Ken Burns is the Oprah Winfrey of documentarians. He is revered by loyal viewers, historians and A-list celebrities who happily provide narration work when asked.
The man has tackled America's biggest events, people and trends with trademark lyricism and elegance be it Mark Twain, the Civil War, baseball or jazz. His latest effort provides a window into the world of presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, plus his wife Eleanor.
The seven-part, 14-hour series "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History" debuts on GPB at 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 14, with new two-hour episodes airing the rest of the week.
“Nobody’s ever done all three of them together,” said Burns in a recent interview. "Nobody has seen it as the complicated, interrelated, interconnected family drama that it is."
Burns noted how inspired FDR was as a young man watching his distant cousin Teddy rule the country with a big stick in the early part of the century, knocking down corporate titans, creating the national park system and building the Panama Canal.
Teddy was a bigger-than-life personality who would put Bill Clinton to shame. During the wedding of FDR and Eleanor (a fifth cousin of his), when the reverend asked who giveth this woman in marriage, Teddy yelled, "I do!" Teddy's oldest daughter Alice said her father "always wanted to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, the baby at every christening."
At the same time, Teddy was borderline reckless. "He thought war was a good thing," Burns said.
Watch the first eight minutes of the 14 hours here:
The series shows how crucial FDR's wife Eleanor (Teddy's niece) helped shape him into the indispensable leader he became. He also reveals how FDR's polio at age 39 may have kept him in a wheelchair but drove him to greater political heights as he guided Americans through two of the greatest crises they had faced since the Civil War: the Great Depression and World War II.
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Burns considers FDR "our greatest 20 century president and perhaps our greatest president of all."
Georgia plays a small role in both Teddy and FDR's lives. Teddy's mother Martha grew up in Roswell and FDR spent time in Warm Springs, GA for polio treatment. FDR, as the New York governor, built a home there and used it as a retreat when he became president. It was dubbed the Little White House and is now a museum.
While Burns covers their accomplishments and successes, "each of them are deeply flawed individuals," Burns said. "It's important to take everything with a grain of salt."
Teddy, he said, is someone you'd love to hang out at a bar and drink a beer. But there was also a side of him that was always trying to escape demons. "He worried if he slowed down," Burns said, "he'd explode."
Eleanor, he said, "had this most pathetic childhood, unspeakably sad... yet she became the most consequential First Lady we've ever had."
And Burns described FDR "as a most loved, pampered child. He was a little too ambitious, a little too charming." (He was not popular in school or in his early days in politics.)
Burns and his chief collaborator and historian Geoffrey Ward had talked about doing a series on the Roosevelts for 32 years. Ward had written three books about FDR already. Seven years ago, they finally decided to move forward.
"The issues and questions about government they grappled with are not really different from what we face today," Burns said. "What is the role of government? What should citizens accept from government? What is the nature of leadership? How does character contribute to leadership? How is character formed by adversity? It's an amazing roller coaster."
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
The series features top-notch vocal talent, including Paul Giamatti as Teddy, Meryl Streep as Eleanor and Ed Herrmann (who portrayed FDR in a 1976 TV movie) as FDR.
"They relieve us the tyranny of the third-person narrator, what we call in the business 'the voice of God,' " Burns said. "One of the contributions I've made to film is adding first-person voices to complement third-person narration so you get a sense of their style, of how people sounded during that period... To have someone like Meryl Streep bring Eleanor alive is incredible. We had historians in our edit bay with tears running down their cheeks and they'd been studying Eleanor for 50, 60 years."
And despite the fierce opposition they faced, they "got things done. They pushed through obstacles that are ever present."
Burns, too, never stops pushing forth on several projects at once. He is doing a three-part series on cancer, a documentary on Jackie Robinson and a deep dive into the Vietnam War. He hasn't taken a day off since February. What did he do? "I think I sat at home breathing heavily and hugging my grandkids," he said.
TV preview
“The Roosevelts: An Intimate History”
Seven parts, to air every night for seven consecutive nights, two hours per night starting 8 p.m., Sunday, GPB
Public Broadcasting Atlanta, Channel 30, will air the program in weekly installments start October 19 starting at 7 p.m.
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