A Connecticut Yankee | |
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Directed by | David Butler |
Written by | William Conselman Owen Davis Jack Moffitt |
Based on | A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain |
Produced by | William Fox |
Starring | Will Rogers William Farnum Maureen O'Sullivan Myrna Loy |
Cinematography | Ernest Palmer |
Edited by | Irene Morra |
Music by | Arthur Kay |
Production company | Fox Film Corporation |
Distributed by | Fox Film Corporation |
Release date |
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Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $1.2 million[1] |
A Connecticut Yankee is a 1931 American Pre-Code film adaptation of Mark Twain's 1889 novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It was directed by David Butler to a script by William M. Conselman, Owen Davis, and Jack Moffitt. It was produced by Fox Film Corporation (later 20th Century Fox), who had earlier produced the 1921 silent adaptation of the novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. A Connecticut Yankee is the first sound film adaptation of Twain's novel.[2] It is unrelated to the 1927 musical also titled A Connecticut Yankee.
As in The Wizard of Oz, many of the actors in the film play more than one role, a character in the real world and one in the dream world. The film stars Will Rogers as Hank Martin, an American accidental time traveler who finds himself in Camelot back in the days of King Arthur (William Farnum, a Fox star for many years). Myrna Loy and Brandon Hurst play the evil Morgan le Fay and Merlin, who must be overcome by Hank's modern technical knowledge, while Maureen O'Sullivan plays Alisande.
The hero's name was changed from Hank Morgan to Hank Martin, possibly because the original name sounded too similar to that of actor Frank Morgan.[citation needed]
A trailer for the film exists at the Library of Congress.[3]