Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Directed by Irving Rapper, with additional dialogue provided by Harry Chandlee, this Harold M. Sherman play, co-adapted with Alan Le May, stars Fredric March in the title role. It's an above average fictionalized biography of the famed author and humorist, from his humble beginnings in Hannibal, Missouri to his final, worldwide speaking tour.The cast includes Alexis Smith, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale, C. Aubrey Smith (near the end), John Carradine (in not much more than a cameo appearance), William Henry, Robert Barrat, and Dickie Moore (who plays Samuel Clemens at age 13), among others. The film received Oscar nominations for its B&W Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Special Effects, and Max Steiner's Musical Score.The story plays out in four well constructed 30 minute segments, each of which tells a significant part of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain's life, and includes numerous of his famous witticisms:After being born coincident with Halley's Comet, the first scenes touch on Samuel's life as a boy through the time that he became a river pilot on the Mississippi River. It begins with him as a youngster (Jackie Brown) playing with friends Tom, Huck, and a Negro slave boy on a makeshift raft on the river, pretending to be pirates as they lounge on an island in the river's middle and try to avoid getting run over by the riverboat Missouri. As a teenager (Moore), Samuel kissed his mother's head before running off to learn the river's 1,200 miles of turns and hidden shoals from Horace Bixby (Barrat), captain of the Paul Jones. We learn that the term "mark twain" means safe water, e.g. water deep enough for a river boat's safe passage. By the time he was in his twenties, Clemens (March) had become its master, piloting "his" Queen of Dixie with derring-do through the fog to impress his former teacher(s) and Charles Langdon (Henry), from whom he stole a picture of his sister (picture of Alexis Smith) upon declaring that one day, he would marry that girl.Off to make his fortune, to make his statement good, Clemens partners with Steve Gillis (Hale) and heads West hoping to strike it rich by finding a gold mine. Though their mule seems to know where they should stake their claim, the two novices fail to discover any valuable minerals and return to town penniless where they witness the newspaper reporter being shot dead in the street. The next thing you know, Clemens is the town's reporter. Enter Gillis with another get rich quick plan by winning a frog jumping contest against the longtime defending champion, owned by Bret Harte (Carradine, whose character may have been the man that shot the previous reporter). Though Clemens is on the verge of having enough money to return East to find his future bride, his friend Steve convinces him to catch a frog and then bet everything he has on their challenger. Unbeknownst to Samuel, Steve has sabotaged the champion jumper (filling it with buckshot) on whom Clemens has really placed their bets. This foreshadows Samuel's bad financial sense, exhibited throughout the film. The thing which eventually rescues Clemens is his writing about the flog jumping contest, using the pen-name Mark Twain, which is discovered by J. B. Pond (Crisp), who pursues Samuel until he finds him on a levee of Mississippi, looking at his post-Civil War ruined Queen of Dixie.Pond takes Twain East on a speaking tour, during which he introduces himself and entertains the paying customers with his witty insights about our culture, and ourselves. In attendance is Charles Langdon, who introduces Mark to his sister Olivia (Smith) after the show and invites him home. She turns out to more than he had dreamed she was and, eventually he (and her love for him) convinces her skeptical father (Walter Hampden) to allow their marriage. Twain writes several popular books but, according to the film, didn't begin Tom Sawyer until the death of their first child, a boy, after Olivia convinces him to capture the stories he'd been waiting to tell their son. As everyone should know, Tom Sawyer was an international bestseller which gained him wealth (Willie Best, uncredited, plays their butler) and the respect of his father-in-law and his favorite authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Unfortunately, just as he'd nearly completed Huckleberry Finn, Twain made a social error at a luncheon in his honor that insulted his would-be peers.The final fourth the film delves into the financial folly undertaken by Twain; he'd become his own publisher in order to avoid writing any more "funny" books such that he could concentrate on more serious works. He invested a lot of his assets in a failed automatic typesetting machine as well such that he was "forced" to write many of the classics he penned like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and The Prince and the Pauper just to stay afloat. His insistence on publishing the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, for the benefit of his near destitute widow and so that his three daughters (including Joyce Reynolds) and other children would know the man's great deeds, ruined him to the point that a Pond sponsored speaking tour around the World was his only hope of existing bankruptcy by paying off all his creditors in full. Once he'd accomplished that, he met his wife in Europe where she'd lived her final days, but not before learning of his pending honors at Oxford University. C. Aubrey Smith plays the University's Chancellor who, not only honors Rudyard Kipling, bestows the "highest possible honor" on the now humble, and teary eyed Twain, who later days with Halley's Comet.

I am one of the biggest fans of the classic era of Hollywood films of 1920-1950. However, there are a few genres within this that I am not especially fond of--musicals, religious epics and biopics. As far as musicals go, I only like a few...very few. I am not against the idea of religious epics, but most play fast and loose with the source material and would bore non-believers. And, biopics are usually wildly inaccurate--with a much greater emphasis on theatrics and sentimentality.As far as this film goes, it is like the prototype of a bad biopic. While the life of Samuel Clemens was pretty exciting and full of strange twists and turns, the film generally only handles these interesting facets in an episodic fashion. Instead, the emphasis is on schmaltz and sentimentality--and it sure ladles it on thick!! Here are a few god-awful examples: 1. When Clemens (Frederic March) is having doubts about his chosen life as a writer, his wife (Alexis Smith) tells him that he MUST go on...as he "...owes it to the ages"! First, how would she know that he could become the world-famous writer he would become?! Second, who talks like this?! My wife is, incidentally, a very successful writer--and IS world-famous. Yet, I don't remember a single conversation that sounded anything like this!! Of course, she's not Mark Twain...but still...no one talks this way! 2. Throughout the film, music drones on and on and on in order to make some of the sappiest scenes I can recall--and I've reviewed a ton of films! Can't a scene be simply done--without patriotic or sentimental music?! 3. Clemens' wife always refers to him as 'Mark Twain'. Whose family refers to a writer by their pen name?! She WAS Mrs. Clemens...NOT Mrs. Twain. Was this some dopey attempt to continually remind the audience that Sam Clemens WAS Twain?! In addition, the film is highly episodic--especially later in the film. The first 2/3 of the film is actually pretty enjoyable as Clemens tries a variety of careers and begins his work as a writer. But then, the film bounces wildly through the next few decades in only a few short minutes--like they weren't especially important--yet this is when Clemens created the bulk of his works.I should point out that I don't hate all biopics. Some, such as "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" or "Young Tom Edison" are quite enjoyable and stick closer to the facts. It's the way that humans are no longer human (almost saint-like) in many biopics of the day that turns me against them--especially since I am a history teacher and want the whole truth (warts and all). And, because of this and some bad storytelling, I am NOT recommending you waste your time with "The Adventures of Mark Twain" and instead watch a documentary about him instead.

The first thing to note about "The Adventures of Mark Twain" is that it is by no stretch an accurate biography of Mark Twain. In that sense the film is unfortunate, because no doubt they could have still had an interesting film without the need for blatant inaccuracies.Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Fredric March is memorable as a witty and principled Twain. March dominates the movie, but the supporting cast gives notable performances as well. The film has a number of great humorous moments as befits a film about Twain. The problems and conflicts developed in the film, although often fictitious, are engaging.If you are looking for an accurate biography of Mark Twain, avoid this film. However, if you can tolerate the historical liberties, see "The Adventures of Mark Twain" for Fredric March's stellar performance as Twain.

A dull biography of Mark Twain is all Warner Bros. managed to do with this lumbering tale of the great author's progression from riverboat captain to editor to author--all accompanied by some jaunty Max Steiner music that holds the various segments together nicely. But it's still dull stuff.Credit FREDRIC MARCH with at least looking the part--although his heart doesn't seem to be in playing Twain with anything more than superficial likeness. Wouldn't you know ALAN HALE plays his rambunctious buddy--hey, it's a Warner flick. Percy Kilbride and John Carradine get short shrift but at least DONALD CRISP, the great character actor that he is, gets to play a more substantial role.Lovely ALEXIS SMITH is the love interest, as Libby, Twain's sweetheart who becomes his understanding wife. Alexis is so modern looking, even in period films, that somehow her characterization of the loyal wife seems false. But the script is so cliché ridden that even the romance doesn't seem real, not entirely her fault.Instead of being the colorful bio it should be, even events like the frog jumping contest comes off as pure hokum. Twain was the teller of tall tales but apparently the screenwriters weren't able to come up with anything resembling his true spirit.It's a tribute to Max Steiner that he was able to come up with a delightful background score in view of the fact that nothing on screen could have given him the inspiration needed.