Lincoln (Gore Vidal’s Lincoln) – Nostalgia Central

1 9 8 8 (USA)
2 x 120 minute episodes

Gore Vidal’s best-selling 1984 historical novel Lincoln was transformed into this four-hour NBC special which aired over two nights on Sunday 27 March and Monday 28 March 1988.

Vidal often saw Lincoln as cunning whereas others saw him as kindhearted. He contended, for instance, that the Civil War raged on not because Lincoln cared so much about the abolition of slavery, as folklore holds, but because he wanted to preserve the Union.

The author also portrayed Lincoln as unashamedly ambitious. Even Lincoln’s law partner and biographer William Herndon (played in the series by Jeffrey DeMunn) wrote, “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.”

Sam Waterston – who bore an uncanny resemblance to the gangly 16th American President, filled Lincoln’s formidable shoes. (They were size 12B for the record). The 47-year-old actor pored over several tomes to research his role, and his reading led to a greater appreciation of Lincoln.

When Waterston – dressed as Lincoln – walked through the streets of Richmond, Virginia, (where the Washington scenes were filmed, in an ironic twist on history), he was surrounded by a crowd. But not all wanted autographs; some wanted to engage him in political discussion.

Mary Tyler Moore played his fragile, misunderstood wife, Mary Todd, in a shining performance.

Moore’s Mary Todd was mentally unbalanced one moment and tough as nails the next, living life to the fullest and then withdrawing completely from it.

There were tirades of anger and jealousy, spells of catatonic depression, a wonderful scene in which she had to be restrained from literally taking on the Confederate Army, and her joy at being surrounded by two lively, ill-behaved boys.

The huge supporting cast included Richard Mulligan as Secretary of State William Seward; Ruby Dee as Mrs Lincoln’s maid, her only friend and confidante; and James Gammon as General Grant, arguably the best among the supporting actors.

Scriptwriter Ernest Kinoy and director Lamont Johnson made the four hours too episodic to be totally satisfying, flitting incessantly between domestic life and affairs of state.

The show never settled at one place long enough for much rapport to develop, never failed to miss a chance to pontificate at all the right places (such as in the case of the famed Gettysburg Address) and never failed to deliver a line that linked past with present.

But there is no denying the mood that was captured in the process – the almost Macbethian chain of emotional and political events which, linked together, toppled both gods and mortals.

There were flashbacks of Lincoln being unrecognised as he arrived in Washington to assume the presidency, an assassination attempt on the dark road filled with soldiers, the burial of a son in a driving rain, the Lincolns coming under fire as they visited a battle line and Mrs Lincoln and Mrs Grant waging a war of words in a bumpy carriage ride.

There were muddy streets, poorly lit homes, whorehouses, injured soldiers and hints of belief in the supernatural.

Taken as a whole, the miniseries really offered nothing new about life and times surrounding the Civil War’s first family. Most of the tarnish had been hinted at in print throughout the years; all the miniseries did was give it a visual bent.

“He made an entirely new country in his own image,” Mrs Lincoln says at the end, recounting the horrendous loss of life and changes in society wrought by his decisions. “I think in some way he willed his own murder, as an atonement for what he had done.”

Abraham Lincoln
Sam Waterston
Mary Todd Lincoln
Mary Tyler Moore
William H. Seward
Richard Mulligan
Kate Chase
Deborah Adair
Senator Charles Sumner
Tom Brennan
Robert Lincoln
Gregory Cooke
Johnny Hay
Steven Culp
Elizabeth Keckley
Ruby Dee
Congressman Elihu Washburne
Jerome Dempsey
William Herndon
Jeffrey DeMunn
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
Jon DeVries
Edward McManus
George Ede
Stephen Douglas
Robin Gammell
General Ulysses S. Grant
James Gammon
William Sprague
Thomas Gibson
Colonel Elmer Ellsworth
Tim Guinee
General George McClellan
David Leary
Frederick Douglass
Cleavon Little
Salmon P. Chase
John McMartin
Ward Hill Lamon
Patrick Rowe
General Winfield Scott
John Houseman
Henry
Greg Baber
Earle
Coby Batty
Allan Pinkerton
Bill Chorney
Captain Holmes
Ritchie Copenhaver
Thompson
Del Driver
John Wilkes Booth
Glenn Faigen
Mrs Ord
Fay Greenbaum
Stewart
Dick Harrington
Speaker Hickman
Rick Hite
Julia Grant
Karen Hutcheson
Editor Forney
Edward James Hyland
Mrs Laury
Helen Jervey
Blair
Marion Johnson
General Wood
Lee Lively
Governor Curtin
John Mingus
Willie Perham
Patrick Coe McCluskey
Fred Grant
Adrian Rieder
Sickles
Alan Sader
Tad Lincoln
Troy Sweeney
Nicolay
Richard Travis
Willie Lincoln
Paul Welch

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