Frank McGlynn

Frank McGlynn Sr. (October 26, 1866 – May 18, 1951) was an American stage and screen actor born in San Francisco, California, whose career extended across more than five decades. He is best remembered for his repeated portrayals of Abraham Lincoln in both theatrical and film productions. McGlynn was the eldest of four children born to Mary and Frank McGlynn. His mother, a native of Australia, had immigrated to the United States with her Irish parents around the time of the California Gold Rush, while his father, also of Irish ancestry, settled in California and worked as a carpenter before moving into real estate. Federal census records indicate that McGlynn had two younger sisters and a younger brother, George, who died sometime between 1870 and 1880.

Before pursuing a career in performance, McGlynn studied law, earning his degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and gaining admission to the bar in 1894. Within two years, however, he had abandoned the legal profession entirely. By 1896 he was appearing on stage in New York at the Casino Theatre in The Gold Bug, a burlesque musical comedy written by Glen MacDonough with music by Victor Herbert. Later that same year he toured in a road production of Under the Red Robe, a stage adaptation by Edward Everett Rose of Stanley Weyman's novel. For the following two decades McGlynn worked primarily in supporting roles with stock companies and in early silent films.

His association with Abraham Lincoln on screen began in 1915, when he portrayed the president in The Life of Abraham Lincoln, directed by Langdon West for Edison Studios in New York. The role that transformed his career, however, came in 1919, when the six-foot-four actor, then fifty-three years old, was cast in the starring role of John Drinkwater's Broadway play Abraham Lincoln. The production ran for 193 performances at the Cort Theatre in Manhattan and subsequently toured the country for more than two years. In 1924, McGlynn performed an excerpt from Drinkwater's play in a two-reel short produced by Lee de Forest and J. Searle Dawley using de Forest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process. No complete copy or partial reels of that recording have been located, though some film stills survive.

McGlynn's Broadway career spanned from 1919 to 1930 and included appearances in several plays beyond the Drinkwater production. His credits encompass Catskill Dutch, Steadfast, That Awful Mrs. Eaton, and A Free Soul, among other productions. He closed his Broadway career in 1930 playing Johnnie in Frankie and Johnnie at the Theatre Republic.

His 1919 Lincoln performance revitalized his work in film, a career that continued into the late 1940s. Across at least ten films he portrayed Lincoln, earning the informal designation "The Great Emancipator" in connection with the role. In one additional film, Are We Civilized?, he played a character named Felix Bockner who performs as Lincoln within the story's plot.

McGlynn died on May 18, 1951, at the age of eighty-four at his daughter's residence in Newburgh, New York. He was survived by four daughters — Grace, Helen, Virginia, and Mary Rose — and by a son, Reverend Thomas McGlynn. His wife, Rose, née Sheridan, and his son Frank Jr., who was also an actor, had both predeceased him. McGlynn is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.