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.

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.

Teddy the Rough Rider (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-winning short from Warner has Sidney Blackmer playing Teddy Roosevelt as we see his early life in New York City to his military days and finally his years in the White House. I'm really not sure how historically accurate this film is but from what I've read it's more accurate than most bio-pics from Hollywood. This two-reelers benefits from being shot in Technicolor, which leads to some very good looking scenes including a rather nice war sequence, which contains some good action and of course some beautiful colors. The main reason to watch this film is for the performance by Blackmer who would play this character six times in his career. Again, I'm not sure how realistic the performance is but the two men certainly look a lot alike and it wouldn't shock me if this was close to how the President acted. Blackmer gives an incredibly strong and uplifting performance as it's clear the political speech at the end was prepping current American's for the war, which was about to happen.

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.