Father Roles | Chapter 7

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Speaker 11 I am literally standing in front of the

Speaker 12 one, two, two, three, four,

Speaker 14 five-story building where I was conceived.

Speaker 12 This building for many decades was the place where

Speaker 17 babies were made in perhaps

Speaker 14 somewhat shady circumstances.

Speaker 18 Sketchy circumstances, let's put it that way.

Speaker 20 I wanted to see it, this building on the east side of Manhattan where fertility treatments were done for about 50 years.

Speaker 10 Man, I mean, the mind boggles with how many babies were created in this place, how much life, how many maybe tens of thousands of people literally

Speaker 23 exist because of this,

Speaker 24 because of what happened inside.

Speaker 26 And, you know, I'm standing here

Speaker 11 just after finding out over the last several days and weeks that my father was likely a man named Vincent McNally,

Speaker 10 and it's kind of moving to think that he might have

Speaker 28 come to this office

Speaker 28 and

Speaker 10 either brought with him

Speaker 31 or

Speaker 11 actually donated

Speaker 11 semen at this very place.

Speaker 12 It was likely October of 1977 and here we are, October of 2023.

Speaker 12 My mom would have just turned 31

Speaker 12 a few weeks earlier.

Speaker 10 I don't know if my mom went in one entrance at a certain time of day, and Vincent went in another entrance at a different time of day,

Speaker 11 but I

Speaker 10 can imagine that this might have been the only place where they walked the very same streets at approximately the very same time.

Speaker 37 This is where I come from.

Speaker 33 After I left the clinic, I went to lunch nearby, got a burger and a beer, told the guy next to me at the bar my story.

Speaker 39 And when I left, I checked my email and had a message from our intern, Natalie, that made me run right into the subway. This is West 4th Street, Washington Square.

Speaker 23 Natalie was helping me with a problem.

Speaker 16 I needed to confirm that this guy, Vincent McNally, was my sperm donor.

Speaker 34 The DNA looked promising.

Speaker 19 My new cousin Ryan had even told me that Vincent had donated sperm.

Speaker 42 But the public records I found so far showed that Vincent lived in California.

Speaker 39 And sure, we had heard he was kind of a vagabond, but was he ever actually in New York and at just the right time to line up with my birthday?

Speaker 23 Before I went to California to knock on the door of an 87-year-old stranger with a microphone in my hand, I wanted to be sure I knew what I was talking about, that we weren't making some terrible mistake.

Speaker 31 Okay.

Speaker 11 Our intrepid intern, Natalie,

Speaker 11 she went to the New York Public Library and looked up telephone directories from the 70s.

Speaker 11 And I asked her to look up Vincent L. McNally, see if he was in the city to put him here in 1977 so he would have been able to donate.

Speaker 16 Sure enough, she found an address for him in the heart of the village.

Speaker 47 And I jumped on an F train and came down here so quick.

Speaker 49 Here I am.

Speaker 11 Holy shit, there it is. It's his apartment building.

Speaker 35 My father's apartment building.

Speaker 11 Oh, geez, I'm out of breath. So

Speaker 44 excited.

Speaker 11 Seven-story building, some beautiful cornices.

Speaker 11 This is a key piece of the puzzle that we just put on the board here.

Speaker 35 I'm like thrilled by this news.

Speaker 34 This is a neighborhood I've hung out in a

Speaker 11 billion times. This is where I used to come from Long Island as a teenager to hang out in the city

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 this is where he was living

Speaker 11 and this is where he theoretically came back to after he made this donation of semen back in 77.

Speaker 11 He would have taken the same path I did back on the train downtown to the village which in the 70s would have been an extraordinary place for sure.

Speaker 11 A place of the heart of the counterculture.

Speaker 35 This was the coolest thing I could have imagined.

Speaker 11 I mean, it's cool as hell. I lived in a village in the 70s.
Did you see, like, Bob Dylan at Cafe Wa?

Speaker 45 I mean,

Speaker 34 we're in a legendary block.

Speaker 52 Dougal Street. Holy shit.

Speaker 11 I'm gonna take a picture.

Speaker 17 And a selfie and a sent to my siblings.

Speaker 2 I mean, he walked these streets.

Speaker 35 He was where I was, I know for sure. Now,

Speaker 35 wow.

Speaker 35 Love it.

Speaker 30 So, clue one, Cousin Ryan's story.

Speaker 26 Clue two, Vincent was in New York when I was conceived.

Speaker 32 He had been living in a neighborhood I know so well, just a few blocks from the radio station where I've worked for a decade.

Speaker 18 And later, I looked at the pictures I took outside of where he lived, and I realized Vincent's old apartment building is now above a restaurant called,

Speaker 12 of all things,

Speaker 31 Papa's.

Speaker 29 The third piece of evidence that came through was a new DNA test result for the other potential relative out in Las Vegas.

Speaker 48 She took the test and it came back a few weeks later showing we shared the right number of centimorgans to be first cousins once removed.

Speaker 30 If Vincent's brother Joseph was my father, she instead would have shown up as my niece.

Speaker 19 This was the scientific confirmation that Vincent was instead the right guy.

Speaker 16 Christina, our DNA sleuth, thought the evidence was convincing.

Speaker 58 I think it's worth making contact with him. He doesn't have any socials.
I do have a phone number for him.

Speaker 59 I'd be scared shitless to make that call, though.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, don't be.

Speaker 17 It was cold calls all the time for work. Like, I I call the relatives of crime victims.
I call dirty politicians who don't want to talk to the media.

Speaker 36 And I'm always nervous, even though I've been doing this for like more than 20 years.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 58 It makes your heart beat a little fast.

Speaker 14 For sure. Yeah.

Speaker 13 And this is like a similar kind of call, except it's

Speaker 33 potentially my father on the other line.

Speaker 58 When this call happens, because it probably will happen, I think it's just really quickly getting to the, hi, I'm so-and-so, and I'm doing my family history and quickly get to Michael McNally and Margaret Lahane.

Speaker 58 Like, he'll know who they are, obviously, they're his parents. So, I think that's a great next step.

Speaker 58 You're gonna pep talk yourself. You are gonna like do some calisthenics before you're gonna have a big cup of coffee.

Speaker 35 I was thinking a glass of Irish whiskey.

Speaker 23 From Waveland and Rococo Punch, this is Inconceivable Truth.

Speaker 30 I'm Matt Katz.

Speaker 8 Episode 7, Father Rolls.

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Speaker 41 I wrote a script for my call to Vincent's.

Speaker 19 I'm Matt, and I'm doing my family history, and I believe I'm related to Margaret Lahan and Michael McNally because I have DNA matches to both of them.

Speaker 39 I found your phone number on the internet.

Speaker 34 Can I ask if I have the right Vincent McNally who is the son of Margaret and Michael McNally?

Speaker 19 I also plan to tell Vincent that I'm making a podcast about my search and I was prepared given that he's 87 years old to explain what a podcast is.

Speaker 26 So I sat down at my desk to make the call.

Speaker 30 My wife was working in the other room.

Speaker 19 All I needed to do was dial.

Speaker 39 But before I called the man who donated the sperm that created me, I had one last impulse.

Speaker 19 I decided one more search.

Speaker 26 I was probably just procrastinating, but I logged on to this database that I sometimes use.

Speaker 26 So I've been assuming he's alive and want to get to him before he dies.

Speaker 51 But then

Speaker 59 I just looked up his name in another database that I have access to,

Speaker 11 of really comprehensive database that journalists use to look up people.

Speaker 29 And I did find a death record from September.

Speaker 51 It's not the official record, it's a

Speaker 17 summary of a death record from 2019 for Vincent McNally.

Speaker 62 Same year of birth

Speaker 31 for

Speaker 54 the Vincent that we've been tracking down.

Speaker 17 Says he died at a nursing home in California

Speaker 17 four years ago,

Speaker 24 which would have been exactly a year after I knew I was done or conceived, but

Speaker 17 it took us all this time to figure out who he was.

Speaker 37 And

Speaker 59 I guess according to this, it's too late.

Speaker 17 So, I mean, that sucks.

Speaker 17 Oh, God, the highs and lows of this whole experience are so intense.

Speaker 46 For the last several days, I was sort of assuming he's alive because we hadn't found a death record.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 now I have.

Speaker 54 And that means I missed my window to know

Speaker 2 how this happened and what he did his whole life and who he was.

Speaker 17 You know, I was texting with my siblings this morning. I don't even want to tell them this until I know for sure.

Speaker 54 Because it's, um,

Speaker 43 you know, we kind of fantasized about this idea of, you know, going out there and

Speaker 17 knocking on his door and finding him. And

Speaker 17 I mean,

Speaker 17 now we have.

Speaker 17 I'm not going to know anything else about him.

Speaker 64 Turned out to wonder if I had like

Speaker 64 aggressively pursued this earlier, if I had signed up for 23andMe sooner, if I had,

Speaker 17 you know, there was this year window, exactly a year window, when I knew I was donor conceived while Vincent was still alive.

Speaker 16 If the fact that I was donor conceived hadn't been kept from me for so long,

Speaker 54 maybe I could have found him.

Speaker 49 I could have met him.

Speaker 57 But I ran out of time.

Speaker 18 I've met my siblings, which has been fantastic.

Speaker 17 Now meeting some cool cousins, so I'm getting something out of this whole experience. No question about it.
I'm answering questions, no question about it.

Speaker 13 But the ultimate...

Speaker 16 The ultimate...

Speaker 33 The man with all the answers.

Speaker 64 I'll never be able to talk to him.

Speaker 17 I'm just gonna have questions forever.

Speaker 44 It's the way it is.

Speaker 17 And that's okay.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 57 I know a lot more than I

Speaker 37 ever did.

Speaker 17 And I know the truth now more than I ever did, but

Speaker 45 I don't know.

Speaker 65 Sad about it.

Speaker 65 Fuck.

Speaker 55 How do you mourn a father you never knew was your father?

Speaker 62 For me, the way I handled it was to continue the search, to find out all I could about who Vincent was.

Speaker 32 I needed to know who my father was.

Speaker 30 The next day, I gave the pitch of my life to the woman on the other end of the line at the nursing home where Vincent McNally died.

Speaker 19 Can I tell you my little story here?

Speaker 26 And then maybe there's some way you might be able to help me or indirectly.

Speaker 34 Can I just give you my...

Speaker 50 It's an unusual tale.

Speaker 44 I told her everything.

Speaker 41 DNA test, my father died before ever meeting him. Death record says he died in your facility.

Speaker 32 She told me she couldn't tell me anything, you know, HIPAA.

Speaker 34 And I said, don't tell me anything. Just do me a favor and pass my message on.

Speaker 54 Relay my story to whoever the contact you might have for Vincent McNally's family or estate or next of kin.

Speaker 56 And that's exactly what she did.

Speaker 16 I got a call back about an hour later from the person who, from what I I can tell, was closer to Vincent McNally than anyone.

Speaker 29 That person, though, ultimately did not want to be involved in my search or this project. In fact, they said they didn't like what I was doing at all.

Speaker 29 They explained all this to me in a long email, and after I got the message, I just laid down on my bed on top of the covers and I cried.

Speaker 65 It was the first time my 12-year-old daughter had ever seen me cry.

Speaker 33 I think I felt like after this long road, after coming so close to knowing this man and who he was, I hit another barrier, another rejection.

Speaker 16 But I did come away from my conversations with this person with two facts about Vincent.

Speaker 16 First, where he lived, New York City, yes, and then Asia, and then California. And second, his profession.
Vincent was a stage actor.

Speaker 21 That detail was a gift because even if I couldn't talk to anyone who knew Vincent McNally,

Speaker 30 if he was an actor in theaters for so many years, that was another lead.

Speaker 65 Actors leave paper trails.

Speaker 19 I could never meet Vincent, but I could find my own way to him by learning as much as I could about the life he led before he decided to sell his sperm.

Speaker 16 Kids are often really interested in their parents' lives before they were parents. I was no different.

Speaker 16 So with Natalie and Emily from our team here, we just started searching for any biographical information on him. This time, instead of an Irish doctor, we were looking for an Irish actor.

Speaker 16 In the weeks after I learned Vincent died, we searched online and in library archives of closed theater companies. And we found a trove of documents about his work.

Speaker 20 Articles, reviews, letters, fan mail, profiles, playbills, scripts, audio clips, pictures.

Speaker 20 From there, I put together a timeline of his life, accounting for where he was and when and what he was doing, all up to the point he walked into a medical office in 1977.

Speaker 49 We found out so much about him that even though he was dead, it felt like he was slowly coming to life.

Speaker 34 And it turned out, one of the roles he played several times on stage was that of a father.

Speaker 29 I called my friend Dan to talk over what I found.

Speaker 36 Dan was the person I kept thinking about when I was researching Vincent.

Speaker 17 Can I start by giving you an intro befitting what you do for a a living?

Speaker 37 Because it's very actually relevant to what we're going to talk about.

Speaker 50 Please.

Speaker 46 Our next guest, you may know him from Cobra Kai on Netflix, the beloved food podcast, Green Eggs and Dan, and Inconceivable Truth.

Speaker 21 My bestest of friends, Dana Dude. Hi, Dan.

Speaker 5 That was a good intro. That was like a stand-up intro.
Like, I was going on stage.

Speaker 2 Thanks.

Speaker 67 Dude, you are an actor and comedian, obviously.

Speaker 38 So I have learned all of this crazy stuff about my father in recent weeks.

Speaker 67 And I keep thinking about you and I wanted to, I needed to tell you everything about it.

Speaker 59 And I feel like you're the closest person I know who might be able to like understand and give context to the bits of his life that I'm piecing together.

Speaker 50 First of all, he was an actor.

Speaker 32 You're an actor. I don't know any other actors.

Speaker 24 So you're really the only person I can talk to about that.

Speaker 32 And then second of all, you lived for a long time in the very neighborhood where he lived, Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan.

Speaker 66 When I found his address, I called you to like ask you, you know, just about the block and we'll tell you this thing.

Speaker 5 And then I think you were just stoked that you found the address.

Speaker 53 Right.

Speaker 5 And I was like, I was like, wait, this address sounds really familiar. It was the.

Speaker 5 Same exact building that my ex-girlfriend Paloma lived in. And it was her dad's apartment.
And he was living there in the 70s. So it was the exact same building that your

Speaker 5 sperm donor father,

Speaker 5 I feel like I'm cheating on Richard when I call him your dad.

Speaker 9 Your sperm donor father.

Speaker 5 That's where he was living at the time, which is so wild because I know that building very intimately. Like I almost like I kind of lived there for a while.

Speaker 2 First of all, this is New York City.

Speaker 60 It's the biggest city in the country.

Speaker 21 There's hundreds of thousands of buildings.

Speaker 55 And this was the same building that you were in many times and that he was in and that I was in.

Speaker 68 I remember, this is like 20 years ago, visiting you and Paloma at that apartment and being in the building.

Speaker 63 I remember the actual apartment.

Speaker 5 What's really crazy is that Paloma's dad was also kind of a journeyman actor. And

Speaker 5 they had to know each other. They had to have.

Speaker 31 They had to.

Speaker 62 That's amazing.

Speaker 17 So a little background on him, and I'll tell you how he ended up in New York City in the 70s, other than, you know, there to donate sperm.

Speaker 56 So, he was first-generation Irish.

Speaker 18 His parents arrived separately from different parts of Ireland.

Speaker 12 They landed in the 20s, and they make their way pretty immediately to San Francisco.

Speaker 50 There's other relatives there.

Speaker 33 Vincent's father was an auto mechanic. His mother worked at a laundry.

Speaker 24 They had a nice house in Lower Haight, right in the middle of San Francisco.

Speaker 51 I did some real research, dude. I found some stuff.

Speaker 14 So he goes to Catholic high school.

Speaker 32 He played varsity football his junior year.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 63 Right?

Speaker 5 The reason I say wow is a lot of you only know Matt Katz by his voice.

Speaker 67 But if you've seen his body, it's hard to imagine me doing anything on a football field other than handing out towels to the quarterback when he comes off the field.

Speaker 5 Or doing an expose interview on like helmet-to-helmet crashes.

Speaker 45 Right.

Speaker 19 So he plays varsity his junior year and then drops it his senior year for drama.

Speaker 38 Wow.

Speaker 2 So he's like committed to this thing.

Speaker 21 It seems to be an early passion.

Speaker 26 So he's into drama, apparently.

Speaker 23 He goes to Colorado State University for a bit.

Speaker 26 And oh, this is like totally needless information, but just to give you a sense of the research I did, his freshman year at Colorado State University, he got a ticket for parking on the sidewalk, pleaded guilty, and paid a $3 fine.

Speaker 5 This is the reason that I would never, ever donate sperm, by the way, okay?

Speaker 5 Because some

Speaker 5 jackass little kid is going to go through every single thing I did and put it out there for everyone to hear.

Speaker 2 No way.

Speaker 68 It was in Colorado, and if you don't, I'm getting my sperm.

Speaker 66 Don't park on the sidewalk if you don't want your son who you never met to to bring it up in a podcast 60 years later.

Speaker 5 Never donating.

Speaker 5 Honestly, I said it half jokingly, but it's also kind of serious. Like what you're doing now is completely insane.

Speaker 5 And I kind of love it. I also don't kind of understand it, but I, you know, I do.

Speaker 5 You know, I'm here for you. But like, I just wouldn't want the potential of shining a light on every single part of my life from someone that I don't know.
Right.

Speaker 45 I mean, he

Speaker 26 could never have imagined at the time.

Speaker 57 I mean, eventually he must have realized this, but he could have never imagined at the time that we would have like

Speaker 53 tracked him down, even in death. But here we are.

Speaker 5 Yeah, look, pre-23 and me, I'd be slanging sperm left and right.

Speaker 5 I'd give it out for free.

Speaker 5 I wouldn't even ask for money. Be fruitful and multiply.
Enjoy.

Speaker 5 But now, no, man.

Speaker 45 No way.

Speaker 59 So, having said that, here's his full life story, up to a point.

Speaker 19 Joins the army.

Speaker 55 He's an infantryman in West Germany after World War II in the lead up to the building of the Berlin Wall, which is kind of interesting.

Speaker 59 And then he seems to really take up acting full-time.

Speaker 70 So this is the early 60s.

Speaker 46 And he's like a serious, hey, no offense, Dan.

Speaker 70 He's like a serious actor.

Speaker 5 No offense taken. I don't consider myself a serious actor.

Speaker 45 Okay.

Speaker 56 He ends up in Dallas, performs Shakespeare.

Speaker 54 He was the lead in a traveling children's theater production of Pussin' Boots.

Speaker 21 Did 257 performances. This is like two performances a day, high school.

Speaker 26 auditoriums, that type of thing.

Speaker 67 Travels all over California.

Speaker 19 He's quoted as saying, I learned a lot.

Speaker 44 You can't fool children.

Speaker 70 In 1963, he's in Merchant of Venice as the storyteller Solario.

Speaker 44 He was, quote, suitably rambunctious, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Speaker 26 The next year, he's in Hamlet.

Speaker 70 A reviewer said he was properly tormented.

Speaker 57 He was doing both very serious, like Shakespeare, and then edgy, kind of progressive theater, from what I can tell.

Speaker 44 He plays a heroine-addicted saxophonist who sold his horn to get high in a play called The Connection.

Speaker 21 And the cast performance is called Stupendous by a reviewer.

Speaker 55 So he's apparently like pretty good actor at this point.

Speaker 9 Like a marketer.

Speaker 44 He's a good stage actor.

Speaker 51 He's a good stage actor.

Speaker 33 And he's traveling a lot.

Speaker 18 His great niece had described him to me as a rolling stone.

Speaker 9 So eventually he joins this really prestigious theater group called the Actors Workshop of San Francisco.

Speaker 23 It's described as adventurous and anti-establishment and daring in its productions, and they do some challenging work.

Speaker 12 And then there's this big profile of him in the Granville Sentinel

Speaker 38 it's very in-depth and I've learned so much about him from this okay one of the two headlines is McNally loves stage but spurns nude roles

Speaker 40 He won't get naked on stage.

Speaker 34 He says he likes to play both tragedy and comedy, but the only parts he won't accept are any to be played in the nude.

Speaker 59 It's too distracting, he said.

Speaker 54 It's much more exciting to imagine an act of love than to watch it on the stage.

Speaker 40 Wow.

Speaker 68 Then in this article, he makes some very interesting admissions about life as an actor.

Speaker 34 that would indicate why he ended up donating sperm for $20 or $25 a pop.

Speaker 19 He says, quote, it is very hard to earn a living as an actor, but he says, there is nothing I want to do but act.

Speaker 23 It's like being high on drugs.

Speaker 17 It takes three hours to come down after playing a part.

Speaker 23 When I'm not acting, there is no reason to get up in the morning.

Speaker 28 Working in an office must be very dull.

Speaker 23 He does say he won't do commercials, he won't do TV, he won't teach, he won't direct.

Speaker 61 Like this is the only

Speaker 31 thing.

Speaker 5 That to me is an interesting genetic trait that I don't know that you've nailed down on is that his

Speaker 5 commitment to his craft is kind of in pathological. And your commitment to your craft is quasi-pathological.
I've tried to get you to sell out many times.

Speaker 5 I can tell you exactly when I've told you to sell out.

Speaker 56 Well, he sacrificed more than I have.

Speaker 66 And this is how the reporter in this profile of him captures his personality a bit.

Speaker 48 The reporter writes, McNally just decided to up and go to New York.

Speaker 54 No job, no money.

Speaker 43 He spent his first three days at the Greenwich Village Hotel that charged $1.75 for 12 hours.

Speaker 70 A real flop house, he says.

Speaker 18 Then he goes to NYU and passes himself off as a graduate student. He like faked being a grad student to obtain one of their student housing apartments.

Speaker 69 And he passed a bad check for for the first month's rent and gathered furniture off the city sidewalks.

Speaker 45 Wow.

Speaker 5 That's the crazy thing is like these guys

Speaker 5 they sacrificed so much to like it's just for that high for the applause.

Speaker 61 Well, the applause didn't always come because he ended up landing a gig in 1968 off Broadway Theater in Greenwich Village.

Speaker 23 He plays Ernest Hemingway and the show is about Hemingway's relationship with F.

Speaker 51 Scott Fitzgerald.

Speaker 38 But the reviews of this thing are terrible.

Speaker 14 The write-up from Variety says it may go down as the only two-character show to give a performance for which the cast outnumbered the audience.

Speaker 45 It sold on one night, literally one ticket. Wow.

Speaker 21 This must have shook him, knowing what we know about him at this point, right?

Speaker 45 I mean, yeah.

Speaker 5 No, this is a catastrophic failure to him.

Speaker 11 He says he's making about $50 a week, but plays only last 15 days.

Speaker 44 So in between plays, he's a market research analyst, a movie theater manager, and a security guard.

Speaker 28 There's weird details in this article that seem way too personal, considering it's just the story about a guy who is coming to act with college students for a few weeks.

Speaker 46 It's like, why are these details in there?

Speaker 60 Are they in there just to like inform me, you know, 50 years later?

Speaker 33 He says that his desire to only act and his lack of money have kept him single.

Speaker 47 And that's, I guess, a thing with actors and artists, right?

Speaker 5 I don't know what you're talking about. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 26 The article says that someday he would like a child.

Speaker 26 He wanted kids and he got them.

Speaker 5 He did get them. And I think he'd be proud of you, Matt.
You know,

Speaker 5 I think he'd be stoked to have you as a kid. You're a good kid thanks man

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Speaker 6 Make visually consistent social posts, presentations, videos, and more with brand kits and lockable templates. Edit, resize, and even translate, all in just a click.

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Speaker 46 I think he might have liked being a father because he played fathers often.

Speaker 33 He, this, the show that he performed at this college, it's about a father and daughter and their mutual recognition of their heritages and their inner selves and the enduring power of love.

Speaker 18 And Vincent plays an Irish father.

Speaker 46 And according to the article, Vincent was, quote, obviously excited by the father role he plays.

Speaker 63 That's like an actual line from the story.

Speaker 2 So he was,

Speaker 63 isn't that weird? It's weird that that's like, why is that even in there, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, right.

Speaker 63 I'm like trying to wonder if he was wanting to be a father, if he would like being a father, and then he's like, I'm getting all these sort of messages.

Speaker 45 Wow.

Speaker 66 So his next performance is also about being a father.

Speaker 16 And it's also about the tension in that, you know, paternal relationship.

Speaker 25 And in this case, it's like way fucking head on.

Speaker 19 It's literally about a father estranged from his children and then they show up unannounced and unwelcome at his doorstep.

Speaker 45 And he

Speaker 21 swear to God, Vincent plays the father.

Speaker 55 He had three children in this show.

Speaker 57 He is at least four we know of in real life.

Speaker 43 And we never got a chance to show up at his doorstep, but I guess now here we are.

Speaker 2 I mean, so crazy.

Speaker 50 So I,

Speaker 26 the show is called The Uninvited.

Speaker 34 It comes out in 1975.

Speaker 37 It gets a rave review in The Villager.

Speaker 56 It's a, quote, disturbing story of the struggle for a family to survive

Speaker 21 vincent blazes father is visited by his children who are looking for reassurance and salvation which is like wait oh my god i know

Speaker 45 oh my god i'm like um am i is that what i'm looking for i'm like well maybe yeah i think that actually is exactly what i'm looking for

Speaker 5 that's crazy to think that he actually

Speaker 5 emotionally prepared for you know exactly what's happening.

Speaker 33 The review says the play flows from memories to metaphors.

Speaker 18 And then it says, the cast is excellent.

Speaker 37 Vincent McNally stands out in the role of Ed Shaw.

Speaker 53 Wow.

Speaker 22 He played a good dad, or he played a good bad dad.

Speaker 33 He ends up doing the same show a year later, and our amazing intern, Natalie, got a hold of the actual script.

Speaker 60 Now, this stuff is like out of control.

Speaker 66 The opening musical number is called, I've Got Myself a Daddy.

Speaker 43 I mean, the lyrics were, Why Did He Run Away?

Speaker 43 And it opens, and then it goes into this scene in the show of the son tracking down his father.

Speaker 54 Quote, I haven't seen him in a long time, the son says.

Speaker 62 And then he meets a sibling who's a half sibling.

Speaker 18 And he says to that sibling, he's your father too.

Speaker 19 This is like the exact conversation I had with my new sisters when I found them.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 60 I've got myself a daddy and he's your daddy too.

Speaker 5 It's definitely weird. Sometimes I think you're guilty of trying to make connections that aren't there.
This one's fucking weird.

Speaker 28 Vincent, he's playing this character, Ed Shaw, who doesn't want to see his kids.

Speaker 43 He says that one of the biological daughters, I never wanted her. Just because I'm her father doesn't mean anything.

Speaker 48 I don't know what you kids are after.

Speaker 47 I got nothing to tell you except that you're beginning to give me the creeps.

Speaker 48 Now, how much do you have to hear before you know how unwanted you are?

Speaker 31 Whoa, dude.

Speaker 32 Right?

Speaker 19 These lines in the play were were kind of haunting.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but it's a decent question. What is it that you're after?

Speaker 2 This was kind of a lot of what I wanted.

Speaker 21 I wanted to identify him, which I did.

Speaker 26 I wanted to meet him, which I can't.

Speaker 19 And then I wanted to know as much as I could about him.

Speaker 10 And I think it's fitting that I have been able to find out everything about him until this point before he

Speaker 12 did this thing that created me.

Speaker 38 So now I know it.

Speaker 16 So maybe that's what I was after.

Speaker 5 Maybe. I just...

Speaker 5 I feel like there's a difference between looking at this whole thing in terms of curiosity and then also in terms of giving you meaning.

Speaker 5 I think it's really cool and really interesting, but I think you should try.

Speaker 5 I don't think it's a substitute for

Speaker 5 creating meaning in your life, like why you are the way you are and all that stuff.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 I think that

Speaker 5 you have a lot of people in your life that are here for you, that love you.

Speaker 5 You should be getting your meaning from those people, you know? And don't get me wrong, this is fun. This is really cool and it's really interesting.

Speaker 5 But I do think you've gone off the deep end on like, if I don't find these things out, I'm not going to be whole. And you're very whole.

Speaker 31 You're one of the more whole people that I know.

Speaker 5 And I think that

Speaker 31 you should

Speaker 5 try to compartmentalize this and try to see this as a fun, cool, like escape room adventure that you went on.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 you already have the meaning that you're looking for. And there's nothing else to find.

Speaker 2 That's fair.

Speaker 5 The best thing that came out of this, in my opinion, is that you could ignore your... who you thought was your birth father.
Right. That's all the meaning you needed from this.

Speaker 5 That's the best meaning you got from this. Because that was really souring your life.
And now you're free of that. So, you know,

Speaker 5 take that as the gift that Vincent gave you.

Speaker 44 Thank you, Vincent.

Speaker 45 You're right.

Speaker 44 You're absolutely right.

Speaker 70 And then all the details of his life are just kind of

Speaker 15 a cherry on top.

Speaker 54 As far as we can tell, Vincent never performed again.

Speaker 52 Those father roles were his last on stage.

Speaker 16 At the same time his acting career appears to have ended, he started donating sperm.

Speaker 16 Next time on Inconceivable Truth.

Speaker 10 Any idea how an actor would have come to donate sperm?

Speaker 27 I cannot tell you because I have no situation where I would have used a non-medical person as a fresh donor in semination.

Speaker 15 Inconceivable Truth is a production of Waveland and Rococo Punch.

Speaker 26 I'm writer and host, Matt Katz.

Speaker 15 The story editor is Erica Lance, mixing by James Trout.

Speaker 15 Emily Foreman is our producer.

Speaker 42 Natalie White is our intern.

Speaker 16 For research help in this episode, special thanks to Christopher Bonanos of New York Magazine and to the folks at New York Public Library Special Collections, Denison University Archives and Special Collections, and Stanford University Library Special Collections.

Speaker 15 Our executive producers are Jason Hoke at Waveland and John Parati and Jessica Alpert at Vercoco Punch.

Speaker 20 For photos and more details on the series, follow at Waveland Media on Instagram, X, or Facebook.

Speaker 15 And you can reach out via email at podcasts at waveland.media.

Speaker 65 That's Waveland, W-A-V-L-A-N-D.

Speaker 42 If you like the series, please leave us a review.

Speaker 16 And as always, don't forget to tell a friend or a relative.

Speaker 49 I'm Matt Katz.

Speaker 35 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 62 One more thing I found meaning in.

Speaker 63 I used to

Speaker 2 act.

Speaker 2 We performed together in a play once, Dan, in high school.

Speaker 5 Oh, let's put the word act in huge quotes.

Speaker 9 Huge air quotes.

Speaker 5 I used to act, he says. Vincent's turning in his grave.

Speaker 33 I performed in California Suite in high school in a Neil Simon play, which he also performed in Neil Simon plays, alongside your high school girlfriend, Kelly, who people may remember from episode one, she found the videotape of our performance.

Speaker 7 Oh my god.

Speaker 73 I'm paying for everything, you understand? The perfume, the plug on the carpet, the tennis balls, I'm shoving up my ass.

Speaker 73 A year I planned for this vacation. You know what I got the show for?

Speaker 12 My acting was

Speaker 19 horrendous.

Speaker 21 I just like yelled everything.

Speaker 48 I had like an inconsistent New York accent through it all. I've had enough.

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