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FDR and the Media
January 30 was the birthday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945).
This is far from the best photo of FDR. It depicts his last address to Congress, in March, 1945, and he looks as old and frail as he was at the time. I chose it because of what’s in front of him, microphones from all of the national radio networks. NBC and CBS you recognize, I’m sure. MBS was the Mutual Broadcasting System. And BLU was for NBC Blue, NBC’s second network, which became ABC not long after this. Coolidge and Hoover had been on radio prior to him, but Roosevelt was the first American President to grab the bull by the horns and truly use the new technology for all that it was worth as a means of getting a buy-in for untried policies from a skeptical nation. Roosevelt’s regular Fireside Chats have never been surpassed as an effective and honest method of Presidential communication. Of his successors, Kennedy, Reagan, and Obama were superb on television, but still not as proactive as Roosevelt was. And while Trump lives almost entirely on social media, and has been effective (politically) at doing so, it can’t be claimed that he uses it responsibly or wisely as a governing tool. He is a demagogue who broadcasts every passing whim, a kind of cross between Father Coughlin and the Loud Family. Roosevelt used radio to keep the nation informed and announce his plans for dealing with problems. Doesn’t sound like much, but it seems to elude most administrations. (Mrs. Roosevelt was very media-savvy too, as we wrote here).
It’s particularly painful to pay tribute to this President at the very moment the American government is being dismantled, torpedoed, and dynamited from within on every front. I began my adult political life as a good working class Democrat with socialist leanings and, after much meandering, have pretty much wound up back in the same place. FDR was the first president my mother ever knew. My father said that the only time he ever saw his own father cry was when FDR died. And of course many of my show biz heroes revered him, people like Woody Guthrie and Will Rogers and Orson Welles.
When I was about 19, I read Arthur Schlesinger’s three volume The Age of Roosevelt (around the same time I first read Bound for Glory), and it’s a very good place to start. All Americans have benefited from what Roosevelt built. Many will die — literally die — as a result of what is happening in Washington right now. Some don’t believe that, some don’t care. That’s always been the dividing line in America: people who care and people who don’t. Roosevelt has always been widely (though not universally) beloved because he cared. And he was a wealthy man who didn’t NEED to care, but he did.
He was also an entertaining character. He wasn’t a great spontaneous wit like some Presidents have been (chiefly, Lincoln and Kennedy) but he was a charmer, and he was more eloquent and quick than most, and generous in his interactions. Above all, his voice and manner were easy to imitate, and so actors loved to do so. Here are a dozen who have played him:
Cohan was a pioneer yet again by playing FDR in the 1937 Broadway musical I’d Rather Be Right.
Impersonated FDR on radio and in TV sketches, and even in a 1937 industrial film. I wish I’d known this prior to my interview for Josh Greenbaum’s upcoming doc Playing POTUS. I had the impression that the first was this one:
Captain Jack Young
Young portrayed FDR in The Reluctant Dragon (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942, pictured above), Edge of Darkness (1943), Mission to Moscow (1943), Action in the North Atlantic (1943), and This is the Army (1943).
Ralph Bellamy: Sunrise at Campobello (1960) and The Winds of War (1983)
Bellamy first played the President in Dore Schary’s 1958 Broadway play Sunrise at Campobello, about the period in the early ’20s when FDR lost the use of his legs due to polio. He reprised the role for the film version, and then later in the TV movie The Winds of War, based on the Herman Wouk book. Unsurprisingly, Bellamy is quite good as Roosevelt. It was one of his best roles.
Edward Herrmann: Eleanor and Franklin (1976), Annie (1982), and Ken Burns’The Roosevelts (2014)
A defining role for Herrmann — you could almost say that the actor played EVERY part as though he were FDR.
Robert Vaughn: FDR (1978-79)
Again, truly excellent casting. Vaughan played FDR in a one-man theatrical performance (also written by Dore Scary), that was also filmed. At various times in his career, Vaughan also played Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman.
Jason Robards: F.D.R.: The Last Year (1980)
Like most folks, I adore Robards, but this was an ill-conceived project for him. Ulysses S. Grant, yes. A fictionalized Nixon in Washington Behind Closed Doors? Yes. But Roosevelt? No. Roosevelt was never crusty, not even in his last year.
John Lithgow:World War II: When Lions Roared (1994)
Lithgow irritates me about 80 percent of the time, but when he is intelligently cast he can be excellent, and that was the case here.
Jon Voight:Pearl Harbor (2001)
A profanation within an abomination.
Kenneth Branagh: Warm Springs (2005)
Not quite sure why this made-for-TV movie exists? It was very well produced, but as the title suggestions, the setting is more memorable than the story, which in any case was already covered by Sunrise at Campobello. Branagh is fine as FDR, but Cynthia Nixon is even more apt as Eleanor. Jane Alexander, who’d played Eleanor in Eleanor and Franklin, plays Sara Delano Roosevelt, the future President’s mother, here.
Ed Asner: FDR (2009-?)
Overweight and 80 years old (FDR died at 63), Asner began touring with his one man show about FDR in 2009 and trotted it out for years afterward. You know, you can admire someone without feeling the need to play him… This is even more ill-conceived than Robards’ take. Judging by the photographs, it looks like a community theatre production.
Bill Murray: Hyde Park on Hudson (2012)
I found this one to be an interesting little experiment. Working class Irish Chicago kid Murray is wrong for the role in many ways, and he knows he’s wrong for it, but he clearly wants to stretch a little, and it’s too charming a turn to hate. It’s about FDR’s affair with Eleanor’s secretary (Laura Linney). Though we can’t help seeing the character as some sort of monstrous Murray-Roosevelt hybrid, Murray plays his actions, he’s always in the moment as the character, and it is by no means as silly as you might fear. The story itself (which takes many historical liberties) is another matter.
Barry Bostwick: FDR: American Badass (2012)
This one doesn’t really count (it has werewolves in it) but it rounds us out to an even dozen. I guess you could say that it’s in the vein of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The bar seems to have become very low for what constitutes a movie. But we have absolutely come full circle from the timid awe that characterized FDR’s portrayal in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Bostwick is well-cast — it’s kind of a waste of his characterization.
As for the next FDR? Never mind the movies, we need a real one, in real life. We’ll need one to repair everything that’s now being deliberately broken, and then to chart a course for the future. It may be decades, it may be around the corner, but we have to hope someone like that is out there. And when she emerges, you know just whom they’ll be comparing her to.
Postscript: after posting, I heard from a contemporary FDR re-enactor! And Gary Stamm is no slouch! He’s been doing FDR for 15 years at National Parks, museums, libraries, schools, and retirement homes. He’s in a film presentation at the White House Historical Association, and has performed at the FDR Presidential Library at Hyde Park four times! You should book him! Learn about him here.
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