History spotlights ‘Theodore Roosevelt’
It’s an absurd understatement to describe Teddy Roosevelt, or any figure carved on Mount Rushmore, as “larger than life.” And not many shows can boast historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and actor Leonardo DiCaprio as co-producers. The twonight documentary series “Theodore Roosevelt” (8 p.m., History, TV-14 concludes Tuesday) offers a wealth of interviews with authors and experts, including Goodwin and Dr. H.W. Brands, Col. USMC Ret. Doug Douds, Dr. Kathleen Dalton, Dr. Douglas Brinkley, Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, Dr. Leroy G. Dorsey, Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Clay Jenkinson, Roosevelt’s great-grandson Tweed Roosevelt and others.
Rufus Jones (“Camping”) portrays Theodore Roosevelt in the series, appearing in a plethora of handsomely costumed scenes and reenactment set pieces that punctuate the talking-head observations.
In spite of its impressive cast of experts, “Roosevelt” presents a kind of picture-book biography of the historical “great man,” a gloss that may be accurate but underplays the complexities and paradoxes that made Roosevelt so peculiar to his contemporaries and captivating to more than a century of biographers, readers and admirers.
Weak and asthmatic as a child, Roosevelt, with the help of a wealthy and universally admired father, all but willed himself to become athletic and hyperactively vigorous. Curiously, this biography propels him rapidly through youth, Harvard, young romance and into politics without once mentioning his mother!
But the emphasis on Roosevelt the boxer, hunter and man “in the arena” downplays his frantically active mind. You could make the case that second only to Thomas Jefferson, Roosevelt was the most brilliant and literate person ever to become president. A self-taught naturalist from the earliest age, he wrote a definitive Naval history of the War of 1812 just two years out of college. He could speak in football metaphors to one crowd and quote poetry at length to another.
Like a lot of extremely bright people, Roosevelt could also be considered slightly unbearable. Many histories, including those written by Goodwin, have chronicled how contemporary politicians, from Manhattan and Albany ward-heelers to the Republican party establishment, could not abide his Niagara of notions, proposals and ideas. The party nominated him for vice president in 1900, not because they liked him, but to confine him in a dead-end sinecure and shut him up. An assassin’s bullet would change those plans.
But while a complicated TR often emerges in the pages of thick biographies, few want to endure that personality on the screen. Way back in 1997, a TNT miniseries called “Rough Riders,” directed by John Milius and starring Tom Berenger, attempted to depict Roosevelt in all his upper-class awkwardness and wheezing weirdness. It wasn’t exactly a success. So, we’re left with the view from Mount Rushmore and a docuseries like “Theodore Roosevelt.”