Honest Abe in Hollywood

4/14/11
entertainment
By Robert Levin

Honest Abe in Hollywood

Sevenscore and six years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd made the fateful trip to Ford's Theater, where an assassin's bullet transformed the 16th President of the United States into America's greatest martyr.

Lincoln "belonged to the ages," as Edwin M. Stanton, his Secretary of War, is said to have proclaimed when the president died in the early-morning hours of April 15, 1865.

In the 146 years that have followed Lincoln's death, from the iconic painting "The Apotheosis of Abraham Lincoln" to Robert Redford's new film "The Conspirator," the lanky lawyer from Illinois has been perhaps the most frequently represented figure in American culture.

With tomorrow's release of "The Conspirator," which depicts the trial of Lincoln assassination co-conspirator Mary Surratt and stars Robin Wright, James McAvoy and Kevin Kline, amNewYork looks at Honest Abe's history on-screen:

D.W. Griffith's Lincoln:

Despite his Southern sympathies, legendary filmmaker D.W. Griffith was a great admirer of Lincoln's. In "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), a controversial film due to its shocking racist stereotypes and idolization of the Ku Klux Klan, Griffith nonetheless offers a sympathetic portrait of a conciliatory leader gunned down in cold blood.

Later, Griffith cast Walter Huston as the icon in "Abraham Lincoln" (1930), the first feature-length "talkie" biography of the president.

Pre-Washington movies:

Two of the best-known films about Lincoln concentrated on his early years - the famous log-cabin childhood in Kentucky and his work as a Springfield, Ill., attorney.

Henry Fonda famously embodied the young president as a tenacious defense lawyer in John Ford's "Young Mr. Lincoln" (1939), while the great Raymond Massey brought his Broadway role to the big screen in "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" (1940).

The president on TV:

Lincoln has been a ubiquitous figure on the small screen. He's turned up as one of Captain Kirk's heroes on "Star Trek" (1969) and transformed into a Muppet for the pilot of "The Muppet Show" (1975).

Hal Holbrook played him in "Lincoln" (1974), the series adaptation of Carl Sandburg's six-volume biography. The Academy Award nominee did so again in the Civil War miniseries "North and South" (1985-86), while Sam Waterston stepped into some imposingly large shoes as the protagonist in the telefilm "Gore Vidal's Lincoln" (1988).

21st-century Abe:

Today, the Great Emancipator is everywhere, engaged in lightsaber combat with George W. Bush on "Robot Chicken," serving as the catalyst for the events of "The Conspirator," or hunting vampires in next year's 3-D adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith's mashup novel "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."

On a more serious note, after years of dithering, Steven Spielberg is finally in pre-production on his long-gestating adaptation of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," starring Daniel Day-Lewis and set for a fall 2012 release. Oscars, take note.
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