Warm Springs (film)

Warm Springs is a 2005 television movie about American President Franklin D. Roosevelt's struggle with polio, his discovery of the Warm Springs, Georgia spa resort and his work to turn it into a center for the aid of polio victims, and his resumption of his political career.

It stars Kenneth Branagh as Roosevelt, Cynthia Nixon as Eleanor Roosevelt, Kathy Bates as physical therapist Helena Mahoney, and Tim Blake Nelson as Tom Loyless. It was produced by HBO Films and directed by Joseph Sargent.

Jane Alexander plays Sara Delano Roosevelt, FDR's mother; she played Eleanor Roosevelt in the acclaimed 1976 telefilm Eleanor and Franklin and its 1977 sequel Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years.

The majority of the film was made at Warm Springs, Georgia and its surrounding locations. The producers strove to make sure that many of the physical details were as authentic as possible. For example, Kenneth Branagh, as Roosevelt, is seen driving the very same specially-equipped automobile that FDR was taught to drive at Warm Springs. The cottage that Roosevelt stays in during the film is one of the cottages that the real FDR stayed in. And the swimming pool in which the patients swim in is the actual therapeutic swimming pool at Warm Springs, refurbished specifically for the film.

Many of the bit part actors in the film are actually disabled, though Branagh and several other of the principal actors are not. The withered look on Branagh's legs was achieved through the use of CGI.

The film was nearly unanimously praised by the critics, and won five Emmy Awards out of an astounding sixteen nominations, including Outstanding Made-for-Television Movie, Best Supporting Actress in a Made-For-Television Movie (Jane Alexander), and Best Original Score (Bruce Broughton). Joseph Sargent, who was also Emmy-nominated for his direction, did not win. Had he done so, it would have been his second consecutive Emmy (he had won the previous year for Something the Lord Made, another HBO film). He did, however, receive a Directors Guild of America award for Warm Springs. Screenwriter Margaret Nagle won a Writers Guild of America Award for her script. The film was also nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, but did not receive any.

Interestingly, a peer-reviewed study in 2003 determined that Roosevelt's paralytic illness was more likely caused by Guillain-Barré syndrome, not polio.