Mark Twain: His Amazing Adventures | Full Documentary | Biography

he was a prankster a gambler a rebel and a  dreamer he was the lincoln of american literature   and his days were filled with adventure mark twain lived it all 75 years of bold schemes  passionate beliefs and daring escapades at age   25 he volunteered to fight for the confederacy  then deserted at the first sign of union guns he traveled far he rode fast and he drank  hard out west he found adventure at every turn   barely avoiding a duel in virginia city  communing with native lovelies in hawaii   he loved as a man of humble origins he  despised wealth even as he schemed to   acquire it he sold himself and his name at every  opportunity and still tumbled into bankruptcy   center stage at the great events of his day he  saved ulysses s grant from dishonor and disgrace   defender of the underdog he risked his very  life attacking the powerful assailing police   brutality against chinese immigrants  and exposing the inhumanity of slavery   fiercely independent and eager to speak his  mind he pierced men's most sacred beliefs   if christ were here now there is one  thing he would not be a christian he became the most conspicuous man on earth  and the first modern celebrity someone famous   for being famous his trademark white suit  was an affectation and a plea for attention   he embodied the best and the worst of  america and his like will not be seen again   born samuel langhorne clemons the boy who would  become mark twain grew up in the frontier village   of hannibal missouri hard on the banks of  the mississippi river although his family was   dirt poor clemens would later idealize his  boyhood days in the adventures of tom sawyer   like his creator tom is a  romantic an embellisher a dreamer   forever mooning over his latest true love  becky thatcher and like the young sam clemons   tom is a master troublemaker he lies he steals he  picks fights with other boys for no good reason   he's a bad boy and he's also the hero of our  story my plan has been to try to pleasantly   remind adults of what they once were themselves  and how they felt and thought and talked and what   queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in  breakfast to the adventures of tom sawyer 1876   sam clemen's imagined ideal ended at age 12 with  the death of his father needing to support his   family and restless with wanderlust he left  school to become a printer's apprentice for   the next decade he roamed widely setting type for  newspapers and cities from cincinnati to new york traveling south in 1857 he visited  the booming port of new orleans   entranced as always by the excitement  of life along the mighty mississippi   at age 22 he grabbed the chance to  enact his greatest boyhood dream when i was a boy there was but one permanent  ambition among my comrades in our village on   the west bank of the mississippi river to be a  steam boatman old times on the mississippi 1875.   in his later writings clemons presented himself as  a bumbling apprentice constantly making mistakes   and irritating his master the invention of  that clumsy naive character is part of the   creation of the fictionalized mark twain in  fact clemens was an extremely skilled pilot   mastering every curve of the river  for 300 miles and never losing a ship the riverboat pilot was the only unfettered and  entirely independent human being that lived on the   earth i love the profession far better than any i  have followed since and took a measureless pride his experiences on the river brought him into  contact with a gallery of colorful personalities   who would later populate his writings when i find a well-drawn character in fiction  or biography i generally take a warm personal   interest in him for the reason that i  have known him before met him on the river events would soon propel twain towards the wider  world and into a host of improbable adventures   he would leave the river but the landscape  of his youth stayed with him always   eternal home to his heart and his imagination with the outbreak of the civil war commercial  traffic on the mississippi was halted   sam clemons was out of a job he returned  to hannibal and joined his chums in a   confederate volunteer brigade that operated  like an older version of tom sawyer's gang   young man who roamed the countryside stealing  farmers pigs and skinny dipping when word arrived   that union troops under ulysses s grant were fast  approaching the volunteers immediately disbanded   that was but one honorable  course for me to pursue and   i pursued it i withdrew to private  life and gave the union cause a chance   with no interest in dying for either side clemons  followed the lure of gold into the untamed west   when the territory of nevada was formed in  1861 sam clemens older brother got a job   as a territorial secretary as a payoff for  his work in the election of abe lincoln   well off to virginia city goes the older  brother tagging along with him is sam clemons virginia city itself is a rather bizarre  town it's set on a very steep hillside   one night he got drunk with artemis ward  and they just walked from rooftop to rooftop   across town that way it was a wild carefree  carousing town and he participated in that there were brass perfect gertie houses wide  open gambling palaces whiskey mill every 15   steps a dozen breweries half a dozen jails and  some talk of building a church rotten in 1872.   sam clemons with a couple partners took up mining  sam clemons was a lazy sort and he actually let   his mining partners do most of the work while  he himself sat around in saloons and spun yarns   dead broke sam put his storytelling gifts to use   hiring on as a reporter for the  virginia city territorial enterprise this is a great time to be a  newspaper reporter a lot of excitement   lots of wild stories were there to be heard  and maybe even a few wild stories to be told   he came up fast though to the notion that you  don't get to say everything that you want in   a newspaper and i think that that helped  urge him to become a writer of fiction but   sometimes you can tell the truth more clearly  if you can do more than just tell the truth   clemens filled the pages of the  territorial enterprise with letters   stories editorials every form of fact and  fiction that sprang from his lively mind   on april 3rd 1863 the pen name mark  twain made its first appearance in print prior to that he had used other pen names  he used the name grumbler rambler josh   john snooks sergeant fathom thomas jefferson  snodgrass w epimonandus adrastus perkins   and w epaminondus adrastus blab and then mark  twain we're all glad he made the right choice finally having struck upon a literary alter ego   it gave clemens the freedom to speak truths  too dangerous to utter in his own voice   he later claimed that his pen  name derived from the mississippi   where leedsmen tested the water depth and signaled  two fathoms or 12 feet by calling out mark twain and it may have been that mark twain made  up that story to hide its true origin   which is probably his custom of going into bars in  nevada and when he wanted to order two drinks and   have him charged to him he simply said mark twain  marked down two drinks for me later in life he was   probably uncomfortable having this great name  of mark twain associated with western saloons in 1865 twain's comic short story jim smiley and  his jumping frog was reprinted across the country   gaining him his first national fame  unwilling to separate fact from fancy   he created elaborate newspaper hoaxes virginia  city awoke one morning to learn with horror of   the empire city massacre a grisly account of a man   who slaughters his family and then rides  into town with his throat cut from ear to ear   it was the talk of the town the talk of the  territories most of the citizens dropped   the gently intuitive breakfast and then never  finished their meal there was something about   those minutely faithful details that  was a sufficient substitute for food from the very beginning what mark twain was  saying is that people really want stories   in which they get fooled and that  this was the kind of gruesome little   fable that the audience was all too  ready to read this would hold their   attention this would sell newspapers and  that they were very happy to be deceived many but not all were charmed by twain's brand  of journalism one of his mostly true articles   so outraged a reader that he challenged twain  to a duel twain accepted at first then learning   that his opponent was a cracked shot he lit off  the same midnight on the stage for san francisco with the west's finest newspapers and magazines   san francisco offered twain a  broad audience for his talents   and the cruelties of a racially divided city  inspired his lifelong defense of the underdog mark wayne had a sense a true democratic sense  of the worth of the common man and the worth of   an individual when he went to san francisco he  writes passionately about the treatment of the   chinese in san francisco and he was outraged  at the treatment in the 1860s of the chinese the majesty of the state itself joined in hating  abusing and persecuting these humble strangers   one of the principal recreations of the  police is to look on with tranquil enjoyment   while the butchers of brannon street  set their dogs on unoffended chinamen   and make them flee for their lives  san francisco morning call 1864. with his stinging attacks on officialdom  twain was imperiling his very life   warned of possible police reprisals he fled  to angel's camp in the sierra nevadas there   he planned his next great escapade a journey to  the distant sandwich islands now known as hawaii on a certain bright morning the islands  hove in sight lying low on the lonely sea   after 2 000 miles of watery solitude the vision  was a welcome one upon disembarking i observed a   bevy of new native young ladies bathing in the  sea and sat down on their clothes to keep them   from being stolen acting as a roving correspondent  twain explored three of the islands on horseback   sampled surfing met king kamehameha and witnessed  the eruption of kilauea volcano these adventures   provided the material for a bold new vocation  platform lecturer and performer extraordinaire   san franciscans were the first to delight in  his soon-to-be famous sandwich island lecture people were all very willing to come out and  see mark twain perform and it was a brilliant   success right from the beginning he sold out  1500 seats in san francisco for this first   lecture and it was very very well received i  mean it was a natural he knew how to sort of   get people's attention and to hold it and to make  them laugh he loved to perform he was masterful   he performed in dozens of cities across  the west to riotous acclaim twain himself   designed the sensationalized posters  that heralded his impending arrival   he had these posters that promised that there  would be fireworks they offered wild animals   i think all kinds of outlandish things nobody was  taken in by those at all they were part of the fun   and they were part of letting the public  know that what they were going to get was   a particular kind of inflated exaggerated  humor that he would provide one of the   famous signs was you know the doors  open at 7 the trouble begins at 8. at age 31 sam clemons had  perfected his comic alter ego   mark twain beloved writer and rack on tour   with his professional fame spreading his thoughts  turned to family and finding a life partner i want a good wife i want a couple  of them if they're particularly good   but where's the wherewithal eager to explore all  that life could offer in 1867 twain looked east   in search of new worlds to  conquer and a home to call his own in the spring of 1867 twain impulsively booked  passage on the very first transatlantic pleasure   cruise aboard the steamship quaker city he  met charles langdon from elmira new york   when langdon showed him a picture of  his sister olivia twain was smitten i saw her first in the form of an ivory  miniature when she was in her 22nd year   she was slender and beautiful and  girlish she was both girl and woman twain's first date with olivia langdon was  unforgettable a reading by charles dickens   from david copperfield from the beginning  twain was determined to make olivia his wife   the langdon family eastern blue bloods  and the pinnacle of elmira high society   opposed the match twain pursued relentlessly  wooing her over two years with almost 200 letters   finally her parents demanded that  he provide character references   so twain gave them references and  he also explained to her father that   his behavior perhaps wasn't blameworthy on  the west coast but it probably wasn't up to   the high standards of eastern civilization the  references wrote back one said that he would   find a drunkard's grave and another  said that he was born to be hanged   his prospective father-in-law said don't don't  you have any friends who will speak well of you   finally jervis langdon said i'll stand up  for you if nobody else will i believe in you livy saw something in mark twain that the  respected family probably did too here is   this crude wild humorist of the pacific  slope untutored outrageous well she's   going to tame him in many ways yet there  was a life to him that she appreciated   she called him youth and there was something  that was always young to her in mark twain at age 34 twain took olivia as his bride  he gave her irreverence and a zest for life   she gave him unconditional love she poured out her prodigal affections in  kisses and caresses and in a vocabulary of   endearments whose profusion  was an astonishment to me while courting olivia twain had collected his  dispatches from the quaker city voyage into a   mocking portrait of the old world the result was  his first best-selling book the innocence abroad it makes me dizzy to think of the vatican of its  wilderness of statues paintings and curiosities   the old masters fairly swarm there  yes the old masters i rather wish they   died a little younger the innocence abroad 1869.  this is the europe as it would look to the eye of   an american who went there without prejudice  and with just good common sense to guide him   and the way it looked to him of course was  ridiculous much of the time what mark twain found   in europe was laughable he keeps finding nails  from the cross in which christ was crucified he   finds hundreds and hundreds of nails scattered  all over europe he says there was a whole   barrel full of nails my goodness they  must have used a lot of nails to do this   he and his cronies on board ship love to tweak  tour guides there'd be these sober tour guides   showing them a tomb or a statue of someone  and they would say well is he is he dead   and the tour guide said well of course  he's dead he died he died 10 centuries ago   they'd move along and they'd be shown a mummy and  they would say is he is he dead this became the   running gag of the innocents abroad mark twain  was very proud of it americans delighted in   seeing european pretensions brought down to earth  fueled by this national pride the innocence abroad   sold over a hundred thousand copies the sales  came via a revolutionary marketing technique   known as subscription publishing book agents  peddling their wares door to door in rural areas   and as a result mark twain tapped a market that he  himself said probably had never read a book before   and the middle class became mark twain's  audience he created popular culture in american   literature the mass audience and they  bought his books in fantastic numbers in the 1870s twain spoke for the  masses in decrying the spirit of   unbridled greed that swept america the  country was fast becoming less democratic   with fantastic amounts of wealth concentrated  in the hands of a very few twain's book the   gilded age named and depicted an era rampant  with money lust and government corruption there is no distinctly native american criminal  class except congress i can say and say with   pride that we have legislators that bring higher  prices than any in the world july 4th address 1873   but he really did speak for ordinary people  in his refusal to surrender to can't his   unwillingness to be bowled over by hypocrites his  contempt for mere money getting for materialism   but he was up to his ears in the very world  that as an ordinary person he attacked   in 1874 twain and olivia built a baroque showplace  of a home in hartford connecticut a gaudy landmark   to an american success story there the common  man from missouri lived in robber baron luxury one of the things that americans loved about  america in the 19th century was the opportunity   to rise make money become wealthy  the american dream mark twain   was a living american dream yet i think  that mark twain is not unlike many americans   that are a little bit suspicious and  a little bit guilty of what this means make money and the whole world will conspire  to call you a gentleman twain's populism did   not keep him from wanting at all he spent an  enormous amount of time on get rich schemes   and his zeal for wealth mingled with an  insatiable curiosity for the wonders of technology he was fascinated by invention but  that very much made him part of the   high victorian and gilded age a sense that  through strong work and good ideas you   could change the way you live and the way that  others was a period of invention and he loved it   he took great pride in having the first  private telephone in america and yet even   though he was asked to invest in the telephone  he chose not to he thought where's the market   twain himself was constantly  devising new inventions   including the hugely successful  mark twain self-pasting scrapbook but he soon discovered that his most valuable  commodity was himself mark twain was aware almost   from the beginning that his name and his image was  something that he could market that it was worth   money he did various endorsements of all  kinds of incongruous products cigars he's   most famous for the mark twain cigar but he  would endorse sewing machines various kinds of   medicines and elixirs almost anything with his  name on it was likely to sell and he knew that one of twain's most profitable ventures was  the new york publishing house he founded   famed for its association with ulysses s grant  after two disastrous terms as president grant   faced financial ruin and personal disgrace  unable to support his family he was persuaded   by twain to write his memoirs dying of throat  cancer grant struggled to finish in time   with twain's help he completed the  book just four days before dying the memoirs were a huge success netting the grant  family nearly a half million dollars a former   confederate deserter had restored the dignity  and fortune of the union's greatest general even as he aided grant twain was  busy re-establishing his claim as   the bad boy of american literature speaking  through the voice of an illiterate child   he would indict all that americans held deer  and reopened the nation's most painful wounds the quality of independence was almost  wholly left out of the human race   the scattering exceptions to the rule only  emphasize it light it up make it glare   the publication of the adventures of huckleberry  finn in 1884 showed twain's rebellious spirit   burning brighter than ever when huckleberry finn  says you don't know about me without you read the   adventures of tom sawyer it was the most radical  sentence in all american literature because mark   twain dared to let a vulgar illiterate we would  now call him a juvenile delinquent tell his own   story no one would ever thought of doing such a  thing in a novel uh before mark twain attempted it huck finn tells the story of two outcasts  twelve-year-old huck orphan and ruffian   and jim a runaway slave together they find freedom  and adventure rafting down the mississippi river   huck's heart tells him that he should help jim run  away his conscience a product of his environment   tells him that he should do  something to return jim to his owner   and so huck begins to write a letter  that will betray jim and in this famous   passage a beautiful passage he tears up the  letter and says all right i'll go to hell huck finn had to overcome the government   had to overcome his church had to overcome  his family had to overcome his peers having   overcome the values of society to make a  decision but his heart says this is right huck's rebellion against slavery  mirrors the transformation   undergone years earlier by sam clemens in my school days i had no aversion to slavery  i was not aware that there was anything wrong   with it no one arraigned it in my hearing  the local paper said nothing against it   the local pulpit taught us that god  approved it that it was a holy thing   both huck and twain paid dearly  for holding true to themselves   huck finn says how wonderful the river is how  you feel safe and warm and comfortable and free   on the great river but he always  also says and you feel lonely   you are free at the price of being  isolated that's the trade-off twain's brash independence antagonized  many often leaving him a drift and apart   only his family and his beloved olivia remained  ever loyal they were an odd pair in a sense   because clemens was so full of energy and so  irreverent he is intrinsically sort of aggravating   he was the bad boy constantly in  the marriage she would throw up   her hands and say oh youth but she  was devoted utterly devoted to him twain and olivia raised three daughters from  the first twain felt a special kinship with his   youngest susie a gifted child with an intuitive  understanding of her father and his strange ways   she was 13 years old she wrote a biography of her  father beginning with the first sentence we are a   very happy family and and uh it does sound like a  happy family the way she describes it and clemens   was very proud of that biography he often quoted  from it uh said it was a king's message to him twain's fierce individualism and  his boyish craving for attention   made him a difficult man to live with he would  act the buffoon to the embarrassment sometimes   of his wife and daughters but what he was  doing was his western shtick he loved it   he would sing his his minstrel songs or his  jubilee which he thought was a tremendously   high art form and after you know an evening  of drinking he would hold forth if you went   to dinner at the twains you had better be ready  for a 20-minute monologue perhaps with seeing twain's work and family life came together at one  special place quarry farm in olivia's hometown of   elmira new york there away from the social bustle  of hartford he worked in a study secluded in the   woods above their house the study's shape and  dimensions mimicked the riverboat pilot house   and from the window twain looked out on the  chimon river a constant visual reminder of the   mississippi this was the birthplace of many of his  greatest works including tom sawyer and huck finn not even elmira could insulate twain from  the financial upheavals of the late 1880s   or from his own disastrous investments for fully  a decade he poured his faith and his fortune   into an invention he was convinced would  revolutionize publishing the page typesetter mark wayne began putting money in at one point  to the tune of three thousand dollars a month   finally investing two hundred  thousand dollars this is in the   eighteen ninety so two hundred thousand  dollars is a small piece of change it never worked well enough it was the fastest  machine of its kind but it broke down constantly   and was always in repair there were times  in fact when the machine would break down   30 minutes before a group of investors would  come to see it nothing but bad luck for twain finally the unthinkable twain forced to  declare bankruptcy olivia and oil baron   h.h rogers came to the rescue devising a plan  to restore his finances and his reputation rogers and livy agreed the best thing mark twain  could do would be to offer himself publicly as a   man who insisted on paying all of his debts he  would not exploit bankruptcy laws and get out   from under his debts but in fact would honorably  repay all the people to whom he owed money that   was not mark twain's first impulse once he agreed  to the plan twain worked hard to carry it out   in 1894 he embarked on an arduous round the world  lecture tour to raise money and erase his debts   before leaving he was forced to hire  lawyers to fend off creditors intent   on repossessing his luggage he had one  more humiliation for the twain family remember he is 60 years old now rheumatism  living in not good health mark twain embarks   on a true world tour goes to australia  goes to new zealand goes to india   goes to south africa an enormously successful  world tour it is clear by 60 years old that mark   twain was a citizen of the world that mark twain  was probably america's best ambassador abroad after a year on the road twain eagerly  looked forward to returning home   arriving in london he received word that susie  back home in elmira had fallen ill with meningitis   the next day brought the worst news of his life   he was standing thinking about nothing  in particular when the cablegram   was handed to him susie was peacefully released  today and the family never recovered from that when they left for the  around the world tour in 1895   their last view of susie was at the elmira train  station waving goodbye to them 13 months later   livy returned in the very same train  the very same coach to elmira to bury a man's house burns down as the days and  weeks go by he misses first this and that   and the other thing always it isn't essential it  was just one of its kind it cannot be replaced   it was in that house it is irrevocably lost  it will be years before the tale of lost   essentials is complete and not till then can  he truly know the magnitude of the disaster when i was younger i could remember anything   whether it had happened or not  but my faculties are decaying now   and soon i shall be so i cannot remember any but  the things that never happened autobiography 1907. in his final years twain battled despair  by turning his thoughts to happier times   susie's death was but the first tragedy to darken  his days in 1904 he lost his beloved olivia she had the heart free life of a girl and when it  broke up on the air it was as inspiring as music   she remained both girl and woman to the last day  of her life wheresoever she was there was eaten   twain's greatest personal sufferings  came amid his grandest public acclaim   by the dawn of the 20th century he had become the  most popular and influential voice in america more   than teddy roosevelt more than anyone he was  a gregarious man he was recognizable here he   is his white mane his white suit he loved the  attention he loved to talk to people by 1900   mark twain's views on everything in the  world were important to somebody if he   walked down fifth avenue in new york if he rode  the buggy down he would hold forth on every topic   the man from hannibal had become an american  institution he was showered with honors and   tributes none more meaningful to him than an  honorary degree from oxford university in 1907.   even the king and queen of england joined in  paying tribute to the giant of american literature   he was given his oxford gowns  he's meant a great deal to a man   whose formal education ended when he was 11.   and so he would take to wearing these oxford  gowns at some of the more important occasions he   would go to including the wedding of his daughter  clara much to her embarrassment but to his pride beginning in 1906 he hit upon yet  another means of attracting attention   dressing exclusively in his trademark white suits it was very theatrical it was a very  conspicuous plea for attention and it   was seen as such as something that you would  do in order to get people to look at you despite all the acclaim and notoriety twain   was at heart a lonely old man who  would outlive those closest to him   the last five years or so of clemen's life were  were quite grim he was lonely he drank quite a   bit he played billiards late into the night his  secretary describes him trying to enter a room   and making a stab at the doorknob and missing  it and he turns to her and he says practicing his loneliness was relieved substantially by  friendships he formed with nearly a dozen young   girls his angelfish as he called them the  girls who he usually met on boats or tours   were all between age 10 and 16. as twain frankly  said these are the grandchildren i've never had   mark twain was in pain despite being  at this point the most conspicuous   person on the face of the earth and he seems  to have reverted back to a kind of an innocence   and a kind of a pleasant childhood that he  had known both with susie and in earlier times   when the end came for twain in 1910 americans  mourned the man and their own lost innocence   the spirit of boundless optimism embodied  by twain in the 19th century was no more even in his most pessimistic there's something  vital there there's something that is engaging   and maybe that's another reason why we love him he  didn't quit he lived it all he experienced it all   and he took the blows that came his way uh and he  felt them with with all of his being and he kept   on ongoing on living on looking for whatever  vitality there was gotta love that about it   the life i led in hannibal was full of  charm and so is the memory of it yet   i can call back the solemn twilight mystery of the  deep woods the made odors of the wildflowers fresh   dewy and fragrant and the great mississippi the  majestic mississippi rolling its mile wide tide   along shining in the sun i can call it all back  and make it as real as it ever was and as blessed you

Channel: Biography

Views: 197,949

Keywords: history, bio, biography, twain, mark twain, writer, author, huck finn, tom sawyer, literature, books, writing, adventures, Commander-In-Chief, Host: Jack Perkins, dwight eisenhower, president eisenhower, bio channel, biography channel, biography tv, biography documentary channel, the biography channel, biography documentary, biography channel documentary, documentaries, Biography a&e, full episode, biography full episode, Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, Eisenhower, pilot, Mark Twain, Huck

Id: ctK1pZNMAJ0

Length: 44min 7sec (2647 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020