The Adventures Of Mark Twain

Cliched but engaging film biography, with a solid performance by Fredric March as the young adventurer who left Hannibal, Missouri, to learn the Mississippi River's tricky ways as a navigator. In one scene, the young navigator is attempting to steer a riverboat through fogbound waters when he hears a deckhand, after throwing out a weight to determine the water's depth, shout: "Mark the twain [twine--the rope tied about the weight] 15 [feet]." Thus the nom de plume of one of America's finest writers and humorists. Sharp dialogue sparks the predictable story line as Twain moves from the Mississippi to the West as a newspaper editor, then on to Gold Rush Califo...