LINCOLN LOOK-ALIKE

In international airports, people who cannot speak English sometimes hold up a penny and start talking to Charles L. Brame.

Those who can speak English start talking about the good man who freed the slaves. "And if you don't watch it they will start saying, `Four score...,'" Brame says.

A south Cape Girardeau native who now lives in Southern California, Brame is a dead ringer for Abraham Lincoln. So much so that he quit his teaching job in 1985 to devote full time to his one-man show, "The Living Lincoln."

Now 70, Brame graduated from Cape Central High School in 1944 and SEMO State College in 1952. He taught school in Puxico during its days as a basketball power, and from 1953-57 taught at Hillsboro High School. That's where he met his wife, Geri.

All this Lincoln business started way back in 1959 while he was teaching history at a high school in San Bernardino, Calif. He'd merely grown a 9-day-old Lincoln-style beard during a break from school and people noticed the resemblance. But back then, high school teachers didn't have beards so he shaved it off.

Then in 1975 he was asked to portray Lincoln in an Armistice Day parade. A photographer for the San Bernardino Sun took his picture, entered it in a photo contest and won.

Then he was asked to put on a beard and read the Gettysburg Address for a service club. He received a standing ovation, and "The Living Lincoln" was born. So was the permanent beard.

Since then, Brame has made more than 2,500 appearances before civic groups, school assemblies and theater audiences. He focuses on civil rights and slavery if the audience is a minority group. He has another monologue called "A Trip to Gettysburg."

Brame, who has a master's degree in American history, has concocted a two-hour dramatic monologue that portrays the audience as guests of the president on the fateful evening of April 14, 1865. He ends the talk by saying he and Mrs. Lincoln must be off to the theater.

Brame appeared at Port Cape Girardeau a few years ago and has done spots on "The Tonight Show" and briefly was in the movie "Happy Gilmore."

Most recently he was on "Cybill" in February and will be on the show again tonight. He also has appeared in print ads for Joe Boxer Shorts, and he has done the voice over and appears in a CD-ROM called "Pony Express" to be released for Christmas.

Wherever he goes, Brame knows why he has been able to create a second career from a resemblance to the Great Emancipator.

"Abe Lincoln is the most popular person in modern history," he declares.