The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (novel)
| The Trail of the Lonesome Pine | |
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 First edition cover |
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| Author(s) | John Fox, Jr. |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Western, Romance |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Publication date | 1908 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 223 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is a 1908 romance novel/western novel written by John Fox, Jr.. The novel became Fox's most successful, and was included among the top ten list of bestselling novels for 1908 and 1909. The novel has been adapted numerous times for both stage and screen, the most notable being a 1916 silent Cecil B. DeMille production and a 1936 adaptation helmed by Henry Hathaway. The 1936 version, starring Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, and Fred MacMurray, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for Louis Alter and Sidney D. Mitchell's "A Melody for the Sky." It was also awarded the Venice Film Festival Award for Best Color Film. Hathaway's version marked the first time the Technicolor process was used for outdoor filmmaking.
The novel was adapted into a successful stage play by Earl Hobson Smith and Clara Lou Kelly. Since 1964, the play has been performed in an outdoor theater in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, the hometown of the novel's author.[1] It was designated the "official outdoor drama" by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1994.
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[edit] Plot summary
Set in the Appalachian Mountains at the turn of the twentieth century, a feud has been boiling for over thirty years between two influential mountain families: the Tollivers and the Falins. The character Devil Judd Tolliver, in the novel was based on the real life of John Wiley, a United States Marshal for the region in and around Wise County, Virginia, and Letcher County, Kentucky. [2] The outside world and industrialization, however, are beginning to enter the area. Coal mining begins to exert its influence on the area, despite the two families' feuds. Entering the area, enterprising "furriner" (foreigner) John Hale captures the attention of the beautiful June Tolliver, and inadvertently becomes entangled in the region's politics.
[edit] Novel vs. film adaptations
The 1916 DeMille adaptation features an additional plot angle of Hale being a revenue agent seeking out "moonshiners." It also omitted much of the subplot concerning the Falin family. Henry Hathaway's 1936 version, which was the first feature film to be filmed outdoors in full (three-strip) Technicolor, remains relatively faithful to the original novel. At least three other major film adaptations exist with varying degrees of faithfulness to Fox's novel.
[edit] Film adaptations
- The Trail of the Lonesome Pine - 1914 version, directed by Frank L. Dear.
- The Trail of the Lonesome Pine - 1916 version, directed by Cecil B. DeMille.
- The Trail of the Lonesome Pine - 1923 version, directed by Charles Maigne.
- The Trail of the Lonesome Pine - 1936 version, directed by Henry Hathaway.
[edit] References
- ^ Trail of the Lonesome Pine Amphitheatre/June Tolliver Playhouse Official Tourism Website of the Commonwealth of Virginia
- ^ http://wright-bates.com/new_page_1.htm
