Quoting from an article titled "Autobiography as Property:  Mark Twain and
His Legend," in THE MYTHOLOGIZING OF MARK TWAIN, ed. Sara deSaussure Davis
and Philip D. Beidler (U of Alabama P, 1984), pp. 42-43:  "His unparalleled
success [at creating his own legend] can partly be gauged by the reluctance
of the popular mind nowadays to accept Samuel Clemens' physical
measurements:  his diminutive height and weight have gained robustness with
each decade, along with his literary reputation.  A more hilarious evolution
can be witnessed in our electronic-media equivalent of the oral tradition,
the made-for-television movie, which produced in 1977 an absurdity titled
THE INCREDIBLE ROCKY MOUNTAIN RACE, starring Chris Connelly as young Mark
Twain and Forrest Tucker as Mike Fink.  In this travesty of folklore and
history, the reporter Twain and the river boatman Fink race each other from
Missouri to California, a competition encouraged by the townspeople of St.
Joseph(!), Missouri, wh!
 o are eager to rid themselves of two cantankerous frontiersmen.  The winner
is to be declared 'King of the West.'  The entertainment specialists
responsible for contriving such fabrications evidently sense that the
outlines of Twain's actual biographical existence are loosening, that he can
be conveniently utilized in any situation involving settings in the American
Far West.  In their story, Twain encounters Jim Bridger and William F. Cody
along the route of his race, and Twain proves to be nearly as much of a
roughneck, daredevil, and talltalker as the bragging Mike Fink.  For the
popular imagination, it would seem, Twain represents almost anything
favorable or amusing about our heritage."

Alan Gribben
Auburn Montgomery