CHICAGO — William Schallert's acting career spanned 60 years, his face, if not name, familiar from pop culture milestones like the Patty Duke Show, Star Trek and The Incredible Shrinking Man.
And, as it turns out, he was the voice of Abraham Lincoln at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, too.
The museum recognized Schallert's death this week at age 93 on its Facebook page: "We were sorry to hear today that William Schallert, the voice of Lincoln at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, has died. "Our condolences to his friends and family."
When the museum opened in 2005, a museum official told the Springfield Journal Register that a number of actors auditioned for the Lincoln role but that Schallert's voice, which is used in a variety of displays and films at the Springfield attraction, had "not only an ageless quality but a certain honesty."
"You like him and you don't recognize him as a star. There's a familiarity to his voice, but the star power does not get in the way of Lincoln," the official said.
This week, the museum noted in its Facebook post that Schallert had told the Associated Press that he spent three days recording Lincoln's lines. "It was an honor to speak his words," Schallert told the wire service then.
Some 300,000 people visited the Lincoln museum in 2015.
A full obituary of Schallert can be found here.
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