Eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
gave his first national radio address, or “fireside chat” (above), broadcast directly from the White House during the Great
Depression.  He began that address simply: “I want to talk for a
few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.”
He went on to explain his recent decision to close the nation’s
banks in order to stop a surge in mass withdrawals by panicked investor’s worried about possible bank failures. The banks would
be reopening the next day.

Roosevelt thanked the public for their “fortitude and good temper
during what he called the “banking holiday.”

On October 5, 1947, President Harry Truman (1884-1972)  made
the first-ever televised presidential address from the White House,
asking Americans to cut back on their use of grain in order to help starving Europeans.

At the time of Truman’s food-conservation speech, Europe was
still recovering from World War II and suffering from famine. He
worried that if the U.S. didn’t provide food aid, his administration’s Marshall Plan for European economic recovery would fall apart. 

Truman asked farmers and distillers to reduce grain use and
requested that the public voluntarily forgo meat on Tuesdays,
eggs and poultry on Thursdays and save a slice of bread each
day. The food program was short-lived, as ultimately the Marshall
Plan succeeded in helping to spur economic revitalization and
growth in Europe.

SANDY KOZEL

On January 4, 1965, in his State of the Union address, President Lyndon
Baines Johnson lays out for Congress a laundry list of legislation needed
to achieve his plan for a Great Society. On the heels of John F. Kennedy’s
tragic death, Americans had elected Johnson, his vice president, to the
presidency by the largest popular vote in the nation’s history. Johnson
used this mandate to push for improvements he believed would better
Americans’ quality of life.

Following Johnson’s lead, Congress enacted sweeping legislation in the
areas of civil rights, health care, education and the environment. The 1965
State of the Union address heralded the creation of Medicare/Medicaid,
Head Start, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Department of
Housing and Urban Development and the White House Conference on
Natural Beauty. Johnson also signed the National Foundation of the Arts
and Humanities Act, out of which emerged the National Endowment for
the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

TIM MAGUIRE

Jodie Foster in "Courtship of Eddie’s Father”, 1969.

Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is 57 today.

Actress, director, and producer Jodie Foster has received
two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards,
two Golden Globe Awards, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award
along with a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for
her work as a director.

Foster began her professional career as a child model when
she was three years old, and she made her acting debut in
1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late
1960s and early 1970s (below).

Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (1976).

    
Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in
The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

October 14, 1991