“There's one thing I've learned here in politics: that ignorance is no obstacle to advancement. In fact, in some cases it's quite an advantage.”
The wit and wisdom of Abraham Lincoln was masterfully captured by Robert E. Sherwood in a play that opened on Broadway in October, 1938. The script earned Sherwood a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1939 and was swiftly adapted for a movie by RKO Radio Pictures, released in 1940. Raymond Massey and Howard Da Silva reprised their roles from the Broadway production as Abe Lincoln and Jack Armstrong respectively; Ruth Gordon made her screen debut in the role of Mary Todd Lincoln.
Expanded some in the cinema version, the film script traces Lincoln's progress from his days of scrambling for a living as a woodsman, to his courtship of the tragic Ann Rutledge and then the mercurial Mary Todd, to the formative years of his law practice, to his debates with Stephen Douglas, and finally to his election as President of the soon-to-be-divided United States in 1860. As the film ends, Lincoln bids his friends goodbye and boards the train to go to Washington, DC.
