|
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.
|
