# Tom Sawyer

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. 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.'" 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; 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."

## 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 |