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Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
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Overview
User Rating:
Director:
Writer:
Lamar Trotti (screenplay)
Release Date:
9 June 1939 (USA)
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Tagline:
The story of Abraham Lincoln that has NEVER been told!
Plot:
A fictionalized account of the early life of the American president as a young lawyer facing his greatest court case. full summary | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
Awards:
Nominated for Oscar.
Another 1 win
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User Comments:
Symbol, history, and myth.
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Cast
(Complete credited cast) | Henry Fonda | ... | Abraham Lincoln |
 | Alice Brady | ... | Abigail Clay |
| Marjorie Weaver | ... | Mary Todd |
| Arleen Whelan | ... | Sarah Clay |
| Eddie Collins | ... | Efe Turner |
| Pauline Moore | ... | Ann Rutledge |
| Richard Cromwell | ... | Matt Clay |
| Donald Meek | ... | Prosecutor John Felder |
| Judith Dickens | ... | Carrie Sue |
| Eddie Quillan | ... | Adam Clay |
| Spencer Charters | ... | Judge Herbert A. Bell |
| Ward Bond | ... | John Palmer Cass |
| rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
| Tiny Jones | ... | (scenes deleted) (as Elizabeth Jones) |
| Eddy Waller | ... | Father (scenes deleted) |
| Clarence Wilson | ... | Dr. Mason (scenes deleted) |
Additional Details
Parents Guide:
Runtime:
100 min
Country:
Language:
Color:
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)
Certification:
Finland:S |
USA:Approved (PCA #5216)
Filming Locations:
Company:
Fun Stuff
Trivia:
Henry Fonda originally turned down the role of Lincoln, saying he didn't think he could play such a great man. He changed his mind after John Ford asked him to do a screen test in full makeup. After viewing himself as Lincoln in the test footage, Fonda liked what he saw, and accepted the part. He later told an interviewer, "I felt as if I were portraying Christ himself on film."
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Quotes:
Abe Lincoln:
[to John Felder] I may not know much of law Mr. Felder, but I know what's right and what's wrong. And I know what you're asking is wrong.
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Movie Connections:
Featured in Fonda on Fonda (1992) (TV)
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Soundtrack:
Turkey in the Straw
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FAQ
This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.more (34 total)
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| Full cast and crew | Company credits | External reviews |
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In his otherwise excellent book, Lincoln in American Memory, the historian Merrill Peterson calls Young Mr.Lincoln a "boring, dreadful, film". This amazingly wrongheaded analysis simply proves that great historians are rarely fine film critics. I am working on a doctoral dissertation on Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. As part of my preparation for writing the dissertation, I made a careful analysis of this film, and of Tag Gallaghers brilliant interpretation of it in his seminal book on Ford. Young Mr. Lincoln comes out that culminating year of the first phase of Ford's cinematic authorship, 1939.In that greatest of Hollywood years, Ford directed three superb, still not fully appreciated films: Drums Along the Mohawk, Stagecoach,and Young Mr.Lincoln. It might seem odd to say that Stagecoach is not fully appreciated, all but the most purblind of critics must perceive that it is one of of the greatest Westerns, and perhaps even one of the hundred greatest films of all time. However, what is NOT fully appreciated is that these three films work together as a kind of trilogy-a triptych, in fact. Ford is creating a sort of mythic history of America on screen. Drums Along the Mohawk is the Revolutionary War. Young Mr.Lincoln is pre-Civil War America.Finally, Stagecoach is Post Civil War America. What the three films have in common is that they are an extended meditation on the American Adam and his "errand into the Wilderness". What are the Psychic and social costs of American manifest destiny, as America strives to build a new human city in the wilderness?Lincoln symbolizes Americas journey, as he seeks to reconcile the civilizational inmpulse (law), with the freedom of the wilderness.Young Mr.Lincoln is not history, ( It is full of historical "howlers'-as both Ford and Trotti were well aware), but myth. This is Lincoln, the symbol of justice and mercy, Lincoln, the man of the wilderness, striving to found a civilization within himself, and to become the "remarkable lawgiver' of young America. Young Mr. Lincoln is not history-like James Agee's long forgotten teleplay about Lincoln, and like Sandburgs biography, it is an epic poem...a very beautiful epic poem.