Lincoln (movie) shot!

Director Henry Belmar and his wife Laurel Love come to New Orleans to film a motion picture about the life of Abraham Lincoln.

On December 3rd, 1918 news broke that the director Henry Belmar had come to New Orleans to film for a new motion picture project about Abraham Lincoln.

Henry Belmar was known for acting in films such as The Raiders (1916) in which he plays the role of David Haldeman, a railroad magnate who is being plotted against and The Desert Man (1917), a classic tale of a small town in the West.

Henry Belmar’s wife Laurel Love played the role of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln.

Many years before being elected President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln made two flatboat voyages to New Orleans that were critical points in his early development.

His first trip was in 1828 when he was just 19 years old. This was his first major interaction with life outside of the small Indiana town in which he grew up. On these voyages he had firsthand experiences with slavery. The New Orleans slave market was especially influential to his development of his lifelong hatred for slavery.

Belmar confirmed that film locations would include popular places at the time that Lincoln came to New Orleans such as the French Market and the levee. He also told of his plan to set up recreations of the Capitol at Washington, the White House, and Ford’s Theatre in New Orleans. Belmar also spoke of his intent to film in the forests of Alabama to make it look like Kentucky.

Sadly, it can only be concluded that the movie was either never finished being filmed or was never released to the public. There are no records of a movie made by Henry Belmar about Abraham Lincoln nor are there records of any movie made by Henry Belmar in 1918 (or the years following).

Bibliography:

“Films Starring Henry Belmar.” Letterboxd. Letterboxd, n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2018. <https://letterboxd.com/actor/henry-belmar/&gt;.

“Henry Belmar.” IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2018.

“Lincoln Movie Films to Be Taken in Orleans.” Times-Picayune, December 3, 1918.

Richard Campanella. Lincoln in New Orleans: The 1828–1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in History. Lafayette: University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2010. Pp. 380.