The actor and the assassin, a nation’s wound still too raw

Date

March 2, 2013

Martin Flanagan

Sports Writer for The Age

Oscar winner … Daniel Day Lewis rides out as Abraham Lincoln.

STEVEN Spielberg’s Lincoln does not feature Lincoln’s assassination. We don’t see it happen. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth, is not even named.

This was a film heavy on message (the message being that even America’s greatest political hero had to wade through the alligator-ridden swamps of politics to achieve his goal of ending slavery). Omitting the scene of Lincoln’s assassination, and the name of his assassin, has to have been done for a reason. Here, I think, is why.

The key to understanding John Wilkes Booth is that he was an actor. He was the third son of Junius Brutus Booth, an English actor who left his wife and eloped to America with a teenage flower seller in 1821. They had 10 children. Junius Brutus Booth was an alcoholic and unbalanced. From an early age, Junius Brutus’ second son, Edwin, accompanied his father on his tours, partly to learn the craft of acting and partly to keep his father out of trouble.

Omission … director Steven Spielberg left out the assassination scene.

This left John Wilkes Booth, the highly ambitious third son and ninth child, at home on the family farm in Maryland with his mother, resentful of the advantage being given to his older brother Edwin. ”I must have fame!” he told his sister. Sent to boarding school, he was reported to be a bully.

Edwin Booth became the great American actor of his day, famed for his Hamlet. If Edwin Booth can be likened to classical actors such as Laurence Olivier, John Wilkes Booth was like Mel Gibson, rushing about the stage in a hyper-physical way, winning praise for the energy of his performances and acquiring a reputation as a scene stealer. He became well known and wealthy but was restless for a greater role.

Alleged assassin of US President Abraham Lincoln … John Wilkes Booth.

Edwin Booth supported the Union. John Wilkes Booth supported the South. He rationalised away slavery, saying he had seen ”less harsh treatment from master to man than I have beheld in the North from father to son”. Having promised his mother he would not enlist in the Confederate Army, he joined the Confederate secret service.

After shooting Lincoln in the head at Ford’s Theatre, Booth could have escaped with his identity unknown. Instead, he chose to leap the 3.5 metres from the presidential box to the stage, breaking his leg in the process and then delivering the line, in Latin, ”Thus always to tyrants!”

During the 12-day manhunt that followed, Booth yearned for newspapers. He wanted to read the reviews of his great performance and was shattered to see how bad they were, even in the South. Shortly before a Union party tracked and shot him, Booth wrote in his diary, ”I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honoured for …”

Two legends – that is, two stories of continuing vigour and mass interest – come from the assassination of Lincoln. One is Lincoln and his legacy. The other is of the man who – by killing an incumbent president – set a terrible precedent that haunts America now as much, or more, than ever.

Spielberg’s response was to take that man out of the picture. Then, at the Oscars, host Seth MacFarlane put him back in, quipping that Booth was ”the only actor who really got inside Lincoln’s head”. When the crowd gasped, MacFarlane chirped, ”Really? 150 years later and it’s still too soon?” Much too soon.

Martin Flanagan is a senior writer at The Age.