THE ROOSEVELTS: Twelve years on, did the series change, or did I?

 

After hugely enjoying the first few episodes, I did finally watch the end of the 2013 PBS series, The Roosevelts, and oh it was hard going. Very well done, but tedious in places, and sort of depressing due to the heavy subject matter and what happened to all of them. Both TR and FDR died at around age 60, completely used up physically and mentally, and it was hard to watch. 

I never liked FDR and saw him as pretentious and superficial, and Eleanor, though you’re supposed to admire her, has an “ADMIRE ME” sign on her, and her querulous voice and matronly print dresses and constant, Roosevelt-esque smiling just irritated me. (They all had a smile that never seemed to leave their faces, replicated a generation or so later by the Kennedys, with their piano keys always on show). Meryl Streep did a parody of her, a Rich Little impression rather than an interpretation.

The first six hours (SIX HOURS!) were the best, and should have been a separate docuseries on TR. It would have been superb as a freestanding series, but it ranged too far and got bogged down. It was as if something changed halfway through, as if other people dominated the research, or the clips, or whatever. Changing horses mid-stream, as TR would no doubt put it.

So it was a bit of a trudge, but it was still better-made than almost any other doc series I've ever seen. I’m still interested in TR, and now have two other books that I hope don’t rip him apart or make him – incredibly! – DULL. The biographer I didn’t like (Brands) was used a lot in the doc, which surprised me and made me wonder if he also wrote other books about them. Maybe he liked FDR, and admired Eleanor as you are required to.

I suppose they helped save the world, etc., but there was every bit as much corruption and deception then, only done as a matter of course. TR  hated it and was the only one who attempted to flush it out of the bushes. The rest of them went along with it because there was something in it for them - maybe, in fact, everything. 

But it remains to be seen if I can get through 2 more long(ish) books about TR, if he even remotely resembles the figure I like so much. Like, for being a badass, a paradox, a historical anomaly, etc. And fierce! I loved the grin with bared teeth, the "Bully!" and "Dee-lighted" (which were not even metioned in the Brands!), and I also liked his tenderness with his wives, children, etc. though one son killed himself and one died in wartime. 

So. Now I have a long-awaited biography of Toulouse-Lautrec, but it’s challenging in a whole different way, SO detailed I wonder why on earth it all needs to be there. Surely the author can say “his mother took him to one health spa after another, with no results”, rather than recounting EVERY single health spa, EVERY useless treatment, etc. But it is interesting to see how positive he was, how almost sprightly, a satirist who wrote funny, pointed letters with tiny ink drawings in the margins, and arrogant in a way that was still kind of endearing.  And I see virtually no self-pity in a man who had every reason to  live in a state of despair. 

This contrasts wildly with Jose Ferrer's portrayal of  a lonely, cynical, embittered genius in Moulin Rouge (which, by the way, I love, and not just for Jose Ferrer's voice which is the sexiest thing I have ever heard!) He was criticized for walking with shoes on his knees, but facially he was pretty close. But who knew about the rest of him?

It was never a mystery what he looked like. There are actually a lot of photos of Lautrec, mostly in weird costumes - clowns, Arab sheiks, women (he loved drag). The pictures are charmingly droll, sort of like walking cartoons or caricatures, and he knew this and even traded on it. He ultimately destroyed himself, of course, but sheer physical and mental pain may have been behind it, burdened with a body that never did work due to what amounted to generations of incest. 

I believe the Roosevelts, with their habit of marrying cousins, suffered the same thing – bluebloods who “married in” with unknown consequences, including mental illness, alcoholism, and early death. Eleanor was not under remotely that kind of strain, and lived into her 70s, but as a figure loved by the whole world, she did not need to actually do anything, just make appearances and shake hands with the right people, and stand there and receive ovations and cheers. She was a nice old lady, homely, dowdy, hesitant in speech, which made her somehow approachable, but she was no more a figure of the people than the other Roosevelts, who were all wealthy, snobbish aristocrats who stooped to save the world. 

Go get 'em, Teddy! (Read at your own risk!)

 

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, on Americans:

“As for my own country, it is hard to say. We are barbarians of a certain kind, and what is most unpleasant we are barbarians with a certain middle-class, Philistine quality of ugliness and pettiness, raw conceit, and raw sensitiveness. Where we get highly civilized, as in the northeast, we seem to become civilized in an unoriginal and ineffective way, and tend to die out. In political matters we are often very dull mentally, and especially morally; but even in political matters there is plenty of rude strength, and I don't think we are as badly off as we were in the days of Jefferson, for instance.”

Whew! Let me blow out the flames coming from that particular statement. Though it was in a private letter and not meant for public consumption, it's more than candid about what T. R. perceived as the woeful limitations of his beloved country and its (too-often-craven) citizens. 

Of course, you're not supposed to like or admire Roosevelt. He killed animals, he seemed to love war, he pounded the podium when he gave a speech. (And those teeth!) But I've always loved the man, and have always wanted to know more about him. To this end, I'm making my way through an 800-page biography by H. W. Brands, called T. R.: The Last Romantic. But I have to tell you, the portrait he paints of the Old Lion is woefully un-romantic. 

I watched a PBS series on the Roosevelts (and how I wish they'd show it again, all 8 hours of it!), and my favorite two hours was devoted to T. R. And yes, the portrait that emerged was of a true romantic: fiercely passionate about everything (especially his family - he was devoted to them), sometimes too opionated for his own good, and not one to suffer fools gladly (or at all!) - yet at the same time, warm and gregarious, genuine, sincere in his patriotism (his vision was of what Americans COULD be, but somehow never were), and a lot of other things. 

But this Brands character does not even seem to like Roosevelt, and there are little jabs at his character on every page. Talk about thinking in black and white! This fellow has decided T. R. needs to be deconstructed, or should we say, given a hatchet job. I have ordered another bio (there are no doubt hundreds of them) which has been criticized for sentimentalizing Teddy too much. But what the PBS bio got right, and what Brands missed by a mile, was his complexity. 

The man was positively Byzantine, and was full of so many opposite traits that you wonder how he got along. But one commentator said, "What you MUST know about T. R. is that he was a depressive." The fierce exterior disguised a very tender heart, and he was hypersensitive, not to mention a ferocious intellect which soared above most of his contemporaries. THAT is the T. R. I want to hear about, read about, get to know better.

I even wrote in my journal about this! The book critic in me never quite dies, and each book I read comes under analytical scrutiny, but this one. . . I kept getting so turned off that I had to unload somewhere:

I am getting fed up with the TR book, which is a disappointment after a good start. It begins quite positively, but as it goes along the author gets more and more snide, then just starts taking shots at him on every single page. He’s literally attacking the man, claiming he did everything for his own gain and towering ego. Nothing about the latent depression, nothing about the warmth and charm of the man, which his supporters never failed to notice. (They named the Teddy bear after him, for God's sake!) But the book is all about his insufferable ego and how he’s basically a windbag, hot air that is all designed for self-aggrandizement and political gain. He doesn't befriend people - he "cultivates" them. 

I LOVED the PBS program, watched it more than once, and it was far more nuanced, claimed he was actually a secret depressive, his heart irreparably broken by the loss of his first wife. The portrait was of someone far more complex and nuanced than this Brands guy comprehends. I did order another bio, just out of interest. But it does seem the guy really doesn’t like Roosevelt and even thinks he was a phony. Typical politician, full of P. T. Barnum hype and even dishonesty. 

So why did he write this? As with the Van Gogh book, I see contractual obligation on every page. Brands signed a contract to write this, then began to get bored and irritated about ¼ of the way through, a contempt that just grows and grows. I’m reading it now because it supposedly helps me get to sleep, though it did not work last night. 

Enough said!