Young Mr. Lincoln

[Martin Fass]

Having discovered this Symposium today, and because it appears nobody has called attention to "Young Mr. Lincoln," this is to do so. Especially in light of all the publicity and talk being given to "Lincoln," which is, for me, an excellent motion picture.

But--not to forget "Young Mr. Lincoln" from 1939, the picture by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda. It is readily available from Netflix and many other libraries and dealers. Have you seen it?

Among its other attributes, it is a feature length film that seems to be over in fifteen minutes. Absorbing, fascinating, beautiful, inspiring.

--Martin

---

Now I see that the movie HAS been discussed a bit here, including not so praiseworthy words about Henry Fonda. So it goes. I imagine people who prefer Hal Holbrook are likely to know already that Holbrook has a role in "Lincoln."

I happen to be strongly in favor of both Ford and Fonda, especially when they are together.

--Martin

[RJNorton]

Hi Martin (love your avatar!) and welcome to the forum! You are absolutely correct. We did discuss Lincoln in film many months ago, and there was a wide diversity of opinions. This is also true with the Spielberg movie. I found the movie fascinating, and I loved it, yet some of my neighbors (all of whom are seniors as we live in a senior community) found many parts of it quite boring. Sometimes it's hard to find a consensus when it comes to movies, actors, actresses, etc.

[Rob Wick]

As one of those not enamored with "Young Mr. Lincoln," a lot of it has to do with Henry Fonda's voice. He sounds too much like Fonda, not someone born in central Kentucky who grew up in Indiana. Of course, some people might find that nit-picking. Holbrook and later Sam Waterston both made Lincoln more believable to me. I'm not saying that "Young Mr. Lincoln" is a terrible movie (I have the Criterion Collection disc) but it's just not my favorite.

Welcome to the forum Martin.

Best
Rob

[Liz Rosenthal]

I thought that Young Mr. Lincoln was awful, but I don't believe that it was Henry Fonda's fault. He did the best he could with poor material.

The Lincoln in this movie seems half-dead. He walks like he has forever to get somewhere, as if he has no energy. Despite Billy Herndon's claims to the contrary, Lincoln's colleagues back in Springfield recalled him as having a lot of energy. One individual in particular recalled that it was all he could do to keep up with Abe. (I can't remember where I saw this recollection, although it might have been from Nicolay's interviews with Springfield contemporaries, a collection edited by Burlingame that I recently read.)

Also, the Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln never cracked a smile. Granted, the real Lincoln did suffer from melancholy, but when he told stories his face tended to get quite animated.

The events depicted in the movie were only very loosely based on occurrences in the life of the youthful Lincoln. The characters and circumstances in Young Mr. Lincoln came off as whitebread. And the putty they put on Henry Fonda's nose to make it look bigger just made him look goofy, for want of a more respectable adjective.

If Lincoln had really been the way he was portrayed in that movie - a slow-moving gloomy gulch with an expressionless face - he wouldn't have gotten anywhere in politics and wouldn't have been our 16th president!

I realize that Hollywood had different standards back then for portraying American history; writer and director had to make it palatable for the broadest audience possible, and with no hint of iconoclasm. That may explain why the movie turned out the way it did, but the explanation still doesn't turn Young Mr. Lincoln into a good movie. Blechh.

That's one of many reasons why Spielberg's Lincoln was a godsend to me. Watching it is probably the closest I or anyone else will get to experiencing the real man. Not that I don't have a few quibbles about how Daniel Day-Lewis portrayed him physically - i.e., a little too bent, almost feeble - but I can recognize artistic reasons for enfeebling the physical Lincoln. It suggested all that he had gone through in the war, that the world was almost literally on his shoulders, that he was exhausted, that he had had enough. But I digress. I'm in love with 98.5% of Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal.

[RJNorton]

I thought I'd look for the New York Times' movie review of Young Mr. Lincoln, and I was able to find it:


Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
NYT Critics' Pick

THE SCREEN; Twentieth Century-Fox's Young Mr. Lincoln Is a Human and Humorous Film of the Prairie Years

By FRANK S. NUGENT

Published: June 3, 1939

One of the most human and humorous of the Lincoln biographies is "Young Mr. Lincoln," which Twentieth Century-Fox presented at the Roxy yesterday. Without a trace of self-consciousness or an interlinear hint that its subject is a man of destiny, it has followed young Abe through his early years in Illinois, chuckling over his gangliness and folksy humor, sympathizing with him in his melancholy, grinning from ear to ear with—and at—him as he goes to court in Springfield before a pipe-smoking judge and a jury of prairie-raised pundits. These were the happy years, before he got into politics; the picture is happier for ending before the long shadows came creeping up.

Henry Fonda's characterization is one of those once-in-a-blue-moon things: a crossroads meeting of nature, art and a smart casting director. Nature gave Mr. Fonda long legs and arms, a strong and honest face and a slow smile; the make-up man added a new nose bridge, the lank brown hair, the frock coat and stove-pipe hat (the beard hadn't begun to sprout in those days) and the trace of a mole. Mr. Fonda supplied the rest—the warmth and kindliness, the pleasant modesty, the courage, resolution, tenderness, shrewdness and wit that Lincoln, even young Mr. Lincoln, must have possessed. His performance kindles the film, makes it a moving unity, at once gentle and quizzically comic.

And yet, while his Lincoln dominates the picture, Director John Ford and Scriptwriter Lamar Trotti never have permitted it to stand out too obviously against its background—the Midwestern frontier. Scene and minor character have their place, and an important one. The prairie types have been skillfully drawn. One knows, somehow, that they are Lincoln's kind of people, that they think as he does, laugh at the same jokes, appreciate the same kind of horseplay. Had they been less carefully presented, Abe himself would have seemed less natural, would have been a stranger in his own community. Alice Brady's frontier mother, Donald Meek's spellbinding prosecutor, Spencer Charters's circuit judge, Eddie Collins's Efe—they all fit into the picture, give Mr. Fonda's colorful Lincoln the protection of their coloration.

The result of it, happily, is not merely a natural and straightforward biography, but a film which indisputably has the right to be called Americana. It isn't merely part of a life that has been retold, but, part of a way of living when government had advanced little beyond the town meeting stage, when every man knew his neighbor's business and meddled in it at times, when a municipal high spot was a pie-judging contest, the parade of the Silver Cornets and a tug of war on the principal thoroughfare. Against that background and through events more melodramatic and humorous than nationally eventful, Twentieth Century's "Young Mr. Lincoln" passes; and it a journey most pleasant to share.

[BettyO]

Love that movie -- and love Henry Fonda in the role! He just has that earthy, down home type of personality in that particular type of part....

[J. Beckert]

In 1939, "Young Mr. Lincoln" was probably the equivalent of Spielberg's "Lincoln". I've always loved "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" with Raymond Massey. When I was a little kid, I used to cry at the end as Lincoln stands at the rear of the train as it pulls out of Springfield station and the Battle Hymn plays because I knew he wasn't coming back.

Welcome aboard, Martin!

[Martin Fass]

I most appreciate these remarks and observations; thank you. One can have (and many DO have) strong criticism of the John Ford film, and of various other Lincoln characterizations. It is important to note, however, that writers, directors and actors have not always had the objectives we might assume they had, or that we believe they OUGHT to have had.

It is also somewhat impossible to know how we, ourselves, might have experienced a movie (or a book) if we had come upon it ten or fifty years earlier than we have. At the same time, it is valuable to see how the Ford movie was originally reviewed in the New York Times. As with other pictures, this one is not the same film at all when we look at it now, especially if we are familiar (and love--or not love) all the work that Ford and Fonda did (alone and together) in the next few decades.

--Martin

[Hess1865]

Don't forget, Ford was the man who made 'The Prisoner Of Shark Island'.

[Linda Anderson]

I came across this recent article on "Young Mr. Lincoln." The author writes about Fonda, "How he failed to get an Oscar nomination always baffles me."

According to Wikipedia, Fonda as Abe Lincoln was up against Mr. Chips, Rhett Butler and Heathcliff, not to mention Mickey Rooney and Jimmy Stewart.

Best Actor

* Robert Donat – Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Clark Gable – Gone With the Wind
Laurence Olivier – Wuthering Heights
Mickey Rooney – Babes in Arms
James Stewart – Mr. Smith Goes to Washington


http://thecelebritycafe.com/reviews/2012...enry-fonda

[Martin Fass]

No names come to mind offhand, but through its history all sorts of qualified people were overlooked for Oscars, and in many cases, awards went to performers and others for what was far below their best work.

I think the short explanation is that from the very first year they existed, the Academy Awards have mostly been determined by POLITICAL considerations (both within the industry and as reflected in the wider world) than by the specific motion pictures of the period.

[Linda Anderson]

(01-19-2013 02:04 PM)Martin Fass Wrote:  No names come to mind offhand, but through its history all sorts of qualified people were overlooked for Oscars, and in many cases, awards went to performers and others for what was far below their best work.

I think the short explanation is that from the very first year they existed, the Academy Awards have mostly been determined by POLITICAL considerations (both within the industry and as reflected in the wider world) than by the specific motion pictures of the period.

That's very true. One of the most famous examples is Elizabeth Taylor winning for "Butterfield 8." Even Taylor recognized that she got it because she was reported to be seriously ill just before the voting. She had had a tracheotomy and she got the sympathy vote plus she seems to have been overlooked for past performances.

http://www.angelfire.com/film/robbed/liz1.htm

It's also very hard to compare performances. Mr. Chips, Heathcliff, Rhett Butler and Mr. Smith are all wonderful in their different ways. I don't remember "Babes in Arms" but Mickey Rooney was very famous back then.

[Rob Wick]

I've always found it fascinating that in a year when Bob Hope said of the 1940 Oscars "What a wonderful thing, this benefit for David Selznick" that Gable was one of the few nominated from the film who didn't win. Who today has even heard of Robert Donat (although I did like Goodbye Mr. Chips very much)? I mean, even Hattie McDaniel went home with an Oscar. It seems illogical given that Gable was the nation's only serious choice to play Rhett Butler.

As an aside, two of the greatest moments in my otherwise lackluster newspaper career came when I saw Mickey Rooney and Donald O'Connor perform together and the next year when I got to interview Debbie Reynolds. Just listening to some of their stories about old Hollywood brought it alive. (Reynolds gushed that Glenn Ford was the best kisser she ever worked with).

Reynolds told about when they were filming How the West Was Won. The cast and crew stayed in Paducah when they were filming in deep southern Illinois near Cave-In-Rock. There was an island that flooded six months out of the year and it was getting ready to do so. They were filming a scene where Jimmy Stewart and Carroll Baker were embracing with Reynolds looking on. During the scene all of a sudden Baker let out a loud scream. A water moccasin had wrapped itself around a low-hanging tree limb. Reynolds quipped "Carroll ran, I ran, but Jimmy outran us both."

Best
Rob

[Liz Rosenthal]

The problem with Clark Gable winning an acting award is that he always acted the same no matter what the movie was. He was the opposite of Daniel Day Lewis! And unlike Humphrey Bogart or even James Cagney, Gable didn't demonstrate acting "growth" in his career. So I don't think he was robbed by not receiving the Oscar in '39. I must say, though, '39 was a banner year for high-quality movies. Let's not forget that The Wizard of Oz (my favorite movie) came out that year!

Regarding Martin's earlier comment about how we might have looked at Young Mr. Lincoln had we seen it at the time of its release - I totally agree. We would have had different expectations then. Reality and accuracy tended not to be hallmarks of Hollywood films in those days, and few people demanded such things. Realistic and/or sociologically probing movies only really came to the fore after World War Two, for many complicated reasons. Anyway, despite the many masterpieces Hollywood churned out prior to the end of the war, the industry also churned out a lot of drivel, and I place Young Mr. Lincoln in that category. For me, the movie was created with (I guess) good intentions and poor (very poor) execution, and exemplifies everything that was phony about the old Hollywood.

[Linda Anderson]

(01-19-2013 06:50 PM)Liz Rosenthal Wrote:  The problem with Clark Gable winning an acting award is that he always acted the same no matter what the movie was. He was the opposite of Daniel Day Lewis! And unlike Humphrey Bogart or even James Cagney, Gable didn't demonstrate acting "growth" in his career. So I don't think he was robbed by not receiving the Oscar in '39. I must say, though, '39 was a banner year for high-quality movies. Let's not forget that The Wizard of Oz (my favorite movie) came out that year!

I don't know if Gable was robbed that year because of the high caliber of the competition but I thought he was terrific as Rhett Butler. I read somewhere that Margaret Mitchell created the character with Gable in mind. Does anyone know if that is true?