Professor Hamilton's Diary: Sept. 4, 1935

They remove pictures to prepare for painters; FDR lunches with controversial N.C. senator

In preparation for having their downstairs painted, the Hamiltons took down pictures in the parlor and dining room. It was another rainy date spent around the house.

Still in Hyde Park, President Roosevelt lunched with Sen. Robert Rice Reynolds of North Carolina, then an avid supporter, later not so much. The North Carolina History Project describes him as “a most atypical Southern politician.”

Paid subscribers can read on about this “colorful and controversial” senator, who unwittingly became a tool of the Germans in the years leading up to World War II.

The 1937 photo of actress Jean Harlow and Sen. Reynolds is from the collection of the Library of Congress, accessed via Wikimedia Commons. Harlow was in Washington to attend the President’s Birthday Ball benefit for the March of Dimes.