According to occasionally accurate pre-production details on The Internet Movie Database it seems Martin Scorsese's next big biopic will focus on a young pre-presidential Teddy Roosevelt. The film, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is set to star non-other than his new best friend and De Niro replacement, Leonardo DiCaprio as a youthful Roosevelt. The source material from the film will be taken entirely from Edmund Morris' original 1979 Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the same name. Morris' book is simply fascinating--including journal entries by a nine year old Roosevelt and a glimpse into the pre-pubescent years of a boy fascinated by natural history and a borderline almost unhealthy love for athleticism. Edmund Morris is clearly the foremost expert on the subject of the twenty-sixth President of the United States and has authored two other biographies an other on Roosevelt, Theodore Rex and Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.
The real focal point in this story is young Teddy's relationship with his father Theodore Senior whom he admired greatly. This excerpt taken from an early journal entry by Teddy:
I bit my elder sister's arm. I do not remember biting her arm, but I do remember running down to the yard, perfectly conscious that I had committed a crime. From the yard I went into the kitchen, got some dough from the cook, and crawled under the kitchen table. In a minute or two my father entered from the yard and asked where I was. The warm-hearted Irish cook had a characteristic contempt for "informers," but although she said nothing she compromised between informing and her conscience by casting a look under the table. My father immediately dropped on all fours and darted at me. I feebly heaved the dough at him, and, having the advantage of him because I could stand up under the table, got a fair start for the stairs, but was caught halfway up them. The punishment that ensued fitted the crime, and I hope-and believe- that it did me good.
There is a lot that occurs in this early look at a president from a young child to a man well into his thirties. He falls in love multiple times, graduates from Harvard, and soon takes on many public positions before succeeding President McKinley in 1901.
Some facts about Theodore Roosevelt:
He was the youngest governor of New York
He was an Imperialist
He suffered from extreme asthmatic problems as a young child
He was an avid boxer, hunter (despite his conversationalist views) and swimmer
He graduated 21st from Harvard out of a class of 177
He spent two of his teen years in Europe becoming fluent in both German and French
He originally wanted to pursue a career in natural history but was persuaded by a professor at Harvard to go into politics
His father was a noted philanthropist
Theodore Senior established the Metropolitan Museum of Modern art and Museum of Natural History in NYC
Theodore Senior died from a bowel obstruction when Teddy was a Sophomore at Harvard
