The novel has been adapted several times into other forms, and the storyline has been used, not always attributed, as the basis for other works:
- A first stage adaptation written by Patrick Kearney for Broadway premiered at the Longacre Theatre in New York on October 11, 1926. In the cast was actress Miriam Hopkins, who had not yet started her film career.[7]
- Sergei Eisenstein prepared a screenplay in the late 1920s which he hoped to have produced by Paramount or by Charlie Chaplin during Eisenstein's stay in Hollywood in 1930. Foolish Wives and Greed director Erich von Stroheim briefly considered directing a film version in the 1920s. Dreiser strongly disapproved of the 1931 film version directed by Josef von Sternberg.
- In April 1929, Dreiser agreed that German director Erwin Piscator should produce a stage version of An American Tragedy. Piscator's stage adaptation premiered in Vienna in April 1932, and made its US debut in April 1935 at the Hedgerow Theatre, Rose Valley. The play was produced as well by Lee Strasberg at the Group Theatre in March 1936.[8] A revival was produced by the Hedgerow Theatre in September 2010.[9]
- In the 1940s, the novel inspired an episode of the award-winning old-time radio comedy Our Miss Brooks, an episode known as "Weekend at Crystal Lake", or "An American Tragedy". The episode revolved around the characters' misinterpreting the intentions of biology teacher Philip Boyton (played by Jeff Chandler), Connie Brooks's (Eve Arden) high school colleague and love interest. The characters fear that Boynton plans to kill Miss Brooks during a leisurely weekend at their boss's lakeside retreat. The episode was broadcast twice, on September 19, 1948, and on August 21, 1949. The episode was also repeated in 1955, when the show was a hit on both radio and television.[10]
- The 1951 Paramount Pictures film A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens and starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, and Shelley Winters, is "Based on the novel "An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser and the Patrick Kearney play adapted from the novel" (quoted from film credits).[11]
- Further television or film adaptations of An American Tragedy have been produced in Brazil (Um Lugar ao Sol, TV series, 1959, director: Dionísio Azevedo), Italy ("it:Una tragedia americana", Rai 1, 1962, regista: Anton Giulio Majano), Czechoslovakia (Americká tragédia, TV series, 1976, director: Stanislav Párnický), Philippines (Nakaw na pag-ibig, film, 1980, director: Lino Brocka), USSR (Американская трагедия, 4 parts, Lithuanian Film Studio, 1981, director: Marijonas Giedrys), and Japan (Hi no ataru basho, TV series, 1982, director: Masami Ryuji).
- Composer Tobias Picker adapted the material as an opera of the same title, with a libretto by Gene Scheer. It premiered at the Metropolitan Opera starring Nathan Gunn in New York on December 2, 2005.
- Critics and commentators have compared elements of Woody Allen's film, Match Point (2005), to the central plot of the novel.[12][13]
- The novel was adapted as a musical of the same title by three-time Tony Award-winning composer and lyricist Charles Strouse.[14] It premiered at Muhlenberg College, located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on March 24, 2010.
- In Cuba, the novel has been adapted and broadcast by Radio Progreso national broadcasting twice: in 1977 and 2001. The first of the versions starred such renowned actors as Raul Selis (as Clyde), Martha del Rio (Roberta), Miriam Mier (Sondra), Julio Alberto Casanova (Gilbert), and Maggie Castro (Bertine).
- Jennifer Donnelly's 2003 young adult novel, A Northern Light, recounts the events from the narrative viewpoint of a young woman working at the local camp.
- In 2021, the classic crime novel was re-imagined in the form of a fictional investigative docuseries in The Anatomy of Desire by L. R. Dorn, the pen name of screenwriting team Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn.
