Penrod

For other uses, see Penrod (disambiguation).

Penrod

First edition
Author	Booth Tarkington
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Doubleday, Page
Publication date	1914
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Followed by	Penrod and Sam

Penrod is a collection of comic sketches by Booth Tarkington that was first published in 1914. The book follows the misadventures of Penrod Schofield, an eleven-year-old boy growing up in the pre-World War I Midwestern United States, in a similar vein to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In Penrod, Tarkington established characters who appeared in two further books, Penrod and Sam (1916) and Penrod Jashber (1929). The three books were published together in one volume, Penrod: His Complete Story, in 1931.

A "Revised" edition of Penrod, "revising or omitting certain ethnic descriptions from the original Penrod manuscript that might be considered offensive or inappropriate", was published by Lasso Books (ISBN 1548402109) in 2017 and released in audio-book format in 2018.

Plotlines

• Chapters 1–6: Penrod, against his will, is cast as "The Child Sir Lancelot" in the local production The Pageant of the Table Round.
• Chapters 7–11: After seeing a movie about the evils of drink, Penrod uses the film's plot as an excuse for daydreaming in class.
• Chapters 12–14: It's the Annual Cotillion for Penrod's Dancing Class, and Penrod, who's known as "The Worst Boy in Town", has to find a female partner.
• Chapters 15–17: It's summer vacation. After meeting Herman and Verman, the children of a local black family, Penrod and Sam set up a show which becomes even more popular by the addition of the son of the most socially prominent family in town, which by coincidence shares the same last name as a notorious convicted murderess.
• Chapters 18–20: A dollar, given to him by his sister's boyfriend to leave them alone, proves Penrod's undoing.
• Chapters 21–23: Penrod meets a local tough kid and falls victim to hero-worship of the same. Eventually Herman and Verman try to kill the tough kid with a lawn mower and a garden scythe.
• Chapters 24–25: Penrod hates to be called a "Little Gentleman", and the local barber's urging other children to keep calling him that leads to fighting with tar. After they get cleaned up Penrod's older sister has a bachelor visitor who keeps calling Penrod "Little Gentleman", so when the bachelor asks Penrod to get his hat, Penrod puts tar in the man's hat.
• Chapters 26–27: Penrod, Sam and other local boys' discussing what they want to be when they grow up leads to them all wanting to be ministers and they make the kid who had the idea climb a tree and yell "I'm goin to heaven! I'm goin to hell!" The kid's mother thinks Penrod is a horrible boy and is going to be a criminal but Penrod says he's going to be a minister.
• Chapters 28–31: It's Penrod's twelfth birthday, and the arrival of a pretty new girl from New York turns his party into an occasion no one in town may ever forget.

Adaptations

Penrod, its sequels, and characters occurring therein were adapted in numerous stage and film versions.

• Penrod (1918), play adapted by Edward E. Rose and first staged at the Apollo Theatre in Atlantic City.
• Penrod (1922), silent film, with Wesley Barry as Penrod.
• Penrod and Sam (1923), silent film, based on the first sequel to Penrod, with Ben Alexander as Penrod.
• Penrod and Sam (1931), with Leon Janney as Penrod.
• A series of 9–10-minute comedy shorts from Vitaphone and Warner Brothers featuring Tarkington's characters with Billy Hayes as Penrod and often directed by Alfred J. Goulding,
  • Snakes Alive (September 26, 1931)
  • Batter Up! (October 24, 1931)
  • One Good Deed (December 5, 1931)
  • Detectuvs (January 2, 1932)
  • His Honor, Penrod (January 23, 1932)
  • Hot Dog (February 20, 1932)
  • Penrod's Bull Pen (March 19, 1932).
• Penrod and Sam (1937), with Billy Mauch as Penrod, the first of three Penrod films starring the Mauch twins.
• Penrod and His Twin Brother (1938), with Billy and Bobby Mauch as the leads.
• Penrod's Double Trouble (1938), with Billy and Bobby Mauch as the leads.
• On Moonlight Bay (1951), a musical with Billy Gray as Wesley Winfield (Penrod), Doris Day as his sister Marjorie (the lead), and Gordon MacRae as her love interest.
• By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953), the musical sequel to On Moonlight Bay, with the same cast.

On September 25, 1949, a one-hour adaptation by Robert Gray was broadcast on NBC University Theater, with Johnny McGovern as Penrod and Jeffrey Silver as Sam.

External links

• Penrod at Project Gutenberg
• Penrod public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• "Penrod" on NBC University Theater, September 25, 1949