Robards’ ‘Tribute’ to Abraham Lincoln

The Civil War may have ended nearly 126 years ago, but according to Jason Robards some Southerners are still fighting the War Between the States.

And most of those Southerners still hate president Abraham Lincoln. They even hate the actors who play Honest Abe, Robards discovered.

In Madison, Ga., where tonight’s “The Perfect Tribute” on ABC, was filmed, the locals generally greeted him with contempt, said Robards, who plays Lincoln.

“We went to a house to film and this woman refused to have Lincoln in her house,” Robards said recently during a breakfast at the L’Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills. “They (the producers) said, ‘He isn’t Lincoln, he’s an actor.’ She said, ‘I don’t care. I refuse to shake hands with anyone who is playing Lincoln.’ ”

Robards didn’t find any warmer a welcome in Atlanta, where the cast and crew spent two days filming Lincoln’s arrival by train at Gettysburg.

“Have I got another funny story,” he said, laughing. “In this park is a mountain like Mount Rushmore. Carved into the mountain is (Stonewall) Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Here I am as Lincoln standing on the train and three tour trains go by me. Boy, the looks of hate from their faces.”

But that wasn’t the case with the fourth car. “It had all black kids. The minute they saw me, they all screamed ‘Yeah!’ and put their thumbs up. I was so happy to see them . “

Robards said an extra nearly slugged him. “We had to get rid of him. He had a Union uniform on. I had to shake hands with him, but he wanted to hit me, not shake my hands. He had a blue uniform on which he really hated. That was bad enough, but then he had to shake hands with Lincoln.”

One of the highlights of ABC’s “The Perfect Tribute” is Robards’ rendition of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The sequence was shot in a huge field similar in size to the actual site.

“It was a large open space,” Robards said. “There were airplanes above, cows mooing, cars moving. But every time I did the speech, and I did it 12 times, there was not a sound. All the airplanes stopped flying, all the cars stopped moving and a breeze came up. And the flag, which hadn’t moved during rehearsal, started to go.”

Robards shook his head. “Isn’t that odd? Something happened.”

It’s virtually impossible to recognize Robards in “The Perfect Tribute” thanks to the skilled talent of makeup artist Kevin Haney, who worked four hours a day turning Robards into Lincoln.

Robards and Haney spent those hours laughing and talking “and playing old Bob and Ray records and a lot of classical stuff. It was fascinating. It took an hour to take it off. You can’t just rip it off.”

“Perfect Tribute” marks the third time Robards has played Lincoln. In 1963 he starred in the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation “Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” and during the live days of TV in New York, in the ‘50s, he portrayed the president in a drama entitled “Fire and Ice.”

Robards said his interpretation of Lincoln has changed with each project. “It just depends on what the script gives you. Everybody has a different idea (on what he was like). I read a lot of stuff. They said he had a high-pitched voice. Who knows?”

Robards received both of his best supporting Oscars for his performances as famous people: Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in “All the President’s Men” and novelist Dashiell Hammett in “Julia.”

“I didn’t try to imitate Ben Bradlee,” he said. “I didn’t at all with Dashiell. Ben said to Robert Redford and Dustin (Hoffman), ‘Why doesn’t Jason come around and look at me? I am afraid at what he’s going to do to me.’ But I didn’t want to copy anybody. I just wanted to fulfill the script we had.

“So I just worked and then afterward, he was delighted with what had happened and then we got to know each other a lot better. I purposely don’t like to do imitation. The play is the thing.”

During this interview, Robards was in the middle of filming the ABC miniseries “An Inconvenient Woman,” based on Dominick Dunne’s bestseller, which is set for broadcast in May. He hopes to do a play this fall.

“I would like to take it on the road,” Robards said. “I am a little wary of Broadway. The area has fallen on hard times. There are British musicals and comedies, but dramas? I don’t know what has happened to Broadway.”

“The Perfect Tribute” airs tonight at 9 p.m. on ABC.