Mrs. Lincoln’s Salon: Her Form Inclines To Stoutness

[Anita]

According to Joanna Johnston, costume designer for Steven Spielberg’s "Lincoln", when Mary was First Lady her waist was 30 in. and her weight 130 lbs.

"The challenge, she says, was that the First Lady and the actress charged with playing her did not resemble each other. “Sally [Field] was too thin. We needed to put some fat on her,” she says. Johnston found a dress at the Chicago History Museum and worked with collection manager Meghan Smith to measure it in detail. The pair discovered that the dress measured 30 inches on the inside of the waist. Johnston reported the figure to Field. “Sally went on a massive put-on-weight diet. She got her waist measurement up and then put on the corset, because I was looking for the measurement of the external waist of the corset on the body. I thought we’d have to pad her up, but she did it!”
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013...ally-field

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(11-04-2015 09:03 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  In her book entitled Mary, Wife of Lincoln, Katherine Helm gives Mary's weight as 130 in 1861 (p.175).

I have seen her height listed as either 5-2 or 5-3.

"She was the bright belle from a wealthy family. She saw the greatness in him," says Taper, the world's leading Lincoln collector. "I think they're a great match." She looks big, but she was five-foot-four (to her husband's six-foot-four) with a 20-inch waist when corseted."
http://www.newsweek.com/hellcat-or-helpm...oln-100149