The Roosevelts - not just a costume drama

We've had one or two chilly evenings, and I've spent them watching The Roosevelts. The more eclectic of my brain cells have focussed on the clothes and hats and shoes, how they changed, and how, as in the case of FDR's mother, they, well, didn't.  I also studied the early photographs of young Eleanor. Although not conventionally pretty by the standards of her time - no fine-featured blonde was she! - her heavy eyes and full mouth reminded me of Sophia Loren's in her early years.




















It's been easy to work up happy enthusiasm for TR, outraged sympathy for Eleanor, and as for FDR, well, one of my uncles had had infantile paralysis as a baby, as an infant, that is, he never walked. The depiction of FDR's brace, crutches, his nightmares, his perseverance, resonated with me, in my head I heard Pop's tales of how his baby brother kept trying to crawl... I thought of the cheerful, intrepid man my uncle became, and of the impact the terrible disease had had on the entire family. If I sneezed at night, my dad would be right at the door: Are you OK? Did you sneeze? and then, in a careful, deliberately casual voice, Does your neck hurt?

the terrors that creep by night, the arrows that fly by day,
the pestilence that stalks in darkness, the plague that wastes at noontime..

I think also of my grandmother's desperate courage, massaging, stretching, tempting the toddler forward with fruit and candy, insisting on the private use of a public swimming pool, and of my grandfather's insistence on "no tears".

No tears.

My generation - every one of us cousins had the vaccine. And dancing lessons.








12 comments:

  1. We are halfway through and I am enjoying it immensely! I was very familiar with Teddy thanks to my boyfriend Mr. McCullough, but am enjoying my more in-depth intro to FDR and Eleanor. The thing that always struck me about Teddy was that he never mentioned his first wife again. Read that in the book and then reinforced by the documentary. There is a whole PhD in psychology to be gleaned from THAT....

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    1. Didn't the whole family live in denial? Eleanor's adored father was a drunken psychotic wastrel, Franklin's women lived right under the same roof, polio was not mentioned aloud...

      One of the local tv critics has opined that Ken Burns' point of view is not necessarily history. I wasn't there, so can't opine.

      The FDR -ER dynamic did, however, remind me of other Democratic presidents and their spouses.

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    2. Me too! When we were in Campobello and saw the very small bed the Roosevelts shared I couldn't help but wonder if they always shared that bed...

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  2. I'm always struck by how beauty varies. Great beauties of their time look meh now and women considered plain are stunning. I guess it's all about waiting for the right era! Sounds like a fascinating series.

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    1. So far, the programs have been terrific.

      Eleanor would have been classified as a neglected child had she been born in any other time, she did have a "deteriorating bite" which can be fixed by minimal orthodonture and the other jaw problems might not have been as severe had anyone taken the trouble to see that she ate a proper diet. I always agreed that her attraction for FDR was her mind, but I also thought he mistook her for someone who would always be grateful and compliant and indulgent .

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    2. I feel like that even in comparison with women of 30 years ago. There is a lot of pressure for women to remain a certain size, hair colour, make up, that was not expected of the average woman even when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s

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  3. I've missed this series but it sounds like I should try to find it. Polio was a terrifying desease.

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  4. I have seen only about half so far so must go back and fill in the holes, but I too find the R's utterly fascinating. Imagine a man today so crushed by his wife's death! Sara the Mother sounded like a right battleaxe; poor Eleanor to have to endure not being loved by this woman who worshipped her son to a rather creepy degree.

    Eleanor was attractive to start, I think, too. Horrifying that Congress passed a bill to humiliate her work efforts.

    The antivaccine people piss me off-- mightily.

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    1. The anti vaccine generation never saw the effects of polio firsthand. Neither did I, but this documentary captures the horrid history that my parents remember it so well to this day. I'm all for better and safer vaccines for illnesses that are non life threatening or debilitating but I don't understand why anyone would play Russian roulette with polio today.

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  5. You have a knack for pointing out very interesting details and I really enjoyed this post. Ken Burn's is such a brilliant documentary director/producer. I'm thoroughly enjoying watching The Roosevelts. FDR’s best decision was to marry Eleanor. He had his pick of “traditionally" beautiful society women but was engaged by Eleanor’s extraordinary beauty of inner strength, brilliant mind, altruism and resilience. She developed and used those same qualities to help shape U.S policy on equality, human rights, fairness and the list goes on and on. She was ahead of her time for sure. I cringe to even imagine what the America social and economic landscape would look like today had FDR married a "society Stepford wife”.

    I agree that Eleanor had lovely features and I think that she possessed an interesting beauty in her youth. If she were first lady today, she might have had a hair and makeup person as well as a clothing stylist and looked quite chic. I wonder though, if she would have dutifully accepted it or dismissed it as frivolous nonsense.

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  6. Missed this series, but will probably pick it up on Netflix. I'm old enough that in the 1950's my sister and I, along with our whole school, were given the first vaccines for polio, some got the vaccine, some got a placebo. I remember going to school with children in leg braces from polio.

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    1. A relative who wishes to remain nameless got the placebo, and was furious at having to be reinjected later. All this time later she still is!

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