Reel 734

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(90 min.)

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One of the 20th century's most powerful and successful White House aides, Harry Hopkins (1890-1946) rose from a $10-a-week social worker to serve President Franklin D. Roosevelt as friend, advisor and New Deal administrator. Hopkins "had a profound effect on virtually every major crisis," narrator Walter Cronkite says, "from the economic collapse of the industrialized nations to the dawn of the Atomic Age." Blending archival footage and interviews, the documentary chronicles how Hopkins arrived in Washington, D.C., during the Depression to serve as director of the Works Progress Administration, prepared "to say and do what I damn well please." With FDR's blessing, he did. A tireless worker, he helped put some 18 million people back to work and helped establish programs in education, housing and medical care that still survive. And when World War II came, FDR gave Hopkins a crash course in foreign affairs, assigned him to mobilize Allied defense efforts and made him White House emissary to Churchill and Stalin. Remarkably, Hopkins achieved many of his successes while battling stomach cancer and intestinal disorders that on several occasions left him near death. FDR died on April 12, 1945. Nine months later, Hopkins died. A friend wrote: "I believe that now he had nothing to live for and that his life ended with Roosevelt's." (90 min.)

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ELEANOR & FRANKLIN PART 1.

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