Huckleberry Finn (1931 film)

Huckleberry Finn (1931) is an American pre-Code comedy film directed by Norman Taurog and starring Jackie Coogan as Tom Sawyer and Junior Durkin as Huckleberry Finn. The picture was based upon the 1884 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Huckleberry Finn
Window card
Directed byNorman Taurog
Produced byAdolph Zukor
Jesse L. Lasky
Written byGrover Jones
William Slavens McNutt
Mark Twain (novel)
StarringJackie Coogan
Junior Durkin
Mitzi Green
CinematographyDave Abel
Distributed byParamount Pictures
Release date
  • August 7, 1931 (1931-08-07)
Running time
80 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1 million
Box office$2.5 million

Cast

Production

This is an adaptation of the classic novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and is a follow-up to Tom Sawyer (1930). Omitting the entire issue of whether or not Huck ought to turn the slave Jim back in after Jim escapes his owners, it concentrated mostly on the comedy in the novel, and turned Jim into the typical comic "darkie" stereotype of that era.

The film was made as a follow-up to Paramount's Tom Sawyer, which had been released a year earlier with substantially the same cast and became the top-grossing film of 1930.

However, as happened with Tom Sawyer, the 1931 Huckleberry Finn was superseded only eight years later by MGM's far more faithful The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, starring Mickey Rooney as Huck, Rex Ingram as Jim, Walter Connolly as the King, and William Frawley as the Duke.

Reception

According to Leonard Maltin, the film is "charming, but very, very dated".[1]

See also

References
  1. Maltin, Leonard (2010). Classic Movie Guide. New York: Plume. p. 301. ISBN 978-0-452-29577-3.


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