The War of the Wolves: Filming Jack London's THE SEA WOLF 1917-1920.

LITERARY characters; DRAMATIC music; MUSIC history; LONDON, Jack, 1876-1916; FILMMAKERS; FILMMAKING; MOTION picture industry; DIRECTORS & directing; CULTURAL industries

This article examines the further involvement of Jack London's estate in the movie industry following the author's death in November 1916. Based on primary source material from the Huntington Library's Jack London Collection, it is a sequel to Robert Birchard's "Jack London and the Movies," Film History 1(1), (Spring 1987):15-37 involving many of the same characters (Hobart Bosworth, Frank Garbutt) and such envisaged film versions as THE SEA WOLF. Beginning with Ince representative Spencer Valentine's overtures to Charmian K. London to consider writing screenplays from her own books (The Log of the Snark, Our Hawaii), the author concentrates on Hobart Bosworth's production of a 20-minute theatrical sketch of THE SEA WOLF, where Bosworth starred in the role he had made his own in 1913. This led to Hollywood's renewed interest in another film version starring either Bosworth or William S. Hart, neither of whom appeared in the eventual film. In addition to tracing the various maneuvers of the Hollywood system and the effect on the major characters of the new SEA WOLF film, the article examines the different ways studios attempted to exploit London's name and his novel by producing alternative versions to the 1913 film such as SHARK MONROE (FP-L, Artcraft, 1918) and THE BRUTE MASTER (Hodkinson, Pathé, 1920). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]