Rip Van Winkle - Adaptations

Adaptations

The story has been adapted for other media for the last two centuries, from stage plays to an operetta to cartoons to films.

Actor Joseph Jefferson was most associated with the character on the 19th century stage and made a series of short films in 1896 recreating scenes from his stage adaptation, and which are collectively in the U.S. National Film Registry. Jefferson's son, Thomas, followed in his father's footsteps and played the character in a number of early 20th century films.

Composer Ferde Grofe spent twenty years working on a symphonic tone poem based on Rip Van Winkle, eventually reworking the material into his Hudson River Suite. One of the movements is entitled "Rip Van Winkle" and is a musical depiction of the story.

The 1960s Tale Spinners For Children record series included a dramatization of the Rip van Winkle story in which the name of Rip's daughter was changed to "Katrina" and the characters of Nicholas Vedder and Derrick Van Bummel were given more importance.

In the 16th episode of The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, which originally aired on January 16, 1965, Mr. Magoo (voiced by Jim Backus) plays Rip Van Winkle.

There is a classic Twilight Zone episode, entitled "The Rip Van Winkle Caper", in which criminals cryogenically freeze themselves to hide for a robbery, and wake up hundred years later.

The story also inspired an episode of The Flintstones entitled "Rip Van Flintstone", which originally aired on November 5, 1965. In it, Fred falls asleep at the Slate Company Picnic and dreams he has awakened in Bedrock twenty years in the future, now a city with a population of 30,000. Besides a change in his personal appearance (Fred has grown a long beard, his hair has turned white and he needs a cane) he first finds out that Slate Company has gone out of business. Fred has been presumed dead and is now alone and forgotten; Barney has become a rich oil tycoon and Wilma has become a bitter old widow. The only one to remember him is his daughter Pebbles, now a full-grown woman who has married Bamm Bamm. Betty is mentioned in the dream sequence but not seen, implying that she has died. At one point during the episode, he even says, "Maybe I have fallen asleep for twenty years like in that Rip Van Winklestone story." However, Fred suddenly wakes up young again, realizing he was only momentarily dreaming.

A claymation version of the story was produced and directed by Will Vinton in 1978 and was nominated for an Academy Award Nomination for Short Subject Animation. The animated film was named Rip Van Winkle.

In the Faerie Tale Theatre children's television series hosted by Shelley Duvall in the 1980s, Francis Ford Coppola directed the episode "Rip Van Winkle" in which the Hollywood actor Harry Dean Stanton played the title role.

There is also an episode of the HBO show Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales For Every Child. They retold popular fairy tales by setting them in different cultures and settings and featuring voices provided by celebrities. For Rip Van Winkle they did a Feminist retelling of the story, given a 1960s twist, and told from the point of view of Rip's wife Vanna.

The TV show Wishbone showed the dog imagining himself as the title character, complete with the men playing ninepins and his mistaking the George Washington Inn for his old hangout of the King George Inn. It is set against the family meeting an elderly black woman who has not lived in her town since childhood, and her remarking at the change since her return makes her feel akin to Rip van Winkle.

The premise of the animated series Futurama where the main character Philip J. Fry was cryogenically frozen from the year 1999 to 2999, was based on "Rip Van Winkle".