“Unearthed from Oblivion: The Forgotten Silent Film That Reveals a Surprising Side of Lincoln”
The Chance Discovery Of A Lost Silent Film About Abraham Lincoln At A New York Film Archive
Historic Films GreenportFrancis Ford as Lincoln in The Heart of Lincoln.
As reported by local media on Long Island, film student Dan Martin, who was working as an intern at the Historic Films Archive, made the discovery while looking through boxes of old donations. The boxes were decades old, and most of what had been recovered from them was too damaged to salvage.
But one reel stood out.
“He came into my office with this little stack of six reels,” Joe Lauro, the co-founder and owner of Historic Films recalled. “And he goes, ‘Joe, I think we have something really special here.’”
Historic Films GreenportA scene from The Heart of Lincoln showing the surrender of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.
It was indeed special: a copy of the 1915 silent film The Heart of Lincoln, a film which, like many silent films, was assumed to be lost to time. This was the case despite the fact that it was directed by, and starred, Francis Ford, a noted filmmaker who was also the brother of fellow director John Ford, winner of six Academy Awards.
According to Lauro, most films from the pre-sound era were simply “ephemera” which the studios didn’t preserve after they were shown. But the The Heart Of Lincoln was in remarkably good condition.
“It’s not something that someone is going to make millions of dollars off of but it fills in a piece of the history of American cinema,” Lauro told All That’s Interesting. “Because 70 percent of all the films made during the silent film era are lost, lost forever. Occasionally a film like this turns up and then a piece of that puzzle gets filled in.”
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