Teddy the Rough Rider

Sidney Blackmer certainly couldn't be accused of being half-hearted with his downright ebullient portrayal of American politician Teddy Roosevelt. Beginning with his determination to rid the police department of it's corruption through to his visionary anticipation of the Spanish-American War before his election as Governor of New York. In all of those positions he managed to irritate just about every vested interest, so they decided to put him up for McKinley's Vice-President where they assumed he could do no great harm. Unfortunately, a gunman managed to see he was unexpectedly elevated to the top job and there he remained until succeeded by Taft. All of that is crammed into a twenty minutes that really doesn't do much justice to his achievements and relies far too much of the exuberance of his performance and of a series of soundbite-style clips of his famous and vibrantly flag-waving speechifying. It might encourage more exploration of the career of this formidable man, but as a stand alone drama it's far too rushed and superficial.

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.

... 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.

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.

It's an Oscar winning short of the life of Theodore Roosevelt from police commissioner of New York City to Assistant Secretary of the Navy to his charge up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War and his rise in the political world.

It's an old fashion film. The writing is very old style. Of course, it has "Speak softly but carry a big stick". The acting is very broad almost to the point of being a cartoon. It is what it is. It's an old fashion filler acting as a historical newsreel.