Skip to main content

Hyde Park on the Hudson


On a lighter note, Mother Jones hails Bill Murray as "far and away the best Franklin D. Roosevelt in movie history."  Here's the trailer.

Seems FDR has drawn cinematic attention as of late, including this oddball movie with Barry Bostwick as the "American Badass!"  Jon Voight played the President in Pearl Harbor.  John Lithgow played him in 1994 movie, When Lions Roared.  Ralph Bellamy assumed his character in the television mini-series War and Remembrance and in the 1960 movie, Sunrise at Campobello.  Edward Hermann also played FDR twice in television movies from the late 70s.  He was even portrayed by Nikolai Cherkasov in a 1949 Soviet film, The Victors and the Vanquished (11:40 min. mark). The earliest known portrayal is by Al Richardson in a 1937 Three Stooges' movie, Cash and Carry.

Comments

  1. My wife and I saw this over the weekend. It doesn't try to accomplish all that much, is fairly humorous at times, at other times reminiscent of a Hallmark Movie. Talk of Murray's performance being Oscar worthy is very debatable. Although as I must remind myself, The Hurt Locker won a Best Picture Oscar a few years ago, so anything is possible.

    ReplyDelete
  2. In Cash and Carry you only saw "FDR"from behind sitting at his desk but he sounded like FDR and the Stooges all saluted him at the end.

    ReplyDelete
  3. In Hyde Park on the Hudson you see FDR from behind early in the movie. He's getting a handjob in the front seat of his car. Not exactly a star turn.

    ReplyDelete
  4. He was known to be a bit of a letch ; )

    ReplyDelete
  5. Despite MJ's glowing review, I see Bill Murray didn't get an Oscar nomination.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!