Husband and life
FILM Playing Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of the 16th president of the United States, was a weighty matter for Oscar winning actress Sally Field, writes John Anderson.
WHEN SALLY Field talks about the ‘‘weight of the role’’ she has in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, she’s not kidding. ‘‘I gained 25 pounds [11kg] to play her,’’ says the twotime Oscar winner. ‘‘And then I had to have knee surgery.’’
The actress doesn’t say whether surgery was worth it, but Field’s portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln – wife of the 16th president and one of the more problematic figures in the American political pantheon – has become one of the more talked-about aspects of Spielberg’s lauded Civil War epic, which opens January 27. Which is saying something, considering that Daniel Day Lewis’s performance as the nation’s secular saint is destined for canonisation itself.
‘‘We all have a preconceived idea of her,’’ Field says of a woman viewed for the past 150 years as the Macbethian ball and chain burdening a man many consider the greatest US president. ‘‘But I didn’t want to start with a conclusion. I did my research as an actress – I pulled the pieces together, and created my own psychological profile of her. I think she’s one of the most abused, misunderstood and underexamined women in our history.’’
Scripted by playwright Tony Kushner, and based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prizewinning book Team of Rivals, Lincoln is less a standard biopic than the story of the 13th Amendment. Having made his Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln then needs it turned into cold, hard law. As the South’s hopes are dimming, so are the amendment’s chances – without the war as leverage, there’s no chance it will pass. Lincoln, a la Kushner-Goodwin, is a consummate politician, and though the film finds dignity in the man himself, it mines suspense out of the lowdown dirty political manoeuvering of 1865 Washington.
The humanity of the story, on the other hand, lies in the relationships between the Lincolns. Son Willie has died, and haunts his family’s dreams. Young Tad (Gulliver McGrath) dresses as a soldier and makes the White House his playground. The older Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is itching to get into the war while he still has a chance. Mary, as played by Field (who won best actress Oscars for Norma Rae in 1980 and Places in the Heart in 1985), is an eloquent defender of her president and the cause; an occasional torment to her husband; and a woman who, under the surface, seems to be barely keeping it together.
‘‘Well, I think that’s the way it was,’’ Field says. ‘‘She was highly emotional, she didn’t like being in Washington, and her grief was extensive – she’d lost two children. Almost as badly, she’d lost her position with Mr Lincoln. She’d been his closest adviser and confidante, but she’d had moments of grave emotionality, and he was afraid of her: He didn’t want her causing unrest at a time when he needed the White House calmer.
‘‘At the same time, he was a depressive, with a huge dark side, and when he fell into a deep dark puddle, she was the one who dragged him out.’’
Depicted as a certifiable lunatic by Gore Vidal in his celebrated historical novel (and portrayed by Mary Tyler Moore in the muchrespected 1988 TV miniseries Gore Vidal’s Lincoln), Mary Todd came from a privileged background, a powerful Kentucky political family, was highly educated and highly astute.
‘‘They met at a party and danced together,’’ says Kushner, ‘‘and afterwards she told her cousin, ‘I just danced with the greatest man of his age and he’s going to be president of the United States someday.’
‘‘I think she’s had a bum rap,’’ Kushner adds. ‘‘I don’t think it’s the case that she wasn’t a person with bipolar features, but she functioned at a very high level. I’m impressed with her, and what Sally does is just astonishing.’’
Field seems to harbour genuine affection for a woman who was maligned in her day, and continues to be a kind of political scapegoat. But she was more than that, Field says. ‘‘Yes, she predicted Lincoln’s ascension the first time she met him. But she could be funny, too. It’s a famous story, but they met at a party and