All the King's Men

Film and stage adaptations

Besides the early verse play version Proud Flesh, Robert Penn Warren wrote several stage adaptations of All the King's Men,[15] one of them in close collaboration with famous German theatre director Erwin Piscator in 1947.

The story was adapted for radio by NBC University Theatre and broadcast in January 1949. Wayne Morris played Jack Burden, with Paul Frees as Willie Stark.[16]

All the King's Men, a movie made based on Warren's novel, was released several months later in 1949. The film won three Oscars that year: Best Picture, Best Actor (Broderick Crawford), and Best Supporting Actress (Mercedes McCambridge). The movie was also nominated for four more categories. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant", and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. It is noted, however, for deviating significantly from the novel's storyline.

NBC network's Kraft Television Theatre broadcast a television version of All the King's Men in May 1958. This adaptation was directed by Sidney Lumet and starred Neville Brand as Willie Stark.

A Soviet TV adaptation titled Vsya Korolevskaya Rat was produced in 1971 by Byelorussian TV. It starred Georgiy Zhzhonov (Willie Stark), Mikhail Kozakov (Jack Burden), Alla Demidova (Anne), Oleg Yefremov (Adam), Rostislav Plyatt (Irwin), Lev Durov (Sugar Boy). Initially Pavel Luspekayev starred as Willie Stark, but he was gravely ill at that time and died of aortic dissection only after 30% of filming was completed, thus the movie director asked Georgiy Zhzhonov to substitute the vacated role.

Another film version was produced in 2006 by writer/director Steven Zaillian, who wanted to more faithfully follow Warren's version of the story than the original film did. However, it was a critical and commercial disappointment.

American composer Carlisle Floyd adapted the novel as a full-length grand opera entitled Willie Stark, commissioned and premiered by the Houston Grand Opera in 1981.

Adrian Hall adapted and directed a stage version of the novel at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island in April 1987.[17] This adaptation has been staged at Trinity and other theater companies in the years since.


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