All language subtitles for The Roosevelts - An Intimate History 4 The Storm

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Previously on "The Roosevelts"...

Theodore was denied a return
to the White House...

He left power too soon.
He had to be in the arena.

Then charted a deadly course
into the Amazon...

We started down the river of doubt

into the unknown.

While Eleanor and Franklin
were rocked by betrayal.

Eleanor Roosevelt
never forgave or forgot

what he had done.

And now part 4 of
"The Roosevelts: An Intimate History."

Campobello was one of the two or three

most important places in
Franklin Roosevelt's life.

He'd learned to sail there.
His father had taught him there.

He'd been going there
since he was a little boy.

And it was also the place

where his children got to know him.

He led the kids on long
walks around the island...

And he was a real family man
at Campobello.

And to Eleanor Roosevelt,

it was the first place she had
ever had a home that belonged

really to her and her husband
and not to her mother-in-law.

On Tuesday afternoon, July 6, 1920,

Sara Delano Roosevelt
was at work in the garden

of her father's old house
overlooking the Hudson,

at Newburgh, New York.

She had seen her daughter-in-law
and the grandchildren off

to Campobello for the summer.

Her son Franklin was far away,

attending the Democratic
Convention in San Francisco.

A servant called from the house.

Mrs. Roosevelt was wanted
on the telephone.

A friend had wonderful news:

Franklin had just been
nominated for vice president

of the United States, still another office

his fifth cousin Theodore had once held.

Sara was pleased, but not surprised.

She had taught her boy that
nothing he ever really wanted

was beyond his grasp.

She wrote him right
away, sending her regards

to the son she now believed
would be "our future president."

"All my love and interest
goes to you," she said,

"and, as always, is centered in you."

- sync & corrections by wolfen -
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I think Franklin Roosevelt
is simply irresistible.

If you see him on film

with that face and that charm

and that infinite grace

and sort of embracing power,

you can't take your eyes off him.

And it almost doesn't matter
what he's saying,

there's just something
riveting about him.

And then I think there's
just a great drama

about a guy who is slick and charming

and graceful as a young man

who goes through this unbelievable testing

and then somehow finds within...
In himself, the ambition

and the power to decide to come back
and then comes back

and then becomes the
most important President

of the 20th century.
It's a pretty good story.

During the 1920s,

memories of Theodore Roosevelt
would begin to fade,

and the public's attention
shifted to Franklin and Eleanor.

The two would find themselves living

altogether new kinds of lives.

Awkward and diffident,

Eleanor would struggle
to emerge from the shadow

of her mother-in-law and the memory

of her husband's relationship
with her own Social Secretary

to become a public figure
and a political power

in her own right,

while Franklin... active,
ambitious, gregarious...

would suddenly find himself
immobilized, powerless,

isolated, his career at an apparent end.

And then, displaying qualities
of courage and compassion

even he may not have
suspected he possessed,

he would re-emerge in time
to help restore the faith

of a badly frightened country.

To some extent,

Franklin Roosevelt's ease
of life before the polio

might not have equipped him for
being the leader that he was.

There was ambition, but
not the ambition attached

to that huge substance that
later came after the polio.

What the polio did, I think, was to just

transform him in many ways.

He learned by withstanding that adversity

that he could come through a trial of fire

and thereby he could help
other people do the same.

This past year

has rather got the better of me.

It has been so full of all kinds of things

that I still have a breathless,

hunted feeling.

During the 20 months that preceded
Franklin Roosevelt's nomination

for Vice President in 1920,

American life seemed to
have turned upside down.

The great war had ended.

Theodore Roosevelt, who had hoped

to regain the White House, had died.

Women finally could vote in every state,

a new, exciting music
would fill new airwaves,

and prohibition would
turn millions of Americans

into lawbreakers.

Wall Street climbed steadily upward

as unregulated speculation
in stocks, real estate,

and commodities attracted
more and more citizens.

It seemed as if the good
times would never end.

Aboard the warship that
bore Woodrow Wilson home

from peace talks in France,
the President told Franklin

and Eleanor that the
United States must enter

the new League of Nations that
promised to prevent another war

or it would break the heart of the world.

In the end, Wilson's isolationist enemies

and his own stubborn refusal
to compromise combined

to keep America out of the League

and broke Wilson's heart.

He himself was a virtual
prisoner in the White House,

partially paralyzed by a stroke,

unwilling to be seen or heard in public.

American voters... sick of war,

plagued by soaring postwar prices,

and alarmed by labor strife...
Had wearied of reform

and were increasingly
uninterested in events overseas.

At Chicago in June of 1920,

the Republicans nominated
for president an amiable

but undistinguished Senator
from Ohio, Warren G. Harding.

To run against him, the Democrats settled

on another Ohioan, Governor James M. Cox.

Cox then picked 38-year-old
Franklin Roosevelt

to balance the ticket.

He was an easterner with
an independent reputation,

had a good record in wartime Washington,

and most important, he bore
a last name the party hoped

would appeal to independent
voters who had planned

to cast their ballots for
Theodore Roosevelt.

Washington. July 17, 1920.

Dearest babs, today I went
down to the station

and met Governor Cox.

A huge, cheering crowd, more enthusiastic

than any Washington crowd
I have ever seen.

Tomorrow we see the president at 10:30.

I still hope to leave Saturday afternoon

and be with you all at
Campobello Sunday evening.

I can hardly wait.

I miss you so, so much.

Kiss the chicks.

It is almost a month since I saw them.

Your devoted "F".

The two Democratic candidates went

to the White House the next morning

to get the ailing President's blessing.

Tears filled Cox's eyes
when Wilson was wheeled

onto the South Portico, a woolen shawl

around his shoulders
despite the summer heat,

his useless left arm dangling.

In a voice that could barely be heard,

he thanked them for coming.

Cox vowed to continue to call

for U.S. entry into the League of Nations.

Wilson managed to say he was grateful

before he was wheeled back inside.

Franklin Roosevelt would
never forget the sight

of the president he'd served for 7 years,

defeated and helpless.

On July 25, 1920,

Franklin Roosevelt steered
the destroyer hatfield

into Passamaquoddy Bay, went
ashore to join his family

at Campobello for a few days' rest,

and was blasted the next day
by a republican newspaper

for using a "fighting ship belonging

to the American people
for commuting purposes."

From now on, everything
in the Roosevelts' lives

would be subject to public scrutiny.

A newsreel cameraman soon arrived

to capture informal footage
of the democratic

vice presidential nominee and his family.

Franklin was a natural.

Eleanor was not.

She was still virtually
unknown to the public.

When she claimed to have
no publishable photographs

of herself, one Washington paper printed

a picture of someone else.

Another paper described her as
"essentially a home woman

who seems especially to dislike
the official limelight"

and went on to quote a
patronizing "friend" who said,

"she is too much of a Roosevelt
to be anybody's prize beauty."

The formal ceremony at which
Franklin was to accept

the vice presidential nomination
was held a few weeks later,

on the lawn at Springwood.

5,000 people turned out
to hear him speak,

tearing up his mother's lawn
and trouping through her house

where, as Eleanor wrote,
"for so many years,

only family and friends were received."

Franklin spoke for nearly an hour.

He bravely denied Americans
had tired of reform

or had lost interest in the world
beyond their borders.

To reject the League of Nations
would betray the cause

of peace for which
Americans had gone to war

and sacrificed so much, he said.

The odds against victory were high,

but Franklin hurled
himself into the campaign,

traveling by train all across the country,

sometimes delivering 13 speeches a day.

"During three months in the
year 1920," he remembered,

"I got to know the country
as only a candidate

or a traveling salesman
can get to know it."

Dear Franklin,

did you see that Alice
is to go on the stump

for Harding, and that Auntie Corinne is

to speak for him in Portland, Maine?

Theodore Roosevelt had always encouraged

his young cousin's political career,

even though Franklin was a Democrat.

But in the years after
his death, resentment began

to surface among the republican
Oyster Bay Roosevelts.

Oyster Bay and the Hyde Park,

Hudson River Roosevelts were
very close in the early years.

In fact, they kept trying
to marry one another.

It was almost as though
Roosevelts thought

no one else was quite good enough.

As the years went by and as FDR
went into the Democratic Party

and did very well,

the remainder of the family

grew more and more and
more resentful of this...

This... overly charming fella

from the minor branch of the family

who seemed somehow to them magically

to be succeeding where they were failing.

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. ...

still hobbling from war wounds

and now a New York
assemblyman... saw himself

as his father's rightful
successor in national politics.

He was sent by the
Republican National Committee

to dog Franklin's steps.

Franklin was "a Maverick,"
he told a Wyoming rally

of his father's old rough riders.

"He does not have the
brand of our family."

In late September, Franklin wired Eleanor

to join him aboard his train.

He may have missed her,

but 1920 also marked the
first national election

in which women had the ballot.

Democrats hoped they would
rally to the cause of the League

and international peace,

and seeing Franklin's wife
at his side could only help.

Dearest Mama,

this is the most killing thing
for a candidate I ever knew.

Franklin made two speeches
and drove 26 miles

over awful roads before
we ever got any breakfast.

There have been two
town speeches since then

and at least one platform speech

every 15 minutes all day.

And now he still has
to get to bowling green

for a speech in a hall.

I will never be able to do without

at least 4 large cups of coffee every day.

Eleanor found life aboard the crowded,

smoke-filled train claustrophobic.

But she was also fascinated by
the different kinds of people

she met... even grew to enjoy
the reporters on board...

And found an unlikely new friend.

She had initially disdained Louis Howe,

her husband's closest
aide and chief strategist.

She thought him coarse, crude, cynical,

and insisted on calling him "Mr. Howe."

But he understood her importance
to her husband's career,

encouraged her interest in politics,

consulted her about speeches.

"I was flattered," she remembered.

Before long, she was calling
him "Louis," and they were

keeping one another company
during the endless card games

that filled the candidate's
time between stops.

Dearest mama,

Franklin's head should be
turned if it ever is going to be,

for there is much praise
and enthusiasm for him

personally almost everywhere.

And then we get asked if
he's Teddy frequently.

It is becoming almost impossible

to stop Franklin now
when he begins to speak.

Ten minutes is always 20,

30 is always 45,

and the evening speeches
are now about two hours.

The men all get out and
wave at him in front,

and when nothing succeeds,
I yank his coattails.

At Hyde Park on Election Day,

Sara and Eleanor cast the
first votes of their lives

for Franklin.

They didn't count for much.

Warren G. Harding and his running mate,

Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge,

won in a landslide.

To add insult to injury,

Harding appointed Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy,

the post both his father
and Franklin had held.

One republican newspaper
expressed the hope

that for this young Roosevelt,
the job would prove

a springboard to the White House,

even though, "for fifth-cousin Franklin,

"it had proved a political scaffold

from which he suddenly
dropped into oblivion."

FDR tried to be philosophical.

The race had been "a darned
fine sail," he told a friend.

"Every war brings after it a period

"of materialism and conservatism.

"People tire quickly of ideals,

and we are now repeating history."

The American people wanted pause,

they wanted surcease, they wanted rest.

They'd been to war.

They wanted jazz and Martinis

and... literature and the twenties.

Franklin handed out
commemorative gold cuff links

to those who had been closest
to him during the campaign,

including Louis Howe;

his advance man, Stephen Early;

his press spokesman, Marvin McIntyre;

and his secretary, Marguerite Lehand,

whom Roosevelt and everyone
else called "Missy."

They were his "cuff-links gang," he said,

and would remain at his side
for years as he tried to build

upon the national reputation he had made.

Until he could mount a serious campaign

for the presidential nomination in 1924,

he had to earn a living.

He practiced law with old
friends and went to work

as regional vice president of the fidelity

and deposit company on Wall Street.

He admitted it was
"mostly glad-hand stuff."

And like many members
of his class, he plunged

into the heedless financial
speculation of the 1920s...

A fleet of dirigibles that
was supposed to ferry commuters

between Chicago and New York;

a plan to corner the
market in live lobsters;

oil exploration that found
only worthless gas;

slot machines that peddled
pre-moistened postage stamps...

So many dubious schemes that the society

for promoting financial knowledge wrote

to protest his misuse of what it called

a "distinguished and honored name."

In my early married years,

the pattern of my life had been largely

my mother-in-law's pattern.

Later, it was the children and Franklin

who made the pattern, but I began to want

to do things on my own,
to use my own mind

and abilities for my own aims.

3 weeks after election day,

Eleanor lunched with her mother-in-law

and Sara's two sisters, Dora
and Kassie, in Manhattan.

It did not go well.

"They all, in their serene
assurance and absolute judgment

on people and affairs
make me want to squirm

and turn Bolshevik," she told Franklin.

The discovery in 1918

that he had been unfaithful to her

with her own Social Secretary,
Lucy Mercer,

had nearly destroyed
Eleanor's self-confidence.

In marrying Franklin Roosevelt,
she had hoped

to find in him a confidant
and to find in his mother

something like the loving
mother she had never had.

She had found neither.

Her husband was self-absorbed
and harbored secrets.

Her mother-in-law's
first loyalty was always

to her son and her grandchildren.

Working for the Red Cross during the war

had been her salvation.

When peace came, Sara had urged her

to give it up and return home.

She refused.

The war, she said, had made
a life of "nothing but teas

and luncheons and dinners impossible."

She had resolved to find "real work."

Now, back in New York,

she learned typing, shorthand,

and joined the board of
a brand-new organization...

The League of Women Voters.

And she began to make new friends...

Veterans of the suffrage movement,

like the activist Esther Lape
and her partner,

the lawyer Elizabeth Reid...
Who were not only committed

to one another, but to a host of causes.

And she finds her own life

in politics with women she admires.

These become her life-long friends

who are her guides

on the most progressive issues.

"The rest of us were inclined
to do a good deal

of theorizing," Lape remembered.

"Eleanor would look puzzled
and ask why we didn't just do

whatever we had in mind
and get it out of the way."

Like her Uncle Theodore,
like her husband Franklin,

Eleanor Roosevelt would
always crave action.

Sara Delano Roosevelt
had been abroad during

the summer of 1921.

When she returned to
New York on August 31st,

she expected to be met by Franklin.

Instead, she was startled to see

Franklin's half-brother
Rosy there at the dock.

He handed her a letter
from her daughter-in-law.

Dearest Mama,

Franklin has been quite ill

and so can't get down to meet you,

to his great regret.

We are all so happy to have
you home again, dear.

We are having such lovely weather.

The island is really at its loveliest.

Franklin sends all his love,

and we are both so sorry
we cannot meet you.

Ever devotedly, Eleanor.

Sara hurried north to Campobello

as fast as she could go.

The trouble had begun
there 21 days earlier.

Wednesday afternoon, August 10, 1921

had been filled with the kind of activity

for which the Roosevelts were famous.

Franklin took Eleanor, James,
and Elliott for a long sail,

spotted a forest fire on
one of the rocky islands,

and led everyone ashore to put it out.

Then he sailed home again,
took everyone swimming

at the family's favorite
pond two miles away,

and insisted on racing his
sons back to their cottage.

When he got back, he felt funny.

His legs felt funny and he felt feverish.

And he looked at his mail
for a while on the porch,

and then he finally said, "I feel so funny

that I'm going to go to bed,"
and he went upstairs to go to bed,

and he never walked without help again.

The next morning,

when I swung out of bed,
my left leg lagged.

I tried to persuade myself
that the trouble with my leg

was muscular, that it would
disappear as I used it.

But presently, it refused
to work, and then the other.

By the end of the third day,
practically all muscles

from the chest down were involved.

It produces terror,

unreasoning terror.

You just can't believe...

That the legs that you
depended on simply don't work.

And I don't know how to
convey to people the sense...

That suddenly he could not go
to the bathroom, he couldn't go

for the telephone, he couldn't
do anything on his own.

And the limbs that... you know,
he was a great dancer,

he was a great golfer, he loved to run.

None of that would ever happen again.

He dreamed about it all his life,

but he never could do it.

Louis Howe rushed to the island
and bedded down

on a cot just outside his boss' sickroom.

He would never again leave Franklin's side

for more than a few days,
largely ignoring his own family;

the first of many people
who, over the coming years,

would sacrifice their
own lives in the interests

of one or the other of the Roosevelts.

At first, no one, including
baffled local doctors,

knew what was wrong with Franklin.

He shook with fever and
suffered severe pain.

His thumbs refused to work for a time,

and he could not so much
as sign his name.

Eleanor did all she could to nurse him,

administering a catheter
when his bladder failed.

She and Howe took turns
massaging his limbs, too,

despite the severe pain it caused.

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt,
you have been a rare wife

and have borne your
heavy burden most bravely.

You will surely break down

if you do not have immediate relief.

Dr. William Keen.

A nurse was hired
to help ease Eleanor's burdens.

Local physicians continued
to be mystified.

Franklin's fever rose still higher.

He became delirious, cried out,

momentarily lost his religious faith,

could not understand why God,
who had favored him for so long,

now seemed to have turned away.

It's agonizing at first,
absolutely agonizing,

and you're coming in and out
of fevers and you can't...

You don't know where you are
and you don't know what's wrong.

No one told him. They
didn't know what was wrong.

So, for days and days, he lay there

terrified, absolutely terrified.

But it was compounded
in his case by the fact

that everything he had been taught,

um...

persuaded him that he
must not tell other people

how terrified he felt,

so all of it was turned inward,

and so there's a lot of talk...
It's perfectly understandable...

About how gallant he was
and how cheerful he was.

And people would say
things, strange things

like "polio never bothered him."

Mrs. Roosevelt said he never spoke of it.

It's absurd.

It was on his mind every day,

almost every hour.

A specialist from Boston was sent for.

He finally made the right diagnosis:

It was infantile paralysis... polio...

A mysterious virus that attacked
the central nervous system,

randomly destroying muscles.

It was an annual scourge.

Little understood, greatly feared,

polio killed or crippled
tens of thousands

of people every summer,
most of them children.

He was 39 years old.

No one could predict how badly
affected Franklin would be

or what his future held,

but he now knew what
had happened to him.

His fever subsided.

His mood changed.

When Sara finally reached
her son's bedside,

he was already back in command of himself.

He and Eleanor at once
decided to be cheerful

and the atmosphere of the
house is all happiness,

so I have fallen in

and follow their glorious example.

Below his waist, he cannot move at all.

His legs that I have always been proud of

have to be moved often,

as they ache when long in one position.

New York City. September 16, 1921.

Franklin D. Roosevelt,
former Assistant Secretary

of the Navy and Democratic
candidate for Vice President

in the last election,
was brought to this city

aboard a special car
from Campobello Island,

suffering from poliomyelitis

and taken to Presbyterian Hospital.

"I cannot say how long
Mr. Roosevelt will be kept

in the hospital," said Dr. George Draper,

"but you can definitely say
that he will not be crippled.

No one need have any
fear of permanent injury

from this attack."

The "New York Times."

From the first, Louis Howe

and Roosevelt's doctors sought
to minimize the seriousness

of his paralysis in order to
keep his political hopes alive

and also out of concern

for Franklin's own
psychological well-being.

He has such courage, such ambition,

and yet, at the same time, such
an extraordinarily sensitive

emotional mechanism that
it will take all the skill

we can muster to lead him
successfully to a recognition

of what he really faces

without crushing him.

Dr. George Draper.

It was 5 weeks

before his doctors
dared try to sit him up.

When they finally allowed
him to be carried the 7 blocks

to his home under cover of
darkness in late October,

his chart still read "not improving."

He was put to bed on the third floor.

His fever returned, his vision blurred,

and he feared for a time
that he might go blind.

He began daily exercises
to stretch his muscles

and evidently overdid it.

His hamstrings tightened,

drawing his knees up toward his chest.

To straighten his legs again,

they had to be encased in plaster.

Each day, wedges were
hammered in behind his knees.

It was agony.

The tendency is for
atrophied muscle to shrivel.

You have to keep it stretched;

that the exercises that
he was made to undergo

were terribly painful, that you were...

All your muscles are stretched
over and over and over again

and you don't seem to be
making any progress.

And, in fact, he was not
making any progress.

"Mother, how does he stand the pain?"

Franklin, Jr. Asked.

"He does," was all his mother could say.

"He does."

His family suffered, too.

James was away at Groton,

but four children still lived at home,
all of them frightened

by what had happened to their father.

Louis Howe took over
16-year-old Anna's room,

and she angrily resented it.

Eleanor lost her own bed

to Franklin's round-the-clock nurse

and had to snatch sleep on a cot.

That winter, Eleanor remembered,

was "the most trying of my life."

One evening, while reading
to her youngest boys,

she began to weep and could not stop.

It was, she said, "the only time

I ever remember in my entire life

going to pieces in
this particular manner."

For Franklin's mother,
all the exhausting exercises,

all the visits from friends
and business associates,

politicians and well-wishers,
all the tensions

in the crowded household,
were bad for her boy.

As soon as it could be
arranged, she believed,

he should return to the quiet of Hyde Park

where she could care for him,
at least for a time, just as she

and Franklin had once cared
for his ailing father.

My mother-in-law thought

we were tiring my husband
and that he should be kept

completely quiet, which
made our discussions

somewhat acrimonious.

She always thought she
understood what was best,

particularly where her
child was concerned,

regardless of what any doctor might say.

Franklin found himself again trapped

between the two most
important women in his life:

his wife, urging him to greater effort;

his mother, urging him to rest and relax.

His doctors eventually insisted

that he had to get away
from what one of them called

"the intense and devastating
influence of the interplay

of these high-voltage personalities."

I think, for anyone who's had polio,

it's very hard not to be angry
at able-bodied people

who urge you to be cheerful
and do your exercises.

And I think, in FDR's case,
it was particularly hard.

Mrs. Roosevelt...

Had very firm views about things

like schedules and so on,
and so, if he hadn't done

his exercises by 11:00 in the morning,

she would tell him that
he should be doing them,

and he bitterly resented it.

In Hyde Park, without his wife

and children present,
the constant stress eased,

but the routine set by
hisolicitous mother

was as rigid as it had been
when he was a little boy:

Breakfast on a bed-tray,

up and dressed by 10:00,

lunch with his mother at 1:00,

followed by a nap,

tea at 4:00,

dinner at 7:00,

put to bed by 11:00,

with physical therapy
and sedentary hobbies

like building toy boats
and stamp-collecting

to fill the long hours in between.

One day that spring,
Sara made a telephone call

to wilderstein, the home
of the Suckley family,

distant cousins of the Roosevelts,

just up the Hudson in Rhinebeck.

She asked to speak to
Margaret, known to friends

and family as "Daisy."

Her son was lonely, she said,
and needed company.

Would Miss Suckley come to tea?

She would.

Ten years younger than
Franklin and unmarried,

she had been dazzled by him
ever since she'd seen him

at a party, laughing as
he whirled one partner

after another around the dance floor.

Now she found him immobilized.

Daisy felt privileged to sit
with him several times

that spring and summer
on the Springwood lawn

as he pulled himself around
a set of exercise bars,

telling extravagant stories about himself

to keep her entertained
and as unaware as possible

of his helplessness.

"I'm not going to be conquered
by a childish disease,"

he told her again and again.

"My God, he was brave," she remembered.

On June 1, 1922,

Roosevelt's doctors charted
44 of his muscles in red,

ranking them from "normal"
to "totally paralyzed."

Not a single muscle below his ribcage

was better than "fair."

He'd been fitted out with steel braces.

They weighed 14 pounds

and ran from above his waist
all the way to his heels.

Once the catches at his knees were locked

to keep his legs from buckling,

it took two people to haul him to his feet

and a third to slide
crutches under his arms.

Braces allowed him to stand; Not to walk,

but to stand, at least to be upright.

But if you wear them
for any amount of time,

they begin to hurt, and
if you stand for an hour

to give a speech, you are
in pain during that speech.

At first, he simply
hung from his crutches,

then managed to drag
his legs across a room,

finally began to try to make
his painful way alone

down the drive that led from Springwood

to the Albany Post Road.

He made it only once.

Coming back even as far as he did

required enormous effort,

hours and hours of exercise,

all of it aimed at somehow magically

making his muscles work again.

They never worked again.

So what he did was master
a series of techniques

for getting around a little bit.

The first one was to be on crutches,

and he was able to swing
his body through.

It's an extremely dangerous way to move.

His legs are in rigid braces

so that he's sort of like a tower,

and you have to swing the
bottom of the tower through,

through those crutches with each step.

You can't really go up and down steps,

and you can't go very far
before you get exhausted.

It's a bit traumatic when you're 16

to see your father, whom you've regarded

as a wonderful playmate,

who took long walks with
you, could out-jump you,

walking on crutches,

struggling in heavy, steel braces.

And you see the sweat
pouring down his face

and you hear him saying, "I must get down

the driveway today, all the way
down the driveway."

Anna Roosevelt.

One day that June,

Eleanor received a phone
call from a stranger,

a lively-sounding woman
named Nancy Cook,

who said she was the Executive Secretary

of the new women's division
of the State Democratic Party.

Would Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt

be willing to speak at
a fund-raising luncheon?

Eleanor hesitated... she
dreaded speaking in public...

But Louis Howe and her
husband insisted she do it.

It would help her to resume
the independent life

that meant so much to her,

and it would keep the Roosevelt
name before the public,

something Howe and his boss
were always eager to do.

The luncheon speech went well,

and she got to know Nancy Cook
and Cook's partner,

Marion Dickerman, a reformer and educator

who in 1919 had been the first woman ever

to run for the New York State legislature.

For some 15 years,

they would be among
Eleanor's closest friends.

To some on the Oyster Bay
side of the family,

her new friends were
"female impersonators,"

but Franklin saw how important
they were to his wife

and to the work he and Eleanor hoped

would keep his political hopes alive.

The women, in turn, admired his courage

and appreciated his counsel.

He called them part of "our gang."

Eleanor began organizing
the Democratic women

of Dutchess County, and with
coaching from Louis Howe,

overcame a nervous tendency to giggle

while speaking to an audience.

"Have something to say," Howe told her,

"say it, and sit down."

Louis Howe was as important
to Eleanor Roosevelt

as he had been to Franklin Roosevelt.

He realized early on
that if Franklin was going

to be President, she had
to have a role to play

beyond the standard one of
being a mother and a wife.

And he's the one who told
her how to speak in public,

that she should not fear
expressing her opinions,

and much later told her
he would like to make her

President of the United States.

She got her first real taste
of raw politics

on Election Day in 1922.

Some of the Democrats
she drove to the polls

in Poughkeepsie, just down
the road from Hyde Park,

had been paid for their votes.

She was appalled by the bribery,
but delighted by the outcome:

Al Smith, Franklin's old political ally

and sometime critic, easily beat

his republican opponent for governor.

Over the coming months, she would join

the women's city club of New York

and the women's Trade Union League,

making even more new friends

and taking on new causes
and responsibilities

everywhere she went.

I was thinking things out

and becoming an individual.

Had I never done this,

perhaps I might have been saved
some difficult experiences,

but I have never regretted
even my mistakes.

They all added to my understanding

of other human beings.

A little over a year
after he was stricken,

FDR decided to try to go back to work

at the fidelity and deposit
insurance company

in Downtown New York.

On October 9, 1922,

the Roosevelt family buick pulled up

in front of 120 Broadway.

The chauffeur opened the back door.

Franklin extended his legs

and locked his braces in place.

A large crowd gathered

to watch this big guy get out of a car.

They didn't know who he was.

And he then got on his crutches,
which he was very new to,

and very slowly began pulling
himself into the lobby.

He got into the lobby.

His chauffeur was expected
to put a foot in front

of one of the crutches
so that he wouldn't slip.

Somehow, that didn't happen.

The crutch went out from
under him and he fell.

He had to pick his legs up
to get them in front of him

and asked for people to help him up.

He kept smiling and laughing
the whole time as though

this was the funniest thing
that had ever happened,

that it happened all the time,
that it was a joke,

no one needed to worry.

People finally did help him up.
He got on the elevator.

He went up to a welcome
back lunch organized

by his secretary, Missy Lehand,

and he didn't return for months.

Florida. March 5, 1923.

Dearest Mama, the west coast of Florida

is wholly wild and tropical.

I have been in swimming, and
it goes better and better.

I'm sure this warmth and
exercise is doing lots of good.

I am sunburned and in fine shape.

Franklin.

In February of 1923,

Franklin and Eleanor;
Franklin's valet, Leroy Jones;

and his Secretary, Missy
Lehand, all traveled south

to the Florida Keys, where
he had rented a houseboat,

hoping that several weeks in the sun

might help rebuild his legs.

Eleanor did not stay aboard for long.

She found the days boring

and the nights "eerie and menacing."

It's nice to think that
Franklin and Eleanor

were brought together
again by polio somehow.

They were not.

They, in fact, were driven
further apart by it.

She began a career of her own

with his encouragement.

He spent months and months
and months away from her,

trying to rebuild his muscles.

He largely ignored his
children during that time.

And it's simply... it's a
romantic myth. It's not true.

With Eleanor away,

Missy Lehand served
as Franklin's hostess

and companion, setting a pattern

they would follow for the next 20 years.

She was catholic, unmarried,
half his age,

and more than half in love
with the boss she called "F.D."

He was fond of her as well,
and some who knew them would

always wonder about the
nature of their relationship.

There's no question
that Franklin Roosevelt

was the love of Missy's life.

She loved him from the time
she was 18 until she died,

and she was a central
figure in his little world.

Missy seemed to understand

his slightest shift of mood.

"She knows when he is bored
before he realizes it himself,"

one visitor remembered.

"She can tell when he is really listening

and when he is merely being polite,

which no one else can."

Her devotion was complete.

Suitors came and went, some hoping
to gain access to her boss through her.

None could compare with him in her eyes.

Sara called her son's secretary
"nice little Missy,"

but worried that people
would talk about his spending

so much time alone with
a woman not his wife.

Eleanor seems never to have objected,

even to have been grateful
to know that her husband had

the sort of admiring
companionship he always craved

and which she could not provide.

She's rather philosophical

about Missy Lehand.

In fact, in 1923,

Eleanor Roosevelt writes an article called

"The women of Tibet" in which she writes,

"it has been brought to my attention

that the women of Tibet
have many husbands,

which seems to me a very good thing

because so many husbands

have so many wives."

And Missy Lehand is her junior wife.

I mean, she accepts Missy Lehand,

she cares about Missy Lehand,

and she recognizes the important role

that Missy Lehand plays in his life.

Franklin loved everything

about life aboard the houseboat:

Fishing, crawling from
deck to deck out of sight

of curious strangers, defying prohibition

by sharing rum drinks in
the evenings with old friends

who found the time to come down
and be with him,

and being lifted in and out of the water

with a pulley arrangement
of his own devising.

He had grown sideburns by
the time he came north again

that spring, and when his mother saw him,

she thought he looked
so like his late father

that she burst into tears.

In May of 1923,

nearly two years after he was stricken,

12 months after Roosevelt's
doctors first tested

44 of his muscles,

they saw him again.

7 had improved.

7 had deteriorated.

The rest were unchanged.

Months of hard, lonely work

had yielded no measurable overall gain

in strength or stability.

He still was trying somehow to walk

on what one physician called "flail legs."

I am very much disheartened

about Mr. Roosevelt's ultimate recovery.

I cannot help feeling that
he has almost reached

the limits of his possibilities.

I only hope I may be wrong in this.

Dr. George Draper.

When his doctors told him
further progress

was unlikely, he refused
to accept their verdict.

He never made peace with the notion

that he was going to not improve.

He always thought that rules
were not written for him,

that somehow he would
find a way to walk again,

and it really was a sort of delusion

that he lived with, really, all his life.

One after another, he tried

and abandoned supposed "cures."

Nothing worked.

"Polio was a storm," one of Roosevelt's

physiotherapists taught her patients.

"You were what remained
when the storm had passed."

Those were the lonely years.

For a long while during
this time of illness,

we had no tangible father,

no father-in-being whom we could touch

and talk to at will,

only an abstract symbol,

a cheery letter written from
off somewhere on a houseboat.

Neither Anna, nor I, nor my brothers

had the guidance and
training that I think father

would have given us

had he not been involved
in his own struggle

to re-establish a useful life for himself.

James Roosevelt.

Between 1925 and 1928,

Franklin would spend
more than half his time...

116 of 208 weeks...

Away from home, struggling

to find a way to regain his feet.

Eleanor was with him
just 4 of those 116 weeks,

and his mother was with him for only two.

Jacksonville, Florida.

Saturday, February 2, 1924.

FDR went on board and put
the boat in commission,

and the trunks were duly
unpacked, fishing gear stowed,

and library of the World's Worst
Literature placed on shelves.

1924 was the year Franklin
had once planned

to run for the White House.

Instead, he spent weeks
drifting off the Florida Keys

that winter with Missy Lehand.

This time, she remembered,
he was so depressed

he rarely made it on deck before noon.

I think the main difference

between Theodore and FDR
is the fact that Theodore

could always outrun his
depressions, his demons.

Because FDR was paralyzed,
he had to absorb them,

he had to think about them,
he had to sit with them

in a certain sense.

Dearest Franklin,

I have wanted you home the last few days

to advise me on the fight I'm putting up.

Mr. Murphy and I disagree.

I imagine it is just a question
of what he dislikes most:

giving me my way or
having me give the papers

a grand chance for a story.

There's one thing I'm thankful for.

I haven't a thing to lose

and, for the moment, you haven't, either.

Eleanor, not Franklin,

went to political war that spring

against Charles Murphy,
the Tammany Hall boss

who had outmaneuvered her husband

during his first term as a
State Senator 13 years before.

She and her new friends
had already driven

all over the State,
organizing Democratic women.

The issue now was who would
pick two woman delegates

and two delegates-at-large
to the National Convention

in July... men like Murphy,
who had always run things,

or the growing number of women

she'd been recruiting for the party.

When Murphy insisted
on remaining in charge,

she publicly warned him at
a Democratic women's dinner

of what would happen if he
failed to share power fairly.

It is always disagreeable to take stands.

It is always easier to compromise,

always easier to let things go.

To many women, and I am one of them,

it is extraordinarily difficult

to care about anything enough

to cause disagreement
or unpleasant feeling,

but I have come to the conclusion

this must be done for a time

until we can prove our strength

and demand respect for our wishes.

When Murphy still refused
to change his ways,

Eleanor appealed directly
to Governor Al Smith.

He overruled Murphy.

Thanks to her, the women, not the boss,

would pick their own delegates-at-large.

Franklin wrote her to tell her
how proud he was.

You need not be proud of me, dear.

I'm only being active
till you can be again.

It isn't such a great desire
on my part to serve the world,

and I'll fall back into
habits of sloth quite easily.

Hurry up, for as you know,

my ever-present sense
of the uselessness of things

will overwhelm me sooner or later.

I think there are ways in which polio,

ghastly as it was, did help him.

If he had not... had polio,

he would have been a leading
candidate to run for President

during the republican twenties,

and we would never
have heard of him again.

Governor Al Smith had known
Franklin Roosevelt

since his days in the State Senate.

They had not much liked each other,

but they had become allies
of a kind over the years,

and as the 1924 presidential
race drew closer,

the governor asked Roosevelt
to serve as chairman

of citizens for Smith.

FDR agreed.

It was a chance to get back
into national politics,

at least behind the scenes.

When the man who was
going to put Smith's name

into nomination died, Smith
asked who should replace him.

"Roosevelt," an aide answered,

because "you're a bowery mick
and he is a protestant patrician

and he'll take some of
the curse off you."

Roosevelt again agreed,
even though it meant

he would run the risk of appearing

in front of thousands of people.

If he so much as stumbled,

their pleasure at seeing him again

would turn instantly to pity.

He refused to be seen in his wheelchair.

In the library of the house
on East 65th Street,

he and his eldest son,
James, measured off 15 feet...

The distance between the rear
of the platform and the podium...

And practiced covering
it over and over again

on two crutches.

He was grinning as he waited
for his introduction

at noon on June 26, 1924

at Madison Square Garden,

but he gripped James' arm so hard,

it was all his son could
do to keep from crying out.

Then, as 12,000 people held their breath,

James handed him his second crutch

and he began his slow, careful movement

toward the microphones.

When he reached the podium,

everyone in the garden stood to cheer.

He had to keep standing for more
than half an hour as he spoke

and did not dare lift either
hand for fear of falling.

But he was determined that no one forget

his introduction to Al Smith.

He has a power to strike

at error and wrongdoing

that makes his adversaries
quail before him.

He has a personality

that carries to every hearer

not only the sincerity,

but the righteousness of what he says.

He is the "happy warrior" of
the political battlefield...

Alfred E. Smith.

The next day, Eleanor's friend
and confidante

Marion Dickerman dropped in to see FDR.

He was sitting up in bed,
exhausted but elated.

"Marion," he said, "I did it!"

In the end, Al Smith failed
to get the nomination.

After 103 ballots,

the weary delegates settled
upon a colorless conservative,

John W. Davis,

but Franklin Roosevelt had
made an indelible impression.

From the time Roosevelt made his speech,

he has easily been the foremost
figure on the platform.

That is not because of his name.

There are many Roosevelts.

It is because, without
the slightest intention

or desire to do anything of the sort,

he has done for himself what he
could not do for his candidate.

Roosevelt took no further part

in the 1924 campaign.

It's one thing just to try
to get back on your feet.

He had a special problem,

and the special problem was
that he wanted to return

to public life, and that pity was poison.

He could not be seen to be...

To use the word always
used then... crippled.

He had to be thought lame.

Meanwhile, Eleanor
remained in the thick of things.

Her late Uncle's son,
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.,

was running against
Al Smith for Governor,

and she had neither forgotten nor forgiven

her cousin's attacks on
her husband 4 years earlier.

Calvin Coolidge was
now in the White House;

President Harding had died in office.

Harding's administration had been
rocked by a bribery scandal

involving the illegal lease
of government oil fields

in Wyoming at a place
called Teapot Dome.

Ted and Archie Roosevelt had

both been accused of involvement

and called upon to testify
before Congress.

Neither had actually
been guilty of wrongdoing.

But Eleanor, Nancy Cook,
and Marion Dickerman

followed Ted around the state anyway,

in a car topped with a giant
papier mache teapot,

steam pouring from its spout.

Eleanor denounced her cousin at every stop

as "a personally nice young man

whose public service
record shows him willing

to do the bidding of his friends."

One evening, her tricked-out
car turned up unannounced

at the Farmington, Connecticut home

of Theodore Roosevelt's sister, Bamie.

Eleanor asked if she and her
friends could spend the night.

Bamie took them all in,

even though they were
maligning her nephew.

She loved her niece, she said.

Eleanor would later admit
her Teapot Tour

had been "a rough stunt."

Ted Roosevelt would never forgive her.

On Election Day,

Calvin Coolidge swept the country,

including New York State.

The unregulated orgy of easy credit,

inflated real estate values,
and wild Wall Street speculation

would continue without letup.

But Al Smith was re-elected governor,

beating Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Badly.

It's a very big question
as to whether or not,

if Franklin Roosevelt had not had polio,

he would have been able to
connect as deeply as he did

to the common man.

Eleanor said, "great suffering
can change a person."

And in his case, I think it did
connect him with other people

who had also had
difficulties in their lives

in a way that he might
not have felt before.

He always loved people;
He was always gregarious,

but now he needed them, that
was his connection to life.

It's tempting and probably true to say

that polio gave FDR the gift of empathy.

There was no suffering

that he could not in some sense relate to.

And also the... just as the irons
were clapped on his legs,

the steel entered his soul
by having to fight through

the constant pain of therapy
that was unforgiving

in its demands and not very
fulfilling in its success.

I think it taught him that
there were certain things

which he could not overcome

by the easy gifts that he had been given;

that is, there's some
things you can't charm,

there's some things
you can't use guile on,

that you have to really

have a goal in mind and try to get there.

Roosevelt remained a very devious person,

but he had big goals
and he met a lot of them,

and I think polio had
a lot to do with that.

While Eleanor was campaigning

against her cousin Ted,

Franklin had traveled
south to rural Georgia,

where he'd been told bathing
in mineralized waters

at a ramshackle resort near
the tiny town of Bullochville

might help strengthen his legs.

He loved the warm, buoyant water

that allowed him to stand
with unbraced legs

for the first time since 1921,

so long as he held on tightly

to a rope or the edge of the pool.

"I feel that a great cure
for infantile paralysis,"

he wrote to his mother, "could
well be established here."

He decided to buy the place.

The price for the Battered Inn,

a cluster of tumble-down
cottages, two pools,

and 1,200 acres of
piney woods was $195,000.

Eleanor objected;

all 5 children were
still in private school.

He was risking nearly
2/3 of his inheritance.

She thought he would
inevitably lose interest.

He bought it, nonetheless,
officiated at a ceremony

renaming the little town Warm Springs

because it was thought more
saleable than Bullochville,

and hoped both to attract
wealthy guests to the old hotel

and to provide aftercare
for fellow polios.

As word of his presence spread,

other polio patients, desperate for help,

began to turn up on the train,

some simply shipped south by families

who had been unable to do
anything for them at home.

One arrived aboard a freight car

in a wooden cage his brother back home

had banged together
to keep him from being

thrown around too much
by the hurtling train.

There, among his fellow
patients and away from the press,

with Missy Lehand to act as his hostess

and handle his correspondence
with the Democrats

he continued to cultivate
all across the country,

he could be himself.

He didn't need to be self-conscious

about his withered legs,

could exercise as he wanted,
at his own pace,

could even wear his braces on
the outside of his trousers.

The hotel never did work out.

Prospective guests were scared off

by the presence of polio patients.

Roosevelt would never make any money

and eventually turned
Warm Springs into a foundation.

But Eleanor was wrong;

he never lost interest,

never backed away.

So it slowly became the Nation's

Premiere Rehabilitation Center for polios.

And Roosevelt became
almost obsessed with it,

raising money for it and helping people.

For him, personally, it was
all kinds of things.

It was the first project
that he had ever had

which he absolutely ran on his own.

He'd worked in the Navy Department,

but as an Assistant Secretary,
which deeply troubled him.

This was his creation,

and it allowed him

to be un-self-conscious about polio.

It's hard to convey,

especially a person who was as beautiful

as Franklin Roosevelt had been,

that he suddenly had withered legs.

I don't care how magnetic
and self-confident

you are or think you are.

To know that people are staring at them

is something that you
never really get over.

And at Warm Springs, he
could not wear his braces

and go to the swimming
pool and have everybody see

how small his legs were,
and it didn't bother him

because there were people
there with worse problems.

You would howl with glee

if you could see the clinic
in operation at the side

of the pool, and the patients
doing various exercises

in the water under my leadership.

They are male and female,
of all ages and weights.

In addition to all this,
I am consulting architect

and landscape engineer
and giving free advice

on the moving of buildings,
the building of roads,

setting out trees, and
remodeling the hotel.

He was the sort of king of Warm Springs.

He knew everybody in town,

and he loved being one of them

and being the number one
of them at the same time,

and that was true all his
life in everything he did.

He loved to be surrounded by people,

all of whom knew that he was number one.

Warm Springs was the first project

he had ever undertaken meant
largely to benefit others.

He began to call himself
"old Doctor Roosevelt."

He devised pioneering water exercises,

hired physiotherapists to work with him

and his fellow patients in the pool,

and paid local "push boys" to wheel them

to and from the water.

Well, we actually... we
got them up in the morning,

bed-bathed them, dressed them,

fed them, and take them
to wherever they had to go.

If they were going to get
therapy, we had to take them

to the therapy room; If
we were going to the pool,

we had to load them on
an old make-shift bus

and take them down the hill.

There was lots of fun, you know,
pool play and stuff like that.

Of course, he liked to get
in there with the patients...

And he'd duck you if you got in that pool.

If you got within reach,
yeah, he'd duck ya, dunk ya,

whichever one you want to call it.

Anyway, your head would go
under the water. Heh heh!

Well, he was... he was jolly.

And he was standing at the door.

He was shaking hands with all
the patients that came that day.

We all had nicknames, and when he met me,

he said, "little girl, what is your name?"

I told him "Suzanne."

"I love that name, Suzanne,
but I'd like to call you Suzie.

Is that all right?" And I said, "uh-huh."

And guess what we called him.

"Rosy."

And when we called him Rosy,

it was always when he drove up

in front of Georgia Hall.

We would be out there...
"Hey, Rosy, hey, Rosy"...

And he loved it.

"Doc Roosevelt's" prescription called

for sunshine, swimming,

gentle exercise, and massage,

and above all, "belief
on the patient's part

that the muscles are coming back."

The physical progress
he and the others made

may have been minimal,

but their psychological
progress was beyond measure.

Oh, he was always happy

and he gave the impression

that it just made you want to achieve

everything you could

and to be more like that he was.

And if we saw him do it,

we wanted to do it.

The only thing that I had
a big problem with...

Those old, gray steps

that had 4 different sides to it.

You would learn how
to go up and down them,

and I didn't want to try it.

But when I saw the rest of them doing it

and he was standing there watching,

I wasn't about to give up.

I thought, "fall or not fall,
I'm going to try."

And I made it.

To see someone so famous

who suffered from exactly
the same problems

that you suffered from
meant an enormous amount

to all of the people that went there.

Most of the people who went
there went there, really,

out of despair, at least at first.

They couldn't... there
wasn't any other place to go.

And here was this laughing giant,

um...

who would kid them and would get...

And would make the kind
of awful, sick jokes

about being handicapped that
other handicapped people love,

but that you can't share
with anybody else.

He loved doing that.

He declared himself vice president

in charge of picnics.

His favorite spot was a rocky overhang

called Dowdell's Knob.

Whenever a patient seemed
about to give in to despair,

he once told a friend,

he or she should be brought
to Dowdell's Knob right away.

One look at the glorious
view, he believed,

would provide the will to go on.

Eleanor now had a place
of her own as well,

a symbol of her growing autonomy.

Back in 1924,

Franklin, Eleanor, Nancy Cook,
and Marion Dickerman

had spread a picnic blanket on the shore

of a meandering stam on Roosevelt land

two miles east of Springwood.

Springwood was always
closed for the winter,

and they'd all agreed it was a shame

Hyde Park wasn't available
to them all year round.

Franklin volunteered to build
Eleanor and her friends

a stone cottage of their own.

"My missus and some of her
female political friends want

to build a shack on a stream
in the back woods,"

he wrote a local contractor.

It took a little over a year
and a half to complete

and would eventually include
a small furniture factory

in an adjacent building,
employing local craftsmen

and overseen by Nancy Cook.

For a time, Eleanor, Cook,
and Dickerman all lived

in a single dormitory
room in an atmosphere

reminiscent of Allenswood,
the English Boarding School

that had meant so much to her as a girl.

"The peace of it,"
Eleanor said, "is divine."

Once the Val-Kill Cottage was completed,

Eleanor rarely slept at Springwood again

unless Franklin happened to be there.

Actually, FDR is relieved

that Eleanor Roosevelt
has a new community,

and they begin to create
not only two separate courts,

but two separate lives.

And they meet for all the
reasons they need to meet

to promote political
things that they're going

to promote together,
including FDR's career,

but it's really a question of
parallel lives at this point.

If women believe they have a right

and duty in political life today,

they must learn to talk
the language of men.

Against the men bosses,

there must be women bosses

who can talk as equals.

In the mid-1920s, Eleanor Roosevelt became

something of a boss herself
and used her clout on behalf

of progressive causes on which
most of her male counterparts

preferred to waffle:
The League of Nations,

the 5-day work week, an
amendment to end child labor.

She even got herself
arrested walking a picket line

in support of striking box workers.

And because of the
tragedies caused by alcohol

within her own family,

she also publicly supported prohibition,

even though her husband
was silent on the subject

and maintained ready supplies
of gin and rum and scotch

at Warm Springs and in an upstairs closet

in their New York home.

Eleanor's new and independent life

meant that she had less
time for her children.

They were alternately
ignored and indulged.

One by one, she would
dutifully escort James

and Elliott, Franklin Jr.,
and John to Groton,

and she continued to clash
again and again

with her mother-in-law, who
spoiled all her grandchildren

and sometimes murmured to them
that she was their real mother;

Eleanor had only borne them.

Anna, the eldest, may have suffered most

from the ongoing tensions
within her family.

She adored her absent father,

but also sympathized with her mother,

who, while Anna was still in her teens,

confirmed to her the rumors she had heard

about her father's romance
with Lucy Mercer.

She was forced by her
mother and grandmother

into making a formal debut at 18

and failed to go to college,
in part because her grandmother

believed educated women
scared off suitors.

Barely 20, she married Curtis Dall,

a wall street broker
ten years older than she.

Many years later, explaining
her early marriage,

she said she'd simply wanted
to get out, away from

the complications that
continued to divide her family.

In the spring of 1928,

Al Smith was the frontrunner

for the Democratic
nomination for president

and asked Franklin to nominate him again

at the Upcoming Convention in Houston.

"I'm telling everyone
you are going to Houston

without crutches," Eleanor wrote Franklin

at Warm Springs,
"so mind you stick at it."

This time, he needed no urging.

To demonstrate to the delegates
that he was making progress

toward becoming a potential
candidate in his own right,

he knew he had to be able to walk...

Or seem to walk... on his own.

For weeks at Warm Springs,
he labored at mastering

what his physiotherapists
called a "two-point walk"...

The slow, rocking gait
he would employ in public

for the rest of his life.

His whole leg would be put forward,

and then the other side
would be put forward

and then the other side
would be foot forward.

It was painful, it was very slow,

and it was very precarious.

If he got jostled,
if the wind blew too hard,

if one of his bodyguards forgot

or relaxed, he could go to the ground,

so he was in constant fear
that that was going to happen.

At the Houston Convention,

he used his new technique to
make his way to the podium.

Thousands of onlookers stood
again to cheer his progress,

and now he was strong
enough to use one hand

to acknowledge their applause.

Smith won the nomination...

And then, to Roosevelt's
astonishment, insisted

that he run for Governor
of New York in his place.

Louis Howe thought it madness.

Republicans and their
candidate Herbert Hoover

were riding a tide of prosperity in 1928.

Smith's catholicism and open
opposition to prohibition

made a Democratic victory
still more unlikely.

Eleanor... already committed

to heading Democratic women's
work for Smith's candidacy...

Felt that if her husband
ran and somehow won,

it might mean for her
the loss of the separate

and fulfilling life she'd
worked so hard to build.

And Missy Lehand told Franklin,

"don't you dare run."

She didn't want to give him
up to public life, either.

Roosevelt himself was torn,

even ducked Smith's calls for a time.

But in the end, he gave in
and agreed to run for governor.

"When you're in politics,"
he told a friend,

"you've got to play the game."

Republican newspapers
denounced Smith for persuading

what they called a "crippled" man to run.

It was a "pathetic and
pitiless act," one said.

Privately, Smith thought

Franklin was little more than an invalid.

"He won't live a year," he told a friend.

But he assured the press,

"a Governor doesn't have to be an acrobat.

We do not elect him for his ability

to do a double back-flip."

To demonstrate he was up to the job,

Roosevelt campaigned through every one

of New York's 62 counties...

Something no candidate for governor

had ever done before.

He did all he could
to minimize the impact

of his disability on the voters:

"No movies of me getting
out of the machine, boys,"

he'd shout to the newsreel cameramen

as he arrived for a speech,
and they obliged.

On Election Night, Franklin, Eleanor,

and Sara waited for the returns
at Democratic Headquarters

at the Biltmore Hotel in Manhattan.

It was quickly clear that
Al Smith and the Democrats

had suffered a terrible defeat.

Smith carried only 7 states;

even his own State of New York
went to Herbert Hoover.

Franklin and Eleanor left
for home well before midnight,

convinced Franklin's
candidacy had also failed,

even though all the returns
were not yet in.

But Sara Delano Roosevelt stayed put.

By 4:00 in the morning,

Franklin was going to win
a narrow victory.

A friend called room service
and, because of Prohibition,

ordered milk, not champagne.

with which to toast her
son's surprising triumph.

FDR would occupy still
another of the offices

his cousin Theodore had held

on his way to the presidency.

Al Smith had assumed Franklin would be

a mostly-absentee governor,
allowing him somehow

to retain power through the men and women

he'd appointed to State Office.

He was quickly disabused of that notion.

FDR fired Smith's two closest aides.

"I've got to be the governor
of the State of New York,"

he told a friend,
"and I have got to be it myself."

Al Smith would never forgive him.

The morning after the election,

a reporter had asked
Eleanor if she were excited

by her husband's triumph.
"No," she answered.

"If the rest of the ticket didn't get in,

what does it matter?"

I felt Governor Smith's election

as president might have meant something,

but whether Franklin spends
two years in Albany or not

matters comparatively little.

It will have pleasant and
unpleasant sides for him,

and the good to the
State is problematical.

Crowds, newspapers,
etcetera, mean so little,

it does not even stir me.

As the First Lady of New York,

she reluctantly resigned her
political and lobbying posts.

But she refused to give up
the job that meant the most to her...

teaching American history

and 19th-century literature 3 days a week

at the Tod Hunter School
for girls in Manhattan.

It gave her an opportunity
to instill in her students

some of the qualities her
own beloved schoolmistress,

Mademoiselle Souvestre,
had instilled in her:

Open-mindedness, independent thinking,

social consciousness.

"I teach because I love it,"
she explained.

"I cannot give it up."

She organized the household in Albany,

assigning Missy Lehand
a bedroom larger than hers,

found space for her circle of friends

as well as Franklin's, and toured prisons

and hospitals on her husband's behalf,

remembering his exhortation
to lift the lids

on cooking pots to check
whether people were getting

the quality of food they
were supposed to get.

And she sometimes stood in for
him at political events as well.

Dear Franklin, arrived

at the Staten Island
Democratic Lunch 12:30,

stood and shook hands till 1:30,

ate till 3:30, talked till 5:20,

home here at 6:40, nearly dead.

You are the finest Governor ever,

and I have all the virtues

and would gladly have
dispensed with half of them

could I have left at 4:00.

Soon after becoming Governor,

Franklin ordered that
wherever Eleanor went,

she be accompanied by corporal Earl Miller

of the New York State Police,

who would serve as her bodyguard.

He's not just her driver and her guard,

he's her buddy.

He teaches her how to shoot a pistol,

how to shoot a rifle

without breaking your shoulder.

He teaches her how to dive.

He is her great friend,

and they spend hours and hours together.

She has a lot of fun with Earl Miller.

He was handsome,
high-spirited, and devoted.

Eleanor was flattered by
his attention and pleased

to be asked for advice
about his many girlfriends.

Miller became a member
of her closest circle,

even starred with her
in a homemade parody

of a Douglas Fairbanks
Movie, filmed at Val-Kill

by Marion Dickerman.

The "New York Times."
October 25, 1929.

The most disastrous decline

in the biggest and broadest
stock market of history

rocked the financial district yesterday.

It carried down with it speculators,

big and little, in every
part of the country.

Losses were tremendous,

and thousands of prosperous
brokerage and bank accounts,

sound and healthy a week ago,
were completely wrecked

in the strange debacle

due to a combination of circumstances,

but accelerated into a crash

by fear.

Americans had survived panics before,

but they had experienced
nothing remotely like

the great depression that began
with the stock market crash

in the autumn of 1929.

Within 12 months, the number
of jobless more than doubled.

Within another year,
it would double again,

with no recovery in sight.

Kansas farmers burned
their wheat to keep warm.

Kentucky coal miners survived

on Pokeweed and Dandelion Greens.

Ten Pennsylvania convicts out on parole

asked to be locked up again.

Life beyond prison walls was too hard.

Everyone seemed to feel the effects.

In Manhattan, Franklin Roosevelt's
own son-in-law,

Curtis Dall, lost his job and
his home in Westchester County

and had to move with Anna and
FDR's first two grandchildren

into the Roosevelt house
on East 65th Street.

Just a few blocks to the west,

homeless men built tar-paper shacks

in the heart of Central Park.

They had nowhere else to go.

Like hundreds of thousands
of desperate people

all across the country,

they named their temporary
village "Hooverville"

after the President whom
they had come to blame

for everything that had happened to them.

Americans differed over
what caused the depression

and what should be done about it.

But Herbert Hoover's grim personality

and his repeated, unconvincing promises

that recovery was just months away

combined to persuade a
growing majority of Americans

that a change was needed.

Meanwhile, Franklin Roosevelt
took more bold action

than any of his fellow governors.

He championed public power,

put unemployed men to work on
state conservation projects,

created the temporary
emergency relief administration,

the first state agency in the country

to provide public relief
for the unemployed...

"Not as a matter of
public charity," he said,

"but as a matter of social duty.

In the final analysis," he declared,

"the progress of our
civilization will be retarded

if any large body of
citizens falls behind.

Without the help of thousands of others,

any one of us would die,

naked and starved."

In 1930,

Roosevelt was re-elected governor

by almost 3/4 of a million votes.

"I do not see how Mr. Roosevelt
can escape becoming

the next presidential
nominee of his Party,"

the State Democratic Chairman
told the press,

"even if no one should raise
a finger to bring it about."

Even Ted Roosevelt reluctantly agreed.

"Well, as far as I can see,
the republican ship went down

with all on board," he wrote his mother.

"Cousin Franklin now, I suppose,
will run for the presidency,

and I am already beginning
to think of nasty things

to say concerning him."

The most serious hindrance

to FDR's winning the nomination

were persistent rumors about his health.

People whispered that infantile paralysis

had affected his mind,

even that he was actually
suffering from syphilis.

To offset them, Roosevelt secretly paid

a freelance journalist named
Earle Looker to "challenge" him

to prove his fitness for office
and write up the results

in "Liberty" Magazine.

Then, also behind the scenes,
Roosevelt provided the money

to pay 3 leading diagnosticians
to look him over.

The examination itself was legitimate.

All 3 doctors signed a statement
pronouncing Roosevelt

in fine shape, aside from
the aftereffects of polio,

though one of them... an
implacable republican...

Privately told his colleagues
he wanted it understood that

"so far as I'm concerned, this
doesn't go for above the neck."

July 16, 1931.

Well, sir, we got away
with the "Liberty" article,

despite all obstacles.

I think we can be sure that
at least 7 1/2 million readers

are sure you are physically fit.

Earle Looker.

FDR would never again
feel the need to speak in detail

about his health to any journalist.

As the 1932 Democratic Convention
opened in Chicago,

Roosevelt was the clear front-runner,

with a reputation as
one of the most activist

and effective governors in the country.

I call on you, whose standards
I see before me,

to here and now testify
to your determination

that the candidate of this
convention shall be and must be

that incarnation of Thomas Jefferson,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York!

Still, he had 9 rivals,

including his embittered
old ally, Al Smith,

and the conservative speaker of the house,

John Nance Garner of Texas.

It took 4 ballots...

And the second place on
the ticket for Garner...

For Roosevelt to win the nomination.

... for President of the United States.

Custom still required
the candidate to wait weeks

to be formally notified of his nomination.

We have a perfect day for this trip,

and I am very happy to be
going out to Chicago,

and everybody knows the
reason why I'm so happy.

In an electrifying break
with that tradition,

FDR decided to fly from Albany to Chicago

to accept the nomination right away.

Louis Howe handed him his speech.

My friends

of the Democratic National
Convention of 1932...

I appreciate your willingness

after these 6 arduous days

to remain here,

for I know well...

The sleepless hours

which you and I have had.

The appearance before
a national convention

of its nominee for President

to be formally notified of his selection

is unprecedented and unusual,

but these are unprecedented
and unusual times.

29 years earlier, Theodore Roosevelt
had promised

the American people a "Square Deal."

Now, 11 years after polio seemed

to have crushed his political hopes,

Franklin Roosevelt made
a promise of his own.

On the farms, in the large
metropolitan areas,

in the smaller cities and in the villages,

millions of our citizens cherish the hope

that their old standards
of living and of thought

have not gone forever.

Those millions cannot

and shall not hope in vain.

I pledge you,

I pledge myself

to a new deal for the American people.

President Hoover had grown so unpopular

that one of Roosevelt's defeated
rivals for the nomination

told FDR all he had to do to win

was to stay alive till November.

With the depression deepening,
a double line of policemen

armed with rifles now
ringed the U.S. Capitol

to keep out demonstrators.

When 17,000 mostly jobless

veterans of the Great War
and their families

descended on Washington to
demand an immediate payment

of a bonus they'd been promised,

Hoover called out the army.

The veterans were brutally
driven from the Capital.

Roosevelt told an aide,

"this will elect me."

Still, he took no chances.

Roosevelt campaigned hard
all across the country,

promising help for "the forgotten man

at the bottom of the economic pyramid,"

attacking Hoover for inaction,

and simultaneously pledging to slash

the federal budget by 25%.

Hoover denounced him as
"a chameleon on plaid."

Now, when Americans spoke of Roosevelt,

they meant Franklin, not Theodore.

"The Oyster Bay Roosevelts have become

the out-of-season Roosevelts,"
a friend wrote.

Theodore Roosevelt's
younger sister, Corrine,

would cross party lines
to vote for FDR that fall.

But Alice Roosevelt longworth,
tr's eldest daughter,

campaigned hard against him
aboard president Hoover's train.

There we were, the Roosevelts,

hubris up to the eyebrows,
beyond the eyebrows,

and then who should come sailing
down the river but Nemesis

in the person of cousin Franklin.

And at Sagamore Hill,
Theodore Roosevelt's widow,

Edith, was so infuriated at receiving

some 300 congratulatory
messages from people

who mistakenly thought
Franklin was one of her sons

that she made an unprecedented
appearance at a Republican Rally

in Manhattan to introduce
the republican incumbent,

just to make it clear that
this Oyster Bay Roosevelt

would also be voting for Herbert Hoover.

Someone once asked Sara Delano Roosevelt

why so many of the Roosevelts
of Oyster Bay seemed

so hostile to her branch of the family.

She didn't know, she said,
but "perhaps it's because

we're so much better-looking
than they are."

Sitting down here next to me
is Mrs. Roosevelt,

my wife, and my granddaughter,

Anna Roosevelt dall, on her lap.

What's our campaign slogan, Sistie?

"Happy days are here again."

"Happy days are here again."

Good. That's right.

On Election Night, November 8, 1932,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
won the presidency

of the United States of America

by 7 million votes

and carried 42 of the 48 states.

His party took control
of both houses of congress.

It was the greatest Democratic victory

in more than 3/4 of a century.

In the Philippines, where
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.

Was serving as Governor-General,

he identified himself to a reporter

as the President-elect's "fifth cousin,

about to be removed."

I was happy for him, of course,

because I knew that in many ways

it would make up for the blow

that fate had dealt him.

But for myself, I was... deeply troubled.

As I saw it, this meant the end

of any personal life of my own.

I had watched Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt

and had seen what it meant to
be the wife of the President.

The turmoil in my heart was
rather great that night and...

The next few months were
not to make any clearer

what the road ahead would be.

During the 4 long months

between Roosevelt's election
and his inauguration,

the depression got still worse.

Stocks, bonds, farm prices...

Everything continued to spiral downward.

Anxious depositors withdrew their savings

in frenzied runs on banks.

Nearly 400 of them failed

in January and February alone.

President Hoover called repeatedly

upon the president-elect to
join him in what he called

"co-operative action" to end the crisis.

Roosevelt refused,

wary of being trapped into supporting

orthodox policies of which
he did not approve.

Off the record, the President-elect told

a reporter the country's
troubles were not yet "my baby."

FDR visited Hyde Park,

rested at Warm Springs,

then went to sea for 12 days,

fishing in the Caribbean

and sleeping aboard
a palatial yacht owned

by an old Hudson River
friend, Vincent Astor.

I got this idea when I was 17 years old.

I see a lot of things I see in my mind.

I see a lot of poor people are
hungry for a piece of bread.

People want bread,

don't have bread to eat.

In my mind,

the idea is to kill the President
in one country.

After he is killed, kill another,

and then kill another.

Giuseppe Zangara.

The President-elect's fishing trip ended

at Miami, Florida on the evening

of February 15, 1933.

Roosevelt stopped his car

to speak to the crowd that
had gathered to see him.

Mr. Mayor, my friends in Miami,

I am not a stranger here

because for a good many years,
I used to come down here.

But on my coming back,
I have firmly resolved

not to make it the last time,

and to see all of you

and to have another wonderful 10 days

or two weeks in Florida waters.

Many thanks.

A deranged Italian immigrant

named Giuseppe Zangara was
waiting with a revolver.

He hated "all presidents," he said later,

and "everybody who is rich."

He had hoped to shoot Hoover;
Now he wanted to kill Roosevelt.

He got off 5 shots and hit 5 bystanders,

including the Mayor of Chicago,

who happened to be standing
next to the president-elect.

FDR never flinched.

He refused to take cover,
ordered the secret service

to lift the mortally
wounded mayor into his car,

held onto him during
the race to the hospital.

Eleanor was in New York.

Franklin called to reassure her.

"He's all right," she said afterwards.

"He's not the least bit excited.

These things are to be expected."

Like Theodore Roosevelt
nearly 21 years earlier,

Franklin seemed unaffected
by coming so close to death.

"There was nothing," an aide
who spent that evening with him

remembered, "not so much
as the twitching oa muscle,

"the mopping of a brow, or
even the hint of a false gaiety

"to indicate that it wasn't
any evening in any other place.

I have never seen anything
in my life more magnificent."

At his inauguration 17 days later,

gripping James' arm,

Roosevelt would demonstrate
another kind of courage.

In 40 of the 48 states,

all the banks were closed.

The stock exchange suspended trading.

Industrial production had
been cut almost in half.

Nearly half of all American
farmers faced foreclosure.

Almost one out of 3 wage-earners...

Some 14 million men and women...

Was without work.

When their families were included,

at least 40 million people had
no dependable source of income.

You, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

do solemnly swear...

It was very, very solemn

and a little terrifying.

You felt people would do anything

if only someone would
tell them what to do.

One has the feeling of going it blindly

because we're in a tremendous stream

and none of us know where
we are going to land.

... of my ability

preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution

of the United States, so help me God.

Americans everywhere were waiting to hear

what the new president had to say.

I shall ask the congress for
the one remaining instrument...

He would promise bold action

and call upon Congress to grant him

"broad executive powers to wage
a war against the emergency."

... as great as the power

that would be given to me if we were,

in fact, invaded by a foreign foe.

This nation is asking for
action, and action now.

But it was another line

his frightened fellow
citizens remembered best.

It echoed hard-earned lessons
that had informed the lives

of first Theodore and
then Eleanor Roosevelt

and now informed his life as well.

So, first of all,

let me assert my firm belief

that the only thing we have to fear is

fear itself...

Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror

which paralyzes needed efforts

to convert retreat into advance.

In every dark hour of our...

"The only thing we have
to fear is fear itself,"

in some ways, is inspired nonsense.

If you're worried about
putting food on the table,

that's something real to fear,
that's not fear itself.

And yet, like all great works
of fiction, all great stories,

that line captures the willing suspension

of disbelief that makes anything possible.

And somebody watching the
speech... Tommy Corcoran,

who later went to work
for Roosevelt... said that

the moment was like Excalibur
being pulled from the stone

and that you just had a sense,
"this guy can do it.

He can lift us up."

- sync & corrections by wolfen -
- www.MY-SUBS.com -

Tomorrow night on "The Roosevelts,"

FDR champions sweeping new programs...

Social security represents

a redefinition of the
American Social Contract.

While confiding in a discreet friend...

Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt

evidently don't get on together.

As the shadow of war hangs over Europe.

Par 5 of
"The Roosevelt: An Intimate History,"

tomorrow night.

These extraordinary Americans
all share one thing in common:

A past they never knew... until now.

"it's incredible!"

In his new season on PBS, Henry
Louis Gates, Jr. helps them

uncover the truth about
where they come from.

S. Field "I can't believe that
these documents even exist!"

"wow!"

Get to know them, as they
discover who they really are.

K. Alexander "that's pretty amazing."

Finding your roots with
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Starts Tuesday only on PBS.