August 9, 2007
FDR’s Polio Posted by John Steele Gordon at 12:35 PM EST Reading Ellen Feldman’s excellent article on FDR’s polio (or whatever it was in fact), I am stimulated to make a recommendation.
A couple of weeks ago I remembered watching, with great enjoyment, the television series “Eleanor and Franklin” based on the book of the same name by Joseph P. Lash, which won the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1972. The TV program dates to the mid-70’s, so I last saw it thirty years ago. I turned to the estimable Netflix and ordered it. I have now watched the first half, “The Early Years,” which covers the Roosevelts up to his election as President.
I think it is excellent in every way, wonderfully capturing the characters of both Eleanor (beautifully played by Jane Alexander) and FDR (equally well played by Edward Hermann) and their complicated, all-too-human, and historically remarkable relationship. I found it deeply moving. Reading Ms. Feldman’s piece this morning, I am struck by how many of the details that she mentions about his early days with polio are mentioned or portrayed in the TV show. Joseph Lash was a consultant, so I imagine the show is equally historically fastidious throughout.
Indeed, about the only thing I could find to complain about was the house used to depict Theodore Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill in one scene: it was too gilded-age fancy. Sagamore Hill, while large (23 rooms), is a much more homey, wicker-rockers-on-the-porch sort of place (the Roosevelts were old money and didn’t need to impress anyone). And, of course, there are TR’s hunting trophies all over the place, including, if I remember correctly, an elephant-foot wastebasket that fascinated me when I saw it fifty years ago.
So I would recommend people do what I did: get “Eleanor and Franklin” from Netflix or Blockbuster or wherever and spend a couple of evenings with one of the most extraordinary American couples of the twentieth century. As a bonus, “Going Home,” the greatest American folk song ever written by a classical Czech composer (Antonin Dvorák), is heard frequently as FDR’s funeral train makes its way slowly northward from Warm Springs.
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