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00:16I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Welcome to Finding Your Roots.
00:21In this episode, we'll meet actor Kate Burton and media mogul Barry Diller.
00:29Two people whose families left them in the dark about their family trees.
00:35For some reason, nobody talked about it, which is interesting.
00:39Like, why wouldn't they talk about it?
00:41It's just strange that this late in my life, I would learn something so central to my mother's life.
00:50Yeah. Shocking.
00:52To uncover their roots, we've used every tool available.
00:57Genealogists comb through paper trails stretching back hundreds of years.
01:02Oh my God, I'm amazed.
01:04While DNA experts utilize the latest advances in genetic analysis to reveal secrets that have lain hidden for generations.
01:13What? I've known nothing of any of this.
01:18And we've compiled it all into a book of life.
01:22A record of all of our discoveries.
01:25That's so thrilling.
01:27Do I get to have this?
01:28This is yours.
01:28What a gift.
01:30And a window into the hidden past.
01:33Oh my goodness.
01:35So they came to the United States.
01:37That is incredible.
01:37I've never known that.
01:40If everybody actually told the truthful stories, how different it would be.
01:49My two guests were both raised in families that reinvented themselves, leaving their roots behind.
01:56In this episode, they're going to recover what was lost along the way.
02:03Hearing stories about women and men who overcame enormous odds to lay the groundwork for their success.
02:11Oh my goodness.
02:51Kate Burton is living proof that your genes are only part of your destiny.
02:58The child of two actors, Kate is following in her parents' footsteps.
03:03But carving her own path.
03:06Because she knows how challenging living in the limelight can be.
03:13Kate's parents, Sybil Williams and Richard Burton, both grew up in coal mining towns in Wales.
03:21They married young.
03:23And by the time Kate was born, her father was an international star.
03:30He'd soon fall in love with another star, Elizabeth Taylor, forcing Kate to watch her parents' marriage collapse in a
03:40very public way.
03:43Yet Kate not only endured the chaos, she emerged the wiser for it, with admiration for her father's genius and
03:53compassion for his complexity.
03:56He was wonderful, loving, he was an alcoholic, and dealt with that throughout his life.
04:05You know, he would be okay for a while, but there, you know, you go through the sobriety and then
04:11there's like, you know, tough time getting through, can be really, really tough getting through that.
04:16And I have to say, to be honest, my stepmother also had issues that were slightly different.
04:22My stepdad also had issues.
04:24So I was dealing with it wherever I went.
04:25My mother did not.
04:26She was the one who did not have those issues.
04:28But I got to understand at a very early age about alcoholism to a certain degree.
04:35But what I really understood at a very early age was that your parents can break up and you can
04:41be okay.
04:44Kate, of course, would be more than just okay.
04:48After attending a United Nations high school in New York City, she went on to Brown University and became the
04:56first person in her family to graduate college.
05:00She then turned her focus to acting, with a cool head and a clear plan, even in the face of
05:08her father's objections.
05:11My dad was not thrilled, very not happy about it.
05:14And he said, you've gone to college, you're the only one, you're the first one to go to college all
05:18the way through.
05:18And I went, I know, I know.
05:20And I said, but dad, I promise you, first I'm going to apply to drama school.
05:23And if I don't get in, that's it.
05:25I'll say, forget it.
05:26I'm not like one of these, you know, crazy people who's going to walk around with no skills.
05:30Right.
05:31So I applied to three in the United States, one in the UK.
05:33I got into two in the United States, one in the UK.
05:39And he was confused as to why I was choosing to stay in the United States.
05:46He said, why aren't you going to the UK?
05:48How will you know how to speak?
05:52And I was like, are you kidding?
05:53I said, dad, listen to me, I'm American.
05:55Like, have you not noticed?
05:57I'm from New York.
05:59But then, you know, and then it was Yale.
06:00So I said, it's Yale.
06:02And he was like, okay.
06:04But he did say to me, if after a semester or something you feel like you want to change,
06:08can you just transfer to the law school?
06:11I'm like, um, dad, I don't have the qualifications to get into Yale Law School.
06:17Kate would never need to try the law.
06:20She was cast in a Broadway play before she even finished at Yale.
06:26And she hasn't looked back.
06:29Over the past four decades, she's built a remarkable career.
06:35Appearing in dozens of plays in over a hundred films and television shows.
06:41Including memorable turns on Grey's Anatomy and Scandal.
06:46But just as importantly, Kate has been able to do what she loves in the way she wants to do
06:52it.
06:54Avoiding the turmoil that marked her youth.
06:58I always think how lucky I am.
07:02Growing up with dad and Elizabeth as my two of my four parents, I saw huge fame very, very close
07:11up.
07:12And I've never aspired, never wanted that to be my life.
07:17And it hasn't been.
07:18And so I feel extremely blessed that I've gotten to play these incredible roles.
07:25But it's a combination of luck, skill, being in the right place at the right time.
07:33And I was very blessed because I was having opportunity and I was able to fulfill the requirements to get
07:44the part.
07:45And getting the part, as my friend Jane Kaczmarek says, is a miracle.
07:48I mean, every time you do, it's a miracle.
07:52My second guest is Barry Diller.
07:56One of the most influential figures in the history of American entertainment.
08:03Barry famously worked his way up the Hollywood ladder, starting with a job in the mailroom of the William Morris
08:10Talent Agency.
08:11But his story is a bit more complicated than that.
08:18Raised in Beverly Hills, the child of a real estate developer, Barry was always intrigued by show business.
08:27But growing up, he showed no inclination for a job of any kind.
08:33I hated school.
08:35I very rarely went to high school.
08:38Mm-hmm.
08:39And it was presumed, actually, that I would never work.
08:42Mm-hmm.
08:43And there was no pressure from my parents.
08:45They couldn't have cared less.
08:46Mm-hmm.
08:47So for a year after high school, I did nothing.
08:50Mm-hmm.
08:50I just hibernated around.
08:52But I had this thing of, well, entertainment, but weird.
08:56What can I do?
08:57I'm 19 years old.
08:59Who's going to pay attention to me?
09:00And I'd heard about the William Morris Agency mailroom.
09:05And so one of my best friend's father was Danny Thomas, who at that time was the probably biggest television
09:17personality in entertainment.
09:21We watched the Danny Thomas show every week.
09:23Yeah, he was incredibly successful.
09:25And he was kind of a bit like a father to me.
09:30Mm-hmm.
09:31So I called him.
09:31He was performing in Las Vegas.
09:33And I said, I need your help.
09:34He said, what can I do for you, my son?
09:36And I said, I want to go to William Morris' mailroom.
09:40And he said, oh, that's easy.
09:42Can I go back to my massage now?
09:44And the next day I was there.
09:48The mailroom ignited something inside Barry.
09:52An ambition that fueled an unprecedented rise.
09:57Within a decade, Barry had left William Morris for ABC, where he'd end up as vice president of primetime television.
10:07He then set his sights on feature films.
10:10And in 1974, when he was just 32 years old, he took over Paramount, one of Hollywood's most prestigious studios.
10:20At first, it seemed like he was in over his head.
10:26No one from television had come into the movie business at that time.
10:30I mean, movie people basically peed on people in television.
10:34They were so snotty towards television.
10:37And I was very clearly a television person.
10:39So the first couple of years were really, really tough.
10:42What was the turning point when you knew you were going to be successful?
10:47Well, we started developing movies rather than buying packages and listening to other people.
10:54We used our own instincts.
10:57And I got confidence in that development process.
11:02Nevertheless, during that period, we were also releasing one dog movie after the other.
11:07But then we produced a movie called Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
11:11Hell yeah.
11:11Which was based on a book, the first book I bought when I got to Paramount.
11:16And it was a good, solid success.
11:20And then right after that came Saturday Night Fever.
11:26Yeah.
11:27And right after that came Grease.
11:29Literally this bonanza of successes one after the other, out of this development process.
11:37So I knew it was good, but thought it would never come to fruition, at least for me, because they'd
11:46throw me out before then.
11:47But luckily they didn't.
11:51Paramount would reap the rewards of that decision.
11:54Under Barry's leadership, the studio enjoyed a sustained period of phenomenal success.
12:01And Barry, who would eventually go on to build a corporate empire of his own, became an icon.
12:10Much to the surprise of those who'd watched him grow up.
12:14What did your parents think?
12:17You mean as I became successful?
12:19Yes.
12:19I think it was like a space alien.
12:23I think they thought, how in God's name did this happen?
12:27There was no show, sign.
12:30You could point to nothing that would have predicted this, but they were very happy for me, for sure.
12:39I mean, it was just like, it was both happiness and wonderment.
12:44How did this happen?
12:47While my guests may seem different on the surface, actually they have a great deal in common.
12:54Both grew up in comfort, thanks to ancestors who did not.
12:58And both came to me, hoping to explore the stories about those ancestors.
13:07I started with Kate Burton.
13:09And with her father, Richard.
13:11With whom she shares much more than a profession.
13:17I think I have a lot of my father's brio.
13:22Uh-huh.
13:22And I think I definitely have some of his, you know, sort of grittiness that I think sort of came
13:29quite naturally to him.
13:31But I had a very different childhood.
13:34Uh-huh.
13:34He was, you know, duking it out from the age of a very young age.
13:38And I was allowed to become an adult in a more holistic way.
13:47As we began to research her father's childhood, it was easy to see what Kate meant.
13:54Richard suffered a great deal from a very young age.
13:59His mother died before he was even two years old.
14:03And he was raised largely by one of his older sisters.
14:06Because his father, a coal miner, was struggling mightily to make ends meet.
14:15What's it like to see that?
14:16To think of your grandfather doing that for a living?
14:20I think the reality of what it was to be a coal miner is mind-bending.
14:28I mean, it was such a brutal job.
14:33My mother spoke more about the experience of growing up in a coal mining community.
14:41And what, you know, just things like they took their baths.
14:46They came home covered in soot.
14:47And they were immediately went to take a bath.
14:50Their clothes were taken off them, left outside to soak.
14:54I mean, there was such a, the mother, the wives and mothers were, they had a routine.
15:00That was the only way, because they couldn't come into the house with their work clothes on it.
15:05But it is, I mean, these, I've never seen these.
15:07I've seen pictures of coal miners, but I've never seen these.
15:10I mean, that is really.
15:13Coal had been the dominant industry in Wales since the mid-1800s.
15:19And Kate's grandfather was not her first ancestor to work in the mines.
15:25Her great-grandfather, Thomas Jenkins, was mining by the time he was 13 years old.
15:32And tragically, the job would leave him in terrible straits.
15:38Thomas Jenkins, age 47, profession, coal miner, cause of death, fracture of spine with displacement, three years.
15:50Three years?
15:51Yeah, that he suffered three years.
15:54Oh, God.
15:55Did you have any idea that your great-grandfather had died so young?
16:01No.
16:02So young.
16:04And he was injured in the mine, and then suffered three years from the injury.
16:09Oh, God, how awful.
16:11Wow, that's incredible.
16:12This is like a page out of a Dickens novel.
16:14Yeah, well, it is.
16:15You know?
16:16It is completely.
16:18This story was about to take a twist that Dickens himself might have enjoyed.
16:26Records show that Kate's great-grandfather was born in Pontrydiffen, a village in South Wales,
16:33and that he was one of at least nine children, many of whom would end up in the mines.
16:39But when we focused on two of his siblings, a pair of brothers named John and David, we found ourselves
16:48in a most unexpected place.
16:50The receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged of all the following described tracts, parcels, and lots lying and being situated in
17:01the original town of Roslyn, county of Kittatus.
17:06Kittatus.
17:07Kittatus.
17:08Uh-huh.
17:08And Territory of Washington.
17:11Territory of Washington.
17:13Do you have any idea what's going on there?
17:15No.
17:16This is a deed of sale between your great-granduncles, John and David Jenkins, in Washington territory in the United
17:24States of America.
17:25Oh, my God.
17:27Oh, my goodness.
17:29That's incredible.
17:30Have you ever heard anything about that?
17:32No, I never have.
17:33That's mind-bending.
17:36We don't know when John and David left for the United States.
17:40Their immigration records have been lost.
17:44But we do know that by 1887, the two had settled in Roslyn, Washington, about 80 miles east of Seattle.
17:55And they almost certainly came to America seeking a better life for themselves.
18:00Yeah, yeah.
18:00And let's see what they did when they got here.
18:02Okay.
18:02Would you please turn the page?
18:03Okay.
18:04This is a newspaper article published in the East Washingtonian, June 2, 1888, about a month and a half after
18:12the deed we just showed you.
18:13Would you please read the transcribed section in that white box?
18:17Roslyn is growing wonderfully.
18:19The grass is green, weather fine, and flowers blooming.
18:23There are 2,000 inhabitants, two churches, two schools.
18:27The Northern Pacific Coal Company, the Northern Pacific Coal Company, have on their payroll 650 men.
18:32The mining company is opening a new mine above the town, which will require a large number of additional hands.
18:41Oh, my God.
18:42Oh, my God.
18:42Just can't stay away.
18:45They can't stay away.
18:46And John and David worked in the mines.
18:49Oh, my God.
18:50Well, that's what they knew how to do.
18:51That's a long way to go to stay in the mines.
18:53That's amazing.
18:54Wow.
18:56Kate's relatives may have been working a familiar job, but there was a significant difference.
19:04In Roslyn, miners made about $18 per week.
19:10Back in Wales, they made the equivalent of about $4 for the same labor.
19:20Wow.
19:21That's amazing.
19:23I mean, there you go.
19:24That's why the...
19:25There you go.
19:25America.
19:26Why people moved here.
19:28Can you imagine hearing that you could make $18 a week instead of $4?
19:33$4?
19:34I think I'm out of here.
19:36Yeah.
19:36I think I gotta go.
19:37That's amazing.
19:38That's amazing.
19:41Even though John and David were doing better in their new home, they still faced immense challenges.
19:49In 1888, Roslyn burned to the ground, and the brothers likely lost everything they owned.
19:58John disappears from the paper trail just a few years later.
20:03But David pressed on and prospered.
20:08David M. Jenkins, head of household, age 56, citizenship, naturalized, occupation, farmer, ownership of home, owns farm, Rachel, wife, age
20:2052, Olive, daughter, age 18, Helena, daughter, age 15, Celia, daughter, age 22.
20:29There's David and his family in 1910.
20:32David owned his own farm.
20:34Wow.
20:35And he was a naturalized U.S. citizen just 20 years after he arrived from Wales.
20:41Mm.
20:41He owned a farm.
20:43Mm.
20:44Got out of the mind.
20:45How does it feel to see that?
20:46That's great.
20:47I mean, it's great because he was, he probably did something that was going to extend his, he was going
20:53to have a better life.
20:54He was going to extend his life as not doing that terrible, terrible work.
21:00As it turns out, David was not the only member of his family to take a chance on America.
21:07By 1880, his sister, Cecilia, was raising her family in Pennsylvania.
21:14And his brother, William, who was working as a miner in Wales when he was 11 years old, had crossed
21:21the Atlantic and was living with his family in Illinois.
21:26Oh, my goodness.
21:28What do you think your father would have made of all this?
21:30I think it would have made him so happy to think that they got out of the life of you
21:38are born, you hit the age of 11, you start working in the coal mines.
21:43Right.
21:43I think he would have been very happy that that mold had been broken, that that pattern had been broken,
21:50which is, let's face it, what he did.
21:52Sure.
21:52You know, he broke the pattern.
21:54And so I think he would have been, I think he would have been very gratified by that.
21:58Does the learning all this change the way you see yourself or help you understand yourself better, more fully?
22:05I've always had an adventurous spirit.
22:09Right.
22:09It is amazing to think that, you know, about my parents and how adventurous they were, how adventurous dad was,
22:18and, you know, that that spirit comes from your heritage.
22:27Much like Kate Burton, Barry Diller was about to see that he has a stronger connection to his father's roots
22:35than he'd ever imagined.
22:38And this discovery would be particularly surprising because Barry told me that he and his father had very little in
22:45common, especially when it came to work.
22:50Somebody asked me, what work did he actually do?
22:54He was in the building business and related things.
23:01And they said, no, no, what did he do?
23:04And I said, screw if I know.
23:07He went to the office maybe three, four hours a day.
23:11I know he had a desk.
23:15He never really talked about it.
23:17I mean, I knew what business world they were in, and I knew some of the things, but he was
23:24not ambitious.
23:27While his father may have lacked ambition, moving back just one generation, we came to a man who most decidedly
23:36did not.
23:38Barry's grandfather, Bernard Diller, was an entrepreneur, very much in Barry's own mold.
23:45Yet Bernard died before Barry was born, and little of his story had been passed down.
23:53So we set out to reconstruct it, starting with an advertisement that was placed in a San Francisco newspaper in
24:021935.
24:04Oh, my God.
24:07I love that.
24:08Your grandfather opened an all-kosher store called Diller's Market, and there it is.
24:15Have you ever seen a picture of it before?
24:16Of course not.
24:17And it was truly a family business.
24:20Did your father ever talk much about his time working for his father?
24:23Yes.
24:24This is what I do know.
24:26He worked in his father's store and hated every second of it because it was, I gather from him, really
24:37hard work.
24:38And that explains why he never really wanted to work again.
24:45As we pored over the records that Barry's grandfather left behind, we discovered that Bernard did much more than run
24:53a market.
24:55He was also deeply involved in the life of his adopted hometown.
25:01Bernard Diller rose to business success through his own efforts.
25:05He came to San Francisco in 1903, establishing a market in the Orthodox community of the city.
25:12From then, he won not only their patronage, but their affection and esteem, being lionized by many as virtually the
25:21mayor of San Francisco's Orthodox section.
25:23A member and director of a variety of Jewish organizations, he was constantly sought out for counsel and benefactions.
25:32Wow.
25:33I did know that he was a very respected person in his community.
25:40Mm-hmm.
25:40Uh, and, but that's really all I know.
25:45This is impressive.
25:46It was.
25:48Wow, this connects me to my roots.
25:52Barry wondered how his grandfather had ended up in San Francisco in the first place.
25:57The answer seems to be that he was searching for opportunity, relentlessly.
26:06Bernard arrived in California in 1903.
26:10After having tried his hand in Beaumont, Texas.
26:14But his journey began in an even more remote place.
26:20The passenger list of the ship that brought Bernard to America indicates that his original name was Burl Diller.
26:28And that his previous residence was a town called Stara Sambor.
26:33It's located in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now Ukraine.
26:42And on the left, you could see photos of Stara Sambor.
26:46Have you ever heard any family stories about this?
26:50Are you crazy?
26:52No.
26:53Well, we're going to take you to Stara Sambor.
26:57Turn the page.
26:59This is a page from a Polish journal called Law and Administration Review.
27:04This entry is dated January 9, 1897.
27:08Would you please read that transcribe section?
27:10How did you frigging find this?
27:12The Imperial and Royal Regional Court of Sambor, this commercial court, announces that a commercial company by the name of
27:22Beryl Diller and Haim Gartner was entered in the commercial registrar for the enterprise of leasing an American water mill?
27:31The general members of the company are Beryl Diller, owner of real estate and merchant in Stara Sambor, as well
27:38as Haim Gartner, owner of real estate and merchant in Piano Vitsa.
27:43That's right.
27:44So they were merchants.
27:46Yes.
27:46Your grandfather was extremely ambitious and hardworking, willing to roll the dice.
27:55Sound familiar?
27:58Yeah.
28:00What do you think Beryl would have made of you?
28:04Oh, beyond his, I could imagine, imagination.
28:08Mm-hmm.
28:09I would think.
28:10Yeah.
28:11He would have been proud.
28:12I think he might have been.
28:13And he would say, takes after me.
28:18We had one more detail to share with Beryl.
28:22Records from in and around Stara Sambor document a series of marriages among his relatives.
28:30They allowed us to map his paternal roots in the region back to more generations and to identify four of
28:39his great-great-grandparents by name.
28:43They were all likely born sometime over 200 years ago in the early 1800s.
28:50Did you ever imagine when you walked through that door?
28:54Are you kidding?
28:56We went back to, I mean, it's just how you could do this.
29:00It's just, phew.
29:02You have extraordinarily deep.
29:05We'll see you next time.
29:05Pays to mind
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