Bierce has been fictionalized in more than 50 novels, short stories, movies, television shows, stage plays, and comic books. Most of these works draw upon Bierce's vivid personality, colorful wit, relationships with famous people such as Jack London and William Randolph Hearst, or, quite frequently, his mysterious disappearance.
Bierce has been portrayed by such well-known authors as Ray Bradbury,[61] Jack Finney,[62] Carlos Fuentes,[63] Winston Groom,[64] Robert Heinlein,[65] and Don Swaim.[66] Some works featuring a fictional Ambrose Bierce have received favorable reviews, generated international sales,[67] or earned major awards.
Bierce's short stories, "Haita the Shepherd" and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" are believed to have influenced early weird fiction writer Robert W. Chambers' tales of The King in Yellow (1895), which featured Hastur, Carcosa, Lake Hali and other names and locations initiated in these tales.[68] Chambers in turn went on to influence H. P. Lovecraft and much of modern horror fiction.
In 1918, H. L. Mencken called Bierce "the one genuine wit that These States have ever seen."[69]
At least three films have been made of Bierce's story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". A silent film version, The Bridge, was made in 1929 by Charles Vidor.[70] A French version called La Rivière du Hibou, directed by Robert Enrico, was released in 1962;[71] this black-and-white film faithfully recounts the original narrative using voiceover. It aired in 1964 on American television as one of the final episodes of the television series The Twilight Zone: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge".[72] Prior to The Twilight Zone, the story had been adapted as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.[73] Another version, directed by Brian James Egen, was released in 2005. It was also adapted for the CBS radio programs Escape (1947), Suspense (1956, 1957, 1959), and Radio Mystery Theater (1974).
In his 1932 book Wild Talents, American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena Charles Fort wrote about the unexplained disappearances of Ambrose Bierce and Ambrose Small, and asked, "Was somebody collecting Ambroses?"[74]
Actor James Lanphier (1920–1969) played Bierce, with James Hampton as William Randolph Hearst, in the 1964 episode "The Paper Dynasty", of the syndicated western television series Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. In the story line, Hearst struggles to turn a profit despite increased circulation of the San Francisco Examiner. Robert O. Cornthwaite appears as Sam Chamberlain.[75]
Carlos Fuentes's 1985 novel The Old Gringo is a fictionalized account of Bierce's disappearance; it was later adapted into the film Old Gringo (1989), starring Gregory Peck in the title role.[76] Fuentes stated: "What started this novel was my admiration for Ambrose Bierce and for his Tales of Soldiers and Civilians."[77]
Two adaptations were made of Bierce's story "Eyes of the Panther". One version was developed for Shelley Duvall's Nightmare Classics series and was released in 1990. It runs about 60 minutes.[78] A shorter version was released in 2007 by director Michael Barton and runs about 23 minutes.[79]
Bierce was a major character in a series of mystery books written by Oakley Hall and published between 1998 and 2006.[80]
Biographer Richard O'Connor argued that, "War was the making of Bierce as a man and a writer... [he became] truly capable of transferring the bloody, headless bodies and boar-eaten corpses of the battlefield onto paper."[2]
Essayist Clifton Fadiman wrote, "Bierce was never a great writer. He has painful faults of vulgarity and cheapness of imagination. But ... his style, for one thing, will preserve him; and the purity of his misanthropy, too, will help to keep him alive."[2]
Author Alan Gullette argues that Bierce's war tales may be the best writing on war, outranking his contemporary Stephen Crane (author of The Red Badge of Courage) and even Ernest Hemingway.[2]
The short film "Ah! Silenciosa" (1999), starring Jim Beaver as Bierce, weaves elements of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" into a speculation on Bierce's disappearance.[81]
Bierce's trip to Mexico and disappearance provide the background for the vampire horror film From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter (2000), in which Bierce's character plays a central role.[82] Bierce's fate is the subject of Gerald Kersh's "The Oxoxoco Bottle" (aka "The Secret of the Bottle"), which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on December 7, 1957, and was reprinted in the anthology Men Without Bones. Bierce reappears in the future on Mount Shasta in Robert Heinlein's novella, "Lost Legacy".
In the fall of 2001, An Occurrence Remembered, a theatrical retelling of Bierce's An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge and Chickamauga, premiered off-Broadway in New York City under the production and direction of Lorin Morgan-Richards and lead choreographer Nicole Cavaliere.[83]
American composer Rodney Waschka II composed an opera, Saint Ambrose (2002), based on Bierce's life.[84]
In 2002 the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco premiered a one-act version of Bierce's ultra-short story "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" by American composer David Lang. The opera has since been performed by other companies.[85]
In 2005, author Kurt Vonnegut stated that he considered "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" the "greatest American short story" and a work of "flawless ... American genius".[86]
"The Damned Thing" was adapted twice. First time in 1975, into a Yugoslav TV-movie Prokletinja. Second time, into a 2006 Masters of Horror episode of the same title directed by Tobe Hooper.[87]
Don Swaim writes of Bierce's life and disappearance in The Assassination of Ambrose Bierce: A Love Story (2015).[88]
Ambrose Bierce features as a character in Winston Groom's 2016 novel El Paso. In the novel, Bierce is personally executed by Pancho Villa.[89]
Weird-fiction critic and editor S. T. Joshi has cited Bierce as an influence on his own work, and has praised him for his satirical wit, saying "Bierce will remain an equivocal figure in American and world literature chiefly because his dark view of humanity is, by its very nature, unpopular. Most people like writing that is cheerful and uplifting, even though a substantial proportion of the world's great literature is quite otherwise."[90][91]
