Newly discovered footage gives rare glimpse of FDR walking

New, rare footage has been released showing polio-plagued President Franklin Delano Roosevelt walking at a White House event.

The footage was recently donated to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park and features FDR at the White House Easter Egg Roll in 1935.

In the silent, black-and-white clip, FDR, then 53, uses a cane to amble to a balcony of the White House’s South Portico and stops to wave at the crowd below while grasping the railing.

“When I saw [it] … I gasped,” library director Paul Sparrow told the Washington Post. “I had never seen this footage before, and we had a sense that no one had ever seen this footage before.

“It’s by far the clearest image I’ve ever seen of something that’s obsessed me for 20 years.”

It was rare for FDR, who was paralyzed from the waist down by polio in 1921, to be captured on film walking. Historians say the press generally did not film him struggling to move as the Secret Service wanted to avoid publicizing his vulnerability.

“Only a handful of mostly private snapshots and a few feet of blurry amateur film hint at that struggle,” historian Geoffrey Ward told WPDH.

The 16mm film was shot by Fred Hill and recently donated to the library by his grandson, Richard Hill.

Richard Hill told the Washington Post that he offered to donate the footage in the 1980s but never followed up, so he’s had it since.

“I’ve kind of jealously guarded this stuff,” he said. But now, it “needs to go where it belongs. It’s an important part of history that almost got away.”

Ward said the film offers “the most vivid glimpse we’ve yet had of his gallant attempt to persuade the public that he was merely ‘lame,’ that he was vigorous enough to withstand the awful pressures of the presidency.”

Sparrow noted how Hill captured history because he “didn’t know the rules.”

In 2014, rare footage also emerged showing FDR walking at a 1937 baseball game in Washington.

FDR used a wheelchair to get around because he could only walk with braces on his legs and with the support of a cane.