Feathertop - in Other Media

In Other Media

• The story, much embellished, was first dramatized in 1908 as The Scarecrow, a full-length, four-act romantic melodrama by American poet-playwright Percy MacKaye. Most of the characters were renamed, Mother Rigby (renamed Goody Rickby) was given a definite reason to hate the Judge, Polly (now known as Rachel) was given a fianceé who is constantly jealous of the Scarecrow, and the story was given a more poignant and sentimental ending. And although The Devil never actually appears in "Feathertop", he is one of the major characters in The Scarecrow.
• The play was adapted as a silent film in 1923 under the title Puritan Passions.
• The play was also presented on television in 1972, again as 'The Scarecrow', with a cast headed by Gene Wilder and Blythe Danner, and featuring Pete Duel, Norman Lloyd, Will Geer and Nina Foch in support.

MacKaye's play has also been made into an opera, also called The Scarecrow, on two occasions -

• once in 1945, by Normand and Dorothy Lockwood,
• and again more recently, with music by Joseph Turrin and libretto by Bernard Stambler.

Feathertop itself was adapted twice into a silent film:

• First in 1912,
• And in 1916

And twice for television:

• The first television version was presented in 1955 as part of the General Electric Theater, with a cast that included Natalie Wood, Carleton Carpenter, Dick Elliott, and Emory Parnell.
• The second television version was presented in 1961 by ABC-TV as a musical special, starring Hugh O'Brian and Jane Powell, with Cathleen Nesbitt and Hans Conried.

"Feathertop" is mentioned in Bill Willingham's comic book series Fables.

• He makes a brief appearance in the prose story "A Wolf in the Fold" from the Fables trade paperback, where he accompanies Snow White on her trip to Carpathia to convince the Big Bad Wolf to join their community.

• "False Young Man!" in the collection Dark Mondays is a variation on "Feathertop."