Fala (April 7, 1940 – April 5, 1952), a
Scottish Terrier
The Scottish Terrier ( gd, Abhag Albannach; also known as the Aberdeen Terrier), popularly called the Scottie, is a breed of dog. Initially one of the highland breeds of terrier that were grouped under the name of ''Skye Terrier'', it is one o ...
, was the dog of United States president
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
. One of the most famous
presidential pets, Fala was taken to many places by Roosevelt. Given to the Roosevelts by a cousin, Fala knew how to perform tricks; the dog and his
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
antics were mentioned frequently by the
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...
and often referenced by Roosevelt and his wife
Eleanor
Eleanor () is a feminine given name, originally from an Old French adaptation of the Old Provençal name ''Aliénor''. It is the name of a number of women of royalty and nobility in western Europe during the High Middle Ages.
The name was introd ...
. Fala outlived Roosevelt by seven years and was buried near him.
A statue of Fala beside Roosevelt is featured in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
's
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is a presidential memorial in Washington D.C., dedicated to the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, and to the era he represents. The memorial is the second of two ...
, the only presidential pet so honored. Another statue of Fala has been placed at
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...
's "Paseo de los Presidentes" in
San Juan.
Early life
Fala was born on April 7, 1940. Roosevelt's distant cousin,
Margaret "Daisy" Suckley, gave the dog to Roosevelt as an early Christmas gift.
As a puppy, Fala was given
obedience training
Dog training is the application of behavior analysis which uses the environmental events of antecedents (trigger for a behavior) and consequences to modify the dog behavior, either for it to assist in specific activities or undertake particular ...
by Suckley, who taught him to sit, roll over, and jump. His original name was Big Boy; Roosevelt renamed him Murray the Outlaw of Falahill after John Murray of
Falahill, a famous Scottish ancestor. This was later shortened to "Fala".
After a few weeks at the White House, Fala was taken to the hospital for intestinal problems. Roosevelt discovered that Fala had found his way to the kitchen and was being overfed. Roosevelt issued an order to the staff that Fala would henceforth be fed only by the president himself.
White House years
Fala was relocated into the White House on November 10, 1940, and spent most of his time there until Roosevelt's death during April 1945. Fala also traveled with Roosevelt to his home (
Springwood) in
Hyde Park, New York
Hyde Park is a town in Dutchess County, New York, United States, bordering the Hudson River north of Poughkeepsie. Within the town are the hamlets of Hyde Park, East Park, Staatsburg, and Haviland. Hyde Park is known as the hometown of Frankl ...
, and to
Warm Springs, Georgia
Warm Springs is a city in Meriwether County, Georgia, United States. The population was 425 at the 2010 census.
History
Warm Springs, originally named Bullochville (after the Bulloch family, which began after Stephen Bullock moved to Meriwether ...
, where Roosevelt received treatment for his
paralytic illness.
An
MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
movie about a typical day in the White House featured Fala. He also became an honorary
private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
of the
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
by "contributing" $1 to the
war effort
In politics and military planning, a war effort is a coordinated mobilization of society's resources—both industrial and human—towards the support of a military force. Depending on the militarization of the culture, the relative size ...
for every day of the year and setting an example for others on the "
home front
Home front is an English language term with analogues in other languages. It is commonly used to describe the full participation of the British public in World War I who suffered Zeppelin#During World War I, Zeppelin raids and endured Rationin ...
". During the
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive (military), offensive military campaign, campaign on the Western Front (World War II), Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted fr ...
, American soldiers asked one another the name of the President's dog, expecting the answer "Fala," as a supplementary safeguard against
German soldiers attempting to infiltrate American ranks.
Fala often accompanied Roosevelt to important events; he traveled in ''
Sacred Cow'', the president's airplane, and in ''
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; pt, Fernão de Magalhães, ; es, link=no, Fernando de Magallanes, ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East ...
'', Roosevelt's custom-made train car, as well as by ship. He was with Roosevelt at the
Atlantic Charter Conference,
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
, the meeting with President
Manuel Ávila Camacho
Manuel Ávila Camacho (; 24 April 1897 – 13 October 1955) was a Mexican politician and military leader who served as the President of Mexico from 1940 to 1946. Despite participating in the Mexican Revolution and achieving a high rank, he cam ...
of Mexico in
Monterrey
Monterrey ( , ) is the capital and largest city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León, Mexico, and the third largest city in Mexico behind Guadalajara and Mexico City. Located at the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental, the city is anchor ...
,
and appears quickly on deck during press filming of FDR’s visit to Hawaii in 1944 to confer with General
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American military leader who served as General of the Army for the United States, as well as a field marshal to the Philippine Army. He had served with distinction in World War I, was C ...
and Admiral
Chester Nimitz
Chester William Nimitz (; February 24, 1885 – February 20, 1966) was a fleet admiral in the United States Navy. He played a major role in the naval history of World War II as Commander in Chief, US Pacific Fleet, and Commander in C ...
.
During 1943, Fala was the subject of a short series of political cartoons by Alan Foster titled ''Mr. Fala of the White House''. In the 1943 romantic comedy ''
Princess O'Rourke
''Princess O'Rourke'' is a 1943 American romantic comedy film directed and written by Norman Krasna (in Krasna's directorial debut), and starring Olivia de Havilland, Robert Cummings and Charles Coburn. Krasna won the 1944 Oscar for Best Origina ...
'', Fala was played by Whiskers.
Fala speech
On September 23, 1944, Roosevelt began his
1944 presidential campaign in Washington, D.C., speaking at a dinner with the International
Teamsters
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), also known as the Teamsters Union, is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of The Team Drivers International Union and The Teamsters National Union, the u ...
Union. The half-hour speech was also broadcast by all U.S. radio networks. In the speech, Roosevelt criticized
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
opponents in
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...
and detailed their criticisms of him. Late in the speech, Roosevelt addressed Republican charges that he had accidentally left Fala behind on the
Aleutian Islands
The Aleutian Islands (; ; ale, Unangam Tanangin,”Land of the Aleuts", possibly from Chukchi language, Chukchi ''aliat'', "island"), also called the Aleut Islands or Aleutic Islands and known before 1867 as the Catherine Archipelago, are a cha ...
while on tour there and had sent a
U.S. Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...
destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort
larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in ...
to retrieve him at an exorbitant cost to the taxpayers:
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family don't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I'd left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find himat a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollarshis Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself ... But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog.
The story of being left behind on the Aleutian Islands was false. (Fala did cause some minor trouble once on the cruiser in the West Indies by licking the feet of sailors relaxing on deck.)
The idea of turning the Republican charges into a joke was that of
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
.
Campaigning extensively for Roosevelt, Welles occasionally sent him ideas and phrases that were sometimes incorporated into what Welles characterized as "less important speeches".
One of these was the "Fala speech". Welles ad-libbed the Fala joke for the president, who was so delighted that he had a final version written into the speech by his staff. After the broadcast Roosevelt asked Welles, "How did I do? Was my timing right?"
"The audience went wild, laughing and cheering and calling for more," wrote historian
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Helen Kearns Goodwin (born January 4, 1943) is an American biographer, historian, former sports journalist, and political commentator. She has written biographies of several U.S. presidents, including ''Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream ...
. "And the laughter carried beyond the banquet hall; it reverberated in living rooms and kitchens throughout the country, where people were listening to the speech on their radios. The Fala bit was so funny, one reporter observed, that 'even the stoniest of Republican faces cracked a smile.'"
After Roosevelt's death
President Roosevelt died at
Warm Springs, Georgia
Warm Springs is a city in Meriwether County, Georgia, United States. The population was 425 at the 2010 census.
History
Warm Springs, originally named Bullochville (after the Bulloch family, which began after Stephen Bullock moved to Meriwether ...
, on April 12, 1945. In the minutes after his death, Fala behaved very strangely. FDR biographer
Jim Bishop
James Alonzo Bishop (November 21, 1907 – July 26, 1987) was an American journalist and author who wrote the bestselling book ''The Day Lincoln was Shot''.
Early life
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, he dropped out of school after eighth gra ...
wrote about the death scene: "... a snapping, snarling series of barks was heard. No one had paid any attention to Fala. He had been dozing in a corner of the room. For a reason beyond understanding, he ran directly for the front screen door and knocked his head against it. The screen broke and he crawled through and ran snapping and barking up into the hills. There,
Secret Service
A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For ...
men could see him, standing alone, unmoving, on an eminence. This led to the quiet question: 'Do dogs really know?'"
Fala attended Roosevelt's funeral
and went to live with the widowed
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...
at
Val-Kill.
She took great pleasure in Fala's company, and the two became inseparable companions.
She often mentioned Fala in her newspaper column, "My Day", and wrote of him in her autobiography:
It was Fala, my husband's little dog, who never really readjusted. Once, in 1945, when General Eisenhower came to lay a wreath on Franklin's grave, the gates of the regular driveway were opened and his automobile approached the house accompanied by the wailing of the sirens of a police escort. When Fala heard the sirens, his legs straightened out, his ears pricked up and I knew that he expected to see his master coming down the drive as he had come so many times. Later, when we were living in the cottage, Fala always lay near the dining-room door where he could watch both entrances just as he did when his master was there. Franklin would often decide suddenly to go somewhere and Fala had to watch both entrances in order to be ready to spring up and join the party on short notice. Fala accepted me after my husband's death, but I was just someone to put up with until the master should return.
During November 1945 Fala was hospitalized for a week after being attacked at the family's Hyde Park estate by
Elliott Roosevelt's
bull mastiff
The Bullmastiff is a British breed of dog of mastiff type and large size, with a solid build and a short muzzle. It was developed as a guard dog in the nineteenth century by cross-breeding the English Mastiff with the now-extinct Old English ...
, Blaze. Fala had been staying with Margaret Suckley and visited Hyde Park. He was on a leash when the larger dog jumped on him, slashing his back and right eye. The attack ended when someone struck Blaze with a rock and dazed him. Blaze was euthanized as a precaution against future attacks and tested negative for rabies.
Suffering from deafness and failing health, Fala was euthanized on April 5, 1952, two days before his twelfth birthday.
Fala is buried in a marked grave about behind the Roosevelt tombstone in the Rose Garden at
Springwood,
beside Chief (1918–1933), the Roosevelts'
German Shepherd
The German Shepherd or Alsatian is a German breed of working dog of medium to large size. The breed was developed by Max von Stephanitz using various traditional German herding dogs from 1899.
It was originally bred as a herding dog, for he ...
.
File:Eleanor Roosevelt with Fala.jpg, Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...
walking Fala (1947)
File:Eleanor Roosevelt with Fala 2.jpg, Fala and Eleanor Roosevelt (1951)
File:Fala's Grave.jpg, Chief and Fala's graves
File:Franklin Delano Roosevelt gravesite.jpg, Grave near that of the Roosevelts' at Springwood
Memorials
A statue of Fala beside Roosevelt is featured in the
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is a presidential memorial in Washington D.C., dedicated to the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, and to the era he represents. The memorial is the second of two ...
in Washington, D.C. Fala is the only presidential pet so honored. Another statue of him has been placed at
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...
's "Paseo de los Presidentes" in
San Juan. A third statue is in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY. Fala's collar, dog dish, White House dog tags and other artifacts also are on display.
File:FDR-Memorial-Fala.jpg, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is a presidential memorial in Washington D.C., dedicated to the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, and to the era he represents. The memorial is the second of two ...
(sculpture by Neil Estern)
File:Fala-detail-FDR-Memorial.jpg, FDR Memorial detail
See also
*
Checkers speech
The Checkers speech or Fund speech was an address made on September 23, 1952, by Senator Richard Nixon ( R- CA), six weeks before the 1952 United States presidential election, in which he was the Republican nominee for Vice President. Nixon had ...
*
List of individual dogs
This is a list of individual famous actual dogs; for famous dogs from fiction, see List of fictional dogs.
Actors
Advertising
* Axelrod, Basset Hound, appeared in commercials and print ads for Flying "A" Service Station advertisements in ...
*
United States presidential pets
Most United States presidents have kept pets while in office, or pets have been part of their families. Only James K. Polk, Andrew Johnson, and Donald Trump did not have any presidential pets while in office. However, Johnson did take care o ...
References
External links
*
*Audio recording of 'Fala Speech':
* Transcript:
Artists for FDR blog post presenting selections from the 1944 pamphlet, ''The President's Speech'', with illustrations by Crockett Johnson, Syd Hoff, Hugo Gellert and 16 others from the Independent Voters' Committee of the Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt.
IMDb profile of Whiskers Fala's movie stand-in in ''
Princess O'Rourke
''Princess O'Rourke'' is a 1943 American romantic comedy film directed and written by Norman Krasna (in Krasna's directorial debut), and starring Olivia de Havilland, Robert Cummings and Charles Coburn. Krasna won the 1944 Oscar for Best Origina ...
'' (1943).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fala (Dog)
1940 animal births
1952 animal deaths
Franklin D. Roosevelt
United States presidential dogs