BOOKS: Growing Up Roosevelt

Franklin Roosevelt used to say his most difficult constituency was his own family. “One of the worst things in the world is being the child of a President,” he maintained. “It’s a terrible life they lead.” Eleanor and Franklin’s six children ran up a total of 19 marriages; two spouses committed suicide, many more seemed to drink themselves silly. The siblings called it “the body count.”

Peter Collier and David Horowitz have made a business of probing the underbellies of grand American families in books about the Kennedys and the Fords. In The Roosevelts: An American Saga (Simon and Schuster; 542 pages; $27.50), written by Collier with research help from Horowitz, Theodore is portrayed as the head of a dynasty. Never mind that his family and Franklin’s were distant cousins connected mainly by Eleanor, who was Theodore’s niece. Her father was Theodore’s brother Elliott, a dandy who late in life was capable of consuming six bottles of liquor before lunch.

Reading this book, it’s possible to see Elliott as the archetypical Roosevelt. During Prohibition, two of Theodore’s sons, Theodore Jr. and Kermit, helped found a club called “the Room” so they could booze in private. They dabbled in politics and traveled the globe trying, with ( disastrous results, to re-enact their father’s adventures. Theodore Jr. did end up as a hero of the D-day landings, but Kermit’s story was tragic: his heavy drinking persisted, and he eventually killed himself. The maliciously funny Alice Roosevelt Longworth was the real original of the group, but as a woman, she was held back by the times.

Collier’s portraits of the two great Roosevelts and Eleanor seem canned, although his real focus is on their role as parents and the dispiriting effects of a famous childhood. Theodore’s very presence could be overbearing; Franklin was distant. Eleanor resented her husband, and “the children grew up virtually without control,” writes Collier.

But Franklin and Eleanor’s offspring might have become first-class boors even without famous parents. Elliott wanted to be a “big man” and ended as a hard-drinking Rotarian in Arizona. Franklin Jr. drank copiously, served in Congress and was a distributor of Fiat cars. Anna Roosevelt feuded bitterly with her mother; her husband deserted her and killed himself. Collier catalogs these events in a plodding, too decorous way, but his problem is basic: with the exception of Eleanor and the two great Presidents, these Roosevelts were an uninspired group who, in the end, weren’t much of a dynasty at all.