News
Henry A. Wallace: An Uncommon Man
Now Available on Amazon.com
Arlington, VA, May 2011 – Henry A. Wallace: An Uncommon Man, a film tribute to an extraordinary American, premiered at the National Portrait Gallery in March and now is available on Amazon.com.
The 57-minute film by Joan D. Murray and VideoTakes, Inc., tells the remarkable story of a man who was expected to continue as vice-president into FDR’s fourth term and succeed him as president. Why that didn’t happen fills this documentary with high drama.
By the time of the Democratic National convention in 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was very ill. Most insiders knew that the man elected as Roosevelt’s running mate that year, would likely be president before the next election. As the convention neared, Roosevelt told his former Secretary of Agriculture and current Vice President, Henry Agard Wallace, that he hoped it would be the “same old team”. The majority of the delegates to the convention also hoped the vice presidential candidate would once again be Wallace.
Thursday, July 20, 1944, turned out to be one of the most extraordinary days in the drama of American political conventions. Thanks to some slick maneuvers by the party bosses, it was not the popular Henry A. Wallace, but the obscure Harry S Truman who emerged as the vice presidential candidate.
Who was Henry Agard Wallace? Why did the common man revere him? Why did politicians fear him? The answers to these questions reveal a complex and brilliant farmer, scientist, writer, and public servant who served his country during some of the most trying times in American history: the Great Depression and World War II.