Abraham

George Washington, the first American president, had at least five motion pictures and TV films in which he appeared as a major character. Thomas Edison, the first filmmaker and recording artist, had at least four.

Abraham, the first Hebrew, the founding patriarch of Jews and Arabs alike, the "father of all nations," had but three.

Go figure.

It is almost as if Abraham as a topic is consciously avoided by Hollywood as a way of avoiding further conflicts between Arabs and Jews, who might argue over the reputation of their common ancestor. (As we all know, they already have enough to argue about.) After all, as important as he is to biblical history, Abraham is not without his warts. For one thing, he slept with his wife's slave, Hagar, just because he wanted a baby boy. For another, he argued passionately with God to spare the reprehensible people of Sodom, yet barely put up a fuss when told to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Warts and all, Abraham is a fascinating bible character whose incidents and episodes, from the time he broke the idols in his father's shop, to his 400-mile trek to Canaan to forge a great nation, to his death at age 175-have by and large been neglected by the movie and television industry. The early part of the story, when the boy Abraham smashes the smaller idols his father had carved and then blames the bigger idols, could be the centerpiece of a compelling motion picture, a sort of biblical "Home Alone," but to date, it has not been done.

Unknown actor William Cumby played Abraham in the all-black "Green Pastures" in 1936, only to disappear from moviemaking altogether. "The Bible" in 1966, "Abraham" in 1994, and "In the Beginning," a television miniseries in 2000, all had the distinction of using quite distinctive actors in the role of Abraham: George C. Scott, Richard Harris, and Martin Landau, respectively. That at least made up in solid, stylized performances what the films lacked in decisive storytelling.

In "The Bible," George C. Scott squeezed a huge presence into his small portion of John Huston's three-hour film, focusing on the test of faith God administers when demanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. The 39-year-old Scott was still four years away from refusing his Academy Award for "Patton," but his style had already been ingrained in the collective movie-going mind. Critic Rex Reed said Scott played Abraham as "a craggy, windswept man with a voice that sounds like it has been massaged with brandy."

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