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What became of it

If I Were King

Justin H. McCarthy · first published 1901

A play about François Villon that became an operetta, a Barrymore vehicle and a Preston Sturges script.

4 versions · 1923–1938 · screen, stage

Rudolf Friml turned it into The Vagabond King, one of the most successful operettas of the 1920s; John Barrymore played Villon in The Beloved Rogue in 1927; and in 1938 Preston Sturges wrote the screenplay for a version with Ronald Colman.

The premise is irresistible and mostly invented: the greatest poet of medieval France, a thief and a brawler, given a week as the king’s minister to see what he would do with power.

The Night Café
The Night Café · Vincent van Gogh · 1888 — a plate from our edition

On screen

3

Film and television, earliest first.

  • 1923 If I Were King J. Gordon Edwards
  • 1927 The Beloved Rogue Alan Crosland
  • 1938 If I Were King Frank Lloyd

On stage

1

Opera, musical theatre and ballet made from it.

  • — The Vagabond King Rudolf Friml

Versions are listed where they are documented. A century of stage productions and most broadcasts were never catalogued at all, so this is what can be shown rather than everything that was ever made.