Teddy the Rough Rider

... more than a century before the current controversy.

This two reel short focuses on Teddy Roosevelt's public life from 1895 through his presidency, and the fact that he lost a son in WWI. Sidney Blackmer made a cottage industry out of the Roosevelt family, between playing Teddy Roosevelt in several feature films and this short, to costarring in "The President's Mystery", the only film to have a screenplay written by a sitting president - FDR.

This just popped up on Turner Classic Movies one night between films, so I thought I'd give it a go since I'd never seen it. As over the top patriotic as it is, I figured it was made during World War II - they even bothered to film it in Technicolor! - but I was wrong. It was actually made in 1940 and won best two reel short of that year at the Academy Awards. If you look at the records, patriotic shorts began winning that award in 1938 and continued doing so until the middle of WWII. Also, Warner Brothers was unique among the studios for making films either directly or indirectly about the threats overseas at a time when American audiences were still very much anti-war.

The short goes into detail about Teddy's trust busting, and his work against graft in government, since that was something common people just coming out of the Great Depression could understand and appreciate - helping the little guy. But then in the middle, the short is not just a sequence about Roosevelt's place in the Spanish American war, but a speech with him warning other cabinet members, when he was asst. secretary of the Navy, that America needs a strong defense. As the others feel he is exaggerating the threat, word comes in that the Maine has been sunk. The point being that isolationism can rock you into complacency and find you unprepared,, with an obvious comparison to what was going on in Europe at the time.

It's interesting how the short doesn't mention, what is to me, one of Roosevelt's biggest accomplishments - the founding of several national parks and his work in conservation. It also doesn't mention that Roosevelt played Ross Perot to successor Taft's George H.W. Bush, causing a Republican split and allowing Woodrow Wilson to become president. But then they only had 20 minutes!

Although undoubtedly one of our best presidents, Roosevelt would probably get no love from his fellow Republicans today given his very progressive policies. If this short makes you more curious about Teddy Roosevelt, then it probably has done its job.

his two-reel short won an Oscar in 1940 and is a fairly good look at Teddy Roosevelt and reasonably historically accurate, for Hollywood. Sidney Blackmer actually looks like TR (thanks to a good makeup job) and it suffers only sligtly from melodramatic excess. The performances are for the most part good and it's a good example of an all but lost form-the 20 minute short film. Turner Classic Movies runs this occasionally as filler and it generally runs as part of their "31 Days of Oscar" feature in March. Recommended.

Sidney Blackmer plays the 28th president of the United States in this short, which won the Oscar for best two-reel movie in the next set of Oscars. Blackmer played Roosevelt seven times on the screen and probably terrorized his entire neighborhood keeping in practice.

This movie covers the period of Roosevelt's life from 1895, when he was Police Commissioner of New York City through his death.

This was director Ray Enright's first short subject in twenty years. Over the past dozen years, he had been one of Warner Brothers' workhorse directors, turning out three or more features a year. Enright was never distinguished as a stylist, but he turned out a long series of money-making movies. This movie looks like it was intended from the first to be Warner Brother's candidate for Oscar gold.

ONCE AGAIN WE are indebted to Turner Classic Movies for bringing us together with movie shorts which are not comedies (farce usually) and introducing many to the "educational" or "historic" types. Although confined to the sum of two reels of celluloid, these pictures do serve at least to a sort of primer on a given area of study. Their exhibition invites the viewer to do some further research of his own at rge local public library.

AS FOR THE production itself, TEDDY THE ROUGH RIDER turns in a remarkably Grade "A" look from stem to stern. This was no doubt at least due in part to the resourcefulness of the Warner Brothers'/Vitaphone's extensive experiences at using and reusing just about every sort of action, adventure and dramatic scene and out take available. Hence, you may see many shots here that were taken from the likes of DODGE CITY (Warner Brothers, 1939).

AS FOR THE treatment of History in this Historical Mini-Biography, t is, of necessity condensed, compressed and somewhat freely embellished. We learn that Roosevelt was rapidly promoted up the political ladder from NYC Police Commissioner, New York State Assemblyman, NY Governor and then to the Office of VP under William McKinley -all basically for being a thorn in the side of the Political Machine.

BUT IN THE END, Teddy fooled them, succeeding McKinley as President upon the assassination of the latter on September 14, 1901. This was the ultimate culmination in a most diverse and obstacle laden life, even for a "spoiled" rich kid.

TEDDY HAD STARTED his life as an asthmatic plagued, skinny, little kid. He spent a good deal of his youthful time in making himself bigger, stronger and much more masculine and robust individual. He could have been called the original "97 pound weakling", even before the days of the Charles Atlas ads.

THIS NEED AND drive to both prove and improve his masculine self continued right up to his organizing the famous U.S. Army Rough Riders of the Spanish- American War.

WHICH NEATLY BRINGS us back to the title of this film.

Probably one of the most written about, discussed, admired, and despised in some quarters, presidents we've ever had was the many sided Theodore Roosevelt. Each generation brings forth new biographies and historical reassessments of his career. The same man who made conservation a personal cause, who passed the Pure&Food and Drug Act, who won a Noble Peace Prize for mediating a settlement of the Russo-Japanese War was also one of the most belligerent men who ever occupied the White House.

But in 1940 with another Roosevelt in the White House, a little of that belligerency might have gone a long way in limiting the ambitions of some megalomaniacs across the pond. It was with that in mind that Warner Brothers made this short subject giving a superficial, but effective treatment of TR's life.

Sidney Blackmer who made a small career within a career of playing Theodore Roosevelt stars in this film which won an Oscar for Best Short Subject. Theodore Roosevelt's career just like his cousin Franklin's would require a nine part mini-series, but the highlights are touched on and the character comes through.