One of the thousands of silent films believed to have been lost forever is lost no more. The Heart of Lincoln, a 1915 Civil War drama, was found by Dan Martin, an intern going through old reels Historic Films Archive in Greenport, Long Island, NBC News reports. Martin, a film preservation student, tells Newsday that most of the material he was going through consisted of "kind of dry" old education reels discarded by universities, but he recognized Francis Ford's name when he rolled the credits on the old 16-millimeter print. Ford, who directed the movie and starred as Abraham Lincoln, is the older brother of John Ford, who won a record four Oscars for best director, including one for 1940's The Grapes of Wrath.
"He came up with a startled look on his face and said 'Joe, I really think we've got something special here," business owner Joe Lauro tells NBC News. The 65-minute movie has been cleaned and digitized. Lauro plans to add a score to the film and screen it. He says it will be donated to the Library of Congress, which lists it among more than 7,000 lost silent films. Only around 3,000 films from the era have survived. "For someone going to school for film preservation, this is about the most rewarding outcome you can have sifting through those old film cans," Martin says.
John Ford released his own Lincoln movie—Young Mr. Lincoln, starring Henry Fonda—in 1939. The Ford brothers "were almost obsessed with Lincoln as this emancipating messiah figure in American history," Martin tells Newsday. "This was like a missing puzzle piece to the whole myth around these guys." (More silent movies stories.)
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