And people in America who had
an eye to surrealist art really, really rated him. When you look at
Salvador Dali's paintings and realize that, technically,
they were some of the finest paintings ever done, ever,
then you have to look at him and say, genius. NARRATOR: It had taken a
decade, but Gala had turned Dali into the undisputed
king of surrealism, and she was his queen. She was a proper consort
for this amazing young artist. She was incredibly chic. She was one of the very rare
women who had the perfect looks for the time. She and the Duchess of
Windsor, tight, hard, you know, tiny waist
and hips, no bosom. She looked great
in couture clothes. And by this time, she's wearing
Schiaparelli and Chanel. She was very chic. NARRATOR: But despite
Dali's critical success, Gala was still struggling
to find buyers for his work. Then in 1943, a wealthy
couple from Colorado attended an exhibition. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse would
become Dali's lifelong patrons and friends. We were so intrigued,
we bought the painting. And now this is the worst
thing that's happened, I can't remember the
name of that painting. So that's typically Dalinian. NARRATOR: The Morses would
go on to buy a quarter of all of Dali's paintings. Gala was finally seeing a
return on her investment. We started collecting them
and seeing him and seeing Gala. He liked us because we
liked his paintings. Gala had a reputation for
being so disagreeable that she didn't-- she was torn between being
disagreeable and being agreeable to us. NARRATOR: With Gala at the helm,
Dali's career was full steam ahead. In 1945, Hitchcock asked Dali
to design a dream sequence for the movie "Spellbound." The following year, he created
sets for an opera in New York. Even Walt Disney became
captivated by the magical world of Dali. In 1946, Disney commissioned
him to make a short cartoon to introduce surrealism
to mainstream America. WOMAN: (SINGING) Yes, you
came along to answer my call. I know now that
you are my destino. NARRATOR: But it was too
surreal to be released. Dali was at the
height of his fame, and his matinee idol looks
were proving quite a draw. Gala had to keep a close eye
on her money and her man. Gala was telling me, so
you have no idea, she said, how many woman try to
steal him away from me. I mean, they were invited to
all the parties in Hollywood, you know, and all those
actresses and all those women in society, women
who are there, oh, my dear maestro, oh, come to
my house, blah, blah, blah. You know, they were
trying to seduce him. NARRATOR: But Dali
and Gala had a secret. Their private life was even
more bizarre than Dali's art. One of the few people who was
privy to this closed world was Ultraviolet. As a genius, you
don't function normally, whether intellectually,
emotionally, and sexually. He was a voyeur. He liked to watch
other people at it. He liked organizing orgies. They happened in
various hotels and they happened in Port Lligat. But they were
organized in such a way that Dali would
be able to watch. Like creating a
bizarre painting, he would create a
living painting. Now, then. You pass through. All right. And he said, you
look at the girl, and then you got all this
excitement going in your head. And then finally, you
get into the sexual act. Well, painting is the same, you
know, except through my hand, through the brushes, what
comes out is exactly, for me, like the sexual act. If you look into
his paintings, he's got all kinds of
sexual things going on. I mean, after about the
fifth time you look at it, you go, oh, you know
what that really is? NARRATOR: And while
Dali was busy enacting his elaborate fantasies, Gala
was entertaining a string of toy boys. Gala had a series
of young men. She always had relationships
with young men. But Dali admired that in her. He thought it was
wonderful, that there was this elderly woman who
could still attract young men. I think he had
a great passion, but Gala had all her passion
also and all her young boys courting her. And you know, it was, as
I said, partner in crime. You know, they set up their
stage and they'd manage with it and they accommodate each other. And I guess it was a
surreal relationship also. Whether it comes under the
heading of normal marriage, the answer's probably no. But they matched each other. Her strengths were
his weaknesses and his strengths
were her weaknesses. And they had a common
goal, and the common goal was to nurture and
further his talent. NARRATOR: But by the
end of the 1940s, there were rumblings within
the artistic community that the wellspring of
Dali's talent had dried up. Gala needed to get him back
to Spain to recuperate. While there, Dali will find
artistic inspiration and Gala's replacement. Salvador Dali, the artist
whose every move was calculated to create a sensation,
had run out of ideas. He and his wife Gala had
retreated to a small fishing village on the
Northeast coast of Spain to rekindle his creativity. Moving back to Spain for Dali
and Gala in 1948 was critical. Dali hadn't been
back since 1936. And he felt deeply
cut off at his roots. And his painting is all
about where he comes from. [music playing] NARRATOR: Dali and Gala
settled into a small house in the fishing
village of Port Lligat and assumed an almost
conventional lifestyle. He abandoned
surrealism and began painting in a classical style
and revisiting old friends, like Lady Moyne, who had
known Dali since she was 13. A lot of people think Dali was
just a showman, but that's not true. He used to work 18 hours a day. He adored, you know,
the landscapes here. And he was a very simple
man in a funny way. NARRATOR: But Dali's
decision to return home sent shock waves
through the art world. Spain was under the thumb of
the fascist General Franco. Thousands of artists had been
forced to flee persecution, including Picasso. Dali's homecoming had become
a political bombshell. At a time when all the artists
in the intellectual community were against Franco, because
it was a dictatorship that had used force to impose
itself on a Republic, Dali's reaction was
to do the opposite and go against popular opinion. He was basically a monarchist. And he talked with Franco. And Franco told him that he was
going to restore the monarchy. So he was for Franco. NARRATOR: Now reconciled
to life in a dictatorship, Dali also returned to
the Catholic Church. And in 1958, he and Gala were
married for the second time. Dali was 54 and Gala was 65. But their relationship
had changed. Gala had succeeded in turning
Dali from a penniless painter into a world famous artist. But their partnership was now
little more than a business arrangement. She liked young men. And Dali was no longer
young, he'd thickened out. He was no longer the kind of
slightly effete, kind of almost asexual boy that she knew. And she was seen out
more without him. NARRATOR: In 1965, the aging
artist met a 26-year-old model in a Paris nightclub. Amanda Lear was the model of
the moment, gracing catwalks around Europe. She was already dating a
guitarist from the Rolling Stones when she
caught Dali's eye. Amanda Lear was the
ultimate Dali object. Here was the woman
that every man wanted because she was so gorgeous. It was a love affair,
complete love affair. He-- every day, I would receive
a letter or a note, I love you. It's forever. You're my one and only. And I said, well, the man,
when he say those things, he's holding my hand, he's
looking straight into my eyes. He's got so much passion. He really means it. She was very intelligent and
also, rather like Dali himself, a slightly ambivalent
character who didn't mind a bit of controversy. She was also someone
that the press loved and Dali loved that. You know, she was
another attention seeker. And then one day, he
announced my wife is coming back tomorrow. Wife? What wife? I didn't know about a wife. Nobody told me about a wife. So he say, well, she's
coming back tomorrow. She's very difficult. You have
to make a good impression. So when Gal the wife arrived,
I walked into the Hotel Meurice in Paris. And I'm wearing this skirt
and the makeup and glitter. And she looked at me and, oh
my God, she said, what is this? And poor Dali, he's there trying
to say-- he was showing me like he was trying to
sell her a vacuum cleaner. NARRATOR: But this
fabulous creature made it clear that she didn't
have designs on Gala's money spinner. She knew that I didn't want
to steal away Dali from her. I didn't want to marry him. I didn't want to take his money. I didn't want anything from him. I just wanted to
be their friend. I think Amanda
was heaven-sent, as far as Gala was concerned. Because it meant that she could
pursue her outside interests, while Amanda, as you might
say, took up some of the slack on the Dali front. Very harmonious
relationship, the three of us. We were together in Paris. We were together in New
York at the St. Regis Hotel. Gala wanted to go on
her own to the theater, to do her shopping. And she said, you'll go with
Dali to the dinner parties, to the premiere, to show
off with the photographers. I've done that, you know. She said I've done it for 50
years and I've had enough. Dali. [speaking spanish] This means, everybody
know, the moment of Dali. NARRATOR: The free love
movement of the 1960s adopted Salvador
Dali as an icon. He was now an artist superstar. He was living the ultimate
rock and roll lifestyle. In New York City,
Max's Kansas City was a hangout for
Andy Warhol and Dali. And I mean, you'd go
to the back room there and there would be, like,
Frank Zappa and John Lenin, Iggy, the Alice Cooper band, and
Warhol, Dennis Hopper, Brando, and Jacqueline Kennedy. And Salvador Dali walked in. It would be Salvador Dali. He had that reverence because,
you know, first of all, he'd been around since the '20s. And he was still more
mad than anybody. Dali just loved to have
the house full of people. Who had no idea who they were. I mean, some of them didn't
even like him, you know? They were all sitting there
sipping rose champagne. And Dali wouldn't
even say, who are you? What's your name
or what do you do? No, they're just extras,
just to fill his house. There was a good looking
girl or a good looking boy, he would say, would you pose
for me because I need a model. And it's very strange because
in all these years with Dali, I have never seen
a girl refusing. I mean, he would say, will you
take your clothes off for me? Immediately, oh, yes,
of course, maestro. The nights of pink champagne,
they're also business orientated. Because while these,
you know, young people were stripping off or having sex
or diving in the swimming pool, there were also buyers
there, wealthy people who'd come in on their yacht. They would be impressed by
this circus that was going on. And having negotiated a
deal to buy a Dali painting, it seals the deal when
you come to the house and find that it really is as
surreal as they have been led to believe. Alice, this is your brain. And he holds out this
brain, that he had built. And it was a brain. And it was a chocolate
eclair running down the back. And all these ants
crawling over it that spelled out Alice and Dali. And he says the Alice brain. And I said wow. You know, I said, can I have it? And he says, of course
not, it's worth millions. NARRATOR: His paintings were now
being sold for upwards of half a million dollars, but
Dali was spending money as fast as he was earning it. A lot of it was
just spent on living. It can't have been cheap
staying in the Meurice and having a suite for
four or five months a year. Ditto the St. Regis in New York. I mean, the only
house they owned was that tiny little
house in Port Lligat. The rest of the time,
they were paying rent, and expensive hotel rent. So I think a lot
of it went on that. Dali, the most
famous living artist, was a valuable commodity. And fans would pay anything
to get a piece of him. Anybody would come and say,
oh can you do some engraving, watercolors, you know? How much? Oh, $500,000, $300,000,
OK, I'll do it. I remember seeing Dali doing
some watercolor in his bathtub. You know, he would just
on a big piece of paper put a dash of red,
blue, and green and just run water over it. And he'd say, you know, I
do this instantaneously. And then it was free form. And then with a pencil, he
would just maybe draw a figure through that, you know, and
then sell that for $40,000. I was there when
he was doing it. And I say, oh, come
on, look, you know, can't you do it a
little better than this? Oh, it's how we
do, they love it. As an artist, one
can always doubt. Even though he used
to say I'm number one and Picasso is number two, you
can always doubt way inside. And so I think the money then
was falling in like gold coins, tick, tick, tick,
he just loved that. It's a confirmation of his
talent and recognition. NARRATOR: By now, Dali was
doing anything for money. The only person who could
reign him in was his wife Gala. But she had other
things on her mind. In 1974, Salvador Dali built an
extravagant museum to himself in his birthplace of
Figueres in Northern Spain. It was the crowning glory of
the hugely successful career he built with his wife Gala. It immediately became one of
Spain's most popular museums and introduced his
artistic vision to over a million
visitors a year. Dali and Gala had become the
most productive partnership in the history of art. They attended the
first anniversary of the museum's opening. And publicly, they
were as close as ever. [applause] But privately Gala was tiring
of Dali's constant need for attention. Dali liked to entertain and be
photographed with famous people and Gala just wanted a quiet
life to read her books. So she said please, please,
you've always promised me my own house. There it is. It's on sale. So he bought her Pubol,
which was his mansion. Gala then moved to Pubol and
never came back to Cadaques. And I think that that was
the split that I think really upset Dali a lot. And I think that she was
beginning to pursue quite seriously outside interests. And I think this made
him very, very nervous. NARRATOR: Gala
was now in her 80s and wanted a complete
break from Dali. Her castle was located
in the village of Pubol, 30 miles from their
home in Port Lligat. Gala did actually tell me
that she would only see Dali if he came with a written
invitation from her. I'm expecting you and
Amanda for dinner on the 22nd of September, blah, blah, blah. And so with Dali, we would
drive there to Gala's house and have dinner with her. And she was very proud
to show her house. And she had always a young man
or a little boyfriend staying there to keep her company,
playing piano or guitar or something. NARRATOR: But while Gala
was entertaining her string of young lovers at Pubol,
Dali was alone at Port Lligat. He was now in his
70s and suffering from the early stages
of Parkinson's disease. When it began affecting
his ability to paint, Gala became concerned. Gala would phone me
and say, he's changed and he's not like before. He doesn't want
to paint anymore. So what's the point of keeping
that man if he doesn't paint? He's useless. As far as Gala
was concerned, Dali had to be kept
painting whatever. She really, by that
time, I think whatever fondness she may have had for
him, whatever, he was simply a cash cow. I said but Gala,
you know, he's ill. Oh, he's ill, is he? He doesn't want to
paint, that's all. He doesn't want
to do it anymore. And she became
very single minded. I mean, she wanted
enough money to afford the kind of, you know, secure
life plus the young men. And she couldn't give a
damn about anybody else, Dali included. These are some of the
good prints we have. NARRATOR: Dali turned
to lithographs as a way to earn money and meet the
huge demand for his work. Lithographs could be reproduced
repeatedly, and then signed. In 1975, Frank Hunter
commissioned a print from Dali. FRANK HUNTER: Dali said
you have to pay Gala. And we were prepared
to pay her in cash. That's what she wanted, cash. So we had $15,000 in cash
in $100 bills for her. And she sat on a chair and I
counted out the money to her. But I made a big mistake,
and I said to her in French, I believe you need money. I didn't mean to say
that, I meant to say here is the money that we owe
you or something like that, but my French wasn't very good. And she got very annoyed at me. And she took the money and she
just threw it all over the room and she said to get out. NARRATOR: Now in her 80s, Gala
was obsessed by her young men and began hunting for a boy she
could turn into the next Dali. Her husband was now the most
successful living artist in the world. But without Gala's constant
domination and control, he was in freefall. Gala's attention had
been drawn elsewhere. He was pretty
unprotected, in a way. So he is at the mercy of someone
that could come along and spin him a tale. They brought him thousands
and thousands of white paper. There's nothing printed
on them, just white. And Dali starts
signing white paper. And he wasn't counting,
it was one, two, three. He was just signing and signing. And while he was signing,
he was talking to me and talking to
people and signing. And I said, papi, you
should count all this paper. Oh, men say it's all right. You know, there's
only 1,000 of them. Oh, 1,000? There was 2,000, 3,000. He was signing, signing. Somewhere in Spain,
police confiscated a truckload of paper with
Dali's signature on it-- or purportedly Dali's signature. And my guess is that those
are all forged signatures. These are some of the fakes
that we've seen over the years. Some of them are-- they try to mimic Dali's style. This is one that's
very badly done. I mean-- NARRATOR: Suddenly the market
was flooded with fake Dali prints. Art gallery owners from
New Mexico to Helsinki were indicted on
charges of fraud. These are all on Japon paper. This is another one
that's ludicrous. This is just a horrible
fake, horrible fake. NARRATOR: The lithograph
scam seriously damaged Dali's reputation
within the art world. The legacy he and Gala had
worked a lifetime to create was under threat. But there was still
greater tragedy to come, when Dali would be forever
parted from his wife, manager, and muse. By 1980, the artist
Salvador Dali had become a
Spanish institution. His extraordinary career
had seen him transformed from an unknown painter into
the world's most famous living artist. His wife and manager Gala
had spent over 50 years masterminding his career. And then in 1982
at the age of 89, Gala died of a heart attack. She had been his wife and muse
for half a century, his lover, his champion, the inspiration
for some of his finest works. Despite the destructive
nature of their final years, Dali was devastated
by her death. Dali's dependence
on her that had been the mainspring of his
life suddenly isn't anymore. NARRATOR: His longtime
collaborator and the director of his museum in
Figueres, Antoni Pitxot, watched Dali self-destruct. [speaking spanish] INTERPRETER: For Dali
it was a huge blow because it was as if his whole
world fell apart before him. He entered a very
difficult period, a period of deep depression. When Gala died, he
seemed to go downhill. And he went to Pubol,
he left Cadaques. NARRATOR: Dali
moved to the castle he had bought for Gala to
be surrounded by memories of his wife and muse. The center of his
universe was gone. He was completely alone for
the first time in his life. He went to this very isolated
castle with a lot of people who-- who didn't know him. I think it was probably a big
mistake to have gone there, but I think he
was mourning Gala. NARRATOR: Dali had once
delighted in performing for the world. Now he would only receive
his closest friends. He say, OK, I'll see you,
but in complete darkness. I don't want you to see
me because I look old. I'm not dying my
moustache anymore. My hair is white. And it's strange. He was so vain. He said I want you to remember
me beautiful as I was. I was asked to go to see him. Dali had got a
bottle of red wine and a glass put out on
a table and a chair. And I didn't see him. He just talked to me from
behind the door of his bedroom. NARRATOR: Dali couldn't face
even his closest friends anymore. But Amanda Lear had shared
the limelight with him for 25 years. And to her, he bequeathed
a special memento to show his everlasting love. Dali was very superstitious. And he was always carrying with
him a little piece of wood. You know, he said touch
wood for good luck. And he always had
that piece of wood. And it was always
in an old sock. He had an old sock
in his pocket. And he was always touching the
wood before to sign a contract or whenever. And he had given me that
little piece of wood, you know, that was bringing luck. And I never saw him again. And so the last encounter
was in complete obscurity. NARRATOR: But there was
further tragedy to come. In 1984, a fire broke
out in his castle. Despite having several around
the clock nurses, none of them responded to his
desperate calls for help. By the time he was rescued,
Dali had severe burns over 20% of his body. Scarred and
emaciated, his friends intervened and convinced Dali
to abandon his castle for a room in his museum in Figueres. Dali lived out his final
years surrounded by his art and able to see the thousands
of fans lining up to share his vision of the world. Five years later on
January the 23, 1989, in a hospital in
Barcelona, Salvador Dali died of heart failure. It seems such a sad end
to someone who was really sort of a very alive and
sort of extraordinary person. He was a fabulous person
who had made our lives richer. I don't mean just by selling us
paintings, I mean by the fact that we knew him so intimately. It really was
like a whole piece of my life, a whole
period of my life, I'd go and I'd disappear because
he was like my father. It really was like
losing my father. Meeting Dali was
just a revelation. Of course, the man
was extraordinary. But you know, his attitude,
his philosophy, his culture, I mean, he was a giant. And when I compare him today to
those poor little artists that are trying to copy
either Dali or Warhol or whatever, it's
pathetic, you know? NARRATOR: Dali would be buried
as he had lived, on center stage. He asked to be interred in
his museum, beneath his art, under the feet of
his admiring fans. There's probably people around
that don't even know that he's dead because they just figure
this guy just keeps putting out work. He kind of transcends
art criticism. Actually, the people
vote for Dali. He's never not been popular. 30 years later, people still
talk about the night they saw Salvador Dali. In some strange
way, it doesn't matter if he's alive or dead,
he's very much alive in the pop world. NARRATOR: On the
centenary of his birth, Dali's dream of
immortality has come true. His astonishing double
act with his wife was one of the century's
most shocking, but also most successful. Dali will always be one of the
most respected and recognizable artists in the world. ANNOUNCER: They live
among us, normal from outward appearances, but
their twisted thoughts play out in heinous headlines. Misfits, murderers, madmen, see
how they became who they are and what demons drove them
to become "Notorious." Weeknights at 10:00, only
on the Biography Channel.
