Your personal choice of actors who have portrayed Lincoln

[emma1231]

I have finally ( ! ) registered on this great site and would like to chime in on my favt. topic -- how Lincoln and aspects of his assassination have bee depicted in the Theatre arts. Reinhart's book is tops. He made a couple of mistakes in his 1st ed., which he corrected in the 2nd one. ANything I can add about who played Lincoln first, who played him first in a talkie, etc; is covered in the book. I will say that my favt. Lincoln is Walter Houston. The movie itself, unfortunately, is episodic and dull. I think -- not sure -- that the first actor to play Lincoln in a talkie was actually George Billings, who had played him in the first sil. feature about Lincoln in 1924. I feel that Massey's Lincoln is overrated. Waterston's Lincoln seems too chipper and young. His acting was OK. That mini-series was badly cast. Let's hope Spielberg did a better job of casting. It would appear so. Sally Field -- if she gained a little weight for it -- will prob. be great. SHe's a great actress and I predict that if the script is decent she'll be nominated for an Oscar. Day-Lewis has great promise, too. I never cared for the way Holbrook loooked as Lincoln. But he had a good grasp of it and did very nicely. As someone said here, he studied the voice from contemporary accts. and seemed to have really captured it. Frank McGlynn is a favt. of mine,but I can't pin down just why. Have you seen him sharing an apple with Shirley Temple in "The Littlest Rebel"? If not, rent it! Borrow it! Buy it! It's priceless! Incidentally, McGlynn played Lincoln in 1915 -- the same year Giffith did "Birth of a Nation"-- in an Edison film that was made in, of all places, the Bronx. Betty Ownsbey's choice of David what's-his-name- (Selby?) is a good one. I saw him as Abe in an episode of "Touched By an Angel," and he was tops. Well, that's enough from me on Abe.[/size][/font] I enjoyed everyone's input on this subject. How about we discuss who the best John Wilkes Booth was, eh?
For starters, I have four "screen" favts. -- Jack Lemmon in "The Day Lincoln Was Shot," John Derek in "Prince of Players," an actor whose name I can't recall who played him in that above-mentioned epsode of "Touched By an Angel," and John LaSalle, who played him in the episode of "The Twilight Zone" entitled "Back There." The "Touched..." actor certainly looked the most like JWB.