Abraham Lincoln (United Artists) (1930)

Joseph M. Schenck presents D. W. GRIFFITH’S “ABRAHAM LINCOLN” with WALTER HUSTON and UNA MERKEL UNITED ARTISTS PICTURE Adapted for the screen by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET Stor y and Production Advisor JOHN W. CONSIDINE, Jr. = PUBLICITY fiirrrrinTM GRIFFITH FINDS VOICE POWERFUL FACTOR IN ACHIEVING EFFECTS FOR "LINCOLN” Screen’s Master Craftsman and Enthusiastic Champion of the Talking Picture Claims Latest Screen Spectacle Greatly Aided by Use of Sound Talking pictures have their boosters and knockers among the millions of motion picture fans throughout the country, but from a purely professional point of view, the speaking films have added the greatest single impetus to the screen since the nickelodeon gave way to the modern picture palace costing millions of dollars. One of the greatest boosters of talking pictures is D. W. Griffith, the pioneer United Artists producer-director, who is responsible for most of the screen reforms of today and whose “Abraham Lincoln” is scheduled to open at the.theatre next. History records that he made the first attempt to commercially popular¬ ize screen dialogue when he employed the Kellem process nine years ago in vocalizing “Dream Street.” “If talking pictures accomplish nothing more than recreating for us in sight and sound the world’s greatest historical moments,” says Griffith, “they will have done more for educa¬ tion and the preservation of culture than any other invention since the birth of type.” One of these moments Griffith re¬ produces in “Abraham Lincoln” when Stephen A. Douglas and Lincoln meet on the platform in that remarkable series of debates which overnight raised Lincoln from obscurity to na¬ tional fame. “A debate is a dull thing at its best,” said Griffith, “ or so I thought. But I have discovered that all my pre-conceived opinions regarding dra¬ matic screen possibilities have radi¬ cally changed now that speech is one of our main ingredients. “Silent, that debate would have bored even me, its director, but cloth¬ ing it with the life of words makes it a human thing, with that homely, in¬ fectious humor that underlay Lin¬ coln’s argumentative moods even in so vital a thing as the preservation of the Union. “Dialogue makes ‘Abraham Lincoln’ a more human and sympathetic a document than a thousand reels of silent film could have made it. Some will point to ‘The Birth of a Nation’ and say that it was human despite its lack of sound. Pride of creation forces me to agree with this conten¬ tion, but only in part. How can I say that it would not have been even a greater picture if we could have heard Lillian Gish and Henry Wal¬ thall speaking their lines? “I was perhaps the first to realize the value of sound in pictures. ‘The Birth of a Nation,’ when it toured the United States as a roadshow, was the first screen production to utilize sound effects. True, the effects were sim¬ ulated by mechanical processes back- stage, but they were none the less ef¬ fective. “I have found that sound is of tre¬ mendous assistance in developing mountage or tempo. Before the era of dialogue, we were obliged to rely solely on plot construction and charac¬ terization for tempo. This method made for good, solid drama. Now, however, we can add to those two in¬ gredients the third element of speech, JOSEPH M. SCHENCK presents D. W. Griffith’s “Abraham Lincoln” with Walter Huston and Una Merkel Adapted for the Screen by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET UNITED ARTISTS PICTURE Story and Production Advisor JOHN W. CONSIDINE, JR. Personally Directed by D. W. GRIFFITH Continuity and Dialogue by Stephen Vincent Benet and Gerrit Lloyd; Photographed by Karl Struss; Settings by William Cameron Menzies; Executed by Park French; Music Arrangement by Hugo Riesenfeld; Production Manager, O. O. Dull; Edited by James Smith and Hal C. Kern; Associate Dialogue Director, Harry Stubs; Sound Recorder, Harold Witt; Production Staff, Raymond A. Klune amd Herbert Sutch; Costumes by Walter Israel THE CAST Mid-Wife .Lucille La Verne Tom Lincoln.W. L. Thorne Nancy Hanks Lincoln.Helen Freeman Offut .Otto Hoffman Abraham Lincoln.Walter Huston Armstrong .Edgar Deering Ann Rutledge.Una Merkel Lincoln’s Employer.Russell Simpson Sheriff .Charles Crockett Mary Todd Lincoln.Kay Hammond Mrs. Edwards.Helen Ware Stephen A. Douglas.E. Alyn Warren Herndon.Jason Robards Tad Lincoln.Gordon Thorpe John Wilkes Booth.Ian Keith John Hay (Secretary to the President).Cameron Prudhomme General Scott.James Bradbury, Sr. Young Soldier.Jimmie Eagle General Grant.Fred Warren Secretary of War Stanton.Oscar Apfel General Sheridan.Frank Campeau General Lee.Hobart Bosworth Colonel Marshall.Henry B. Walthall THE STORY On February 12th 1809, amidst agitation between the North and South; a boy is born to Tom and Nancy Lincoln in a corner of a one- room log cabin during a tempestuous February storm. The parents name the boy Abraham. At the age of twenty-two, young Lincoln, six feet three inches in height, “the ugliest and smartest man in New Salem, Ill.” is the clerk in D. Offut’s general store where he sells calomel, warming pans, Bibles, and sometimes extracts teeth. In the spring of 1834, Abe is courting Ann Rutledge. The courtship terminates abruptly when Ann becomes ill of fever and dies. Abe is depressed and broken-hearted. Three years of intense living heal the wound somewhat. Lincoln has been to the Legislature, fought in the Indian war as Captain of Volunteers and has been certified to practice law. His horse and saddle bags, his only possessions, are taken away from him to pay a debt. At a ball in the home of former Governor Ninian Edwards, Lincoln meets Mary Todd. At first she laughs at Abe’s homeliness and awk¬ wardness, but later falls in love with him. Two years later, at the home of Mrs. Francis, Mary and Abe meet again. Lincoln begs forgiveness, and he antd Mary are married that night. Lincoln’s reputation as a debater wins him an overwhelming majority as candidate for the presidency for the Republican Party. Lincoln is elected. Shortly after, John Brown and his Abolitionists have captured the armory at Harper’s Ferry. John Wilkes Booth, a loud and fanatic exhorter cries out for guns and volunteers to avenge Harper’s Ferry. Thus, the great Civil War begins. Lincoln is firm on one point; the Union must be preserved no matter what happens. The fall of Fort Sumpter marks the beginning of bloodshed. In Wash¬ ington thousands of men in uniform are marching to the mournful tune of “John Brown’s Body” as the soldiers in grey mobolize at Richmond. Bull Run is lost. Washington is threatened. Mrs. Lincoln complains to Abe because their stay in the White House seems almost over and the possibility of capture seems imminent. “Mary,” he says, "I’ve hung my hat here, and here it stays until they knock it off with a bayonet. From now on I’m going to run this war.” He makes a personal and unheralded visit to one of the battlefields and wanders into an official tent where a court martial is in progress. When the defendant turns around, Lincoln in his kindly way, asks the boy to explains his actions. The boy relates how in the midst of battle the mutilated form of his dead friend loomed up in front of him and momentarily out of his head, he threw away his rifle and took to his heels. The boy is pardoned and ordered back to his regiment. The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation which frees millions of slaves, intensifies the struggle and Lincoln is urged by his Congressmen and colleagues to end the war. Lincoln answers that he, too, would like to end the sorrow and bloodshed and have peace, but, “we want everlasting peace, and we can have that only by preserving the Union.” Lincoln finally selects Grant to lead the Union forces. Things look bad for the Union. While in conference with Secretary of War Stanton, Lincoln receives the news of Sheridan’s defeat. Lincoln tells Stanton of his vision of a ship with white sails before each victory, and the vision has just come to him. Out on the battlefield, Sheridan is leading his routed men in the cele¬ brated ride that is to stem the tide of Confederate victory. Onward they charge, and in one of the most spectacular engagements of the w.ar, Sheridan emerges triumphant. Again Lincoln is with Stanton when news of Sheridan’s great victory comes. The war is nearly ended. The last of the Confederate forces under Lee go down to defeat before Grant’s army and the war is over. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln is speaking from a box at Ford’s theatre,—“—with malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right—to bind up the nation’s wounds—and cherish peace. Thank you—God bless you all.” There is a great demonstration. The play has just begun when Booth steals into Lincoln’s box, and a pistol roars. A woman screams out: "Mr. Lincoln has been shot.” The uproar in the theatre gives way to the tremendous sobbing of an unseen multitude. Then a grave voice calls out: “Now | he belongs to the ages.” Scene from. D W QriffLtlir "Abraham LincolnJ 6—One Col. Scene (Mat 05c; Cut 30c) with its multiplicity of shadings and nuances. “Dramatically, the screen has about reached its peak with the reproduction of realistic speech and action. We will fool with many other innovations— color and wide film and perhaps ster¬ eoscopic effects—but those are the side lines of the three major fundamentals —talk, character and movement.” Griffith worked with a cast of 112 speaking actors in this most ambitious undertaking of his career. The title role of “Abraham Lincoln” is por¬ trayed by Walter Huston, while Kay Hammond plays “Mary Todd”; Una Merkel, “Ann Rutledge”; Jason Ro¬ bards, “Herndon,” Lincoln’s junior law partner; Ian Keith plays the assassin, “John Wilkes Booth,” and Hobart Bos¬ worth and Frank Campeau are cast LINCOLN ROMANCE PROVES PUZZLING "Honest Abe’s” Reason for Jilting Mary Todd is Still a Mystery To be jilted is an experience in tragedy which occurs to but few women, yet Mary Todd was jilted, and by no less a person than Abraham Lincoln. This peculiar phase of Lincoln’s character, when he was so frightened as to run away from the prospect of marriage into the most aristocratic family in the West, is revealed in D- W. Griffith’s United Artists pro¬ duction, “Abraham Lincoln,” which is scheduled to open at the. theatre next. Innumerable psychologists and friendly biographers have tried to ex¬ cuse Lincoln’s behavior with conflict¬ ing theories. Some believe that the future President, who was shy and highly sensitive, was a victim of nerves on the night of the wedding and as a further development of that condition became temporarily de¬ ranged. It is known that he wan¬ dered the woods abstractedly for days. Others contend that the memory of his boyhood love for Ann Rutledge proved so strong that it conquered his reasoning mind and thus caused him to jilt Mary Todd. Whatever the cause, Lincoln was a character that would delight all modern psychologists. His wedding day misadventure was but an echo of a somewhat similar conduct when Miss Rutledge died. Lincoln, grieving over her untimely death from fever, lived like an animal for five days in the woods until his normal mind func¬ tioned. Several days after his return it stormed and Lincoln ran tc Ann Rut¬ ledge’s grave and covered it with his body so that the rain would not beat down upon her. Lincoln eventually mariied the proud Mary Todd, but not until a year and a half after he had jilted her. Historians are puzzled as to why this aristocratic young voman, then one 'of the most sought after belles in the Western Empire, should have wanted to marry a country law¬ yer with no seeming future when she could have married Stephen A. Doug¬ las, a presidential candidate and one of the greatest politicians of the time. Miss Todd, however, had a faculty for divination. She had made the statement on innumerable occasions that she was destined to marry a man who would become President of the United States. It was her ambition and peppery tongue, historians be¬ lieve, which were largely instrumen¬ tal in developing Lincoln’s latest gen¬ ius for political expression. The cause of Lincoln’s strange con¬ duct on his wedding night is definitely obscured in a maze of theory and contradiction, yet this episode in h : s life is one of the most illuminating to scholars. Griffith has reproduced this scene faithfully, with all its un¬ derlying pathos and drama. The cast of “Abraham Lincoln” in¬ cludes Walter Huston, playing the title role; Kay Hammond, portraying “Mary Todd”; Una Merkel, as “Ann Rutledge”; Jason Robards, as “Hern¬ don,” Lincoln’s junior law partner and friend; Ian Keith, as “John Wilkes Booth”; Hobart Bosworth, as “Lee”; Frank Campeau, as “Sheri¬ dan,” and Lucille La Verne, playing an important character part. Every historical character appearing in “Abraham Lincoln,” the mammoth screen romance of Lincoln’s life, scheduled to open at the. theatre next., bears a striking resemblance to the original, according to D. W. Griffith, who made this all-dialogue epic for United Art¬ ists. Griffith insists that no detail was lost in the recreation of faces and facts for his first big historical ro¬ mance since “The Birth of a Nation.” More than 112 of the best known character actors on the stage and screen appear in the picture. This tremendous cast is headed by Walter Huston, as “Lincoln”; Kay Hammond, Una Merkel, Ian Keith, Jason Ro¬ bards. Hobart Bosworth, Frank Cam¬ peau and Lucille La Verne.