> Along with John Wayne, Henry Fonda is an actor most often associated with the films of director John Ford, appearing in seven of his movies, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940), My Darling Clementine and Fort Apache (1948). His first collaboration with Ford, however, was Young Mr. Lincoln and if the decision had been left up to the actor, the Fonda-Ford relationship might have ended there. Fonda was reluctant to accept the role from the start. In an interview with director Lindsay Anderson for the book About John Ford, Fonda recalled, "The producer and Lamar Trotti, who wrote it, sent it to me and I read it and I said 'Fellas, it's a beautiful script, beautiful, but I can't play Lincoln.' To me it was like playing Jesus Christ or God. Lincoln is a god to me. They persuaded me to do a test. So I allowed myself to go in there and spent three hours in the make-up chair, and they did a nose and a wart and fixed my hair, and they put the wardrobe on, and I went on the soundstage and did a scene..."
> When Fonda later viewed the test footage he at first thought he was looking at the real Abraham Lincoln. "...and then he started to talk," Fonda told Anderson, "and my voice came out and destroyed the whole image. And I said, 'No way' and I turned back to Lamar and said 'I'm sorry fellas, but I just can't do it.' Ford was not part of the package then - he had a deal with the studio but he was away somewhere - and it was months later, when he came back, that they assigned him to the picture. They must have shown him the test and told him my reaction, because I got a call to go and meet Mr. Ford."
> Fonda had never officially met the director before but had glimpsed him at work on Stagecoach while he was working for producer Walter Wanger at United Artists. When he went to Ford's office, the actor felt completely intimidated as if he was an enlisted man going to see an Admiral. According to the authorized autobiography Fonda: My Life, Ford was sitting behind his desk and the first thing he said to Fonda was "What the f*ck is all this sh*t about you not wanting to play this picture?...You think Lincoln's a great f*cking Emancipator, huh? He's a young jack-legged lawyer from Springfield, for Christ sake.'
> Fonda recalled, "...that's the way the guy talks. I mean he was full of the words you don't use in polite society. He talked that way naturally, but for God to sit there and talk to me like that was awesome. What happened was he was trying to shame me into playing Young Lincoln, and that was the point he made. He wasn't the Great Emancipator. He was a young jack-legged lawyer from Springfield. We don't know at the end of the movie what's going to happen to this guy. That's not it. It's a good movie about a young lawyer in 1830. Anyway Ford shamed me into it, I agreed, and I did the film."
