HBO's 'Warm Springs' puts a spotlight on FDR's rehabilitation
Roger Catlin
The Hartford Courant
Apr. 29, 2005
As much as has been written about the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- and later made into TV movies -- one hidden chapter finally gets some light in a typically lavish HBO production that premieres Saturday.
"Warm Springs" is named after -- and was filmed at -- the rural Georgia spa where Roosevelt went for treatment when his promising political career in 1921 seemed forever stalled when he contracted polio at age 39 after visiting a Boy Scout camp on Staten Island for a photo opportunity.
English actor Kenneth Branagh, who won an Emmy for his role in a previous HBO film, "Conspiracy," makes a dashing and convincing FDR, whose legs are made useless by the feared disease. In the film by Joseph Sargent, written by Margaret Nagle, he appears first as a cad, conducting an affair with his secretary and falling into a dark abyss of depression when struck by his condition.
Slowly, in rural Georgia, he begins to learn to live again, attains some freedom with a car equipped with hand controls, and creates a community among residents at the springs. His family and closest political allies are at first shocked by all this, but slowly see how working his way out of his funk is the first step in his unprecedented political career -- election to the presidency followed by three re-elections, serving a crucial role in his 13 years in office by both getting the United States out of the Depression and finally into World War II.
Still, an unspoken agreement with the press at the time meant the president was rarely seen in his wheelchair, his condition seldom spoken of.
At the Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y., where Nagle did research for her script, there were 35,000 pictures of FDR "but only two of him in a wheelchair," she says.
"He is the only person in recorded history to be elected to the highest office who could not walk," Nagle told reporters earlier this year. "I thought to talk about Franklin from the point of view of his ability, to sort of 'out' him as a disabled person, was incredibly important."
Because his involvement at Warm Springs -- which he decided to buy with his trust fund money and where he returned to die in 1945 -- was largely covered up, a lot of the production crew had to guess how things looked, or how FDR dressed there.
But the production is convincing -- carried by the performances by Branagh, who turns his British seriousness easily into a paternalistic Hyde Park accent, and, surprisingly, by Cynthia Nixon, best known on HBO for her long role on "Sex and the City," as the ever-supportive Eleanor Roosevelt.
She, too, manages the future first lady's distinctive, enunciating speaking style -- despite being affixed with the large teeth her character had. In fact, Nixon says, the fake teeth aided her elocution. "I found that when I could have the teeth in, it was much easier to sound more like her, because a lot of the way she spoke was trying to speak around her teeth."
In playing Eleanor, she also had to measure up to previous TV portrayals, whose standard was set by Jane Alexander -- who was also cast in "Warm Springs," this time as FDR's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt.
"It was very daunting to have (Alexander) on the set, but in a way I think she kind of launched us," Nixon says.
Sometimes the actors would check their portrayals with her before they proceeded, she says. "And if you couldn't have Eleanor Roosevelt there at the filming," Nixon says," I think Jane Alexander is about as close as you could get."
The strong supporting cast in "Warm Springs" includes David Paymer as political colleague Louis Howe; Tim Blake Nelson ("O Brother, Where Art Thou?"), just right as the down-home owner of the spa; and Kathy Bates, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the character she plays, physical therapist Helena Mahoney.
"Kathy Bates looks so much like that character, we freaked her out when we showed her a picture of the real character," Nagle says.
For the lead role, HBO Films President Colin Callinder says, Branagh was always the top choice, though it almost didn't happen.
"He wasn't available because that was when he was going to do 'Mission: Impossible,' " Callinder says. "There was nobody else that we had as a backup, and we put the movie on hold."
Because "Mission: Impossible III" was put on hold, it freed up Branagh, whom director Sargent calls "the quintessential actor who can do virtually anything," and was especially good with the accent.
"That mid-Atlantic accent to good American English obviously came very easily for Ken," Sargent says. "In fact, that mid-Atlantic sound is the kind of thing that permeated that period a lot. A lot of people had it. Katharine Hepburn had it. Most of the divas of the American stage developed a good American stage English. And so it was interesting to see how quickly and easily Ken slipped into it."
For Branagh, the challenge was to square the FDR he heard in stirring speeches with how he might have sounded in his private life, before he became a famous politician.
Branagh says he spent time listening to FDR speeches, but adds, "I don't think he started off as a great orator. Eleanor said at various times in the early races for the New York Legislature that there were often a lot of embarrassing pauses, but he became a great orator. And you hear the speeches. And there is a tone of voice that it's sometimes a little hard to imagine him ever asking for a cup of tea without (sounding that way). But somehow we try to find a way to find the private individuals."
Roger Catlin
The Hartford Courant
Apr. 29, 2005
As much as has been written about the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- and later made into TV movies -- one hidden chapter finally gets some light in a typically lavish HBO production that premieres Saturday.
"Warm Springs" is named after -- and was filmed at -- the rural Georgia spa where Roosevelt went for treatment when his promising political career in 1921 seemed forever stalled when he contracted polio at age 39 after visiting a Boy Scout camp on Staten Island for a photo opportunity.
English actor Kenneth Branagh, who won an Emmy for his role in a previous HBO film, "Conspiracy," makes a dashing and convincing FDR, whose legs are made useless by the feared disease. In the film by Joseph Sargent, written by Margaret Nagle, he appears first as a cad, conducting an affair with his secretary and falling into a dark abyss of depression when struck by his condition.
Slowly, in rural Georgia, he begins to learn to live again, attains some freedom with a car equipped with hand controls, and creates a community among residents at the springs. His family and closest political allies are at first shocked by all this, but slowly see how working his way out of his funk is the first step in his unprecedented political career -- election to the presidency followed by three re-elections, serving a crucial role in his 13 years in office by both getting the United States out of the Depression and finally into World War II.
Still, an unspoken agreement with the press at the time meant the president was rarely seen in his wheelchair, his condition seldom spoken of.
At the Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y., where Nagle did research for her script, there were 35,000 pictures of FDR "but only two of him in a wheelchair," she says.
"He is the only person in recorded history to be elected to the highest office who could not walk," Nagle told reporters earlier this year. "I thought to talk about Franklin from the point of view of his ability, to sort of 'out' him as a disabled person, was incredibly important."
Because his involvement at Warm Springs -- which he decided to buy with his trust fund money and where he returned to die in 1945 -- was largely covered up, a lot of the production crew had to guess how things looked, or how FDR dressed there.
But the production is convincing -- carried by the performances by Branagh, who turns his British seriousness easily into a paternalistic Hyde Park accent, and, surprisingly, by Cynthia Nixon, best known on HBO for her long role on "Sex and the City," as the ever-supportive Eleanor Roosevelt.
She, too, manages the future first lady's distinctive, enunciating speaking style -- despite being affixed with the large teeth her character had. In fact, Nixon says, the fake teeth aided her elocution. "I found that when I could have the teeth in, it was much easier to sound more like her, because a lot of the way she spoke was trying to speak around her teeth."
In playing Eleanor, she also had to measure up to previous TV portrayals, whose standard was set by Jane Alexander -- who was also cast in "Warm Springs," this time as FDR's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt.
"It was very daunting to have (Alexander) on the set, but in a way I think she kind of launched us," Nixon says.
Sometimes the actors would check their portrayals with her before they proceeded, she says. "And if you couldn't have Eleanor Roosevelt there at the filming," Nixon says," I think Jane Alexander is about as close as you could get."
The strong supporting cast in "Warm Springs" includes David Paymer as political colleague Louis Howe; Tim Blake Nelson ("O Brother, Where Art Thou?"), just right as the down-home owner of the spa; and Kathy Bates, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the character she plays, physical therapist Helena Mahoney.
"Kathy Bates looks so much like that character, we freaked her out when we showed her a picture of the real character," Nagle says.
For the lead role, HBO Films President Colin Callinder says, Branagh was always the top choice, though it almost didn't happen.
"He wasn't available because that was when he was going to do 'Mission: Impossible,' " Callinder says. "There was nobody else that we had as a backup, and we put the movie on hold."
Because "Mission: Impossible III" was put on hold, it freed up Branagh, whom director Sargent calls "the quintessential actor who can do virtually anything," and was especially good with the accent.
"That mid-Atlantic accent to good American English obviously came very easily for Ken," Sargent says. "In fact, that mid-Atlantic sound is the kind of thing that permeated that period a lot. A lot of people had it. Katharine Hepburn had it. Most of the divas of the American stage developed a good American stage English. And so it was interesting to see how quickly and easily Ken slipped into it."
For Branagh, the challenge was to square the FDR he heard in stirring speeches with how he might have sounded in his private life, before he became a famous politician.
Branagh says he spent time listening to FDR speeches, but adds, "I don't think he started off as a great orator. Eleanor said at various times in the early races for the New York Legislature that there were often a lot of embarrassing pauses, but he became a great orator. And you hear the speeches. And there is a tone of voice that it's sometimes a little hard to imagine him ever asking for a cup of tea without (sounding that way). But somehow we try to find a way to find the private individuals."
