Abstract
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was the first U.S. president to have his career and life chronicled on a significant scale by motion picture companies. William McKinley may have been the first occupant of the Oval Office to be filmed and Calvin Coolidge was the first to speak on film, but neither matched the sheer volume of TR’s celluloid imagery. The first part of this chapter explores Roosevelt’s interaction with the new medium, from his emergence as a major public figure during the Spanish-American War of 1898, to his presidency (1901–1909) and subsequent public life. Consideration will also be given to the impact of Roosevelt’s writing and experience on the origins of two staple genres of American cinema—the Western and the war film. The nascent film industry, before or at the very beginning of the nickelodeon era (generally seen as dating from 1905), not only conveyed moving pictures of this highly distinctive leader to the public, but also produced early satires of his presidency. The developing film medium further recorded Roosevelt’s eventful postpresidential decade, including his epic hunting trips in Africa and Brazil (in 1909–10, and 1913), his European tour, his 1912 Progressive Party campaign, and especially his controversial last hurrah as a campaigner for preparedness and Americanism before and during U.S. involvement in World War I.
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Notes
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton,” Political Science Quarterly 112 (1997): 182.
Sarah Watts, Rough Rider in the White House: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 4.
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Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail [first edition, 1888] (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1902), 87, 92.
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© 2011 Iwan W. Morgan
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Neve, B. (2011). The “Picture Man”: The Cinematic Strife of Theodore Roosevelt. In: Morgan, I.W. (eds) Presidents in the Movies. The Evolving American Presidency Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117112_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117112_4
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