According to this article, the Disney folks are about to unveil a new, improved Animatronic version of Abraham Lincoln at Disneyland and, one assumes, at its other theme parks later on. The new robotic Abe is capable of hundreds of different facial expressions…which is more than can be said for the last dozen-or-so men to occupy the Oval Office, unless you count talking out of both sides of their mouth at the same time.
The old voice track by actor Royal Dano has been retained despite suggestions that they opt for a new one…say, one by Sam Waterson, who is said to be closer to what The Great Emancipator actually sounded like. In the linked piece, it says, "To be sure, no one living today has ever heard Lincoln speak — and there are no recordings. Much of what scholars have deduced about Lincoln's delivery comes from contemporary accounts of his relatively high-tenor voice."
Far be it from me to quibble with Lincoln scholars…but I'm quite sure I remember reading or hearing somewhere the opinion of poet-historian Carl Sandburg on the subject. Sandburg, of course, never heard Lincoln speak having been born in 1878. But I'm certain he said somewhere that his research had led him to conclude that Lincoln sounded very much like the late Pat Buttram.
You all remember Pat Buttram, perhaps as Gene Autry's sidekick, perhaps as Mr. Haney on the TV series, Green Acres. He was a lovely, funny man and I had the pleasure of directing him a half-dozen times for his recurring role on Garfield and Friends. In fact, I once asked him about the Sandburg remark and he said he'd heard it, too. Pat had a squeaky voice filled with highs and lows, often at different ends of the same word, and he said, "People would never believe ol' Honest Abe sounded like me."
He may have been right about that…and the current flock of experts may know that. Look at that line above about our 16th President having a high-tenor voice. And look at this quote: "He often was so nervous at the beginning, he would almost shift up into a falsetto before he settled himself," said historian Ronald C. White Jr., author of "A. Lincoln: A Biography." Sure sounds like Pat Buttram to me.