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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Monzo" data-source="post: 437239" data-attributes="member: 19949">I watched Backstairs at the White House for the first time, which received a total of eleven Emmy nominations but only won Best Makeup. The four-part miniseries was very popular with audiences, averaging a 25.1 rating.For me, as a non-American who doesn't know every detail of US history, it was interesting to learn more about the presidents and their first ladies. I wasn't aware that so much death took place in the White House between World War I and World War II: a president died, a first lady died, a presidential child died. All the presidents and first ladies had their flaws in the miniseries, but the Roosevelts were portrayed as perfect. Incidentally, I noticed that John Anderson, as Franklin D. Roosevelt, was mostly in a wheelchair, just as the actor later had to do in Dallas as Kimberly's father. I wondered if a casting director on Dallas remembered that John Anderson could portray a wheelchair user well and that's why he got the part of Herbert Styles. One of my favorite performances in Backstairs at the White House is Celeste Holm's portrayal of Florence Harding. She made me so curious about the First Lady that I even researched whether Florence Harding was really as eccentric as Celeste Holm depicted her.Olivia Cole starred in Backstairs at the White House, and I realized I only know her from miniseries. I liked her in Roots, but I liked her best in North & South, perhaps because of the tragic end of her character, Maum Sally. It's a shame Olivia Cole never made it outside the world of miniseries. She was part of the main cast of three series (Szysznyk, Report to Murphy, Brewster Place), but none of them were successful.What bothered me somewhat about Backstairs at the White House is its handling of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of the Black servants asked President Truman how long the war would last after the victory over Germany, and the president replied, "Not much longer." Then, a mushroom cloud appeared in the mirror the president was looking in; that was all that was ever shown or told about the atomic bombing. In another miniseries I recently watched, War and Remembrance, which deals extensively with World War II, the atomic bombing was also only briefly mentioned. I wonder if, in the 1970s and 80s, there was some kind of unwritten rule not to show anything critical about US conduct during World War II.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?