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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Films of 1939”

September 30, 2014 - Alicia Dietrich

Film still from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

The Ransom Center kicks off the series “Films of 1939” with a screening of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn this Thursday, October 2, at 7 p.m.

 

1939 is widely considered by film historians to be one of the most outstanding years in filmmaking. In conjunction with the Harry Ransom Center’s exhibition, The Making of Gone With The Wind, which marks the 75th anniversary of the film, the Ransom Center will screen three other films released in this prolific year: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Idiot’s Delight, and The Wizard of Oz.

 

The screenings are free and open to the public. The Ransom Center’s Charles Nelson Prothro Theater has limited seating. Line forms upon arrival of the first person, and doors open 30 minutes in advance.

 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Thursday, Oct. 2, 7 p.m.

Mickey Rooney and Rex Ingram star as Huck and Jim in this adaptation of the Mark Twain classic. Daring boy Huck (Rooney) sails down the Mississippi River with Big Jim (Ingram), an enslaved man running away from being sold. Ingram turned down the role of Big Sam in Gone With The Wind to play Jim. Film run time is 91 minutes.

 

Idiot’s Delight

Thursday, Nov. 6, 7 p.m.

Starring Clark Gable and Norma Shearer in their third film together, Idiot’s Delight follows disparate travelers stranded at an Alpine hotel when the borders are closed with war imminent. MGM hoped to reunite Gable and Shearer as Rhett and Scarlett in Gone With The Wind, but the negative public response to rumors of Shearer’s casting ensured that it would not happen. Film run time is 107 minutes.

 

The Wizard of Oz

Thursday, Dec. 4, 7 p.m.

In in this early Technicolor classic directed by Victor Fleming, Judy Garland stars as Dorothy Gale, who is swept away to a magical land by a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the wizard who can help return her home. After completing work on The Wizard of Oz, Fleming took over as director of Gone With The Wind after George Cukor left the production. Film run time is 102 minutes.

 

Image: Film still from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Filed Under: Exhibitions + Events, Film Tagged With: Clark Gable, Films of 1939, George Cukor, Gone with the Wind, Hollywood’s Golden Age, Idiot’s Delight, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Norma Sherer, Rex Ingram, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Making of Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Victor Fleming

Mark Twain letter has close geographical tie to University of Texas

May 30, 2013 - Edgar Walters

A 1900 Sanborn map, used to estimate fire insurance liabilities, depicts Bowen's house and the surrounding neighborhood at the time the letter was written. The highlighted area shows the location of Bowen's house on the map.

When Samuel Clemens—better known by his pseudonym Mark Twain—penned a letter in London in 1900 to the widow of his childhood best friend in Austin, he had no idea that it would be preserved more than a century later in the Harry Ransom Center’s archives just four blocks south. Today the letter resides in a collection of Twain-related materials that features correspondence with longtime friends and others, including one from Clemens to P. T. Barnum.

This letter’s addressee, Mrs. Dora Goff Bowen, lived at 2506 Whitis Ave. in a neighborhood just north of the burgeoning University of Texas campus. The address, now home to The University of Texas at Austin’s hulking Jesse H. Jones Communications Center, has an interesting past. A few years after Clemens wrote the letter, 2506 Whitis became the site of one of the University’s first sorority houses, that of the newly organized Pi Beta Phi chapter. Two lots down the street lay George Littlefield’s still-new Victorian mansion, built in 1893, which maintains a grandiose presence on campus to this day.

Dora’s husband, Will Bowen, had grown up with Clemens in Hannibal, Missouri. Their friendship and escapades along the Missouri River became the basis of Twain’s books The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Bowen and Clemens engaged in countless hijinks, including, as another letter reveals, stealing dinner from the town drunkard to feed “the hogs in order to keep them still till we could mount them & have a ride.”

Clemens’s letter to Mrs. Bowen begins abruptly: “Yes, I really wanted to catch the measles. I succeeded.” The statement refers to another episode of Will Bowen and Clemens’s childhood mischief. When a young Bowen came down with the measles, Clemens decided to join his friend in bed to catch the virus and “settle this matter one way or the other and be done with it,” as he revealed in a posthumously published autobiography.

But fans will notice in the letter a conspicuous absence of Twain’s characteristic humor and lightheartedness. The turn of the twentieth century was a difficult time in Clemens’s life. Will Bowen, with whom Clemens had been in correspondence for more than 30 years, had recently passed away. Shortly thereafter, in 1896, Clemens’s daughter Suzy died of meningitis. Around the same time, Clemens was forced to declare bankruptcy after investing $300,000—worth approximately $8,000,000 today—in the Paige typesetting machine, a dysfunctional technology that quickly became obsolete.

Those hardships are reflected in the melancholy tone of Clemens’s letter: “[T]he romance of life is the only part of it that is overwhelmingly valuable, & romance dies with youth. After that, life is a drudge, & indeed a sham. A sham, & likewise a failure.” He fantasizes an alternate timeline, in which he would rather “call back Will Bowen & John Garth & the others, & live the life, & be as we were, & make holiday until 15, then all drown together.”

Despite his apparently bleak outlook, Clemens insists in the letter that he does not “say this uncheerfully—for I have seldom been uncheerful.” Indeed, in a post-script, he indulges in some characteristic playfulness in his response to Mrs. Bowen’s previous letter: “P.S. What we did to Brown? Oh, no, I will never reveal that!”

Please click the thumbnails below to view full-size images.

The envelope for a letter from Samuel Clemens to Dora C. Bowen at 2506 Whitis Avenue, where the Jesse H. Jones Communication Center now stands today on The University of Texas at Austin campus.
The envelope for a letter from Samuel Clemens to Dora C. Bowen at 2506 Whitis Avenue, where the Jesse H. Jones Communication Center now stands today on The University of Texas at Austin campus.
Letter from Samuel Clemens to Mrs. Dora Goff Bowen, dated June 6, 1900.
Letter from Samuel Clemens to Mrs. Dora Goff Bowen, dated June 6, 1900.
Second page from a letter from Samuel Clemens to Mrs. Dora Goff Bowen, dated June 6, 1900.
Second page from a letter from Samuel Clemens to Mrs. Dora Goff Bowen, dated June 6, 1900.
A 1900 Sanborn map, used to estimate fire insurance liabilities, depicts Bowen's house and the surrounding neighborhood at the time the letter was written. The highlighted area shows the location of Bowen's house on the map.
A 1900 Sanborn map, used to estimate fire insurance liabilities, depicts Bowen’s house and the surrounding neighborhood at the time the letter was written. The highlighted area shows the location of Bowen’s house on the map.

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: 2506 Whitis Ave., Dora Goff Bowen, George Littlefield, Jesse H. Jones Communication Center, Littlefield House, Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, University of Texas, Will Bowen

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