The Eleanor Roosevelt Story

The life of the wife and widow of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is told through still photographs and newsreel footage. Born to a domineering mother and an alcoholic father, Eleanor Roosevelt is a shy, homely child who finds it difficult to fit into the social milieu of turn-of-the-century New York. After marriage to her fifth cousin, however, her life changes; she raises a family, contemplates the suffering undergone during the First World War, and encourages her husband, after he contracts polio and is permanently crippled, to enter politics. Eleanor Roosevelt is ever-present as her husband becomes Governor of New York and then President of the United States; after his death, she continues her active involvement in politics and the humanities--traveling the world, fighting McCarthyism, and overseeing the passage of the Declaration of Human Rights through the United Nations.