Irving Rapper directs this biopic of the beloved American author Sam Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. Fredrick March is excellent in his portrayal of Clemens from his early 20's to his death at age 75. The story goes that Sam's birth was ushered by Halley's Comet. This entertaining tale may not be accurate enough to be a serious biography, but is good enough to sustain Twain's legacy. Alexis Smith plays Twain's wife Olivia, who understands that her husband may always be a boy at heart. His tales of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn remain enduring as the day he introduced them. The prolific writer had a major financial reversal due to bad investments and his struggle to publish the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Twain would go on a world wide speaking tour to pay off his debts before his death. Most memorable is the film's finale with spirits of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn urging the spirit of Twain to join them in heaven...just at the time Halley's Comet streaks the sky. In supporting roles are: Donald Crisp, John Carradine, Percy Kilbride, Alan Hale and William Henry.

Arguably the gentleman born in Hannibal Missouri with the arrival of Halley's Comet named Samuel Langhorne Clemens at birth is America's greatest man of letters. Though his character was a great deal more complex than what you see in slightly over two hours Mark Twain, The Adventures Of Mark Twain presents the most positive aspects of his character as realized on screen by Fredric March.

Warner Brothers did a fabulous makeup job on March and his skill as a player makes you really believe you're watching Mark Twain in action. At least this is the public image that Twain liked to convey that of a shrewd observer into the foibles of the nature of man.

One of the things that does show is the love match that was made with Olivia Langdon and Sam Clemens. It's not much of a part in terms of something to work with, but Alexis Smith is a kind and loving help mate to March something the real Olivia was to Clemens. Mark Twain's private life contained not a hint of scandal in all of his 76 years on earth.

In wartime especially American audiences liked to see those values affirmed. But with the deaths of Olivia and a favored daughter, the shrewd cynicism of Twain multiplied exponentially. What we don't see in the last several years of his life Twain becoming a brooding pessimist about life and the afterlife in general. The rollicking humorist that wrote about the Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County became an almost Stephen King like figure when his posthumous story The Mysterious Stranger was published. If there's a more pessimistic work out there, I'd like to know about it.

When Alexis Smith says to March in the film that he's captured youth itself on page, she was referring to Tom Sawyer. In that and to an even greater extent in Huckleberry Finn, Twain was able to channel his Mississippi childhood into the book. It's not the adult Twain who observes human nature in either book, but it's the child Sam Clemens. That's the power both works have and they are what set Mark Twain's name firmly among literary immortals.

The Adventures Of Mark Twain received three Oscar nominations, for Special Effects, for Art&Set Direction, and for its musical score by Max Steiner. Special mention should also go to Donald Crisp who plays Twain's literary agent especially for the lengths at which he goes to find the guy who published that jumping frog story under a pseudonym.

The Adventures Of Mark Twain succeeds in capturing the public Mark Twain and the private Sam Clemens. I think the viewer will like both of them when they see the film.

"Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody wants to do anything about it", Frederic March says here in character, and of course it get laughs. He had a view of the big and mighty Mississippi that influenced not only his stories but his view of the world around him. To Samuel Clemens, the world started and stopped with the river that divided the east from the west and carried goods from the north to the south, so when the steamboats were docked with the civil war, to him, it was as if the world stopped moving for him.

Frederic March is every inch Mark Twain here, only rivaled on stage and TV by Hal Holbrook, as much Twain here as Raymond Massey was Abraham Lincoln just a few years before. His tales of the Mississippi flow from the veins of his own life, aided by the loving assistance of his wife (Alexis Smith). But this isn't just a story of "I wrote this, and then I wrote that", but how he influenced the publishing world as well, even if it lead him to bankruptcy for a time.

This doesn't paint Twain as a grownup version of either Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn, but there's always the sign of the little boy living through these stories. He's a raucous jokester, a hot tempered artist and an incredible storyteller, definitely an incredibly devoted family man. It's obvious that he'd appreciate my own joke as a younger on a 7th grade history test, putting Sam Clemens down as a test paper answer over Mark Twain then bringing the test to my teacher to have the answer marked wrong changed to correct.

The supporting cast here is vast and incredibly good, featuring Alan Hale, John Carradine, Donald Crisp, Percy Kilbride, Willie Best and C. Aubrey Smith among the many familiar faces. I learned from this what a mark twain really is in terms of river jargon, and the importance of Halley's Comet in his life. The film only received three technical Oscar nominations, but deserved so much more, perhaps at least for March over Barry Fitzgerald who was nominated for leading and supporting for the same film, "Going My Way".

This is a joyous film in so many aspects, filled with wit, heart, history and the idea that if the problem with the human race is the human race, then Twain indeed was a member of an advanced species of that race that has yet to be surpassed.