Left: “Change, please.” Illustration by American artist James Allen St. The Collected Shorter Works of Mark Twain “ Is He Living or Is He Dead?,” Mark Twain.“ Mark Twain in Irons: The Humorist Tried Before an Admiralty Court at Sea” (clipping from The Weekly News, November 10, 1892, ) It is wise, however, not to be overly picky.“ The 19th-Century Start-Ups That Cost Mark Twain His Fortune” (Richard Zacks, Time) I hat tony district of London is more than a mile from the River Thames and even farther from where sailors are likely to go ashore. What Adams is doing in Portland Place is another puzzle. Suddenly, a voice from a nearby house invites him to conic inside. The story's narrative begins the second day, with Adams wandering through London's Portland Place, so hungry that he discreetly tries to pick up a pear a child has discarded. (5) I laving paid for his passage by serving as a common sailor, Adams arrives in London reduced to rags, with a mere dollar to his name-enough to feed and shelter him for twenty-four hours. Why a wind-powered brig embarking on a nearly fifteen-thousand-mile voyage would not make at least one more stop in California and put Adams ashore before continuing on to Cape Horn is a puzzle that several adaptations have addressed. (4) Narrating his experiences with the benefit of hindsight, the story's protagonist, Henry Adams, is a twenty-seven-year-old mining broker's clerk from San Francisco who finds himself in London after being swept out to sea on his sailboat and rescued by a "brig" that has carried him all the way to England. Also, the inherent simplicity of the original 8,300-word tale should be kept in mind when considering what adaptations have done to it. Something about Mark Twain's story has clearly appealed to the British, particularly the English. What, then, is the reason for the banknote story's evident popularity? The first thing to note is that half the adaptations have been British productions. (2) By contrast, among his other short stories, only "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," his most frequently anthologized story, has inspired more than one or two adaptations. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court have inspired at least ten television and theatrical film adaptions each, plus numerous stage and radio adaptations. Indeed, its impressive tally of adaptations compares favorably with those of Mark Twain's more famous longer works. Whatever else may be said about the original story, it has certainly not lacked for willing adaptors. Research into adaptations of the story has turned up evidence for three theatrical films, four television productions, and at least five radio productions, including a musical version, and even a report that a Broadway musical was contemplated. (1) That extravagant claim for the story's popularity may have been a stretcher, but the surprisingly rich history of dramatic adaptations of the tale suggests that there may actually have been something behind it. Such, at least, was the claim of the American distributors of Man with a Million, the story's 1954 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck. Although attracting scant attention when first published in the Century magazine in 1893, Mark Twain's "The 1,000,000 Bank-Note" would eventually earn renown as his "single most famous" and "most beloved" short story.
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