Newly discovered film footage from 1935 offers a rare glimpse of President Franklin D. Roosevelt walking, in a show of extreme effort that he went to great lengths to hide from the public eye. 
 
 Fred Hill of New York was attending the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House with his family on April 22, 1935, when he used his movie camera to capture the moment Roosevelt emerged from the White House onto the South Portico. In the short, silent film Hill shot that day, Roosevelt, who usually used a wheelchair after being stricken with polio some 14 years earlier, can be seen walking painstakingly along the portico with the assistance of his bodyguard, before stopping at the railing of the balcony to wave to the crowd. 
 
 The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York released the black-and-white 16-mm film footage this week after it was donated by Hill’s grandson, Richard Hill of Reno, Nevada. “I’ve kind of jealously guarded this stuff,” Richard Hill told the Washington Post. But now, he said, it “needs to go where it belongs . . . It’s an important part of history that almost got away.” 
 
 As a 39-year-old rising politician, Roosevelt first showed symptoms of infantile paralysis, or poliomyelitis, at his family’s beloved Campobello Island retreat in New Brunswick, Canada, in the summer of 1921. At the time, there was no known cure for polio, and it often led to full or partial paralysis. After his diagnosis, Roosevelt withdrew from public life for a time to rehabilitate at his home in Hyde Park, New York, and also traveled to work with physiotherapists at Warm Springs, Georgia. When the resort there was struggling financially, Roosevelt bought the place for $200,000 and turned it into a rehab facility for himself and other polio sufferers. 
 
 After Roosevelt resumed his political career, winning the governorship of New York in 1928 and the presidency for the first time in 1932, he took great pains to manage public perception of his disability. Strict White House rules prevented people from taking pictures of or filming him either in his wheelchair or being helped in and out of cars. Roosevelt also worked very hard to develop a way of walking by using heavy leg braces and a cane, and leaning on someone else’s arm—a struggle he also did not want to be preserved on film. 
 
 Geoffrey C. Ward, a Roosevelt biographer and trustee of the FDR Museum and Library, writes that before Fred Hill’s newly revealed footage, “only a handful of mostly private snapshots and a few feet of blurry amateur film” have been found to show Roosevelt walking. According to Ward, the Secret Service agents probably didn’t see Hill filming during the Easter Egg Roll because of the unusually large size of the crowd on the White House lawn. (A record 51,391 people entered the White House gates that day.) If they had, they would likely have taken the camera and confiscated the film before giving it back to him. 
 
 But the Secret Service didn’t spot Hill—and now we can see the moment he captured for ourselves. ||||| Fred Hill Film 
 
 Article by Roosevelt historian and Library Trustee, Geoffrey C. Ward 
 
 Franklin Roosevelt was elected president of the United States four times, yet most of those who voted for or against him had no idea that infantile paralysis had rendered him unable to take a single step unaided. The White House imposed strict rules on how he could be filmed or photographed: no images of FDR in his wheelchair or being helped in and out of cars were permitted; no visual record was to be made of the arduous effort it took him to move just a few steps on his rigid braced legs. 
 
 Only a handful of mostly private snapshots and a few feet of blurry amateur film hint at that struggle. But 31 seconds of silent 16 mm. amateur black-and-white footage recently deposited at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library offer the most vivid glimpse we’ve yet had of his gallant attempt to persuade the public that he was merely “lame,” that he was vigorous enough to withstand the awful pressures of the presidency. 
 
 We owe that glimpse to a Nevada rancher named Frederick Hill. On Easter Monday, April 22, 1935 he and his wife, Marjorie and their two children attended the annual Egg Roll on the White House lawn. Mr. Hill had a movie camera with him and began filming the genial chaos – children scurrying after eggs, the Goodyear blimp dipping low above the Executive Mansion, admirers presenting Eleanor Roosevelt with baskets of flowers. The crowd was enormous: by evening, 51,391 people would pass through the White House gates – a record for the time. 
 
 Then, at some off-screen signal, three newsreel cameramen begin shouldering their way toward the South Portico. They are to wait until the President and First-Lady have made their way to a pre-selected spot along the iron railing before they begin shooting – and then to stop shooting the moment FDR starts back inside. 
 
 But Mr. Hill pushes in behind the cameramen, oblivious to the White House rules, and begins filming as soon as he spots the President in a doorway. The larger-than-usual crowd on the lawn that day may account for the fact that the Secret Service fails to see what Hill is doing; had they seen that he is filming the President in motion they would have asked him to hand over the camera and removed the film before handing it back. 
 
 Instead, from a distance but in crystal-clear detail, we see Roosevelt proceed along the portico with the slow, rocking gait he had painstakingly developed with physiotherapists at Warm Springs, Georgia. He grips the strong right arm of his bodyguard Gus Gennerich with his left hand, leans on a cane with his right, and heaves himself forward from the hip, one unbending leg after the other, smiling and chatting all the while as though nothing whatsoever is out of the ordinary. Behind him come Eleanor and two daughters of her brother, Hall, eight-year-old Diane and six-year-old Amy Roosevelt. 
 
 When FDR and the First Lady reach their assigned spots on the railing, Roosevelt grabs on with his left hand to keep himself upright while he waves to the cheering throng with his right. The delighted crowd waves back. Then, it’s time to go. The newsreel men presumably turn off their cameras, but Mr. Hill goes on shooting and we see Gus Gennerich, -- who has slipped behind the nearest pillar so that he won’t be seen on-screen -- return to the president’s side. Together, they make their halting way back inside.
– For seven seconds, the footage shows an American president walking to a White House railing to wave at a crowd. But "when I saw [it] ... I gasped," says Paul Sparrow, director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, which has acquired the silent film of the 32nd president at the 1935 White House Easter Egg Roll. It's so remarkable because FDR, disabled by polio in 1921, wasn't keen on walking, which for him often required braces. Only a handful of short, blurry films show him doing so, per History. Indeed, cameramen were told not to record his stiff gait for fear it would make clear his disability, per the Washington Post. Apparently unaware of such a rule, New York tourist Fred Hill aimed his camera at Roosevelt as he walked with help from a cane and bodyguard, his wife and two nieces at his side. Secret Service agents surely would've taken the film had they spotted Hill's camera amid the crowd of 50,000, says Roosevelt biographer Geoffrey C. Ward. "It's by far the clearest image I've ever seen of something that's obsessed me for 20 years," he adds, pointing to the careful "choreography" of bodyguard Gus Gennerich, who helps FDR to a railing, vanishes behind a pillar, and reemerges just as the president is ready to leave, per the Post. The footage stayed with Hill as he relocated to Reno, Nev., continuing to make home movies, and was discovered by his grandson in the 1980s. "I've kind of jealously guarded this stuff" but it "needs to go where it belongs," says Richard Hill, 66, who made the December donation announced Wednesday. "It's an important part of history that almost got away." (This FDR footage is rare for another reason.)