12/07/2014 - Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were the “first couple” of American radio. From the 1920s through FDR’s fourth term, the president and first lady used this extraordinarily powerful new medium to win elections, combat the Great Depression and rally the nation to fight fascism. Eleanor Roosevelt’s radio work is almost entirely forgotten. But she was a radio star in her own right — with commercial sponsors paying top dollar for her talents as a news commentator.
A very significant date for the Roosevelts, and our nation, was Sunday, December 7, 1941, the bombing of Pearl Harbor — “a date which will live in infamy.” It is also the day that Eleanor Roosevelt, not FDR, spoke to the nation. (His speech to Congress was the following day, Monday, December 8.) But on that Sunday evening, during her regularly scheduled national news/talk show, “Over Our Coffee Cups” on NBC, Eleanor Roosevelt told her audience:
“We know what we have to face and we know that we are ready to face it … Whatever is asked of us, I am sure we can accomplish it. We are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of America.”
It was an exceptional moment. As the nation plunged into war, Americans heard from the first lady, not the president. It speaks to the unprecedented public role Eleanor Roosevelt created for herself, and the remarkable political partnership she had forged with FDR. The documentary includes an excerpt of Eleanor Roosevelt’s radio broadcast.
The Roosevelts forever changed the way Americans relate to their chief executive and his family. Their legacy — both FDR’s and Eleanor Roosevelt’s — helped shape our political media today.
This hour-long American RadioWorks documentary features rarely heard archival audio of the broadcasts, as well as oral histories and contemporary interviews to explore how the Roosevelts revolutionized political communication in America.
Photos of FDR and Eleanor are available at APMStations.org. Go to the image gallery for American RadioWorks.
A companion anthology edited by Stephen Drury Smith, The First Lady of Radio — Eleanor Roosevelt’s Historic Broadcasts, will be published in November 2014 by The New Press.
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Producers: Stephen Smith and Kate Ellis
