“Franklin deserved a good time,” Alice Longworth, a confidante of FDR, once said. “He was married to Eleanor.”
And a good time Franklin Delano Roosevelt seems to have had, especially when it came to the ladies. FDR is rumored to have had at least five relationships outside his marriage to Eleanor — which, by presidential standards, is practically celibate — and one such dalliance is now getting the big-screen treatment.
“Hyde Park on Hudson,” opening Dec. 7, stars Bill Murray as Roosevelt, and concerns the close connection he had during the war years with Margaret “Daisy” Suckley, a distant cousin played by Laura Linney. Despite the film’s suggestion that the New Dealer was a Don Juan, not everyone is buying FDR’s swordsman rep.
“The movie seems to have taken some liberties,” says David Woolner, Hyde Park resident historian at the Roosevelt Institute. “My guess is that there was an affair with Lucy Mercer [see below], but after that I don’t think Franklin Roosevelt was involved physically with women.”
Woolner says FDR simply preferred the company of women, and he had close — though not sexual — relationships with many females. Also, Woolner believes that the president, who was stricken with polio and confined to a wheelchair in 1921, was probably incapable of, er, relations. (A 1931 medical exam, however, found no such problems.)
Other historians suggest where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
“There’s no hard evidence of the affairs. They’re all dead, and no one was in the bedroom,” says Jean Edward Smith, a Columbia professor and author of “FDR.” “But it’s fair to surmise.”
So let’s get to surmising. Here’s a quick peek behind the president’s bedroom door at some of the women who might have been inside.
Lucy Mercer
Of all FDR’s indiscretions, the one with his wife’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer, is the least disputed. It began in 1916 when he was assistant secretary of the Navy and carried on for two years, facilitated by FDR’s friends. One posed as Mercer’s escort; others provided their homes for clandestine rendezvous. Eleanor discovered the affair in 1918 when she found a bundle of love letters in FDR’s suitcase. “The bottom dropped out of my world. I faced myself, my surroundings, my world, honestly for the first time,” she later said.Mercer eventually married, but never fell out of the president’s life, attending his inaugurations and visiting the White House regularly under an alias.
When FDR died in 1945, Mercer, not Eleanor, was at his side.
Truthiness: High
Daisy Suckley
The extent of FDR’s relationship with Suckley wasn’t known until her death in 1991, when a huge stash of letters from the president was found under her bed. “There is no reason why I should not tell you that I miss you very much,” Roosevelt, who grew close to her around 1933, wrote in one. In another: “I have longed to have you with me.” Suckley made long visits to the White House during World War II, and stayed at FDR’s upstate manse, where he took her for car rides, as depicted in “Hyde Park on Hudson.” During a drive on Sept. 22, 1935, she and FDR visited a hill in Dutchess County. From that point on, the two referred to the area cryptically as “our hill,” and began making plans to build a secluded cottage on the spot. In 1941, Suckley became a junior archivist at Hyde Park, sorting the president’s papers and providing ample opportunity for trysts. She also happened to be present when he died at his retreat in Georgia.Naysayers claim that Suckley was probably in love with the president, but that the relationship was not sexual.
Truthiness: Medium
Princess Martha Of Sweden
The royal was forced to flee Scandinavia in 1941 after the Nazi invasion and spent much of the war in the United States. She became close friends with Roosevelt, and it wasn’t long before rumors of an affair ignited, in part because of the pair’s flirty demeanor with one another. She called him by the nickname “Dear Godfather,” and visited the White House and the president’s Hyde Park home often — though usually when Eleanor was conveniently out of town. One particular nasty rumor had Roosevelt blackmailing the princess for sex in order to provide wartime aid to her husband, Crown Prince Olav of Norway.
Truthiness: Low
Dorothy Sciff
Imagine what a great Post headline this would have made. In 1977’s “Men, Money and Magic: The Story of Dorothy Schiff,” author Jeffrey Potter claimed that Schiff — a former publisher of The Post — had an affair with FDR from 1936 to 1943. “Everything about his body, with the exception of his legs, was so strong,” Schiff said of Roosevelt, whom she gushed had a “sun-god quality.” Though married, Schiff agreed to the infidelity because she said she couldn’t say no to the commander-in-chief. Also, she “had nothing better to do.” Her husband was fine with the affair. “George was overwhelmed by the president, and it was he who really sold me on him. He was proud of it and it gave him tremendous prestige with his friends,” Schiff said.
When headlines of the romance broke in 1976, Schiff made an about-face and denied the story. The book’s publisher said Schiff had seen a manuscript and hadn’t asked for changes.
Truthiness: Medium
Missy LeHand
Roosevelt supposedly began a 20-year affair with his secretary in 1921. While serving as New York governor in the late ’20s, FDR and “his other wife” had adjoining bedrooms, while Eleanor slept down the hall.The only evidence of the affair is a 1973 book by FDR’s son Elliott, who wrote that the dalliance was common knowledge: “Everyone in the close-knit inner circle of father’s friends accepted it as a matter of course. I remember being only mildly stirred to see him with Missy on his lap as he sat in his wicker chair in the main stateroom holding her in his sun-browned arms . . . He made no attempt to conceal his feelings about Missy.”
Roosevelt rewrote his will to leave her half of his $3 million estate.
Truthiness: Medium