Career
Henabery"s acting career began in The Joke on Yellentown (1914). Henabery appeared in the Doctorate. West. Griffith silent film Birth of a Nation (1915) as Abraham Lincoln. From 1914 to 1917 he appeared in seventeen films.
Henabery also worked as a second-unit director on Griffith"s Intolerance (1916), and supervised the filming of at least one extended sequence that appeared in the film.
Throughout the rest of his career, he worked as a director From the mid-1920s, and after professional disagreements with both Louis B. Mayer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Adolph Zukor at Paramount Pictures, Henabery found employment as a director for smaller Hollywood studios.
His career as a director of feature films ended by the late 1930s. Although Henabery"s impersonation of Lincoln was a masterpiece of facial makeup, the 6"1" (185cm) Henabery was three inches shorter than the 6"4" (193cm) Lincoln.
Kevin Brownlow"s book The Parade"s Gone By (1968) contains a photo of Henabery in costume and makeup as Lincoln, seated in a chair with planks placed on the floor under Henabery"s feet so that his knees are raised several inches.
This effect (with the planks kept off-camera in the movie) made Henabery"s legs appear longer than they actually were. Henabery died on February 18, 1976, aged 88, in Los Angeles, California.
