May 30, 1939 –
John Ford’s bio pix of President Abraham Lincoln, Young Mr. Lincoln starring Henry Fonda, Alice Brady, Marjorie Weaver, and Arleen Whelan, opened in Springfield, Illinois on this date.
Henry Fonda originally turned down the role of Lincoln, saying he didn’t think he could play such a great man. He changed his mind after John Ford asked him to do a screen test in full makeup. After viewing himself as Lincoln in the test footage, Fonda liked what he saw, and accepted the part. He later told an interviewer, “I felt as if I were portraying Christ himself on film.“
co-incidentally (or not), 17 years earlier:
May 30, 1922 –
The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on this date.
The Memorial walls feature a typo. The north wall of the monument building features an inscription of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, a speech originally delivered in March 1865 at the tail end of the Civil War. Lincoln’s memorable incantation, “With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured,” concludes the first paragraph of the inscription, though with a minor error: The word “FUTURE” is misspelled as “EUTURE,” a blunder that remains visible despite attempts to correct it.
The Haus of Dcaligari 