sunday on oral histories, we continue our series on women in congress with former republican congresswoman helen bentley. >> i know i had to do well because i could not afford not to. i just kept plugging and working hard. it is not a play pad. campaign is tough work. and i admire anybody who goes into it. fromncer: we will hear robert canales, nancy johnson and lynn woolsey. watch oral histories sunday at 10:00 a.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span3. announcer: the franklin d. roosevelt residential library did your a unique film collection and joining us on the phone is library director paul sparrow.

-- was an assistant to franco roosevelt starting in 1920 and was with him for more than 20 years and was a close friend of the family as well. she lived in the white house when he was president and she became intrigued with film cameras. she would film a number of these at formal pictures and events and luncheons. -- picnics and events and luncheons. movies to herme included in her collection. she had a stroke in 1941 and left the white house and took possessions with her and died several years later it did not become part of the initial library collects with the library was created. her grand nieces decided to donate these films to a library

last year and since then we have been going back to the original film, had them transferred and restored and now we are starting to make them available to the public and so this is the first time we have put this whole collection of films online for people to review. >> how many films are in the collection? >> there were 11 different films that they are strangely intercut so there are two hours total. we put 90 minutes online. there are still some we are trying to store -- sort through. some may be copyright protected. the footage, we are exactly clear on ownership so we are still trying to work through it. you will have on one of these reels, you might have five or six different sub clips. the reels reach 10 minutes long and there might be a scene from their home up in canada. there might be a scene from springwood in hyde park. there might be a scene from val

kill or warm springs and it jumps all over. at this point, they are not clearly delineated. there is not a clear analogy so we are trying to sort through them. we started putting together a highlight reel where we put together a selection of clips from warm springs and a selection of clips from cap abella. so people can get a sense of where these -- were taken. >> this is mostly black and white? >> it is but there was wonderful where colored footage taken in hyde park at the home and springwood that features franklin and eleanor roosevelt on the lawn with their irish setter and his mother sarah cutting roses and the children riding on horses. it is beautiful footage and very unusual color footage from that period. there is color footage of eleanor roosevelt on a boat with some of her friends, but most of

it is black and white. >> went to the fdr come to acquire the collection? >> the collection was donated a year ago in august 2017 and it has taken a left for us to go through it and have it transferred. some of this old film stock is fragile and has to be treated with a special laboratory that the national archives works within maryland. they had to go through the process of getting it ready for transfer and we transferred it at what they call for k video files and the high definition video files so this footage will be available to researchers and filmmakers in the future. --is the connection collection previously unknown? >> the entirety of the collection was unknown. some footage has been seen before. some has not been seen before. some has been rarely seen, so

some film archivists who work for ken burns may have seen it but a lot of it has not been widely seen. some has never been seen. >> these are pre-world war ii films. >> it is mostly 1932-1938. after that, it drops off. i imagine life in the white house got too busy. what one -- is wonderful about it is it shows you behind-the-scenes footage. there are some scenes where there are reporters around and you can see other newsreel crews but a lot of it, roosevelt's are letting their hair down. there are scenes with fdr and warm springs around the pool where you can see his atrophied legs and that is something he would never reveal in a setting in which there might be press. he was so comfortable with the other polio survivors at warm

springs he felt they were his someonend when you have like maceo hand taking footage, he knew it would never get in the footage of a newsreel company. some of the behind-the-scenes things you see our insights into the informal life of the roosevelt's. >> how would you say the collection as to fdr's legacy? >> one thing intriguing about the roosevelt is even though they were extraordinarily public figures for decades, they had a private life. particularly, if you think about his polio in the fact he was completely paralyzed from the waist down, this was something kept secret from the american public for decades. people knew he had polio. they knew he was crippled back then or had a funny walk but there are a few people knew he

was paralyzed and so severely crippled. when you see the home movies, it reveals a side of him where he is not putting on the act. everywhere else, wherever he is giving speeches, he is pretending to be able to walk and to be able to stand when without the assistance of the steel braces he wore on his legs or someone he could hold onto, he could not stand. appear in any of these? other any observations about her relationship with fdr? ofshe appears in a number the footage, including the scenes with franklin at the white house and at his home in hyde park and there are fun scenes that are home movies of missy that do not have the roosevelt's at all where she is traveling with her sister and they are going around the country. you can tell they had a good

time. these are people who enjoys life. because of missy's position, she always looks serious. she is the president's secretary zinke you can easily get a -- oftion of her reserved a reserved and series person. when you see the home movies, you get the sense she was vivacious and of course she was a powerful woman. she controlled access to the president. she was not given a lot of respect. there was sexism back then. historians do not balance the remarkable plant -- role she played. we have correspondents from ambassadors and powerful people contacting missy saying i need to see the president. can you get me in? and her providing backdoor access to fdr for the people she felt he needed to see and the people she felt he didn't need

to see did not get in. >> you talked about the condition of the films. how is the library processing the collection? >> the original film was sent to washington and transferred to video file so we have these high definition video files. the film itself will be stored in our collections rooms, which are temperature and humidity controlled. we have some stock and audiotapes that are stored in our stacks and they are kept been very, very good environmental conditions. there are a lot of shots where we don't know who everybody is yet. we were debating whether we should wait and try to identify everyone, or whether we should put up some out there and get public feedback.

eventually, we went to grade crowd sourcing opportunities so that people can go to the footage. there are several scenes for example of a big picnic they had at eleanor roosevelt's home, and it looks like there are number of reporters there but they are not there as reporters come other there just having fun, doing three-legged races, egg races, just playing. we would love to get feedback and have people identify who all the individuals are. nine of the 11 roles have been put online come of the other ones, i guess we are still working through issues of ownership. onthey are all available now both the fdr library youtube channel, and there is a page on the fdr library website which has a connection that will take you right to the youtube playlist. >> thank you for your time today. >>. announcer: i appreciate it. announcer: each week, american artifacts takes you to museums and