Lincoln (1988– )

After arriving in Washington in 1861 after his election, Abraham Lincoln struggles with personal and political problems during his Presidency.

Stars:

Sam Waterston, Mary Tyler Moore, Richard Mulligan

Won 1 Primetime Emmy. Another 1 win & 7 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Sam Waterston	...	Abraham Lincoln
Mary Tyler Moore	...	Mary Todd Lincoln
Richard Mulligan	...	William H. Seward
Deborah Adair	...	Kate Chase
Tom Brennan	...	Sen. Charles Sumner
Gregory Cooke	...	Robert Lincoln
Steven Culp	...	Johnny Hay
Ruby Dee	...	Elizabeth Keckley
Jerome Dempsey	...	Congressman Elihu Washburne
Jeffrey DeMunn	...	William Herndon
Jon DeVries	...	Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
George Ede	...	Edward McManus
Robin Gammell	...	Stephen Douglas
James Gammon	...	Gen. Ulysses S. Grant
Thomas Gibson	...	William Sprague

Storyline

After arriving in Washington in 1861 after his election, Abraham Lincoln struggles with personal and political problems during his Presidency. Beneath his folksy charm and unassuming manner, he shows himself to be a shrewd politician who is able to overcome his wife's neurotic behavior and the death of his son.

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Plot Keywords:

abraham lincoln | politician | epic battle | stovepipe hat | reference to james monroe | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

27 March 1988 (USA)

Also Known As:

Gore Vidal's Lincoln

Company Credits

Production Co:

Chris/Rose Productions, Finnegan/Pinchuk Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

188 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Goofs

There are many inaccuracies regarding the layout of the White House. In Lincoln's day, the second floor Yellow Oval Room served as a library, not as his office. The cabinet room is incorrectly placed in the State Dining Room on the first floor. The current Lincoln Bedroom served as both Lincoln's office and cabinet room (hence the name) during his presidency.

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Quotes

Abraham Lincoln: To run away when someone is shooting guns at you is a sensible reaction, I think it would be my own.
Abraham Lincoln: Faced with a battery of guns, I might find myself some nice tree to rest behind.

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Connections

Featured in 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards (2012)

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Soundtracks

"Go Tell It on the Mountain"
Written by John Wesley Work Jr. (1860s)
Heard at White House party

User Reviews

Abe and Mary

Sam Waterson and Mary Tyler Moore play Abraham and Mary Lincoln, 16th president of the United States and his first lady. A rather calculating politician from the mid west who invented a cracker-barrel image of himself that has passed into legend.

When John Ford and Henry Fonda made their Young Mr. Lincoln back in 1939, Ford allegedly told Fonda that he was not playing the Great Emancipator, but a hick country lawyer from New Salem. Waterson took some of that same advice in his performance. Lincoln shows just how much image management he used in making a bumpkin persona belie an incredible innate shrewdness. This was a man with so much confidence in his abilities to deal with people that he took in his two chief rivals William Seward and Salmon Chase in his cabinet as Secretaries of State and Treasury and worked with both.

Mary Tyler Moore gives one of her most memorable portrayals on the big and small screen as Mary Lincoln who was one woman with issues. She caused her patient husband no end of grief with her extravagance in the middle of the Civil War over her wardrobe and redecorating the White House. It all of course hid some incipient madness, lot of that brought on by the death of her son Willie.

Some meticulous research was done for this series as the personalities of Civil War Washington seem to have descended on the cast playing them. I particularly liked what James Gammon did with General Ulysses S. Grant a man who had two main characteristics, military genius and an occasional bad judgment in friends.

Lincoln's legend like JFK passed into our American scene with his assassination at the moment of his triumph holding the Union together. Forgetting the course the country would have taken had he lived and retired at the end of his second term in 1869, how would he be regarded today, as quite the mythic figure he is?

This mini-series should be well regarded and seen.