I don’t really watch documentaries, but saw this on Nefflix this weekend and started watching as it was rated so high. It’s a fascinating biography of Teddy and Franklin, both of which I knew nothing about. The narration, the photographs, the stories are extremely interesting and well done, it keeps my interest the entire time. There are 7 episodes, about 2 hours each…so I typically break up one viewing to an hour as that’s enough for me at a time, I’ve gone through 3 now.
To those who liked this show, I’d recommend a visit to Hyde Park and Eleanor’s house, Vallkill nearby. There a lot of insight into people from visiting their homes.
I was absolutely addicted to this when it was on PBS, to the point where my DH still teases me whenever he hears the name Roosevelt. I loved every minute of it and found it so brilliantly done. I’m such a fan of Eleanor now.
I am just at the point where she is starting to spread her wings after his polio. I don’t know how I will feel about him after I learn what he did in the presidency, but I’m not impressed with him as a husband nor father at all. I think the only reason he married her was because she was Teddy Roosevelts niece, and he had presidential aspirations.
Eleanor and Franklin were a very, very complicated couple (and I am not going to defend FDR’s track record with his various mistresses and such), but I don’t think he necessarily married Eleanor strictly for political reasons. FDR respected Eleanor’s mind and opinions on things (some say he feared her wrath, from what I have read of her, when she dressed someone down with words might as well have been a sword), and in that way they very much were a couple (which again, doesn’t excuse his affairs and such). If I can admire FDR for one thing (and I personally think there were a lot of things I can give him credit for), it is that he resisted the temptation to do what many wanted him to do when he took office, which was basically to in effect become a dictator (congress basically was willing to offer him emergency powers; plus Roosevelt had a speech, that he never gave, that he was going to give to the American Legion, that almost implied seeking military backing to beat back opponents.
Things I learned while visiting Hyde Park: Sara Delano (FDR’s mother) had the largest bedroom with a spectacular view of the Hudson. FDR had the next largest, nicely furnished. Eleanor’s separate bedroom would have been appropriate for a nun. Simple and small. Sara was the original helicopter mother. She moved to Cambridge while FDR was at Harvard (at least for a year).
At Vallkill, Eleanor had many women who lived with her for long periods of time over the years. Vallkill is also simply furnished. Eleanor could cook nothing other than scrambled eggs. Eleanor was very distant from her children. In her last years, she lived with friends rather than family.