katy wrote:
There was that one excellent rendition of _Huckleberry Finn_....

Which one was that?

...and the
there was _Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ and all the weird
spin-offs (the Danny Kaye version)....

Hah! I saw that... long time ago... I thought it was pretty
good back then. Danny Kaye was pretty funny.


... I always thought the Jack London
books were tedious but I did like the movie versions...

Jack London is like James Fenimore Cooper, great for
adventure but not so great on content or accuracy. I loved
all those adventure books in my early teens, then discovered
actual history and realized that nothing remotely like it
ever happened (or could). Then Mark Twain's essay "The
Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper" killed the whole
game for me.

Another don't-see movie is the 'Last of the Mohicans' from
the early 1990s, don't remember who starred in it. It should
have been titled 'Men with Long Hair & Torn Clothes Running
in the Woods' as that pretty much sums up the plot, the
dialog, and 90% of the action. Neither J.F. Cooper nor Mark
Twain would have recognized it IMHO.

A good one (even has some sailing in it) is the Spencer
Tracy version of 'Captains Courageous.'

Fresh Breezes-
Doug King