All the King's Men is a novel by
Robert Penn Warren, published in
1946. The novel won the
Pulitzer Prize in 1947 and is acknowledged to be one of the best American political novels of all time. It portrays the life of an ambitious, unscrupulous and populist politician Willie Stark as told by Jack Burden, who works for Willie. There is a striking similarity between Stark and the real-life politico
Huey P. Long. The novel is important not only for its fascinating depiction of the rise and corruption of Stark, however, but also for the portrayal of the cynical Burden.
The title comes from the English nursery rhyme, "Humpty Dumpty".
All the King's Men is also a film based on Warren's novel. Released in 1949, the film won Oscars that year for
It was also nominated for
In 2001 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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