Epic Burns doc sheds light on Roosevelt family

No other family has touched so many lives as the Roosevelts. Thats the claim of The Roosevelts: An Intimate History the intensive and exhaustive new documentary series by Ken Burns bowing Sunday night on PBS.

Employing the now-slightly-staid style made famous by his award-winning documentaries on baseball, the Civil War, jazz and the National Parks, Burns sets out to prove his point. He interweaves the histories of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor from Teddys birth in 1858 to Eleanors death in 1962 with a preponderance of archival footage, photographs, newspaper headlines and voiceovers from actors Paul Giamatti, Edward Herrmann and Meryl Streep as Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt with a young fan in 1935, during FDRs first term.Photo: Corbis

Viewers will get an education in how the Roosevelts shaped the history of New York, making their money on Manhattan real estate, West Indian sugar and plate glass. Their family homes cover the state, including Hyde Park, Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, Long Island and Teddys birthplace on East 20th Street. The familys tradition of philanthropy and humanitarian works was begun by Teddy, who believed that, as a country, the US had to work for everyone to work for anyone at all. Talking heads including George Will, Clay Atkinson and historian David McCullough almost blush with naughty delight as they recall what a politician like Roosevelt could get away with before the age of publicists and spin doctors. If Teddy, the youngest president of his day at age 42, thought he was doing the right thing, he didnt care what anybody thought of it. The Southern press became apoplectic when he invited an African-American, Booker T. Washington, to dine with him at the White House the first president to do so.

His rise was spectacular, from New York City Police Commissioner to Assistant Secretary of the US Navy, Governor of New York and then Vice President, easing into the Commander-in-Chief spot when President McKinley, described as having the backbone of a chocolate eclair, was assassinated in 1901.

Teddy cast such a giant shadow that his cousin Franklin, then an unpopular student at Groton and later Harvard, was encouraged that he, too, could become president. He was short on charisma in his early years. Besides being a social outcast at snooty private schools, Franklin was not much of a ladykiller either, settling for a marriage with his homely cousin Eleanor, herself an unloved child whose only sense of fulfillment came from engaging in humanitarian works. Theirs was not a match made in heaven, but as an alliance they were formidable.

During Roosevelts three terms, Franklin and Eleanor received 5,000 to 8,000 letters per day, since troubled Americans felt they could go to them with their problems. Eleanors globetrotting made her the most famous woman in the world. And FDR faced the two greatest challenges any president had dealt with since the Civil War the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler. As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin reminds us, its amazing that most Americans never realized that FDR, who suffered from polio, could not walk. His disability never interfered with his ability to lead; nor was the press, unlike today, allowed to harp on such matters. When reporters tried to broach the topic of his health, Roosevelts press secretary Steve Earley said, Its not a story.

The Roosevelts is a reminder that we once lived in a country where people were more concerned with the big picture.

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Epic Burns doc sheds light on Roosevelt family