Produced by Warner Bros., the film was nominated for three Academy Awards, including that for Best Music for Max Steiner's score.

[3] A group of people are watching Halley's Comet overhead when Judge Clemens is called away for the birth of his son Samuel.

The teenage Sam goes to work for his brother Orion, publisher of the Hannibal Journal newspaper, but after three unhappy years, runs away to become a riverboat pilot.

After a rough start, he thrives under the tutelage of Captain Horace Bixby and becomes a highly skilled pilot on the Mississippi.

The "Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is published in newspapers and is widely enjoyed as a welcome change from the grim war news.

Rogers tells him he can avoid bankruptcy, but only if he does not honor his overly generous contract to publish Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs.

Dismayed to find Grant poverty-stricken and dying, Sam decides that the country owes the man so much that going bankrupt is a small price to pay.

Though Rogers persuades the creditors to accept half payment, Sam is determined to pay in full his staggering debt of $250,000.

"[4] He continued by saying "Mr. March's performance of Twain is agreeable," but called Alexis Smith's portrayal "colorless and conventional".

[4] Variety ran a positive review, calling it "an educational yet highly entertaining biography of the immortal American ...