Mr. Lincoln Goes to Hollywood (and Looks Like Henry Fonda)

[David Lockmiller]

I thought that the most unusual thing was movie director "Ford shot a scene, cut from the movie by the producer Darryl F. Zanuck, in which the presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth passes through Springfield." The only Oscar nomination for the Lincoln movie that year (because of competition -- “Gone With the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Wuthering Heights,” “Ninotchka,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and Ford’s own “Stagecoach”) was for script writer Lamar Trotti.

It kind of reminds me of the Spielberg "Lincoln" movie playwright Tony Kushner's contribution to this movie. I wish the producer of Spielberg's "Lincoln" movie had demanded removal of that the scene at Ford's theater where Mary Todd Lincoln fictitiously berated President Lincoln for not doing enough to secure passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Unfortunately, Spielberg was both director and producer of the "Lincoln" movie. Obviously, this was one of those situations where "two heads are better than one."