BOOK REVIEW

     Haupt, Clyde V.  _Huckleberry Finn on Film: Film and
     Television Adaptations of Mark Twain's Novel, 1920-1993_.
     Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland and Company, 1994.  Pp.
     xi + 187.  Includes bibliography and index.  Cloth, 6-1/4" x
     9-1/4".  $35.00.  ISBN 0-89950-920-7.

     May be ordered for $38.00 (postpaid) from McFarland and
     Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson, NC 28640, telephone
     (910) 246-4460, fax (910) 246-5018.

     Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:

          Glen M. Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
          The Catholic University of America
          Washington, DC

_Huckleberry Finn on Film_ is frustratingly uneven, but valuable
for the amount of information it contains.  We've had plenty of
commentary on movie adaptations, from initial reviews to overviews
like Perry Frank's "_Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ on Film,"
published in the 1985 collection _Huck Finn Among the Critics_.
But no account has been as detailed as Claude Haupt's.  He
discusses eleven adaptations of _Huckleberry Finn_--six feature
films and five televised versions, including a mini-series.  The
subject is Twain's book, not Huck the character, so Haupt skips the
1918 and 1995 films, both called _Tom and Huck_, based mainly on
_Tom Sawyer_.  Also omitted are stage versions, including _Big
River_.  (Bill Cosgrove informs me, via the Mark Twain Forum, that
scenes from _Big River_ were televised as part of the 1980s
syndicated TV show "Fame.")

Beyond these exclusions, Haupt's treatment is still not
comprehensive.  Wesley Britton's _Mark Twain Encyclopedia_ essay on
"Media Interpretations," for example, lists a 1946 MGM version not
mentioned by Haupt (or by Perry Frank), as well as a Soviet film,
_Hopelessly Lost_ (1973), and three animated versions.  Haupt
provides only spotty filmographic information for the versions he
does include, and his technical vocabulary is sometimes ambiguous.
He refers to the 1978 version directed by Jack Hively as both a
"film" and a "teleplay," and indicates that "its release date is
not public information."  I had to turn to Kent Rasmussen's _Mark
Twain A to Z_ to find out that this version aired on NBC in July
1981.  There are other anomalies as well: Haupt was unable to
locate the 1957 "U.S. Steel Hour" television production, so he
writes about it based on reviews and "my scanty teenage
remembrances."  On the other hand, he has used the original, four-
hour version of the 1985 mini-series, which has been shown publicly
only once, on PBS's "American Playhouse."  Haupt makes a convincing
case for the long original as far superior to the edited version
that has been widely available via cable and video cassette.

Haupt treats the films on their own terms, reviewing production
information, summarizing plots, and critiquing uses of the visual
medium before he turns to comparisons with the novel.  He uses the
term "adaptive distortion," but insists that changing what Twain
wrote, even "in most respects," is not necessarily "to be faulted."
(Twain himself encouraged adaptive distortion in attempts to get
his books dramatized.)  Haupt's approach to each adaptation--
treated separately in chronological order--is straightforward.
This is both an advantage and a weakness.  Information about
production, plotting, and reception is presented without the haze
of "theory" that obscures much contemporary critical writing.  On
the other hand, the study's level of conceptualization is
primitive.  We get evaluations based on "a Twainian spirit" or--
vaguer still--"the flavor of Twain."  Haupt will explain what this
spirit or flavor is, or should be, in a given instance, but
evaluations based on these notions usually seem impressionistic or
arbitrary.

A related problem in _Huckleberry Finn on Film_ is the thinness of
reference to Twain scholarship.  Haupt's concluding bibliography
contains two books by Mickey Rooney, but only two works on Twain
published since 1985: Leo Marx's collection _The Pilot and the
Passenger_ (which in fact reprints a piece from 1956) and a 1990
article by John Bird in _Texas Studies in Literature and Language_.
There are citations of major books of a generation or more ago: Van
Wyck Brooks, Richard Chase, Leslie Fiedler, Henry Nash Smith.  And
the interpretive view of _Huckleberry Finn_ presented here tends to
derive from that earlier era.  For Haupt, the key is the humanistic
view of Huck's friendship with Jim: he says, in fact, that this is
one of two things that make for a successful adaptation.  (The
other is a personable actor playing Huck.)

Beyond the Huck-Jim relationship, Haupt prefers his Twain grim.
For example, he calls the 1985 mini-series "a swamp of violent,
necromantic, and carnal specifics"--and this is a compliment!  His
preference for the gory extends to praising the mini-series for
going beyond the specifics of Twain's novel.  So we get an
explicitly filmed lynching, and a comment by Haupt that, though no
such thing occurs in the book, "it is clear that lynching is
something Twain craved to depict."  Twain, says Haupt, "will often
veer away" from dark "narrative possibilities," but the script
writer will "see them through."  The silliest example of Haupt's
critical approach has him praising the scene where Colonel
Grangerford (Richard Kiley) reads the "Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots,
Dec'd": "It's a lovely take because, . . . Kiley makes the dead boy
real, and one feels tangible loss for him."

Having acknowledged the omissions, oddities, and weaknesses of
_Huckleberry Finn on Film_, I can turn to the pleasures and
insights it offers.  Haupt has a good eye for visual imagery,
especially evocations of the big river.  He isolates a number of
single shots and describes them lovingly.  (It's unfortunate that
there are no frame enlargements to illustrate these.)  His
sensitivity to the visual medium allows Haupt to praise the silent
_Huckleberry Finn_ (1919) directed by William Desmond Taylor.  (He
notes evidence of ham-handed studio editing of this film, not the
last time that would happen.)  Haupt's book also provides a good
bit of fascinating trivia.  For example, only one of eleven
visualized Hucks has dirt on his face.  And--did you know?--three
directors of _Huckleberry Finn_ films went on to make movies with
Elvis Presley.  Think about that.  (Twain trivia mavens should go
beyond Haupt and seek out Sidney Kirkpatrick's _A Cast of Killers_,
which shows that the first _Huckleberry Finn_ director, William
Desmond Taylor, was a real King/Duke type, eventually victim of one
of Hollywood's most notorious unsolved murders.  There was even an
interracial gay angle.)

Haupt's critical acumen is sharpest in analyzing how adaptations of
Twain's book fail thematically.  He points out how often movie and
TV versions aggrandize the King and Duke as opportunities for hammy
acting.  (The rapscallions have been played by, among others,
Eugene Pallette, William Frawley, Tony Randall, Harvey Korman, Jack
Elam, Merle Haggard, Barnard Hughes, Jim Dale, and Jason Robards.)
Then Haupt cuts to a key insight: turning _Huckleberry Finn_ into
a romp by the King and Duke creates an "adult white male" story,
obscuring Twain's more radical focus on the boy and the slave.
This discussion by Haupt made clearer to me than ever before how it
may be a mistake to see Huck in the tradition of the picaresque
hero: the King and Duke are picaros, but culturally Huck is
something different, more radical.  Other film and video
adaptations, as Haupt analyzes them, pursue other "special
agendas": the 1931 film becomes the story of the social adjustment
of a troubled teenager, while the 1939 and 1978 versions make Huck
an abolitionist from the start.  Political correctness has been
involved in adaptations of _Huckleberry Finn_ for a long time.

Other observations provide handles for interesting discussion.  A
variety of framing devices have been used over the years: Taylor's
1919 version presents the narrative as Mark Twain's dream (and
carries the dream motif through the film), while the 1975 version
uses Mark Twain in a stage manager role.  Then there are the
various ways the film and television versions conclude: Huck ends
up with Mary Jane Wilks (1920), back at the Widow's and Miss
Watson's (1931, 1939), or at least back in Hannibal (1974, 1975);
he plans new adventures with Tom Sawyer (1978), lights out for New
Orleans (1960), or floats away on the river (1955, 1985, 1993).
Interestingly, besides the 1985 mini-series, only the 1955 live
performance on TV's "Climax" picks up the "I can't stand it" aspect
of Huck's final position, though he's bolting from Mary Jane, not
Aunt Sally; and that version fudges by having him promise "I'll be
back."  In the 1993 Disney version, on the other hand, Huck takes
off, but instead of fleeing anything he's going "for the glory,"
whatever that may mean.

You can have a lot of fun flailing around in the minutiae of
_Huckleberry Finn_ adaptations, and Haupt provides plenty of it.
I'm struck by how frequently these versions are filled with
extraordinary actors (Paul Winfield, Jane Darwell, Buster Keaton,
Lillian Gish, Butterfly McQueen, Geraldine Page, among others), as
well as by a dreary succession of cute teen idols as Huck (Junior
Durkin, Mickey Rooney, Eddie Hodges, Ron Howard, Elijah Wood) or as
Tom (Jackie Coogan, Donny Most).  What to make of all the minutiae
is still a task for scholars.  The model study of this sort is
Thomas F. Gossett's _Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture_
(1985).  Whoever finally produces a work on the cultural life of
_Huckleberry Finn_ worthy to share the shelf with Gossett's book--
and with Louis Budd's _Our Mark Twain_--will be grateful to Haupt's
hours in front of movie and TV screens.