Tom Sawyer

Tom Sawyer
Tom Sawyer
	1876 illustration by True Williams
First appearance	The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Last appearance	Tom Sawyer, Detective
Created by	Mark Twain
In-universe information
Family	Aunt Polly (aunt) ; Sally Phelps (aunt) ; Mary (cousin) ; Sid (younger half-brother)

Thomas "Tom" Sawyer (/ˈsɔːjər/) is the title character of the Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He appears in three other novels by Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896).

Sawyer also appears in at least three unfinished Twain works, Huck and Tom Among the Indians, Schoolhouse Hill, and Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy. While all three uncompleted works were posthumously published, only Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy has a complete plot, as Twain abandoned the other two works after finishing only a few chapters. It is set in the 1840s in the Mississippi.

Inspiration

The fictional character's name may have been derived from a jolly and flamboyant chief named Tom Sawyer, with whom Twain was acquainted in San Francisco, California, while Twain (which was the assumed pen-name of the author born Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was employed as a reporter at The San Francisco Call.^[1]^[2] Twain used to listen to Sawyer tell stories of his youth: "Sam, he would listen to these pranks of mine with great interest and he'd occasionally take 'em down in his notebook. One day he says to me: 'I am going to put you between the covers of a book some of these days, Tom.' 'Go ahead, Sam,' I said, 'but don't disgrace my name.'"^[2] Twain himself said the character sprang from three people, later identified as: John B. Briggs (who died in 1907), William Bowen (who died in 1893) and Twain;^[2] however Twain later changed his story saying Sawyer was fully formed solely from his imagination, but as Robert Graysmith says, "The great appropriator liked to pretend his characters sprang fully grown from his fertile mind."^[2]

Portrayals

Actors who have portrayed Tom Sawyer in films and TV:


Name	Date	Notes
Jack Pickford	1917	Film, Tom Sawyer
Gordon Griffith	1920	Film, Huckleberry Finn
Jackie Coogan	1930, 1931	Films, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn
Tommy Kelly	1938	Film, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Billy Cook	1938	Film, Tom Sawyer, Detective
Michael Miller	1944	Film, The Adventures of Mark Twain
Robert Hyatt	1955	Film, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
John Sharpe	1956	TV musical, Tom Sawyer
Kevin Schultz	1968	TV series, The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Roland Demongeot	1968	Romanian/French/German TV series Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer/Tom Sawyers und Huckleberry Finns Abenteuer
Johnny Whitaker	1973	Film, Tom Sawyer
Don Most	1975	Film, Huckleberry Finn
Sam Snyders	1979	TV series, Huckleberry Finn and His Friends
Patrick Creadon	1981	TV film, Rascals and Robbers: The Secret Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Fyodor Stukov	1981	Soviet three-episode TV miniseries, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Chris Ritchie	1985	Film, The Adventures of Mark Twain
Eugene Oakes	1986	TV series, American Playhouse Series 5: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn parts I, II, III and IV
Raphael Sbarge	1990	TV film, Back to Hannibal: The Return of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Jonathan Taylor Thomas	1995	Film, Tom and Huck
Rhett Akins	2000	Voice, animated musical film, Tom Sawyer
Grey Griffin	2003	Voice, animated TV series, The Fairly OddParents
Shane West	2003	Film, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Louis Hofmann	2011, 2012	Film, Tom Sawyer (de), Die Abenteuer des Huck Finn (de)
Joel Courtney	2014	Film, Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn
Adam Nee	2015	Film, Band of Robbers
Jeremy Shada	2015	3DS game Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.
Reilly Jacob	2016	TV series Once Upon a Time