Fact1: group of people are watching Halley 's Comet overhead, Fact2: Clemens is called for birth of son, Fact3: Sam gives up job to seek fortune with Steve prospecting for gold or silver with little success in west, Fact4: Jumping Frog of Calaveras County enjoyed as welcome change from grim war news, Fact5: Charles and Olivia are in audience of very first lecture
Output: A group of people are watching Halleys Comet overhead when Judge Clemens is called away for the birth of his son, Samuel Clemens. The film proceeds to mix in elements of many of Clemens bestknown stories as if they actually occurred. Thus, as he grows up, Sam plays with his friends Huck, Tom, and the slave boy Jim on a raft on the Mississippi, providing a fictitious reallife basis for the novels Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The teenage Sam goes to work for his brother Orion, publisher of the Hannibal Journal newspaper, at his nowwidowed mothers urging, but after three unhappy years, runs away to become a river boat pilot. After a rough start, he thrives under the tutelage of Captain Horace Bixby and becomes a highly skilled pilot on the Mississippi River. One day, he spots a pickpocket robbing Charles Langdon, a passenger aboard his ship. Among the possessions Sam forces the thief to return is a small portrait of Charless sister Olivia. After seeing it, Sam falls deeply in love. As they become friends, Sam tells Charles that he is going to marry Olivia. To that end, he gives up his job to seek his fortune with his friend Steve, prospecting for gold or silver with little success in the west. When he finally gives up, he becomes a newspaper reporter in Nevada. Steve persuades him to enter a jumping frog contest against Bret Harte. The plot is taken from Twains real first major story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Steve cheats by secretly feeding lead buckshot to Hartes champion frog. Their frog wins easily as a result. However, Sam later sheepishly admits to Steve that he bet all their money on the champ. Sam then writes the story and sends it off, under the pen name Mark Twain, to try to get it published. When the Civil War begins, Sam leaves Nevada, narrowly missing J. B. Pond, who has come all the way from the east to find the writer of the frog story. In real life, Clemens went to Nevada after the war started, partly to get away from the conflict. The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is published in the newspapers and is widely read and greatly enjoyed as a welcome change from the grim war news. When the Civil War ends, Pond finally finds Sam. He signs him up for a lecture tour. Charles and Olivia Livy Langdon are in the audience of his very first lecture, where his humor and wit make him an immediate success. He marries his beloved Livy, despite her fathers initial opposition, and becomes a famous writer and lecturer. However, Sam wants to become more than just a humorist. He invests in a typesetting machine and establishes a publishing company. Both ventures require more and more capital, so Sam has to keep writing furiously for years. Finally fed up with his constant money troubles, he turns to businessman Henry Huttleston Rogers to extricate him from his financial mess. Rogers tells him he can avoid bankruptcy, but only if he does not honor his overlygenerous contract to publish Ulysses S. Grants memoirs. Sam agrees to go see the former president. Dismayed to find Grant povertystricken and dying, he decides that the country owes the great man such a debt of gratitude that going bankrupt is a small price to pay. In reality, the company did publish Grants memoirs—about eight years before Clemens met Rogers—and the venture was a huge success. The business did, in fact, eventually go bankrupt, but not because of Grant. Though Rogers gets the creditors to accept half payment, Sam is determined to pay in full his staggering debt of 250,000. To do so, he embarks on a strenuous worldwide lecture tour, leaving behind Livy to care for their daughters. At last, he manages to pay everything off and is reunited with his nowailing wife in Florence. She is very proud when she receives word just before she dies that her husband is to receive an honorary doctorate from Oxford University, which she considers the greatest honor a writer can attain. Sam himself dies when Halleys Comet returns in 1910. Afterward, his spirit is called away by Tom and Huck to join them in the afterlife.