This short feature is mostly fiction. While it's aim - to persuade anyone disheartened to hang in there-- is praiseworthy, it plays pretty fast and loose with the life of Abraham Lincoln. Far from being a failure, Lincoln at 50 was a successful family man and corporate lawyer, who lived in one of the nicest houses in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln's family life is simply ignored. He served four terms in the state legislature and was elected to Congress in 1846, achievements which are also ignored. This little bit of Hollywood hokum probably had them weeping in the aisles between features in the 1940s. In the north at least. One suspects it was an omitted reel down South. There's plenty to admire about the Railsplitter without resorting to yarn-spinning.
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BigSkyMax5 September 2013
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SnoopyStyle14 May 2022A jobless man is struggling. A stranger fears that he is about to commit suicide and tells him a story of another failure from long ago, John Jones. It turns out to be the story of DADADA... Abraham Lincoln.
So the unemployed guy is going to be President. That's the idea coming from the movie. I don't know. I don't know. I guess it's trying to build a lore about Lincoln but there must be a better way. Also the reveal is a bit of huh... I guess it's intriguing but it feels a bit empty. That's the best description. For such an important figure, this feels a bit empty. -
boblipton14 May 2022If you're looking at this review, you probably came through the main IMDB page of this movie. That means you know that it's Abraham Lincoln who, in Carey Wilson's words, was a failure at fifty.
Of course, Lincoln was not the failure that Wilson portrays him as, plucked from the obscurity of failure. He had served in the Blackhawk War with distinction, and in Congress. He was well known as a member of the rising Republican Party, and a fine orator. But Wilson was Hollywood all the way and knew that when the facts and the legend conflict, you print the legend. -
Michael_Elliott29 August 2010Failure at Fifty, A (1940)
*** (out of 4)
Winning entry in the Passing Parade series has a fifty-year-old man, broke and hungry, about to kill himself when a man stops him and tells him the story of another man his age who went through decades of failure. This man started off poor, lost the woman he loved, went into debt, lost several Senate seats and all of this before finally becoming President. This of course is Abe Lincoln and this MGM short is a pretty good one and especially if you're a fan of the series. Once again there's a very dark tone running throughout the film and you won't be able not to think about IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE especially since it's an angel that stops the man from killing himself and teaches him why it's important to live. Character actor Edmund Glover plays Lincoln and does a pretty good job with the role even though he doesn't have any dialogue. The story itself is a pretty predictable one but it's still entertaining enough to make this worth sitting through. As usual Carey Wilson does a fine job narrating. -
bkoganbing31 January 2019In this short subject made at the close of the economically challenged 30s a stranger out of the mist that even being 50 life may still offer opportunities that have passed him by. Truman Bradley's rich narrating voice tells the tale of a man who suffered like Job until destiny picked him to lead a nation through its greatest crisis.
The problem is that this really isn't Abraham LIncoln's story. Presidents aren't chosen from breadlines. Certainly Lincoln came from humble circumstances, but the film doesn't mention a few terms in the Illinois legislature and a term in Congress during the Mexican War. At the time of his nomination Lincoln was making a comfortable living as an attorney for the railroads and it wasn't no log cabin at that point he was dwelling in with Mary Todd and their 3 boys.
Nice inspiring film and most intellectually dishonest.