Abe Lincoln in Illinois

Other notable stage credits included “After the Fall,” “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” and “I Never Sang for My Father.”

John Cromwell’s “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” is written for the screen by Robert E. Sherwood, who adapted his hit play.

Theater has been churning the biographies of political leaders into drama for decades; Robert Sherwood won the Pulitzer Prize more than 75 years ago for his play “Abe Lincoln in Illinois”; in the late 1950s, “Sunrise at Campobello,” Dore Schary’s play about Franklin Roosevelt’s struggle with polio, ran for 556 performances on Broadway.

The pivotal event came in January 1963, while he was directing a Phoenix production of Robert Sherwood’s drama “Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” starring Hal Holbrook.

MacFarlane did press his luck a bit on an Abraham Lincoln joke, noting that Raymond Massey preceded “Lincoln” star Daniel Day-Lewis as an Oscar nominee for 1940’s “Abe Lincoln in Illinois.”