Too Soon?

"Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" So goes the old joke, a rare, singular exception in the history of questionable presidential assassination jokes.

On July 2, 1881, James A. Garfield, 20th president of the United States, was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a frustrated politico-wannabe whose frequent requests for a foreign ambassadorship were rejected by Garfield’s cabinet. Garfield died September 19, 1881, only six months into his term. A little over 90 years later, standup comedian Robert Klein would say, "Garfield was assassinated. Shot by a disappointed office seeker, right? Don’t they always say that in the same sentence?…Every time you read his name, James Abram Garfield, ‘shot by a disappointed office seeker.’ That’s all they can think of what he did in his short term of office. You look in the Encyclopedia Britannica under Garfield, James Abram, it says, ‘See Office Seeker, Disappointed.’"

When it comes to Abraham Lincoln, there is a reverential awe inspired by our 16th president, and jokes about him often elicit the phrase, "Too soon?" "For Lincoln, the trip to sainthood was speedy," authors Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III and Peter W. Kunhardt noted in 1992’s Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography. "The apotheosis began on the day after his death in thousands of pulpits across the nation. Ministers and their congregations chose to forget the real man and to replace him with a sanitized version, pure and great, up there in the heavens beside George Washington, awash in martyrdom and divinity."

Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker and confidante, a freed slave named Elizabeth Keckley (below), remarked in her 1868 memoir, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, "No common mortal had died. The Moses of my people had fallen in the hour of triumph."

(In director Steven Spielberg’s "Lincoln," Elizabeth Keckley is portrayed by Gloria Reuben, best known as physician’s assistant Jeanie Bouleton on the TV series "ER" and Rosalind Wilson in "Raising the Bar.")

In the year of Abraham Lincoln’s death, over 450 pamphlets, copies of speeches, and sermons about him appeared in print, many comparing him to Jesus Christ as the son of an illiterate carpenter and a saintly mother who was sent by God to save his people.

He was born in a log cabin (which he did not build) in the bluegrass farm country of Harlin County, Kentucky. His father was a leading Primitive Baptist with a religious disdain for slavery, his mother was the illegitimate daughter of a well-bred Virginia farmer. She died of tainted milk sickness when Abraham was nine. Self-educated, Lincoln became a storekeeper, postmaster, surveyor, captain in the Illinois militia, lawyer, state legislator in the U.S. House of Representatives, and, to be honest, this nation’s most respected and beloved president.

The first biography of Lincoln was published one year after his assassination, written by Josiah G. Holland, a New York novelist and poet who never met his subject. Since then, the Great Emancipator has been the subject of over 16,000 books (compared to 3000 or so biographies of the Father of His Country, George Washington).

In a recent interview with Time magazine’s managing editor, Rick Stengel, Steven Spielberg commented, "I don’t understand why it’s taken so long for anybody…to bring Lincoln to a movie theater." According to Spielberg, one of the last major motion pictures about Lincoln was 1939’s "Young Mr. Lincoln," starring Henry Fonda (below) and directed by John Ford.

In fact, that film was followed the next year by "Abe Lincoln in Illinois," starring Raymond Massey (below). A contentious Mary Todd Lincoln was played by Ruth Gordon, noted for her later roles in "Rosemary’s Baby," "Harold and Maude" and "Every Which Way But Loose." In 1962, Massey would again portray Lincoln in a cameo role in the Cinerama spectacle "How the West Was Won."

Earlier, more than 40 silent films featured portrayals of Lincoln, beginning in 1903, a mere 38 years after his assassination (at a time when a multitude of Civil War veterans were still living). One of the only two sound motion pictures directed by D.W. Griffith, the silent film era titan responsible for the controversial epic "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), was 1930’s "Abraham Lincoln," starring Walter Huston (below), father of director John Huston and grandfather of actors Anjelica Huston and Danny Huston.

While the visage of Lincoln may have faded from the big screen in the years following the Great Depression, he maintained an enduring presence in concert halls and recording studios with performances of "Lincoln Portrait," a classical orchestral work featuring spoken-word excerpts from Lincoln’s speeches and documents, composed by Aaron Copland in 1942, purportedly as part of a patriotic effort during World War II. Over the years, the voice of Lincoln has been provided by a formidable roster of thespians, politicians, musicians, newsmakers, journalists and authors, notably Neil Armstrong, Alec Baldwin, Bill Clinton, Walter Cronkite, Henry Fonda, Danny Glover, Al Gore, Tom Hanks, Katharine Hepburn, Charlton Heston, Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones, Edward Kennedy, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Paul Newman, Barack Obama, Gregory Peck, Vincent Price, Jason Robards, Carl Sandberg, Norman Schwarzkopf, Willie Stargill, Adlai Stevenson, James Taylor, Margaret Thatcher, and Gore Vidal.

President Barack Obama performs "Lincoln Portrait"

Virtually ignored in movie theaters, Abraham Lincoln was transformed, more or less, into a guest star in made-for-television movies and miniseries. In 1973, Dennis Weaver starred in "The Great Man’s Whiskers" (below), a cute, family-slanted tale based on a play by Robert Adrian Scott.

During the communist witch-hunt of the 1950s, Scott, a screenwriter and producer, was one of the Hollywood Ten who found themselves blacklisted by studio bosses for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Scott continued to write under an assumed name for British television, including the TV series "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

(Interestingly, in 1980, Dennis Weaver appeared in the TV film "The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd," portraying the Maryland physician who was convicted and imprisoned for aiding Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.)

Sam Waterston (best known as District Attorney Jack McCoy on "Law & Order") starred in the 1980 miniseries "Gore Vidal’s Lincoln," featuring Mary Tyler Moore’s Emmy-nominated performance as Mary Todd Lincoln. (Waterston later supplied the voice of Lincoln for Ken Burns’ 1990 documentary "The Civil War.")

A stoic Gregory Peck (as if the actor could be anything but stoic) delivered the Gettysburg Address as Lincoln in the 1982 miniseries "The Blue and the Gray," while Hal Holbrook, an actor famed for his one-man stage performance as Mark Twain, portrayed Abe in the 1975 TV production of "Sandberg’s Lincoln" (above left). A decade later, Holbrook reprised his presidential role for the miniseries "North and South" (above right).

(Above: In Steven Spielberg’s "Lincoln," 86-year-old Holbrook portrays Francis Preston Blair, a Virginia-born journalist and trusted advisor to the president.)

The iconic stovepipe hat, frock coat and chin whiskers were worn by Kris Kristofferson (above) in the 1995 television movie "Tad" (Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, Abraham’s fourth and youngest son, succumbed to pneumonia at age 18), costarring Jane Curtin as Mary Todd Lincoln, and by Lance Henriksen (best known as the android Bishop in "Aliens") in the 1998 TV film "The Day Lincoln Was Shot" (below) featuring Rob Morrow (from the series "Northern Exposure") as John Wilkes Booth.

Stephen Lang, who enlivened "Gettysburg" (1993) and "Gods and Generals" (2003) with his vivid portrayals of, respectively, Confederate generals George E. Pickett (below) and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, has been cast as Lincoln in the upcoming miniseries "To Appomattox."

Popular culture, according to Steven Spielberg, in Time magazine, floats "so many trial balloons with Lincoln’s face every year in the form of advertising, spoofs, parodies, ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketches, Presidents’ Day commercials. Lincoln has become a caricature."

In the early 1980s, when Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo ruled over the cast of "Saturday Night Live" (or, more importantly, when Joe Piscopo was actually funny), Joe Piscopo (below) was featured in a hilarious sketch as a boorish, obnoxious Lincoln, stumbling into his balcony seat at Ford’s Theatre with a jumbo tub of popcorn, mauling Mrs. Lincoln ("Is this a First Lady or what, huh? I just hope I’m the first man!"), spilling his soda over the railing ("Send me your cleaning bill! To my Gettysburg Address!"), bellowing catcalls to the onstage actress ("Whoa, yeah! I thought mine eyes had seen the glory, but get a load of that babe! Hey, angelpuss! Whoo, whoo, whoo! Up here, huh?"), and arguing with a heckler ("Why don’t you come up here and do somethin’? What are you gonna do, shoot me, pal, huh?!").

In a similar jocular vein, "Late Night with David Letterman" recently boasted an exclusive preview for Steven Spielberg’s "Lincoln," which turned out to be a faux film clip of a loutish Tom Hanks, giant tub of popcorn and jumbo soda in hand, intruding on the Lincolns in their balcony box. After accidentally dumping his snacks into Abe’s lap, an apologetic Hanks blurts, "I guess this is about the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in a theater!"

Coincidentally, Tom Hanks is a third cousin, four generations removed, of Abraham Lincoln’s. Lincoln’s mother’s maiden name was Nancy Hanks.

In what proved to be a comic misfire, on an early November 2012 broadcast of "Saturday Night Live," guest host Louis C.K. looked ill-at-ease depicting an updated Lincoln as a standup comedian (below), complete with a brick wall backdrop, complaining about slave-owners and his wife ("She’s crazy…historically insane!").

Honestly, one of the more comically inspired slants on Lincoln was a recent TV commercial for Geico Insurance which posed the question: "Was Abe Lincoln honest?" On scratchy, sepia-toned film, the Lincolns appear to be preparing for an evening out when Mary asks, "Does this dress make my backside look big?" After a moment of sheepishly fondling the brim of his stovepipe hat, Abe starts to utter, "Perhaps a-" before his indignant wife storms off.

Kelly Keaton as Mary Todd Lincoln and Timothy Simmons as "Honest Abe"

In the 1989 stoner comedy "Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure" (below) two time-traveling slackers ace their high school history report by rounding up several historical figures, including Billy the Kid, Socrates, Freud, Joan of Arc, Beethoven, Genghis Khan and Abraham Lincoln (actor Robert V. Barron), who advises students, "Be excellent to each other…and party on dudes!"

Author Seth Grahame-Smith, whose 2009 monster mash-up novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies struck a peculiar chord with readers, followed up with another twisted best seller, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, depicting the Great Emancipator as an impassioned slayer - armed with a silver-bladed axe - of the bloodsucking undead who are fighting for the Confederacy. In an interview for The New York Times, Grahame-Smith said, "There’s something in the American psyche, we want our presidents to be a warrior. We’re giving that to Abraham Lincoln…posthumously in this case."

The inevitable screen version of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was released in June of 2012 (four months before the release of Steven Spielberg’s "Lincoln"). It was scripted by Grahame-Smith and co-produced by Tim Burton (director of  "Dark Shadows"), with Benjamin Walker (acclaimed for his Off-Broadway and Broadway performances as "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson") as the incredibly acrobatic skull-splitter and scream queen Mary Elizabeth Winstead ("Final Destination 3," "The Thing") as Mary Todd Lincoln.

Director Timur Bekmambetov is a Soviet-born filmmaker who "first popped up on American radar," in the words of The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, "with a pair of supernatural diversions, ‘Night Watch’ (2004) and ‘Day Watch’ (2006), that are close to incomprehensible (I became bored trying) but are crammed with enough gloom and pyrotechnics that he soon went Hollywood. His first American studio effort, ‘Wanted’ (2008), is a modestly diverting if finally tedious exercise in which the stylized violence almost upstages its star, Angelina Jolie."

Bekmambetov told The New York Times, "What Lincoln did was like what Jesus did 2000 years ago, he freed people," describing his film as a cross between D.W. Griffith’s "Abraham Lincoln" and F.W. Murnau’s "Nosferatu."

First of all, neither Griffith nor Murnau soaked their sleeves up to the elbow in the blood of wholesale, slow-motion carnage, and secondly, according to most scriptures, the Nazarene was more concerned with resurrection of the dead than destruction of the undead. Nevertheless, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" achieves "a surprisingly good job of doing justice to its title," according to Roger Ebert, "and treating Lincoln with as much gravity as we can expect, under the circumstances," resulting in "without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject - unless there is a sequel…"

…Or unless bargain-basement filmmakers whip up a quickie, popularly known as a "mockbuster," a low-budget rip-off, usually direct-to-DVD, rushed into production with the aim of cashing in on the publicity for a major big-screen release with a similar title. A singular offender, The Asylum, is a California-based studio notorious for such shameless piggy-back schlock as "Transmorphers," "AVH: Alien vs. Hunter," "The DaVinci Treasure," "Snakes on a Train," "Paranormal Entity," "Almighty Thor," and 2012’s "Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies" (below).

Bill Oberst Jr. as Abraham Lincoln

Not surprisingly, fodder from The Asylum is readily consumed by the Sy Fy Channel, alongside that network’s regular cut-rate fare of cheesy "original" movies.

One of the delirious delights of watching television in 1982 was "Police Squad! (In Color)," created by comedy iconoclasts David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams as a springboard for bland TV drama-staple Leslie Nielsen’s reinvention of himself into the zany deadpan star of "Naked Gun" and "Scary Movie" films. The opening of each episode of "Police Squad!" featured a popular celebrity as "Tonight’s Guest Star" who would be promptly killed after their introduction, among them William Shatner, Lorne Greene, Robert Goulet, and Florence Henderson (pinch-hitting for John Belushi, whose already filmed demise was nixed in the wake of his fatal speedball overdose). Another running gag in the program’s opener was the cast credit: "And Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln," showing the 16th president in his box seat at Ford’s Theatre as a gunshot knocks off his stovepipe hat and he returns fire with a police revolver. (As a professional Lincoln impersonator, Hamilton often appeared in public school programs.)

After only six episodes, "Police Squad!" was canceled, because, according to ABC-TV entertainment president Tony Thomopoulos, the show actually required viewers to pay attention. TV Guide would dub that decision "the most stupid reason a network ever gave for ending a series."

Ultimately, the question - in regards to Abraham Lincoln - of "Too soon?" was posed and irrevocably answered in the affirmative by a mercifully euthanized sitcom which aired four episodes on the now defunct UPN in 1998. The jaw-dropping premise of "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" centered on the titular character, a black British nobleman (played by Chi McBride) inadvertently abducted and shanghaied to America, where he ends up as Abraham Lincoln’s valet and an unexpected source of intelligence and erudition in a chaotic Civil War White House.

Prior to the show’s premiere, many African-American groups protested outside the Paramount Studios. A week before the series premiered, UPN decided to delay the controversial pilot depicting Pfeiffer’s abduction but would run alternate episodes, including one in which Lincoln engages in "telegraph sex" with an unknown woman, and another in which the president has to dress in drag to escape from behind Confederate lines. Lincoln was portrayed by an embarrassed Dann Florek (better remembered as police Captain Don Cragen on the first three seasons of TV’s "Law & Order").

Only four of nine filmed episodes of "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" were broadcast before UPN pulled the plug. (Which brings to mind, here in the moviehouse, one of the most infamous flops in TV history, "Turn-On," a rapid-fire sketch comedy show emceed by a computer and guest host Tim Conway, created by producers of "Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In," co-written by comedian Albert Brooks and canceled midway through its only episode on ABC, February 5, 1969). TV Guide would later list "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" as the 11th-worst series ever and as the 15th (of 25) "Biggest TV Blunder."