Abstract
Focusing on the collaboration between Eleanor Roosevelt and the modern dancer Martha Graham, the chapter analyzes the former First Lady’s intricate, courageous, and innovative relationship with American arts and American cultural diplomacy during a very sensitive and complicated historical time. Eleanor Roosevelt invited Martha Graham to perform “American Document” at the White House in 1937. Like in the case of Marion Anderson’s invitation, Graham’s performance of modernism and American art was not only a social event but a political statement. Most importantly, Mrs. Roosevelt’s innovative mélange of arts and politics took place during a time when Americans did not believe yet in the power of the arts in making (and unmaking) political and diplomatic statements. Eleanor Roosevelt’s visionary involvement in the development of American cultural diplomacy continued during the 1950s; now a recognized politician and diplomat, she helped Martha Graham during her first tour in Europe. Even more so, when Mrs. Roosevelt’s old friend, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, visited Hyde Park in 1952, she orchestrated the Queen’s meeting with Graham in New York City. Thus, on the occasion of Graham’s second European tour, in 1954, the Queen attended one of her performances. It was an unprecedented success for the dancer and American public diplomacy in Europe, on the background of which Eleanor Roosevelt played a major role.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
McDonagh, Don. 1973. Martha Graham: A Biography. New York: Praeger, 232.
- 2.
Stamberg, Susan. 2014. Denied A Stage, She Sang for A Nation. NPR Interview, April 9.
- 3.
Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1939. My Day, February 27, 1939. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017) George Washington University, Washington. https://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/browsebyyear.cfm. Accessed July 1, 2019.
- 4.
Black, Allida. 1990. Championing a Champion: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Marian Anderson “Freedom Concert.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 20, 4: 719–736.
- 5.
Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1936. My Day, February 21, 1936. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), George Washington University, Washington.
- 6.
Graham, Martha. 1991. Blood Memory. Washington Square Press, 154–155.
- 7.
Obama , Michelle. 2018. Becoming. New York: Penguin Random House, 283.
- 8.
The lives and legacies of American presidents were the topic of numerous scholarly books and articles, but the ones of the First Ladies are still waiting to become a major topic of interest for scholars. Books such as Kate Anderson Brower’s First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies (New York: Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition, 2017), and Margaret Truman’s 2009 work First Ladies: An Intimate Portrait of White House Wives (New York: Ballantine Books) offer very thoughtful, informed, and thought-provoking insights into the First Ladies’ lives, but they were written mostly for a more general audience. The memoirs and biographies dedicated to the First Ladies added valuable information and knowledge to this topic, especially Hilary Rodham Clinton and Michelle Obama’s memoirs, which were published more recently.
- 9.
Black, Allida M. 2014. My Day Columns. White House Historical Association Videos. Posted on YouTube, 2014. Accessed January 2019.
- 10.
For more on the choice of serving hotdogs to the British Royals, on the occasion of their visit to the United States in 1939, see Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum website, https://www.fdrlibrary.org/iw/royal-visit. Accessed July 25, 2019.
- 11.
Dudziak, Mary. June 22, 2019. Twitter post. Dudziak said that “besides coffee diplomacy, there’s alcohol diplomacy, and strategic dining.”
- 12.
J. B. West was the chief usher of the White House during six administrations, including the Roosevelts.
- 13.
West J. B. and Mary Lynn Kotz, 2013. Upstairs at the White House. My Life with the First Ladies. Open Road Media.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Black, My Day Columns, White House Historical Association Videos.
- 16.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Day by Day, January 26, 1937. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/daybyday/daylog/february-26th-1937. Accessed December 20, 2018.
- 17.
Franko, Mark. 2012. Martha Graham in Love and War. The Life in the Work. New York: Oxford, 68.
- 18.
Rowley, Hazel. 2011. Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage. London: Picador, 77; Kowal, Rebekah J. 2010. How to do Things with Dance. Performing Change in Postwar America. Middletown: Wesleyan University, 65 cited by Mark Franko, Martha Graham in Love and War, 63.
- 19.
Roosevelt, David B. 2002. Grandmere. A Personal History of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Warner Brooks, 2002, 148; Foner, Eric. 2017. Give Me Liberty. An American History, Vol. 2, from 1865. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 866.
- 20.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 1999. Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2, 1933–1938. New York: Viking Press, 420; Franko, Martha Graham in Love and War, 14.
- 21.
Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume Two, 471.
- 22.
Ibid., 455.
- 23.
Together with photographer Dorothea Lange, Gellhorn documented the everyday lives of those were hungry and homeless during the Great Depression. Their investigations into topics that were usually out of bounds to women at this time became part of the official government files and made both women major contributors to American history. Gellhorn also used what she had observed as inspiration for a collection of short stories called The Trouble I’ve Seen (1936).
- 24.
The American magazine Collier’s , founded in 1888, pioneered investigative journalism and quickly gained a reputation as a proponent of social reform.
- 25.
See more on Martha Gelhorn’s experience as a war journalist in The Face of War. 1959. New York: Simon & Schuster.
- 26.
See Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence with Martha Gelhorn, Selected Digitized Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933–1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY.
- 27.
Letter from Eleanor Roosevelt to Martha Gelhorn, April 21, 1936, Selected Digitized Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933–1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY.
- 28.
See more in Tomko Linda. 1999. Gender, Ethnicity and Social Divides in American Dance, 1890–1920. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Horst continued to develop his choreography courses, while Irene Lewisohn produced dance performances.
- 29.
Jacobs, William Jay. 1983. Eleanor Roosevelt. A Life of Happiness and Tears. New York: Coward-McCann, 26–27.
- 30.
Cott, Nancy F. ed. 2000. No Small Courage. A History of Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 457.
- 31.
Garber, Marjorie. 2008. Patronizing the Arts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 65.
- 32.
Bel-Kanner, Karen. 1998. Frontiers: The Life and Times of Bonnie Bird. American Modern Dancer and Dance Educator (London: Harwood Academic Publishers), 185–186.
- 33.
Kennedy, David M. 1999. Freedom from Fear. The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 254.
- 34.
Bel-Kanner, Karen. 1998. Frontiers: The Life and Times of Bonnie Bird. Singapore: Harwood Academic Publisher, 186.
- 35.
Letter to ER from Genevieve Jones, August 16, 1939, Box 440, Paper Events, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, WH Correspondence, 1933–1946, Presidential Library, Hyde Park; Letter to ER from Dina Huebert, June 19, 1939, Box 440, Paper Events, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, WH Correspondence, 1933–1946, Presidential Library, Hyde Park.
- 36.
The role of ER as the patron of the arts was proven even more on the occasion of the visit by Britain’s King George VI his wife to the United States. The letters and messages received by ER from artists ready to perform for the royal guests tripled, even if it was widely known that the events and the programs at the White House (WH) were arranged by Henry Junge, Steinway and Sons. For Americans, the First Lady was becoming the most respected maker of the cultural image of their country, inside and out, while her involvement in the arts gave ER the opportunity to meet some of the most innovative American artists of the moment.
- 37.
Ibid., 119.
- 38.
Bohm, Jerome D. 1936. Suite Features Martha Graham Dance Program, The New York Herald Tribune, December.
- 39.
Irving Kolodin. 1936. Martha Graham Offers New Dance. New York Sun, December.
- 40.
Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1936. My Day, December 19, 1936. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), George Washington University, Washington.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Day by Day. January 26, 1937. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/daybyday/daylog/february-26th-1937. Accessed December 2018.
- 43.
Quinn, Susan. 2016. Eleanor and Hick. The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady. New York: Penguin Press, 155.
- 44.
Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Da Capo, 1992), 123.
- 45.
Cook, 433.
- 46.
Obama, Becoming, 283.
- 47.
DeMille, Agnes. 1992. Martha. The Life and work of Martha Graham. New York, First Vintage Books Edition, 221.
- 48.
Graham, Blood Memory, 153.
- 49.
West and Kotz, Upstairs at the White House.
- 50.
Franko, Mark. 2013. Myth, Nationalism and Embodiment in “American Document.” In Dance, Politics & Co-Immunity, eds. Stefan Holscher and Gerald Siegmund. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 163.
- 51.
The English military officer who accompanied the Pilgrims on their journey on the Mayflower.
- 52.
Burt, Ramsay. 1998. Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, “Race,” and Nation in Early Modern Dance. London: Routledge, 132; Foulkes, Julia Lawrence. 1997. Dancing America: Modern dance and cultural nationalism, 1925–1950. PhD Thesis, University of Amherst, 3.
- 53.
Nedham, Maureen. 2002. I See America Dancing: Selected Readings, 1685–2000. University of Illinois Press, 176.
- 54.
See Kennedy, Freedom from Fear. The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945.
- 55.
Elinor Morgenthau and Eleanor Roosevelt’s collaboration was described in detail by the former First Lady in her autobiography: they worked together on the Democratic State Committee in 1928 (148), the WPA projects (176), while Morgenthau was her assistant in the Office of Civilian Defense (225–229); Cook Blanche Wiesen, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2, 1933–1938. New York: Viking Press, 1999, 283. ER’s implication in the problem of the possible war and of the American participation in it was described in detail in the chapter “Mobilizing for New Action” and “A Silence Beyond Repair.”
- 56.
Martha Graham. Dance Observer, March 1937.
- 57.
McDonagh, Don. 1975. Martha Graham. New York: Popular Library. 113.
- 58.
DeMille, Martha. The Life and Work of Martha Graham, 223.
- 59.
German Invitation Refused by Dancer. 1936. New York Times, March 13.
- 60.
Olympic Protest. 1936. Dance Observer, April.
- 61.
Franko, Martha Graham in Love and War, 15.
- 62.
Ibid., 14.
- 63.
Martha Graham cited by Mark Franko, Martha Graham in Love and War, 64.
- 64.
See Terry, Walter. 1975. Frontiers of Dance. The Life of Martha Graham. New York: Thomas Crowell Company, 80.
- 65.
Jones, Kim. 2015. American Modernism: Reimagining Martha Graham’s Lost Imperial Gesture (1935). Dance Research Journal, 47/3 (December), 54.
- 66.
Music by Ernst Toch, 1930.
- 67.
DeMille, Martha. The Life and Work of Martha Graham, 221–222.
- 68.
Roosevelt, Eleanor. My Day, March 1, 1937. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), George Washington University, Washington.
- 69.
Graham, Blood Memory, 153.
- 70.
Bedell Smith. Sally, 2004. Grace and Power. New York: Random House, XXII.
- 71.
Parkinson, Hillary. 2018. Betty Ford, Dancer. National Archives blog, April 6. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2018/04/06/first-ladies-betty-ford-dancer. Accessed September 7, 2019.
- 72.
Ibid.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lenart, C. (2020). Dancing Barefoot and Politicizing Dance at the White House: Eleanor Roosevelt and Martha Graham’s Collaboration During the Rise of Fascism in Europe. In: Fazzi, D., Luscombe, A. (eds) Eleanor Roosevelt's Views on Diplomacy and Democracy. The World of the Roosevelts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-42314-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-42315-5
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)