A Roosevelt Too Far

cinema à la carte

ROOSEVELTS Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) The story of the love affair between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret "Daisy" Suckley, centered around the weekend in 1939 when the King and Queen of the United Kingdom visited upstate New York. ... Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Olivia Williams. . I saw Hyde Park touted on NETFLIX and thought, "screw Roosevelt", and "Bill Murray??? WTF"!  In a moment of weakness, last week, I watched it. This is what I'll say about it.   Somewhere in the middle of the film I caught myself thinking, "Jesus, FDR looks like Bill Murray." I am not making that up. This is a lot of fun. The wank Ms. Suckley (I love that name) administers,  is the first time FDR's adventures have been openly portrayed.  After I watched "Hyde Park," 'FLIX recommended The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. I bit. This seven-part, fourteen hour film from Ken Burns follows the Roosevelts for more than a century, from Theodore’s birth in 1858 to Eleanor’s death in 1962. I couldn't put it down, and by the end my fuzzy attitude about Teddy's presidency had hardened into utter contempt, and my utter disrespect for Franklin had moved to grudging admiration of sorts, and a feeling that if Eleanor had died in 1922  his administration would not have been so littered with communists.  Real communists. As an aside, in one of the FDR bios I read years ago was an accounting of how an apparent melanoma was removed in secrecy while he was off on the presidential yacht.  To this day I have yet to see this addressed in other bios, written or filmed.  There is a web presence that suggests that he died from cancer.  If he did, there would be no reason to hush it up, but "conspiracy" happens when you hush things up.