Eleanor and Franklin (1976) is a mini-series broadcast on ABC on January 11, 1976, starring Edward Herrmann as Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) and Jane Alexander as Eleanor Roosevelt. It was based on the 1971 Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling biography by Eleanor's personal secretary Joseph P. Lash.
The film relates their lives in flashback from the perspective of the the newly-widowed Eleanor (in 1945), who recalls
- the time they were children as cousins who met briefly
- their courtship and marriage
- bearing and raising a large family
- her social efforts as he rises to Assistant Secretary of the Navy in World War I
- his hidden affair with Lucy Mercer
- her help and encourgement with his famous bout with the affliction of polio
- her campaigning with Louis Howe, their mentor, crony and campaign manager during her husband’s runs for political offices in the New York state legislature
- his unsuccessful effort for Vice President in 1920
- his election as Governor of New York and his rivalry with the failed candidate for the presidency in 1928, Al Smith
- his election to the Presidency in 1932 during the "Great Depression".

Part two, about FDR's years in the White House and World War II, is here:
   • Eleanor and Franklin part 2: The Whit...  


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