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200 YEARS OF LINCOLN

Miscast mates

Hollywood can't seem to get it right when it makes movies about Abe and Mary Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, help us!)

By Rich Copley and Cheryl Truman

RCOPLEY@HERALD-LEADER.COM
ctruman@herald-leader.com

Many people consider Abraham Lincoln the greatest president in U.S. history.

Why they can't make a great, or even halfway good, movie about him we don't know.

That doesn't really leave Abe alone, though. Quick! Name a great movie about an American president -- and fictional presidents don't count.

Thought so.

Based on his track record, you have to think Steven Spielberg could very well be on his way to giving the 16th president his due on the silver screen. After all, he's adapting Doris Kearns Goodwin's acclaimed book, Team of Rivals, has Tony Kushner writing the screenplay and cast Oscar winners Liam Neeson and Sally Field as Abe and Mary. Phil Funkenbusch, director of shows at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, Ill., says Neeson even showed up unannounced to do some research last year.

Over the years, directors of various levels of skill have taken on Lincoln stories, including La Grange native D.W. Griffith, who devoted his first talkie to the president.

If you're going to do a Lincoln film, the first step is casting Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln. Sometimes, it seemed more like directors were casting The Odd Couple. Here's a look at some of those cinematic Abes, Marys and their court of supporting players:

• Tad (1995). The all-time weirdest Abe 'n' Mary are in this TV movie: Kris Kristofferson as The Great Emancipator, and Jane Curtin of Saturday Night Live and Kate & Allie as Mary.

Variety said of this stinker:

"Perfectly acceptable children's version of Abe and Mary Lincoln as seen through the eyes of their young son Tad is scripted by Ernest Kinoy (Roots) and follows the family from Springfield, Ill., to Washington, D.C.

"Casting of Kris Kristofferson as a full-faced Abe and a mechanical Jane Curtin as Mary flattens the familiar docudrama no matter how much research went into it; Tad leans to artifice."

Variety also let fly with this stinker: "The Civil War doesn't help, and Tad's abruptly left alone, lonely and needful."

"The Civil War doesn't help"? That blasted war, getting in the way of adolescence. And also killing 620,000 Americans.

Sadly, we could not find a copy of Tad -- we kept getting referred to Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!-- because, really, seeing Kristofferson and Curtin would be like having six Red Bulls with a bracing flask of bourbon.

• Lincoln (title as listed on the Internet Movie Database) (2009): It's hard to top Kristofferson and Curtin, sure, but pairing Schindler with the Flying Nun might do the trick: Liam Neeson and Sally Field are the next Abe-Mary cinematic alliance. Then again, Neeson has played a Jedi Knight and C.S. Lewis' version of God, so maybe he's been working his way up to this one.

• Gore Vidal's Lincoln (1988): His days of providing Order to Jerry Orbach's Law were still ahead of him, but her days as that plucky woman who was "gonna make it after all" were behind her: Sam Waterston was Abe, Mary Tyler Moore was Mary. Waterston looks Abe-like but sounds just like Jack McCoy. Moore makes up for Waterston's restraint by all but chewing the scenery; her accent is as broad as the Kentucky River and suggests that she studied Kentucky dialect by watching Coal Miner's Daughter. Bluegrass history buffs might get a charge out of her catcalling to "cousin" John Breckinridge over on the Rebel side.

Bonus: Richard Mulligan of Soap as Seward!

• Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940): Raymond Massey as Lincoln and Ruth Gordon as Mary. Although Gordon could bring the crazy, her breakthrough role didn't happen until 28 years later, when she played the devil's own Mia Farrow menace in Rosemary's Baby.

• Lincoln (1974): Hal Holbrook as Lincoln, Sada Thompson as Mary. Holbrook's signature role, though, is Mark Twain. Thompson was better-known for the role she didn't get: Archie Bunker's nemesis on All in the Family. That plum went to Beatrice Arthur, later of Maude and even later the most towering of The Golden Girls. Thompson made do with Family; her TV husband was Matthew Broderick's real-life dad.

You have to wonder what Holbrook's real-life wife, Dixie Carter, might have done with the role of Mary. We've always seen Mary as having more than a pinch of Julia Sugarbaker in her.

• The Day Lincoln Was Shot (1998): Northern Exposure's Rob Morrow as John Wilkes Booth Ð it was, apparently, the era of the pixie assassin. Lance Henriksen, the dour villain in Aliens and the dour husband in TV's Millennium, wasn't half-bad as Abe. As for the rest of the movie, a few words will suffice. Abe: stoic. Mary: wackadoo. Foppish John Wilkes Booth: world's worst boyfriend.• Abraham Lincoln (1930): Griffith cast Walter Huston -- director John Huston's dad, Anjelica Huston's grandfather -- as Lincoln and Kay Hammond as Mary.

Big cool fact: The screenplay was written by poet Stephen Vincent BenŽt -- yes, that Stephen Vincent BenŽt, the one who wrote John Brown's Body. And the script, while politically incorrect by today's standards, included a nice jab at the silken femme-appeal of John Wilkes Booth.

But, although helmed by Griffith, this movie is painful to watch: The movie is an early talkie and feels like a poorly filmed stage play. Most of the supporting cast looks as if they studied at the 84 Lumber School of Acting. Huston, however, makes a mighty stab at embodying Lincoln -- the first shot of Abe, unfolding his lanky frame at a backwoods store, and later repeating the movement when the Lincolns move into the White House, is priceless.

Lincoln covers a lot of ground by jumping to it, using an hourglass to signify the passing of time. And there's enough makeup on Huston's face early on to suggest he's playing the Scarlet Pimpernel rather than Honest Abe.

But May Hammond as Mary is a stitch, suggesting an early version of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara nine years later. Una Merkel, chewing the scenery as Ann Rutledge, looks amazingly like Kirsten Dunst.

For the guy who revolutionized the cinematic spectacle, Griffith's portrayal of the Civil War is somewhat surprisingly short on -- uh -- war.