Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain's immortal TOM SAWYER flirts with Becky Thatcher, goes rafting with Huckleberry Finn on the Mississippi River & generally makes life a sore tribulation for the law-abiding citizens of St. Petersburg, Missouri.

Produced only seven years after the death of Mark Twain, this rousing, action packed silent film remains faithful to the original classic novel. The fine production values lavished upon it give it the feel of an old photo album. Many of the favorite episodes from the first half of the book are included and filmed with much charm.

Jack Pickford gives a hardy, robust portrayal of Tom, the eternal companion of millions of American boys. Although a bit tall & old (he was 21) to be an authentic portrait of the real Tom, he comes close enough. Tattered, begrimed Robert Gordon as Huckleberry Finn also scores in his small role.

The film concludes with the boys interrupting their own funeral, after being assumed drowned while river rafting. Director William Desmond Taylor decided to film the rest of the book and release it as a sequel, which he did the following year as HUCK AND TOM (1918). Four years later, in 1922, Taylor's still unsolved murder would give Hollywood one of its most sensational scandals.

Almost forgotten today, Jack Pickford, Mary's younger brother, was a movie star in his own right, appearing in 106 films between 1909 & 1928. Lacking his sister's intense dedication & drive, he gave his life over to riotous living - to the detriment of his career. Personal tragedy & dissipation would haunt him until his death in 1933 at the age of 36.

It is said that director William Desmond Taylor intended a sequel that would detail the rest of Mark Twain's classic. Two hour movies were not popular in 1917, despite the success of D.W. Griffith's work. Since the original book was just a series of episodes, it is surely no grounds for condemning this old film for the same quality. Actually, it is rather entertaining and faithful to the book for the episodes it contains. For proper enjoyment, though, you have to project yourself via mental time warp back to 1917 and the film technology of the era. If you can, you can see Mary Pickford's brother Jack doing a good job of bringing that eternal scamp Tom Sawyer to life. And it is a chance to see the work of William Desmond Taylor whose death a few years later was one of the greatest Hollywood mysteries of all time.

Mark Twain had just died six years earlier when the first feature film, the earliest existing film on his character Tom Sawyer, was released in December 1917. Called simply "Tom Sawyer," the Paramount Pictures movie starred Jack Pickford as Tom.

If the last name sounds familiar, yes, Jack was Mary Pickford's younger brother. "Tom Sawyer" was one of his first starring roles. His debut in a major part occurred earlier in the year when he played Pip in the feature "Great Expectations."

Jack, along with his older sisters Mary (Gladys at the time) and Lottie exhibited a talent in acting as youngsters. Their from improvised mother, Charlotte, deserted by her alcoholic husband, saw an opportunity to make some money and allowed the three to go on the Canadian stage. The trio were so talented and successful that by 1900 the kids and mom relocated to New York City where the action was for theater. Once Mary signed with Biograph Studios in 1910, she was able to get acting jobs for Lottie and 14-year-old Jack. Her brother appeared in several bit parts while in New York City before Mary signed that very lucrative contract with Paramount (specifically Famous Players-Lasky) in 1917. One of the clauses in her million dollar pact was for the studio to sign her two siblings to lucrative salaries.

On the 80-plus films Jack was in before Mary's arrangement, the consensus was her brother was a pretty decent actor. He gained good notices in his "Great Expectations" role as Pip, positive reviews as Tom in "Tom Sawyer" (even though his 21-year-old age belied the younger fictional Sawyer), as well as his follow-up in May 1918's "Tom And Huck."

A year earlier, Jack had met and married rising movie actress Olive Thomas, a former Ziegfeld Follies star who had an affair with the married founder Florence Ziegfed. A former model who won the "Most Beautiful Girl in New York City," sponsored by a New York artist, she appeared on several magazine covers, including the Saturday Evening Post, before getting the Ziegfeld chorus girl position. Olive became the first "Vargas Girl," drawn by a famous Peruvian artist noted for his racy portraits. Ziegfeld bought a Vargas nude of Thomas and hung it up on his office wall.

She and Jack met in 1916 just as she was getting into film and before Mary signed her contract. A quickie marriage, without the Pickfords present, turned out to be one of the wildest marriages Hollywood would ever see. Screenwriter Francis Marion, who had rubbed elbows with them frequently at Mary's house, described them as "two innocent-looking children; they were the gayest, wildest brats who ever stirred the stardust on Broadway. Both were talented, but they were much more interested in playing the roulette of life than in concentrating on their careers."

After "Huck And Tom," Jack volunteered in the United States Navy in 1918. He got in trouble for operating a bribery scheme where he received money from rich men who wanted to avoid the military during World War One. He also was caught running a racquet where he arranged young women for the officers where he was stationed. Jack survived the accusations leveled at him and returned to film acting after he was discharged.

The production quality and techniques are about par for Hollywood at the time. But the story is very erratic. So much stuff happens over the course of just an hour that it feels almost disconnected. I guess they were going for a faithful adaptation of the novel but it ends up feeling more like a highlight reel of the events from the book instead of its own story. Maybe I would've liked this film more had I actually ever read the novel but here we are.

Also a novelty for starring Jack Pickford, written by Julia Crawford Ivers, and directed by William Desmond Taylor. Maybe I'll go deeper into their work but probably not. I do actually want to read Twain's novel some day though. From this film alone I actually hate the character of Tom Sawyer.

For its time, this is a pretty good version of Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer", with a good selection of sequences from the novel and a well-cast Tom Sawyer in Jack Pickford. It creates the right atmosphere, and believably brings to life several of the well-known characters. Besides the story itself, the movie gives you a chance to see what Jack Pickford was able to do before his personal weaknesses and problems derailed his career, and it also offers a rare chance to see one of the surviving films of ill-fated director William Desmond Taylor.

Pickford seems a natural for the part of Tom; not only does he look the part, but he had the same personality of a likable wastrel. The silent screen made it particularly important for an actor to look right in the part of such a well-known and popular character. Pickford's roguish smile and mannerisms generally work pretty well.

The story takes a selection of the episodes from the novel, and most of them work as well as you could ask, given the lack of spoken dialogue and other limitations. The fence-painting scene, one of Twain's finest gems of humor and psychology, is enjoyable to watch even without all of the nuances that the written story was able to add.

So many film adaptations of Twain's popular stories have been made over the years that it's not very hard to find versions of "Tom Sawyer" that would work better for today's audiences. But for those who enjoy silent films, this one still works well enough to be worth seeing, and it is also interesting as a small piece of movie history.