All The King's Men - Film and Stage Adaptations

Film and Stage Adaptations

Besides the early verse play version Proud Flesh, Robert Penn Warren has written several stage adaptations of All the King's Men, one of them in close collaboration with famous German theatre director Erwin Piscator in 1947. The story also was adapted for radio by NBC University Theater, broadcast in January 1949, before the release of the first film adaptation.

All the King's Men, a movie made based on Warren's novel, was released 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 The Kraft Theatre broadcast a television version of the story in May 1958. This adaptation was directed by Sidney Lumet and starred Neville Brand as Willie Stark.

Soviet TV adaptation named Vsya Korolevskaya Rat' (All the King's Troops) was produced in 1971 by Byelorussian TV (see ru:Вся королевская рать (фильм, 1971)). Starring Georgiy Zhzhonov (Willy Stark), Mikhail Kozakov (Jack Burden), Alla Demidova (Anne), Oleg Yefremov (Adam), Rostislav Platt (Irwin), Lev Durov (Sugar Boy).

Another film version was produced in 2006. Writer/director Steven Zaillian has said it was his goal to more faithfully follow Warren's version of the story than the original film did.

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. This adaptation has been staged at Trinity and other theater companies in the years since.