The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #13736   Message #1822250
Posted By: M.Ted
29-Aug-06 - 09:04 PM
Thread Name: Tune Req: The Face on the Bar-room Floor
Subject: RE: BS: Edgar A. Guest
We've been through this before--as mentioned in the article posted above(written in the 1930's), Titus wrote and published the poem in an Ohio newspaper in 1872. D'Arcy published a somewhat re-written version in 1887. Service, on first arriving in Alaska, did some dramatic reading of that version and was inspired to write verses of his own in a similar style.

The poem was popular for many years, and ended up being made into a movie--according to one website that I can no longer find, Titus subsequently sued the D'Arcy estate for claiming his work, he produced newspaper clippings of his orginal, and won--the upshot being that D'Arcy's work was deemed to be a revision--

No matter how much stuff I cut, paste, and save, there is always something I miss--