Mark Twain’s works, like Mark Twain himself, have been favorite sources of adaptation in American popular culture – in film, television, radio, and comic books. Except for the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn novels, the most frequent work to be adapted to the film medium and television has been A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Professor Inge will survey several film versions of Hank Morgan as portrayed by Will Rogers (1931), Bing Crosby (1949), Thomas Mitchell (1952), Bugs Bunny (1977), Paul Rudd (1978), Dennis Duggan (1979), and even a black child actress, Keshia Knight Pulliam (1989). He will discuss why this particular novel has attracted so many film producers, how Hank Morgan has been interpreted through six decades, and what this tells us about the continuing influence and relevance of the Yankee from Connecticut.