Joseph Henabery

Joseph Henabery as Abraham Lincoln in Birth of a Nation

Joseph Henabery (January 15, 1888 - February 18, 1976) Omaha, Nebraska, was a US film actor, screenplay writer, and director.

Career

Henabery's acting career began in The Joke on Yellentown (1914). Henabery appeared in the D. W. Griffith silent film Birth of a Nation (1915) as Abraham Lincoln. From 1914 to 1917 he appeared in seventeen films.

Henabery also worked as a second-unit director on Griffith's Intolerance (1916), and supervised the filming of at least one extended sequence that appeared in the film. Throughout the rest of his career, he worked as a director. From the mid-1920s, and after professional disagreements with both Louis B. Mayer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Adolph Zukor at Paramount Pictures, Henabery found employment as a director for smaller Hollywood studios. His career as a director of feature films ended by the late 1930s.

As Abraham Lincoln

Although Henabery's impersonation of Lincoln was a masterpiece of facial makeup, Henabery was significantly shorter than Lincoln. Kevin Brownlow's book The Parade's Gone By (1968) contains a photo of Henabery in costume and makeup as Lincoln, seated in a chair with planks placed on the floor under Henabery's feet so that his knees are raised several inches; this effect (with the planks kept off-camera in the movie) made Henabery's legs appear several inches longer than they actually were.

Death

Henabery died on 18 February 1976 in Los Angeles, California.

Selected filmography

• Double or Nothing (1936)
• Cobra (1925)
• A Sainted Devil (1924)
• Travelling Salesman (1921)
• Brewster's Millions (1921)
• Life of the Party (1920)
• Mr. Fix-It (1918) co-screenplay
• Say! Young Fellow (1918) (directed and wrote scenario)
• The Spell of the Poppy (1915)
• The Birth of a Nation (1915)

References

• Joseph Henabery at the Internet Movie Database
• Oscars Special Collections:Joseph Henabery