Mark Twain | |
---|---|
Written by | Dayton Duncan Geoffrey C. Ward |
Directed by | Ken Burns |
Narrated by | Keith David |
Country of origin | United States |
Production | |
Producers | Pam Tubridy Baucom Ken Burns |
Running time | 212 minutes |
Production companies | Florentine Films WETA |
Release | |
Original release | January 14, 2002 |
Mark Twain is a documentary film on the life of Mark Twain, also known as Samuel Clemens, produced by Ken Burns in 2001 which aired on Public Broadcasting System on January 14 and 15, 2002. [1] Burns attempted to capture both the public and private persona of Mark Twain from his birth to his death. The film was narrated by Keith David. [2]
The voice of Mark Twain was provided by Kevin Conway and the voice of Olivia Langdon Clemens was portrayed by Blythe Danner. [2] Other voice work was provided by actors Philip Bosco, Carolyn McCormick, Amy Madigan, Cynthia Nixon, and Tim Clark. The film also includes interviews with playwright Arthur Miller, [2] novelist and Twain biographer Ron Powers, [3] writer William Styron, [4] poet Russell Banks, [4] historian John Boyer (executive director of the Mark Twain House), [5] Harvard University professor Jocelyn Chadwick, [6] Stanford University English literature professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin, comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, [4] actor Hal Holbrook, [1] animator and actor Chuck Jones, [4] and Mark Twain scholar Laura Skandera Trombley. [7]
Mark Twain Legacy Scholar Barbara Schmidt asserts on her website twainquotes.com that some artistic license was taken, resulting in some historical inaccuracies and misrepresentations. [8] She also notes, that some of these errors are the result of the Twain scholarship at time the documentary was made, and that more recent scholarship has revealed some of the factual errors that are in the documentary. [8] Schmidt's website twainquotes.com is widely cited in academic publications on Twain and is highly regarded as an authoritative resource within Twain research. [9]
Film critic Caryn James wrote the following in her review in The New York Times :
"No writer was ever more sardonic about American culture than Twain, and no filmmaker is more earnest than Ken Burns. In Mark Twain that makes for a maddening collision between Twain's ironic sensibility and Mr. Burns's familiar, sentimental style. Twain is forced into the Burns cookie cutter here, complete with the unironic sound of Sweet Betsy from Pike , fiddled relentlessly in the background." [2]
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the "Great American Novel". Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
Kenneth Lauren Burns is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities and distributed by PBS.
A humorist is an intellectual who uses humor, or wit, in writing or public speaking, but is not an artist who seeks only to elicit laughs. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business entertainers whose business is to make an audience laugh. It is possible to play both roles in the course of a career. A raconteur is one who tells anecdotes in a skillful and amusing way.
The Civil War is a 1990 American television documentary miniseries created by Ken Burns about the American Civil War. It was the first broadcast to air on PBS for five consecutive nights, from September 23 to 27, 1990.
Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. was an American actor, television director, and screenwriter. He first received critical acclaim in 1954 for a one-man stage show that he developed called Mark Twain Tonight! while studying at Denison University. He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1966 for his portrayal of Twain. He continued to perform his signature role for over 60 years, only retiring the show in 2017 due to his failing health. Throughout his career, he also won five Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on television and was nominated for an Academy Award for his work in film.
Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn.
Napoleon Sarony was an American lithographer and photographer. He was a highly popular portrait photographer, best known for his portraits of the stars of late-19th-century American theater. His son, Otto Sarony, continued the family business as a theater and film star photographer.
Jazz is a 2001 television documentary miniseries directed by Ken Burns. It was broadcast on PBS in 2001 and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. Its chronological and thematic episodes provided a history of jazz, emphasizing innovative composers and musicians and American history.
Justin Daniel Kaplan was an American writer and editor. The general editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, he was best known as a biographer, particularly of Samuel Clemens, Lincoln Steffens, and Walt Whitman.
Kenneth Joseph Howard Jr. was an American actor. He was known for his roles as Thomas Jefferson in 1776 and as basketball coach and former Chicago Bulls player Ken Reeves in the television show The White Shadow (1978–1981). Howard won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1970 for his performance in Child's Play, and later won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his work in Grey Gardens (2009).
Jane Lampton "Jean" Clemens was the daughter of Samuel Langhorne Clemens and Olivia Langdon Clemens. She drowned in a bathtub at Samuel's home on Christmas Eve 1909, likely due to a seizure.
Mark Twain's legacy includes awards, events, a variety of memorials and namesakes, and numerous works of art, entertainment, and media.
Olivia Susan Clemens was the second child and eldest daughter of Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the pen name Mark Twain, and his wife Olivia Langdon Clemens. She inspired some of her father's works, at 13 wrote her own biography of him, which he later published in his autobiography, and acted as a literary critic. Her father was heartbroken when she died of spinal meningitis at age 24.
Clara Langhorne Clemens Samossoud, formerly Clara Langhorne Clemens Gabrilowitsch, was a daughter of Samuel Clemens, who wrote as Mark Twain. She was a contralto concert singer and she managed his estate and guarded his legacy after his death as his only surviving child. She was married first to Ossip Gabrilowitsch, then to Jacques Samossoud after Gabrilowitsch's death. She wrote biographies of Gabrilowitsch and of her father. In her later life, she became a Christian Scientist.
Orion Clemens was the first and only Secretary of the Nevada Territory. His younger brother Samuel Langhorne Clemens became a famous author under the pen name Mark Twain.
Stormfield was the mansion built in Redding, Connecticut for author Samuel Clemens, best known as Mark Twain, who lived there from 1908 until his death in 1910. He derived the property's name from the short story "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven". The building was destroyed in a 1923 fire, with a smaller replica built at the same site the following year.
Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey is a 2014 American documentary film directed by Scott Teems about actor Hal Holbrook's six decades performing his one-man show Mark Twain Tonight! The film was released in 2019. The idea for the documentary came from Dixie Carter, Holbrook's wife. It was shot in black and white.
Cindy Lovell is an American educator and writer.
The Center For Mark Twain Studies is a cultural humanities site associated with Elmira College. The Center manages two historic sites, the Octagonal Study and Quarry Farm, where the American author, Mark Twain, composed many of his works, including his 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The center also includes exhibits and archives. It administers research fellowships and delivers extensive programming, including lectures series, symposia, teachers institutes, digital resources, podcasts, and the quadrennial International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies.
Jane Lampton Clemens was the mother of author Mark Twain. She was the inspiration of the character "Aunt Polly" in Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. She was regarded as a "cheerful, affectionate, and strong woman" with a "gift for storytelling" and as the person from whom Mark Twain inherited his sense of humor.