Saturday, October 4, 2008

TODAY'S TWD: WOODROW WILSON

For the penultimate Tiddlywinkydink in the memory of Paul Newman, we're turning our attentions to President Woodrow Wilson. As I mentioned yesterday, Newman supplied the voice of President Wilson for an episode of that documentary series, "Freedom, A History Of Us'.

Here is a short biographical sketch of Wilson, edited down from
his Wikipedia page:

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856—February 3, 1924), was the twenty-eighth President of the United States. A leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, he served as President of Princeton University and then became the Governor of New Jersey in 1910. With Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft dividing the Republican Party vote, Wilson was elected President as a Democrat in 1912.


Narrowly re-elected in 1916, his second term centered on World War I. He tried to maintain U.S. neutrality, but when the German Empire began unrestricted submarine warfare, he wrote several admonishing notes to Germany, and in April 1917 asked Congress to declare war on the Central Powers. He was the first President to leave the United States while still in office, going to Paris in 1919 to create the League of Nations and shape the Treaty of Versailles, with special attention on creating new nations out of defunct empires. Largely for his efforts to form the League, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.

Wilson collapsed with a debilitating stroke in 1919, as the home front saw massive strikes and race riots, and wartime prosperity turn into postwar depression. Wilson's idealistic internationalism, calling for the United States to enter the world arena to fight for democracy, progressiveness, and liberalism, has been a highly controversial position in American foreign policy, serving as a model for "idealists" to emulate or "realists" to reject for the following century.

The online site for the White House also provides a biography for Woodrow Wilson.

Among his many accomplishments as President:

The Federal Trade Commission
The Clayton Antitrust Act
The Underwood Tariff
The Federal Farm Loan Act
The Federal Reserve System
The Military Service Draft
Liberty Bonds
The Income Tax
Federal Drug Prohibition
The War Industries Board
The Lever Act (dealing with agriculture and food production)
The Treaty of Versailles
The League of Nations

For his efforts in creating the League, Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.

Wilson had a vision of a post-war world free of international conflict, and toward that end he issued his "Fourteen Points".

The points were:


Abolition of secret treaties

Freedom of the seas

Free Trade

Disarmament

Adjustment of colonial claims (decolonization and national self-determination)

Russia to be assured independent development and international withdrawal from occupied Russian territory

Restoration of Belgium to antebellum national status

Alsace-Lorraine returned to France from Germany

Italian borders redrawn on lines of nationality

Autonomous development of Austria-Hungary as a nation, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved

Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and other Balkan states to be granted integrity, have their territories de-occupied, and Serbia to be given access to the Adriatic Sea

Sovereignty for the Turkish people of the Ottoman Empire as the Empire dissolved, autonomous development for other nationalities within the former Empire

Establishment of an independent Poland with access to the sea

General association of the nations – a multilateral international association of nations to enforce the peace (League of Nations)

In Toobworld, Wilson has been portrayed several times, mostly via voice-overs like Newman's, but at least once in the Tooniverse as well.
ACTORS AS WOODROW WILSON
Whit Bissell. . . "Profiles in Courage" (1964)
- {Woodrow Wilson (#1.14)}


Reynolds Evans . . . "Frontiers of Faith" (1951)
- {A Dream of Faith}


Bob Gunton. . . Iron Jawed Angels (2004)

Michael Kane. . . First Ladies Diaries: Edith Wilson (1976)

Josef Sommer. . . "Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, The" (1992)
- {Paris, May 1919 (#2.18)}


Harry Townes. . . "Omnibus" (1952)
- {He Shall Have Power (#8.1)}


Robert Vaughn. . . "Backstairs at the White House" (1979)

VOICE-OVERS AS WOODROW WILSON
Mason Adams. . . "Freedom to Speak" (1982)

Rene Auberjonois. . . Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of the American Century (2002)

Martin Landau . . . "Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, The" (1996)
- {Collapse (#1.6)}
- {Hatred and Hunger (#1.7)}

- {War Without End (#1.8)}

George Mitchell. . . "American President, The" (2000)
- {The World Stage (#1.6)} TV Series


Paul Newman. . . "Freedom: A History of Us" (2003)
- {Safe for Democracy (#1.11)}


WOODROW WILSON IN THE TOONIVERSE
Rob Paulsen. . . "Time Squad" (2001)
- {White House Weirdness}

BCnU!
Toby O'B

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