ABSTRACT
Roosevelt’s patrician upbringing in rural estate of Hyde Park was considerably different from the urban and ethnic environment of the moguls who created the motion picture industry in Hollywood. However, the Hollywood community was certainly not monolithic in its support for the New Deal. Although some of the roots of the contemporary controversy surrounding politics and the film industry may be found in the political and personal animosities focused upon Roosevelt, most of these associations were unknown to the general public. The downplaying of more radical and collectivist possibilities within the New Deal was further evidenced in Ford’s film translation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. A contemporary film treatment of Roosevelt might degenerate into subtlety of such television programs as Hard Copy and a Current Affair, and audiences would be introduced to an exploitation of the Roosevelt family’s sex life, complete with lesbianism, extramarital affairs, and consideration of how the president could function sexually through his paralysis.
