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January 2022

The Fireside—News and Views from The Living New Deal

Dancing That Others May Walk

Shirley Temple at FDR Birthday Ball

Shirley Temple at FDR Birthday Ball
Courtesy, Imgur.com.

As president, FDR used his birthday, January 30, to advance his most important cause—raising awareness and money to eliminate polio, a disease FDR knew first hand. In 1934, more than four thousand communities across the nation came together at 600 celebrations for what would become an annual “Birthday Ball.” They raised millions of dollars for the Warm Springs Foundation, a charity FDR founded in response to the scourge. He later chaired the March of Dimes.
  Many today seem to have forgotten that such efforts led to breakthrough vaccines that eradicated polio throughout much of the world. Roosevelt likened the fight against polio to war. “It strikes with its most frequent and devastating force. And that is why much of the future strength of America depends upon the success that we achieve in combating this disease.”

 

In this Issue:

Vaccines and Church Bells

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Dr. Jonas Salk

Dr. Jonas Salk
Courtesy, Wikipedia Commons.

Church bells rang. Loudspeakers in department stores shared the news. Factories paused production to spread the word to jubilant coworkers. Families huddled in their parlors around their radios for the latest updates. There was glee, relief, resounding joy across the country. It was March 3, 1953, the year Dr. Jonas Salk, a 40-year-old medical researcher, famously announced that he and his team at the University of Pittsburgh had successfully tested a vaccine that would end polio.

The Salk vaccine was readily accepted and celebrated, in part because of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s leadership. Roosevelt had a personal stake in eradicating polio. He had contracted the

FDR is aided exiting a car 1932.

FDR is aided exiting a car 1932
Photos of FDR’s disability from polio are rare. Courtesy, FDR Library, public domain.

disease in 1921 when he was 39 years old and would never walk again without leg braces or assistance. It spurred him to create the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. In 1938, entertainer Eddy Cantor used his radio show to enjoin people to donate a dime in honor of the president’s birthday. The White House received more than two and a half million dimes totaling $268,000. The foundation was later renamed the March of Dimes.

“Roosevelt’s passion for finding a solution—a cure, a vaccine—made polio a priority coming from the very top leader in the country, says Stacey Stewart, current CEO of the March of Dimes. “People across the country felt like they were called to duty. It was a call to action, like the war effort.”


Staged photo of polio patient and nurse. Courtesy, Polio Canada/Ontario March of Dimes.

The Mothers March, the first March of Dimes fundraising event, began in 1950. Armies of volunteers went door-to-door handing out information about polio and the efforts to stop it. Lapel pins were sold for ten cents each; special features were produced by the motion picture studios and radio industry; and nightclubs and cabarets held dances and contributed a portion of the proceeds.

During the 1940s and 50s, according to statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, polio disabled an average of 35,000 people a year in the United States alone, most of them children. Polio peaked in 1952 at 57,879 cases. 3,145 people died. Those that survived the polio virus would oftentimes be crippled for life, forced to use crutches, wheelchairs, or be placed into iron lungs in order to breathe.

 
Iron lungs in Los Angeles school gym. Courtesy, Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center.

Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburgh developed the poliomyelitis live vaccine. Leading up to the vaccine’s 1954 release, parents volunteered their offspring in clinical trials, including Salk, who inoculated his is own children as part of the study. By August 1955, some 4 million shots were given. By 1956, cases of polio in the United States had dropped to 5,876, one-tenth of its 1952 peak. The United States has been polio free since 1979. Today, 92.6 percent of children 2-years and younger have been vaccinated for polio.

 
FDR and March of Dime foundation director Basil O’Connor counting dimes, 1938. Courtesy, March of Dimes.

America is far from free of COVID. Misinformation and resistance to COVID vaccinations persist, putting many at risk. As of this writing, there have been nearly 53 million cases of COVID, and 820,000 related deaths, according to the CDC. 505 million doses of the various COVID vaccines have been dispensed. 204 million people have been fully vaccinated—only about 61.9 percent of the population.

A number leading experts, including former president Trump’s coronavirus testing tsar, Dr. Brett Giroir, have suggested that hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been avoided had there been clearer direction and action taken. More than 400,000 Americans died during Trump’s term. Church bells of a different kind.

Polio Pioneer

Polio Pioneer
The first mass trails of polio vaccine took place in 1954. Ultimately, more than a million elementary school children were enrolled in the trials, the largest public health experiment in history.

Because Franklin D. Roosevelt founded the March of Dimes, a redesign of the dime was chosen to honor him a year after his death. The Roosevelt dime was issued in 1946, on what would have been the president’s 64th birthday.

Dr. Salk received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Canadian biochemist Ian MacLachlan created the innovative delivery system to get Moderna and Pfizer MRNA vaccines into one’s cells. No word on what medal he may receive, if any.

Jonathan Shipley is a freelance writer based in Atlanta, Georgia. He's written for such publications as the Los Angeles Times, National Parks Magazine, and Seattle Magazine.

Pare Lorenz and the U.S. Film Service Take on America’s Problems

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Documentary filmmaker Pare Lorentz headed the U.S. Film Service. Credit, Wikipedia.

Highlighting the nation’s problems during the Great Depression—and the federal government’s responses to those problems—was the job of the United States Film Service, established in 1938 as part of the New Deal’s Resettlement Administration, later renamed the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The Service’s inspiration was Pare Lorentz, a pioneer in the production of documentary films. Lorentz, a native of West Virginia, directed the U.S. Film Service from 1938 until 1940.

Lorentz’s first film, The Plow That Broke the Plains, about the Dust Bowl, was completed for the federal government in 1936. Hired to head the Film Service, Lorentz soon added The River, to his film credits. Completed in 1938 under the FSA, The River dealt with the disastrous floods along the Mississippi River and construction of Norris and Wheeler Dams.

The Plow That Broke the Plains

The Plow That Broke the Plains
This classic film about the Dust Bowl has been one of the most widely studied documentaries. It was the first film to be placed in Congressional archives. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Credit: Library of Congress.

Both films employed forceful narration and a dramatic soundtrack to expose how over-farming and soil erosion contributed to natural disasters and the New Deal’s response in the form of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Soil Conservation Service, Civilian Conservation Corps and other conservation initiatives. Lorentz used this tried-and-true style to direct or supervise three more documentary films for the Film Service.

The Fight for Life (1940), about a community health program to reduce maternal mortality, utilized professional actors. (Will Geer would later portray “Grandpa” in The Walton’s). It concludes with a tense scene in which a new mother pleads, “You won’t let me die, will you doctor?” (No spoilers here!)

Film Poster for "The River," directed by Lorentz and produced by the FSA.

Film Poster for "The River," directed by Lorentz and produced by the FSA.
The companion book to The River was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Credit, NARA.

The excellent, tightly focused Power and the Land (1940) follows a farming family as they go about their daily chores, pre- and post the Rural Electrification Administration that transformed remote areas of the country—no more oil lamps, just a flip of the switch!

The Land (1949) explores farming problems of the 1930s. It features a segment on Latino migrant workers and music by the National Youth Administration, but the narration is dull and the film falls flat.

The U.S. Film Service ended in the same way many other New Deal programs ended—it was defunded by national defense distractions and an increasingly hostile Congress.

After the New Deal, Lorentz created training films during World War II, worked as a film consultant and produced two notable documentaries: Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (1946) and Rural Co-op (1947), but struggled to raise money for other film projects. He died in 1992 at age 86.  

His legacy lives on, aided by the Pare Lorentz Center at the FDR Presidential Library & Museum and the IDA Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund, which supports independent films about society’s most pressing problems.

Great Mississippi Flood, Arkansas City, Arkansas, 1927

Great Mississippi Flood, Arkansas City, Arkansas, 1927
Poor farming and timber practices led to one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. New Deal conservation efforts were featured in Lorentz’s films. Credit, NOAA.

Were Lorentz alive today—and running a U.S. Film Service—one could expect to see documentaries about such problems as global warming, ocean pollution, wildfires and America’s growing economic inequality playing at local movie theaters. Lorentz believed in the power of film to enlighten the electorate and inspire social change. (He also felt that Hollywood was spending too much time on the frivolous).

Brent McKee is a Living New Deal Research Associate (the first, in fact!) and a core member of the LND team. He lives in West Virginia.