DEATH VALLEY DENIZENS - MARK TWAIN, YET AGAIN

'DEATH VALLEY DAYS'

"TEN DAY MILLIONAIRES"

SAM CLEMENS

portrayed by 

TOM SKERRITT

From Wikipedia:

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel".

Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. His humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published in 1865, based on a story that he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention and was even translated into classic Greek. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, but he invested in ventures that lost most of it—notably the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its complexity and imprecision. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of these financial setbacks, but he eventually overcame his financial troubles with the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers. He chose to pay all his pre-bankruptcy creditors in full, even after he had no legal responsibility to do so.

Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" as well; he died the day after the comet returned. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature".

Twain's journey ended in the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada where he became a miner on the Comstock Lode. He failed as a miner and went to work at the Virginia City newspaper Territorial Enterprise, working under a friend, the writer Dan DeQuille. He first used his pen name here on February 3, 1863, when he wrote a humorous travel account entitled "Letter From Carson – re: Joe Goodman; party at Gov. Johnson's; music" and signed it "Mark Twain".

His experiences in the American West inspired Roughing It, written during 1870–71 and published in 1872. His experiences in Angels Camp (in Calaveras County, California) provided material for "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865).

Mark Twain is one of a handful of authors who have been depicted in television almost as often as the characters they created.  (Others include Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, and of course, William Shakespeare.)  Over the years, I have tried to include as many of the depictions of Twain as possible in the main Toobworld by citing the Perspective Imperative (I'm working on the name) - any facial differences caused by recasting the role from show to show is due to the character - in this case, Mark Twain, being seen from the point of view of a regular character in the series.  Because of this, I've been able to keep portrayals of Twain in the same TV dimension from such disparate shows as 'The Rifleman', 'The Virginian', 'Touched By An Angel' and even 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', despite the actors being Kevin McCarthy, Dabbs Greer, John Cullum, and Jerry Hardin respectively.

Stand-alone movies I shunt off to alternate TV dimensions (which saddened me when it came to James Garner as the author in 2002's "Roughing It".)  And of course, his portrayal in comedy sketches and cartoons are automatically consigned to the dimensions of Skitlandia and the Tooniverse.  A jerkwad portrayal by Vanilla Ice in "The Ridiculous Six" didn't even merit consideration; off to Doofus Toobworld with that Netflix movie!

There are two series appearances which I have had to grapple with, however.  'Murdoch Mysteries' will never be pried out of Earth Prime-Time as I enjoy it too much.  And many of its historical figures can be splained away with that P.O.V theory.  But William Shatner as Mark Twain made no attempt at an historical impression, at least using Hal Holbrook's defining and classic portrayal as the template.  He didn't even bother with adopting the established look with the shaggy white hair and bushy white mustache.  Oh, he had the mustache, but it was a dark brown - too brown for the man at that stage in his life.  (This takes place at some point after 1903, when the Empire Club [where Twain was targeted] was founded.)

The overall effect was that he was Mark Twain in name only; he was simply Shatner... but with a mustache at least better than the... thing he sported on his upper lip in the 'Columbo' episode "Butterfly In Shades of Grey".  For my money (and for the sake of what's left of my sanity), there's only way to splain away his horrible performance: the Mark Twain who appeared at the Empire Club in Toronto was an impostor who fooled even Detective William Murdoch.

The other show that's giving me problems is 'Bonanza', which has seen fit to portray Mark Twain three times over the years, each time played by a different actor.

"Bonanza" 

    - Enter Mark Twain (1959) 

Played by Howard Duff 

    - The Emperor Norton (1966)

Played by William Challee
    - The Twenty-Sixth Grave (1972) 

Played by Ken Howard

I'll have to watch "Enter Mark Twain" and "The Twenty-Sixth Grave" again, to determine how to splain away the discrepancies - the Zonks - generated by not only the recastaway situation but their placement on the Toobworld timeline.  I may have to send Ken Howard's Samuel Clemens to an alternate TV dimension 'Bonanza'.  (It wouldn't be the first time I've had to do that for just a single episode of a series.)

But I don't need to bother with the Mark Twain who made a "cameo appearance" in the episode which dealt with Emperor Norton.  He wasn't Mark Twain; like Shatner's joke of a portrayal, Challee was playing a Twain impostor.  And not only that... he was a time-traveling alien in disguise as a human!

But that's another story which had its beginnings in an episode of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' surprisingly.

Anyway.....

Let's get back to Tom Skerritt's portrayal of Mark Twain.  After all, that's why I started writing this post!

At the beginning of this month, I said that many of the historical episodes of 'Death Valley Days' would have to be relegated to alternate TV dimensions whenever the historical characters had multiple portrayals from other TV series.  And that's the case here as I've noted.  There were no established regular characters in this anthology series whom we could claim were seeing Sam Clemens from their own perspective.  Had he been the only actor to play the role, then he would have had a lock on the position in the main Toobworld.  But with an author as famous, as popular, and as distinctive in his appearance as Samuel Clemens AKA Mark Twain, it is not to be....

BCnU!

O'BSERVATION:
Even though there is one more day to the month of August, this will be the last TV Western post for the showcase.  (And I couldn't think of a better historical figure to write about from 'Death Valley Days'.)  

For tomorrow, there will something completely different on a topic that has become something of a tradition the last few years......