Ledger-Enquirer, 14 April 2005
By Harry Franklin

WARM SPRINGS, Ga. - Nearly 400 people, including many from the Columbus area, attended the world premiere of the HBO movie "Warm Springs" Tuesday night at Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation.

After a screening of the movie, Little White House Historic Site Superintendent Frankie Mewborn, commented on the movie, "Remember the word incredible."

Both British actor Kenneth Branagh, who portrays Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Cynthia Nixon, who portrays Eleanor Roosevelt, were outstanding. In the film, Branagh first appears as a proud, self-assured, polished politician whose main focus in life is to satisfy his own needs and who is driven by the goal of winning the White House.

As the wealthy New Yorker travels to Bullochville, the original name of Warm Springs, for treatment of his paralyzed legs and discovers a rural society that still has not recovered from the Civil War, he begins to mellow. Undergoing treatment in the mineral pools with other polio patients, he begins to recover from the fear that his career in politics is over, discovers a self he never knew and finds that life has renewed meaning.

He becomes the sensitive, concerned leader who strives to help others who cannot help themselves. He literally grows up and begins to develop vision for his purpose in life as the movie progresses.

Nixon carries her role beautifully. As the plain-looking and plain-dressed woman she first accepts her role as the quiet, obedient homemaker for her popular, outgoing husband. Even when she discovers he is having an affair, she soberly stands by him. But under pressure from Louis Howe, FDR's self-appointed political promoter, she begins to discover another side of herself, promoting women's and children's rights and furthering FDR's career by keeping his name in the spotlight, even while he doubts himself and secludes himself in the old Meriwether Inn.

The movie captures the attention of viewers from start to finish. It moves at a steady pace and perhaps the only disappointment is that it ends so abruptly, before FDR becomes president. The film has viewers in tears one minute, as a 6- or 7-year-old girl in leg braces takes a few steps by herself for the first time, and in other moments laughing, as FDR gets behind the wheel and drives a car with hand controls for the first time, running off the road and scaring onlookers.

Had FDR never contracted polio and come to Warm Springs, he most likely would never have been the president he became, winning the hearts of the masses and displaying a love and concern for suffering people that he might only have despised as a wealthy member of the upper class.

Margaret Nagle, the young actress-turned-screenwriter who wrote "Warm Springs" as her first screenplay, revealed during an interview Tuesday evening that she was not commissioned to write it.

"I wrote it as a speculative script," she said. "I worked on it for two years at night while working a day job, hoping no one else was doing the same project." She knew the timing was perfect, as the 60th anniversary of FDR's death on April 12, 1945, would be commemorated this year.

Nagle said she approached Producer Mark Gordon, who did "Saving Private Ryan," and shared her idea of writing a screenplay about FDR.

"He loved the idea," she said. "He said he wanted me to bring it to him when I was finished. I did." And Gordon became producer of "Warm Springs."

What surprised her most about FDR as she researched his history is "What he did here at Warm Springs. To me, it was about the opening of his soul. He came here searching for a miracle. He never stopped trying to walk again. He had tremendous disappointments. He came here and saw people surviving under much harsher circumstances than he had ever known. It really humbled him in the best possible way."

She said FDR conceived many of his ideas for digging the country out of the Great Depression from observing the needs of the people in rural southwest Georgia. Out of that vision, he later developed such programs as The New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the experimental Pine Mountain Valley Project, which established small homesteads for families to farm across the Valley and a means to market their produce.

"He could see and experience the lack of infrastructure," she said.

And though FDR didn't regain use of his legs by exercising in the mineral-rich warm spring waters, his experiences here made a man -- a different man -- out of him, a man who would be equipped to lead the nation out of the Great Depression and through most of World War II.

"He didn't get better but he felt better," Nagle said. "He wanted people to help themselves. Nobody knows how to correct a depression. But he knew people had to be put back to work."

What she hopes viewers take away from the film is what she said FDR said best: "'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' He didn't deny fear. He let fear in and embraced it."

Executive Producer Celia Costas agreed, saying she hopes viewers remember that "You have nothing to fear but fear itself and anything is possible."

Producer Chrisann Verges said she hopes "Warm Springs" shows viewers that "we all have to live together as one -- the disabled and the able-bodied."

Perhaps Frank Ruzycki, executive director of Roosevelt Institute, best summed up the feelings of the local community: "We had Roosevelt as a friend in Warm Springs."