The Search for Family

THERE WILL BE BLOOD | The Search for Family

Put. That Coffee. DOWN.

Coffee's for Closers, only.

Alec Baldwin Glengarry Glen Ross Speech

Daniel Plainview :

Get out of there! 

 Can I Help You? 

Henry :

 Daniel?

Daniel Plainview :

Who's that? 

Henry :

My Name is Henry. 

Daniel Plainview :

Yeah? 

Henry :

 I'm Henry. 

Daniel Plainview :

 What can I do for you? 

Henry :

I'm Henry Plainview. 

I'm from Fond du Lac. 

 I'm Your Brother, 

from Another Mother. 

 Ernest is My Father. 

Daniel Plainview :

 Who are you? 

Henry :

 Henry.

Daniel Plainview :

Mary Branch? 

Is that Your Mother?

Henry :

Yes, sir, that's right. 

 I read about Your Gusher 

in The Paper, about 

Your Success. 

Daniel Plainview :

 You heard about my strike? 

You just show up? 

Henry :

 Our Father's Dead. 

 Ernest Died, I heard. 

I wanted to find you. 

Daniel Plainview :

 When? 

Henry :

 Three months ago. 

I got a letter from Annabelle. 

Daniel Plainview :

 My Sister, Annabelle? 

Where is she?

Henry :

Still at Home. 

Fond du Lac. 

Daniel Plainview :

 You came all the way 

from Wisconsin 

to tell me this? 

Henry :

I'm coming from New Mexico. 

I've been there. I came to find you. 

 Did you know about me? 

Daniel Plainview :

 Do you have Identification? 

 Do you have this letter?

Where are you coming from? 

Henry :

From New Mexico. 

Daniel Plainview :

 Yes, I know, but from where? 

Henry :

 Silver City. I've been there for two years. 

I was trying drilling of my own for years.

Getting leases in Texas. Louisiana. 

Daniel Plainview :

Anything that produced? 

Henry :

 No. Not like Your Success, no. 

Daniel Plainview :

Are you married? 

Henry :

No. I spent time in jail. 

I had a stretch of very bad time. 

I had nothing. I was picked up in Louisiana. 

I worked on a chain gang 

for six months building roads. 

 That was a very hard time. 

 Are you married? 

Daniel Plainview :

 What were you in jail for? 

Henry :

Believe it or not, for all 

the terrible things I've gotten myself into, 

 when they picked me up, 

I hadn't done anything. 

Henry :

 But I've done my share of things 

 that shouldn't be talked about. 

Daniel takes a milkbottle, fills it 7/8ths up with whiskey, tops it off with milk, and then forces his deaf son to drink it in one --

 Drink it. Drink it! Come on. 

Now Daniel and Henry 

can talk in Private --

Daniel Plainview :

 So... What do you want, Henry? 

Henry :

 Nothing. If you can spare something, 

I can work for you in any way. 

I know I'll keep moving, before long, 

to get back to Fond du Lac. 

Daniel Plainview :

Do you have any money? 

Henry :

Some. Not much. 

Daniel Plainview :

Just answer me directly. 

 You say "nothing," then you say 

you'd like to stay and work. 

And it's better, I'd just like 

to hear you say you'd like to be here. 

Henry :

I'd like to be here. 

I'm a good worker. 

I worked cable tool rigs, built railroads. 

I won't need any favours. 

Daniel Plainview :

 Good. What did My Mother know? 

Henry :

I don't know. I don't know if she knew 

and looked the other way, 

if she never knew. 

 Why did you leave? 

 I know you didn't get on 

with Our Father. 

 

Daniel Plainview :

I worked for The Geological Survey 

and went to Kansas. 

I couldn't stay there. 

I just couldn't. 

 I don't like to explain myself. 

Are you an angry man, Henry?

Henry :

About what? 

 Are you envious? 

Do you get envious? 

Henry :

I don't think so, no. 

Daniel Plainview :

I have a competition in Me....  

I want no one else to succeed. 

I hate most people. 

Henry :

That part of me is gone. 

 Working and not succeeding, 

 all my failures have left me... 

I just don't care.

 

Daniel Plainview :

 Well, if it's in me, it's in you. 

 There are times when I look at people 

and I see nothing worth liking. 

I want to earn enough money, 

I can get away from everyone. 

Henry : 

What Will You Do 

about Your Boy? 

Daniel Plainview : 

I don't know. 

Maybe it'll change. 

 

Does Your Sound 

come back to you?

I don't know. 

 

Maybe no-one knows that.

Doctor might not know that. 

 

Henry :

Where's His Mother? 

Daniel Plainview : 

I don't want to talk 

about Those Things. 

 

I see The Worst in People, Henry. 

I don't need to look past seeing them 

to get all that I need. 

 

I've built-up my hatreds 

over the years, 

little by little. 

 

Having you Here gives me 

a second Breath of Life. 

 

I can't keep Doing This 

on my own with 

these people. 

Henry : 

Daniel! 

Daniel, wake up! 

Daniel! 

Daniel Plainview : 

Just have to Go and Have a Word 

with The Conductor. 

I'll be right back. 

You stay here. You understand? 

You stay here. I'll be right back. 

 

 

No! No! No! 

Tilford!

 

Plainview. 

 

 Daniel Plainview :

This is My Brother, 

Henry Plainview 

from Fond du Lac. 

 

H.M. Tilford. 

 

Pleasure. Henry Plainview. 

J.J. Carter. So... 

Shall we?

Tilford, of Standard Oil : 

Yes. How's your boy? 

Daniel Plainview :

Thank you for asking. 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

Is there anything we can do? 

Daniel Plainview :

 Thanks for asking is enough. 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

 So what are your plans? 

Daniel Plainview :

Is this about buying up my tracts here? 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

 Yes. 

Daniel Plainview :

The Cable was about my Coyote Hills lease.

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

We'd like that, too. 

Daniel Plainview :

What's your offer on Coyote Hills?

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

We'll offer $150,000 for full title. 

Daniel Plainview :

That's A Deal. What's next? 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

 You have 11,000 acres in Little Boston. 

You have one proven well that was damaged... 

 

Daniel Plainview :

I have three wells proven. 

You haven't been

Paying Attention. 

That's three proven wells.

Tilford, of Standard Oil : 

 We'll make you a millionaire while you're sitting here 

from one minute to the next. 

 

Daniel Plainview :

And what else would I do with myself? 

 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

Are you asking me?

 

Daniel Plainview :

What else would I do with myself? 

 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

Take Care of Your Son...?

I don't know what you would do. 

 

Daniel Plainview :

If you were me and Standard offered to buy 

what you had for a million dollars, why? 

So, Why? 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

You know why. 

Daniel Plainview : 

Yeah, you fellas should just 

scratch around in The Dirt 

and find it like the rest of us, 

instead of buying-up 

Someone Else's Hard Work. 

 

 Tilford, of Standard Oil :

I've scratched around The Dirt, Son. 

 

 

 Daniel Plainview :

You going to change your shipping costs? 

 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

We don't dictate shipping costs. 

That's railroad business. 

 

Daniel Plainview :

You don't own the railroads? 

 'Course you do. Of course you do. 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

 Where you going to put it all?  

Where? Build a pipeline? 

Make a Deal with Union Oil? 

Be My Guest. 

 

But if you can't pull it off, 

you've got an ocean of oil 

under your feet with 

nowhere to go. 

Why not turn it over to us? 

We'll make you rich. 

You spend time with Your Boy. 

 

It's a Great Discovery. 

 Now, let us help you. 

Daniel Plainview :

Did you just tell me how to run My Family? 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

It might be more important, 

now that you've proven the field 

and we're offering to buy you out.

  

Daniel Plainview :

One night I'm going to come to you, 

inside of Your House, 

or wherever you're sleeping, 

and I'm going to cut your throat. 

Tilford, of Standard Oil : 

What? What are you talking about? 

Have you gone crazy?

Daniel Plainview : 

Did you hear What I Said?

 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

I heard What You Said -- 

Why did you say it?

 

Daniel Plainview :

You don't tell me about My Son. 

Tilford, of Standard Oil : 

Why are you acting insane and 

threatening to cut my throat? 

Daniel Plainview : 

You don't tell me about my son.

 

Tilford, of Standard Oil :

I'm not telling you anything! 

I'm asking you to be reasonable. 

If I've offended you, I apologize. 

 

 Daniel Plainview :

You'll see What I Can Do. 

 

This parcel here is the 3,000-acre ranch owned by B.L. Harper. This is San Luis Obispo County land. 

 And from here to the coast, it's all Union Oil. 

Daniel Plainview :

 What's this? Why don't I own this? 

Why don't I own this!? 

 

That's the Bandy tract. 

He was The Holdout, when we were doing The Buying.  

He had hoped to Speak with You. 

Can't you just build the pipeline around this tract? 

 

 Daniel Plainview :

Can I build around 50 miles 

of Tehachapi mountains? 

Don't be thick in front of me, Al.

 

I can go to him again. 

Daniel Plainview : 

No, I'll Go and Talk to The Man. 

I'll Talk to Him. Show you How It's Done. 

All right. Pack it up, Henry. 

 

Daniel Plainview :

How big is His Room? 

 

 

He's sharing with another boy. 

 

Daniel Plainview :

Who?

 

An older boy. About 12. 

He's been there for a year. 

Named Ballard.

Daniel Plainview : 

How big is The Room? 

 

It's a fair size. 

Got enough space. 

.....are you taking Henry 

with you to meet Union Oil..?

*****

Daniel Plainview :

Are you the son of William Bandy? 

Bandy : 

Grandson. 

Daniel Plainview :

Is he here? 

Bandy :

No, he's out. 

 

Daniel Plainview :

Where is He? 

 

Bandy :

Told you, He's out. 

Now, what do you want? 

 

 Daniel Plainview :

I'm Daniel Plainview. 

I want to Talk with Him about 

His Property. 

 

About what? 

Daniel Plainview :

I believe I'll talk with him about that.

You're that oilman, aren't you? 

Daniel Plainview :

That's right. 

 We don't want you drilling out here. 

Daniel Plainview :

I don't want it either. 

Now, when will he be back? 

 Few days. 

Daniel Plainview :

 Tell him I'd like to speak with him. 

Not about drilling. 

 And I'll be back in a week. 

*****

Daniel Plainview :

 Put that in a glass case. 

 Here's to Union Oil. Hundred miles of pipeline, 

 and all the independent producers 

of this great state. 

Cheers. 

 

Daniel Plainview : 

There's that house in Fond du Lac 

 that John Hollister built. 

Do you remember it?  

I thought as a boy that was 

The Most Beautiful House 

I'd ever seen, 

and I wanted it. 

 

I wanted to Live in it. 

And eat in it. And clean it. 

 

And even as A Boy, 

I wanted to have children 

to run around in it. 

Henry : 

You can have anything 

you'd like now, Daniel. 

And you should.  

Where are you going to build it?

Daniel Plainview : 

Here, maybe. 

Near The Ocean. 

 

Henry :

Would you make it 

look like That House? 

 

Daniel Plainview :

I think if I saw That House now, 

it'd make me sick. 

 

Henry :

We can eat and get some women. 

Take them to the Peachtree dance. 

I say get liquored up 

and take them to the 

Peachtree dance. Yeah. 

  

Can I have some money -- please? 

*****

 

Daniel Plainview :

I want you to tell me something. 

 

Henry :

What? 

 

 Daniel Plainview :

What's the name of the farm 

next to The Hill House? 

 

What was the name of the farm, 

next to the Hill House? 

 

Henry :

I can't remember... 

 

 Daniel Plainview :

Who are you? 

 

 

 Henry :

I'll leave, Daniel. 

 

 Daniel Plainview :

Who are you? 

 

 Henry :

I'm No-One. 

Just let me get up and go. 

 

 Daniel Plainview :

Do I have A Brother? 

 

Henry :

I met A Man in King City 

who said He was Your Brother.  

We Were Friends for months. 

Working in King City. 

And he wanted to make 

his way to you, Daniel. 

 

We didn't have any money. 

He died of tuberculosis. 

 

He wasn't harmed. 

Wasn't killed, nothing bad. 

 

But he told me about you, 

and I just took His Story, 

used His Diary. 

 

Daniel. Daniel, I'm Your Friend. 

I'm not trying to hurt you. Never. 

Just Survive. 

 

 

No!

Domesticity

Helen Keller - Family Meal Scene - The Miracle Worker

"There's a really interesting movie 

I watched recently, "The Miracle Worker," 

Arthur Penn's 1962 movie about Helen Keller. 

And it really felt like I was watching 

an early lost David Lynch film. 

There's a dinner scene where the very formal 

and proper Keller Family are 

sitting around The Table, and 

Helen is racing around it like a wild animal, 

growling at Food, grunting, and all 

the rest of The Family around her are trying 

to act like nothing is strange. 

That kind of contrast, at once comic and horrifying and a little sad, 

it felt very Lynchian. 

She'll be alright in a minute. 

ASCHER: 

There's another moment where 

Her Teacher is watching 

Helen out The Window, 

and then Annie flashes back 

to her own school days. 

As a kid, she was in an institution 

for the blind, and Penn uses a 

double exposure dissolve that lasts 

just an incredibly long time. 

If it doesn't look like a dream scene straight out of "The Elephant Man" or "Eraserhead," 

I don't know what does. 

It's something that David Lynch does in a way 

that feels effortless and it has 

this powerful, dreamlike effect. 

There's that amazing dissolve on Cooper's face that lasts a minute, minute and a half where he seems to be unmoored in his world. In "The Miracle Worker," it's almost as if the ghosts of Annie's past have returned. And in both cases, it's slightly "Oz"-like. 

All these characters are 

becoming untethered and losing track 

of which layer of reality they're in. 

Why would Lynch be that absorbed with " The Wizard of Oz Wizard of Oz"? Well, it's a very nostalgic American icon of a film. But anyway, Toto, we're home. Home. And this is my room. 

ASCHER: 

In a lot of his movies, there's a sense of a search for a sort of lost, perfect American world. A nostalgia for paradise lost. 

Perhaps for one that never really existed. 

Did he watch " The Wizard of Oz" on 

a perfect day at the perfect time as a child 

and it sort of baked into his subconscious? 

I wonder if on the same day he watched 

"The Brain From Planet Arous" instead,

would his movies be very, very different? 

[ Dramatic music plays] 

Many filmmakers' works are often variations on a theme. To me, Stanley Kubrick's films are often about exposing the abuses, the excesses of people in power. 

"Paths of Glory" being one of the most literal ones. [ Speaks German ] -Guten tag. -[ Laughter] 

Hey, talk in a civilised language! 

But that continues all the way 

up to "Eyes Wide Shut," 

which is about the decadent super rich. 

Ladies, where exactly are we going? -Exactly? -[ Laughter] Where the rainbow ends. Where the rainbow ends. ASCHER: In "The Shining," there's the whole conversation about all the best people who stayed at the Overlook. We had four presidents who stayed here. Lots of movie stars. Royalty? All the best people. ASCHER: Even Lolita is a girl who's preyed upon by different powerful men, Clare Quilty and Humbert Humbert. Gee, I'm really winning here. I'm really winning. I hope I don't get overcome with power. ASCHER: Lolita is a girl who's forced to live in multiple worlds, the normal one of teenagers, but also a darker adult one. You want to stay with this filthy boy? -That's what it is, isn't it? -Yes! -Why don't you leave me alone? -Shut your filthy mouth. ASCHER: There's a lot of "Lolita" the film in "Twin Peaks," and there's a lot of Dolores Haze in Laura Palmer. What is real? How do you define real? ASCHER: Right now, I'm wrapping up a film about simulation theory and " The Wizard of Oz Wizard of Oz" has been coming up a lot because at the end of the day, what kind of movie is it? It's the story of a young girl who moves between parallel worlds. It means buckle your seat belt, Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye. -[ Thunder rumbles] -ASCHER: And there's a question, a sort of question mark left at the end. Which of these worlds is the real one? Are both of them real in some way? But it wasn't a dream. It was a place. And you, and you, and you, and you were there. ASCHER: That's a question that people play with in countless movies that have been influenced by it, everything from "Nightmare on Elm Street" to "The Matrix." Lynch's films are filled with characters who move between different worlds, and they're often very innocent characters like Dorothy. Never seen so many trees in my life. W.C. Fields would say, "I'd rather be here than Philadelphia." ASCHER: In "Mulholland Drive," which might be the most " Wizard of Oz"-y of all of them, Betty is a perfect innocent who finds herself in sort of the twin versions of Hollywood, the dream and the nightmare. I think that in Lynch's duelling realities, the membranes between layers of reality are thinner than they were in " The Wizard of Oz Wizard of Oz." In many of these movies, there are characters who hold all the cards, just like The Wizard of Oz himself. The man behind the curtain. Characters whose influence travels between worlds. We've met before, haven't we? I don't think so. Where was it you think we met? At your house. Don't you remember? When Lynch was talking about "Inland Empire," another story of a woman who moves between different levels of reality, he once answered, "We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along it. We are like the dreamer who dreams, then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe." Like Mulholland Drive and Winkie's Diner, that guy is talking about his dream, and he's afraid that the dream could come true. And then, soon enough, he finds himself in the nightmare of having to relive that dream. He says to a psychiatrist, "In the dream, I was sitting here, and you were up there by the cash register," and then it panned slowly over to the cash register. And you see the absence of the psychiatrist. And it cuts back and then you see the gears turning in the psychiatrist's head who says, "Oh, you want to see if it's real." And then the man can't stop it from happening. The psychiatrist gets up and he walks to the register and we pan over. And now he is exactly in that position. He's filled the negative space, and then the man finds himself in his dream the way Dorothy is transported into her dreams of Oz, only without a tornado or even a dissolve. Just in the space of a line of dialogue or two. That very last scene in "Twin Peaks: The Return" is the summation of a lot of ideas that I think about with "Oz" and with Lynch. The question of dreams versus realities. Because I read that the woman who answered the door in the scene is actually the woman who lives in that house in our world. Is this your house? Do you own this house or do you rent this house? Yes, we own this house. ASCHER: So it's almost as if, well, which of the thousands of possible multiple realities does Cooper land in at the end of the series? He lands in the same one that you and I are living in and that the woman who owns the house that they film "Twin Peaks: The Return" lives in. And it's more than Cooper and Carrie are able to take. What year is this? [ Dramatic music plays] [ Screams ] ASCHER: They end that sequence in a complete mental breakdown, a complete panic, which was an experience that I really went through while watching that whole season. It was shortly after the election and a lot of us were confused and scared about what was going to happen in the world. God bless America. ASCHER: So it's really nice to return to the world of "Twin Peaks," even if within the show, there's one unspeakable nightmare after another, at least it was our unspeakable nightmare. This is the water. And this is the well. Drink full, and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within. ASCHER: But the strangeness crossed over into my reality because I remember episode eight, the big episode, the one with the atom b*mb and the fireman and that lizard. I've watched that episode twice. And each time, another horror would be waiting for me the morning after. The first time my wife and I watched it, our cat was acting really strange, rubbing her head against the TV. The next morning, we came downstairs, and the floor was just littered with blood and feathers of a bird that she had managed to catch while locked in the house all night. Maybe she escaped through a window and maybe she pulled it back inside somehow. I've got no idea. But she m*rder*d it while we were sleeping and scattered its remains all over the floor. And then two or three weeks later, I watched it again alone. And maybe this is in hindsight, but as I imagined myself walking down the steps the next morning, I'm feeling a sort of Lynchian dread, like that guy in "Mulholland Drive" who's walking back behind Winkie's. And I come to my desk and on my phone, there's like 20 new messages that have just popped in the last hour waiting for me. My father back in Florida, he d*ed the night before. He hadn't been doing well for a while, so it wasn't a shock. But I don't know, the timing felt really strange. I don't think I'm going to watch that episode again anytime soon. I don't want to know what's going to happen. There's bad juju baked to the bones of that thing. [ Dramatic music plays] It is happening again. ANNOUNCER: Like wildfire in the wheat field, the fabulous tale of " The Wizard of Oz Wizard of Oz" spread from town to city to nation to the entire world. WATERS: For me, " The Wizard Of OZ" was the ultimate not just American movie, movie period that I saw as a child that made me want to be in show business, that made me want to create characters, that made me want to go on adventures and probably made me take LSD. [ Mid-tempo music plays ] I think it was a good influence on me all the way around. For me, it changed my life when I saw it. My obsession with it started before television. My parents took me to see it at the Rex Theatre in Baltimore, which, oddly enough, later became the sexploitation nudist camp movie theatre like 30 years later. Then the Christmas thing became like the sequel in my mind as a child. Every year, we watched it. I mean, it was a big deal event. And you always watched it because it didn't come on again. There was no other way. Nobody could imagine that you could ever buy a video of something and watch it whenever you wanted or rewind it. That's the thing I always thought was kind of against. You give away the magic trick. But, you know, the saddest thing I ever heard was I talked to this young kind of hipster kid, and we were just talking about movies. And I said, "Do you like 'The Wizard of 02'?" And he said, "No, not really. I mean, it's basically just walking." I thought, "God, what a blurb." If a kid watches " The Wizard of Oz Wizard of Oz" today, the film completely works. I think it's the perfect -- like a drug to kids to get them hooked on movies for the rest of their young lives.

Poor, Lonely Little Boy

 

The Center of the World

David McCullough: [voice-over] 

"My dear Mama, 

I am in a great hurry. I found two birds' nests. 

I took one egg. 

Your loving Franklin." 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent his childhood among people so unlike ordinary Americans they modeled themselves after the lords and ladies of England.

Bronson Chanler, Hudson Valley Neighbor: 

The world of wealth and privilege that F.D.R. grew up with was one that was essentially very comfortable for everybody. 

And the families that lived on those estates were generally friends with one another, related very often to each other, and were the only people that visited one another. 

I think it's fair to say that even The Professional Men in the towns, who were the doctors and the lawyers and so on, were not generally invited to the river houses to dinner.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York on January 30, 1882 on the big, forested estate his parents called Springwood.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: 

Springwood was a beautiful, isolated place. 

It was its own world, and it was entirely 

built around this privileged little boy. 

And I think he spent most of his life trying to replicate the way his boyhood was arranged.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "At the very outset he was plump, pink and nice," his mother said. "I used to love to bathe and dress him. He looked very sweet, his little blonde curls bobbing as he ran as fast as he could whenever he thought I had designs on combing them."

Nearly every detail of Franklin's childhood was recorded with single-minded devotion by his mother, Sarah Delano Roosevelt. She kept his baby clothes, every childish drawing, each golden curl. Franklin was eight and a half years old before he was allowed to bathe himself.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: If it's the job of a mother to make her child feel that he or she can do anything, then Sarah Delano Roosevelt was surely one of the great mothers in American history.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin's father was more than 25 years older than Sarah. He was 53 when Franklin was born. Franklin called him "Popsy." Everyone else called him "Mr. James." Mr. James bred trotters and rode to the hounds. He smoked cheroots. He would ride out with his son to survey their estate. The workers tipped their hats to Mr. James and then to Master Franklin. The boy accepted these displays of deference as routine.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: F.D.R. grew up in a very tight little island. He learned how to please adults from probably before he remembered. His activities were related to showing off for them, relating to them, not to other children, and he didn't go off to play games with other children. I don't think he ever swung a baseball bat until he finally went to school. He was tutored at home or abroad, because every year they went abroad for several months. F.D.R., with all this attention, was undoubtedly a lonely boy.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin wandered his family estate, secure, he later said, in the peacefulness and regularity of things. Then, when he was nine, his well-ordered world fractured. His 63-year-old father suffered a heart attack. Any irritation might aggravate him, provoke another heart attack and kill him.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: His father's sickness must have reinforced the tendency that was already in him as a small child to be a nice boy, to never make any trouble, never make anybody sad. Now he had to worry, "If I go in there and make trouble, I may weaken his already-weakened heart." So it must have put an enormous pressure on this kid.

David McCullough: [voice-over] With an infirm father and a domineering mother, Franklin learned to conceal his true feelings. Throughout his life, he would remain a charming but distant figure even to those who were closest to him. When he was 14 years old, Franklin left the rarified world of his Hyde Park estate. His path seemed clear -- boarding school, Harvard, and an uneventful life of luxury and ease among his own kind.

"Dear Mama, I am getting on very well with the fellows. I have not had any black marks or lateness yet, and I'm much better in my studies."

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: His letters are always cheerful -- everything's wonderful, he's having a grand time with the other fellows -- and yet he wasn't. He was, I think, quite unhappy.

David McCullough: [voice-over] At Groton, the private school for sons of the rich, Franklin, with all his charm and self-assurance, expected to excel. He did please his teachers and took to heart his headmaster's urgings toward public service, but he did not fit in with the boys.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: Groton was his first exposure to other children on a regular basis. After all, he boarded -- all the children boarded -- so he was with other boys 24 hours a day. And it must have been a rude shock to come out of that nest, that very protective nest where he was the only bird or chick in the nest.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Sports meant everything at Groton, but Franklin was too slight for success. His mother worried Franklin might be injured and wrote that he "not have the misfortune of hurting anyone." He was enthusiastic about baseball, but only carried the bats and fetched the water for the ballplayers.

Jeffery Potter, Groton School Alumnus: He wasn't an athlete. He had never played with other boys' games much, and that was very bad indeed, because it made him an outsider, as if he wasn't -- no, as if he didn't belong and really in a sense where he didn't belong.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Plunged into an unforgiving world of adolescent boys, Franklin never fit in. His struggle for acceptance only isolated him further.

Jeffery Potter, Groton School Alumnus: Franklin's tone was not the Groton tone. He seemed so desperate for approval. He was too ambitious and too eager and he was very much, I would say from what I've heard, very close to being a golden retriever. In other words, his tail was always wagging even when it shouldn't be.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Jeffrey Potter's father was the star of the baseball team. "I can't understand this thing about Frank," he said when Roosevelt became president. "He never amounted to much at school." At Groton, Franklin confessed years later, something had gone sadly wrong.

At Harvard, he was determined to win popularity and recognition, and he did succeed. He campaigned for class office and won and was elected editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, but what he wanted even more was admission to Porcellian, Harvard's most exclusive club.

Bronson Chanler, Hudson Valley Neighbor: You immediately, if you were a member of the Porcellian Club, were recognized as a-- as we say in the club, a brothah, by all graduates who had been in the place that were still alive. But it was essentially a network of friendships, not of power but of friendships, but that could lead to power.

David McCullough: [voice-over] The election was secret, held behind closed doors in the Porcellian Clubhouse. Each member was given one white and one black ball. A single black ball deposited in the wooden ballot box was all it took to exclude a candidate. His father had been a member. So had other Roosevelts. Franklin had every reason to believe that he would be chosen, too. Franklin was blackballed.

Bronson Chanler, Hudson Valley Neighbor: No doubt Franklin Roosevelt failed to be elected to the Porcellian Club for the simple reason that somebody who was in there at the time didn't like him. You didn't have to have done anything particularly significant. The fellow would just say, "I don't like the cut of your jib, so I don't want you in there," and out you went.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Years later when he was president and the New Deal at high tide, there were those Porcellian members who would call him a traitor to his class and ascribe his social policies to revenge.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Certainly, none of Roosevelt's classmates at Harvard imagined that he would ever be president. I think they were the first of many, many people who underestimated Roosevelt.

David McCullough: [voice-over] While Franklin was at Harvard, his father, 72 years old and grown frail and weak from heart disease, died. Sarah wrote in her diary, "All is over. He merely slept away." Now her boy was all she had left. She moved to Boston to be near him. A family friend once wrote, "She would not let her son call his soul his own."

Franklin began using a secret code in his diary. He wrote, "E is an angel." Franklin had fallen in love with a distant cousin. "E" was Eleanor Roosevelt. From the first, Eleanor Roosevelt saw that there was a serious man beneath the easygoing charm. For the rest of their life together, even through the most difficult years of their marriage, she would be drawn to the serious side of his nature.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Franklin and Eleanor come, from the same social class. There are certain mores, customs, rituals that link their childhoods. Everything else is so totally different they might have come from the other ends of the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt: I was a very ugly little girl. My mother was very beautiful. I think she always wondered why her daughter had to be so ugly. I adored my mother, but rather like a distant and beautiful thing that I couldn't possibly get close to.

Oh, my father meant a tremendous amount. I adored him all the days of my childhood. He called me Little Nell after the Little Nell in Dickens's story, and I always liked that.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Eleanor's childhood was a series of losses. Her parents' marriage was troubled. Elliott Roosevelt was an alcoholic. Erratic and self-destructive, he left home when she was six. Less than two years later, her mother died of diphtheria. The year after, her younger brother died, and the following year her beloved, drunken father died. Eleanor and her brother were left with dutiful, reserved relatives. She grew afraid of other children, mice, the dark, practically everything.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: From the melancholy lives of both of her parents, Eleanor took away the feeling that love never lasts, that the world is a dark and forbidding place and that you never can count on anything.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Then when she was 15, she was sent to an English boarding school called Allenswood where she was encouraged to think for herself, be independent, overcome her fears.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: Allenswood was definitely a turning point. It was the first time that she was really allowed to shine, and her own specialness was recognized. That is really where she got her sense of security and also her sense of her own power.

David McCullough: [voice-over] The years she spent at Allenswood, Eleanor said, were the happiest of her life. She was 18 when Franklin began to pursue her.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: He was a gay and outgoing and charming young man. There was something very sympathetic about him and romantic, and they had a very sweet and romantic relationship according to their early letters.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "We have had two happy days together," she wrote him, "and you know how grateful I am for every moment which I have with you. Your devoted Little Nell."

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Eleanor's relatives and friends thought of Franklin as a feather duster, which meant somebody who just skimmed along the surface of life and never got very deep into anything at all, so I'm not sure they thought that he was such a wonderful catch for her, because even then Eleanor had a certain vitality, a certain seriousness of purpose that made people feel that she was something special.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: Can you imagine how different she must have been from the average run of debutantes of the time? She must have been very interesting, besides being tall with a beautiful figure, fine light hair and lovely skin and great warmth. There was something else, too, and this is not to be underestimated. It didn't hurt his courtship that her uncle was President of the United States.

The Lost Cause of Independents

“…..They’re Not Coming;

Command says it’s Too Hot — 

We’re to Lay-Down Arms….”