President’s Day Movies

Celebrate President’s Day with some some of the classic movies about Abraham Lincoln’s life. Reportedly, he has been portrayed more on screen than any other real-life character. I was honored to be invited to participate in the 272-word project from the Abraham Lincoln Library in Springfield, Illinois. Each of us was asked to contribute an essay that was, like the Gettysburg Address, just 272 words.

Here’s mine:

Two score and six years after the death of Abraham Lincoln, he was first portrayed in the brand-new medium of film. 102 years and over 300 films later, Lincoln has appeared on screen more than any other historical figure and more than any other character except for Sherlock Holmes. In 2013 alone there were three feature films about Abraham Lincoln, one with an Oscar-winning performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, directed by Steven Spielberg. In another one, he was a vampire slayer. He has been portrayed by Henry Fonda (John Ford’s “Young Mr. Lincoln,” Raymond Massey (“Abe Lincoln in Illinois”), Walter Huston (D.W. Griffith’s “Abraham Lincoln”), and Bing Crosby — in blackface (“Holiday Inn”). The movies have shown us Lincoln defending clients, mourning Ann Rutledge, courting Mary Todd, and serving as President. We have also seen him traveling through time with a couple of California teenagers in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and granting amnesty to Shirley Temple’s Confederate family in “The Littlest Rebel.”Lincoln is appealingly iconic as a movie character, instantly recognizable as a symbol of America’s most cherished notion of…