Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786300269613 Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC ISBN: 6300269612 Label: Warner Home Video Manufacturer: Warner Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Warner Home Video Release Date: February 10, 1998 Running Time: 144 minutes Studio: Warner Home Video Theatrical Release Date: September 28, 1960 Sales Rank: 8074
Description: Academy Award-nominated biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the time he was stricken with polio to his presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Starring Ralph Bellamy, Greer Garson and Hume Cronyn.
Amazon.com: No wonder Franklin Delano Roosevelt has drawn scores of actors to portray him over the years: creator of the New Deal, national cheerleader during the Depression, statesman extraordinaire, cool-headed World War II commander-in-chief. But one of the most touching portrayals of him lies in Dore Schary's play and film, Sunrise at Campobello, which deals just with the period during which FDR was stricken with polio at age 40 and his torturously slow recovery, up to his thunderous nominating speech for Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith in 1924. Ralph Bellamy, avuncular character actor, gets the role of a lifetime as Roosevelt, and inhabits the character with subtlety, verve and heart. The humility he learns while immobilized infuses his political outlook from that point on, as he touchingly confesses to wife Eleanor (played admirably by Greer Garson, who struggles only a bit with the great lady's singular speech patterns). The film is based on Schary's play (for which Bellamy won a Tony Award), and in the film the dialogue seems rather stagy, especially in the long scenes while Roosevelt, bedridden, is off camera. But when Bellamy, with Hume Cronyn as his coarse but knowing political adviser, is center stage, we are reminded of the very human--and frail--person behind the historical tower of strength. "I feel I've had to go through the fire for some reason," he tells his wife. "Eleanor, it's a hard way to learn humility, but I've had to learn it by crawling. I know what is meant, 'You must learn to crawl, before you can walk.'" And after viewing this affecting film, so do we. --A.T. Hurley
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Jean Hagen Shines
Ralph Bellamy and (to a lesser degree) Greer Garson won plaudits for the amazing way they sunk themselves into their roles as FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt; and Hume Cronyn is also very good, but for sheer ... Read More
Rating: - ONE DETERMINED INDIVIDUAL
Having read several biographies of FDR, I reached the conclusion that he was a very extraordinary individual. This story, however, regarding his paralysis, shows us what a truly great man he was. The ... Read More
Rating: - Wonderful Docudrama!
This movie is one of the best ever. Franklin Delano Roosevelt got infantile paralysis (called poliomyelitis, or polio) while vacationing at his family's summer home at Campobello, in August 1921. Although ... Read More
- Jean Hagen Shines
- ONE DETERMINED INDIVIDUAL