In the earliest movie about Abraham Lincoln, not a word was spoken. It was 1924, and talking films were still three years away when "The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln" premiered to positive reviews.
A century later, the 16th president plays a lead role in the new exhibition "Commanding the Screen: The American Presidency in Film and Television" at the Clinton Presidential Center. The silent movie, which survives only in fragments, is one of three motion pictures about him in the exhibit.
Visitors are reminded that a pair of 2012 movies cast Lincoln in very different guises. Steven Spielberg's historically focused "Lincoln" won actor Daniel Day Lewis an Oscar. The fantasy thriller "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" pitted the fictionalized president against a literally bloodthirsty ally of the Confederacy.
