Travels with Eleanor #10 - Teddy Roosevelt and the NRA Women

Eleanor was her Uncle Teddy's favorite niece,

a source of great irritation to his daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Eleanor’s coattails were a great place to ride. One of the gifts of portraying her was the opportunity to see friends around the country. Last week’s memories of the memorial for Lorena Hickok reminded me of my appreciation for Suzanne McHugh and Annamae Schuler and my various forays to the Hudson River Valley. Their company, Active Culture Productions, produced Dear Mrs. Roosevelt near their home in Kerhonkson. Isn’t that a great name for their company? Suzanne says they felt their entertainment deserved as much care as their yogurt. This might be the time to mention that their tender care for traveling artists included excellent cooking. But I digress.

Lindenwald, the home of President Martin Van Buren

One of my trips to the Valley included an appearance at the Martin Van Buren Historic Site. I knew  that Van Buren had been president, but that’s all I knew. Thanks to Wikipedia, I just learned that Van Buren and Teddy Roosevelt were cousins, which means that Eleanor is some sort of distant cousin as well. I was a little trepidacious because my heart rhythms were becoming more and more unreliable and I was often in deep fatigue. At such times, I couldn’t think clearly and was often on the verge of fainting. But I wasn’t willing to give up. I took a few days vacation from my 40-hour day job and took off without much preparation except that I could, by this time, ad lib as Eleanor for hours – and often did.

The event at the historic site was to include visits with presidents and first ladies: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy  Roosevelt, Jefferson Davis, Mamie Eisenhower, and a special appearance by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We were to spend the day on the grounds of the historic site and then one or two of us would give a short performance in an evening tent show. It was my introduction to the community of first-person enactors and it turned out there was quite a network.

I was a little baffled by the inclusion of Jefferson Davis, president of the confederacy. But I learned that the director of the site/museum, a gentleman who portrayed Davis, was undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia and wanted to portray Davis just one more time. On the day of the event, I was moved again and again by how the staff cared for him, watching over him surreptitiously to make sure he had a chair when needed, a drink of water in the afternoon heat. I liked how the staff all worked together to pull off a big event and it was clear the director had created a great work atmosphere and sense of teamwork. 

One member of the team, a ranger with the National Park Service who worked as a guide at the site, looked a lot like Franklin Roosevelt; he’d heard that all his adult life. I wish I could remember his name and locate a photo – he really did look like FDR. His coworkers persuaded him to go for his ambition to pay FDR and asked if I would help make it happen. So he and I corresponded (via US mail as was the way in those days) and I wrote a script for a conversation between FDR and Eleanor. I think the staff even found an old-fashioned wheelchair. The ranger was nervous about learning his lines, so he clipped the script inside a replica 1940s newspaper. I remember being grateful that the tent wasn’t the Purina red and white checkered type with a cattle feed sign as backdrop – shades of the Southern Illinois Chautauqua. I also remember that the lighting was a little dim because, after all, we were outdoors and using long extension cords patched together for power. The dim light, however, made it difficult for the ranger to read his lines. His nerves got the best of him, and he looked up at me in a panic. Sweat poured off his face from the heat and the fear. My heart went out to him.

I suddenly remembered a time when I was playing the villain in a dinner theater musical melodrama some time in the early 70's. One of my favorite directors, John Foland, asked me to step in on one-day’s notice to replace another woman. She was an Actors’ Equity member and prohibited from appearing without pay. In order to do the musical, she had appeared under another name, but a critic whom she had antagonized at some point or other called her out in print. “Never antagonize a man who buys his ink by the barrel” was a sometimes useful, if threatening, adage. She and the producers were in big trouble and my friends needed a villain. I met with the outgoing actress, who was furious. She gave me the blocking notes about where to enter, where to stand and move, the choreography, and so on.

I set about learning my lines and songs overnight and I can still see the script propped up on the windowsill above the kitchen sink where I washed dishes and memorized lines at the same time. The next day, I cleared the toys from the middle of my sons’ basement playroom and had a short rehearsal with my friend Miki Mathioudakis, who was in the show. We discovered that the blocking I had been given was backward. Where I thought I was to enter stage left, it should have been stage right, and so on. If I had relied on the notes without Miki’s help, chaos would have ensued.

The musical run-through was terrifying for me; I did not consider myself a singer. My solution grew out of the character, who was foolishly arrogant. I remembered hearing a recording of Florence Foster Jenkins when I was a teenager and how she unwittingly sang off key, making audiences laugh. (The 2016 movie Florence Foster Jenkins with Meryl Streep is a treat.)  So, I sang off key quite deliberately, which should not have come easily, but did. I can still recall the lyrics and sometimes sang them to my sons, "Always take mother's advice, she knows what is best for your good. Let her kind words then suffice, and never be naughty or rude."

I gathered up a costume, figured out hair and make-up, kept running those lines and went on. There wasn’t much time to think about how I’d done it all in one day and night. My first scene was a confrontation with the sweet young ingenue – classic melodrama stuff. The young actress had her back to the door where I entered and when she turned to respond to my first line, she went up. Which is to say she went up in her lines – and old expression that describes the situation well. It’s as if she had levitated right out of her body and her mind had flown far far away. I knew that blank look, had “gone up” myself. So I heard myself say, “I know what you are thinking. You think [insert her line here].” Followed by my next line. Still no glimmer of recognition on the poor ingenue’s face. So I did it again, “And you probably want to tell me [insert her next line here].” That went on for a while until she had to sing, and my life flashed before my eyes. All of sudden, she was back singing away and the show moved on. When I got offstage, my velvet dress was soaked with sweat.

The full memory came to me in a nanosecond as I looked down at that sweating park ranger, so I said something like, “Ah, Franklin, I know what you always tell me [insert his line here]” and he nodded. I was pretty tired and not sure I could remember the script, but who would know if I didn’t? I forged ahead. Sometimes my stubbornness pays. Our scene went on like that until he could move the newspaper into a little bit of light, find his place, and follow the script. The audience cheered for him and all was well.

The day had begun with a little bit of time “backstage” in a trailer that was used as office space by the site staff. I was just putting on my hat and gloves when the trailer began to shake and I heard the door slam. A deep voice shouted, “Where is my favorite niece?” It was the man who portrayed Uncle Teddy. He swooped me off my feet in a big bear hug, the kind for which Teddy was famous. Our connection was immediate and great fun. Before we parted that evening, we promised to stay in touch and maybe even create a joint tour. But life would intervene, and now I can’t remember the man’s name until I can access my archive. 

Each of the presidents and first ladies was assigned to a place on the grounds of the Historic Site. I was grateful for a chair on a shady porch and the glass of lemonade on the nearby table. I settled in to knit and wait for visitors. There was a steady stream of very polite men and women. When no one was there, I could look out to see George Washington in his heavy woolen coat and breeches under a giant tree. His wig must have made the heat even worse. 

A local news crew appeared. I had a hunch the young woman reporter would ask about Hilary Clinton, who was campaigning for the New York Senate. It turned out the reporter had an agenda and wasn’t the least bit subtle about it. So much for journalistic ethics. The cameraman wanted a close up and did, indeed, get close. So there I was with camera literally in my face and a reporter who wanted me to trash Hilary Clinton. I played the no-anachronism-allowed card. “Who is Hilary Clinton?” I asked the reporter, who rolled her eyes. She explained that she was a democrat. “Good!” I said. More eye rolling. The reporter said with a sneer that Hilary was running for the U.S. Senate. “Ah,” I said, and launched into two stories:

I told the reporter that when Madame Chiang Kai Shek, First Lady of the Republic of China (which we also know as Taiwan), visited the White House she suggested that men had been in charge of the world for centuries and failed to keep the peace or make things much better, so it was time for women to be in charge. Then I said, “When Franklin contracted polio and I had to campaign for him, Louis Howe had to teach me how to speak in public. Women in my family just didn’t so such things then. He had to cure me of giggling from nerves and I’m afraid I was a slow pupil. When I finally could give a passable speech, Louis suggested I run for office. He used to call me Mrs. President. Can you imagine such a thing? Now about Mrs. Clinton, I think it is time for women to lead. Madame Chiang Kai Shek was right.”

I never knew if the story ran on local television; somehow I doubt Eleanor made the cut.

Just as I was leaving my post on the porch to go to dinner and prepare for the evening tent show, two women who appeared to be at least in their eighties stopped me. They were agitated and kept stepping closer and closer until I was backed up against the house. “What do YOU think of the NRA?” they asked, eyes flashing. I was exhausted, hot, thirsty, hungry and could not for the life of me remember anything about the NRA except that it involved guns. They kept asking and I kept stalling with such inane answers as remarks about the heat. Finally it dawned on me: these women had strong opinions about the NRA. They didn’t really care what Eleanor thought, they just wanted to express themselves. So I summoned enough common sense to ask, “What do you think about it? I’d like to know.” This was a typical Eleanor response and it worked. They had memories of the depression and the National Recovery Administration.

The NRA was a New Deal agency created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. It was popular with workers, who could set minimum wages, maximum work hours, and even help set prices for goods. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional two years later, so the agency was disbanded. But many of the labor provisions reappeared in legislation, resulting in the growing power of labor unions. I have no idea why they were still angry about the NRA, but those ladies had a lot to say about it all. I listened and started walking toward the “backstage” trailer, but the ladies came right along with me, still agitated. I had no idea how to calm them. The site staff was on the job, caring for us all and a park ranger came to my rescue, calmly escorting the women toward the parking lot.

Next time: Eleanor in the Presidential Race with Herbert Hoover

Disclaimer:  Because I do not currently have access to my records, archive, or library, all information here about performances and touring in general is based upon my memory. If you, dear reader, have corrections, please do comment.

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