At age 17, London tired of life in San Fransisco and decided to join the crew of a ship on its way to Japan. When he got back a few months later, everyone was in a scare over the Panic of 1893. Gold was scarce, or something. (How come that happened so often in old-time America?) Unemployment was high, but London elbowed his way into jobs at a jute mill and a power plant. Since these jobs weren't to his liking and he didn't know what jute was, London quit working and joined Kelly's industrial army. His career as a bum earned him a free thirty-day stay in the Erie County Penitentiary. He later wrote of this tenure, "I hate prison."

Jack London's spirit inhabited Donald Sutherland during the filming of this movie.

A few years later, he went to Oakland High School to get his GED. All the kids looked up to him, since he was the oldest student at 19. He had his pick of the ladies and steadily dated the head cheerleader. Finally, he graduated and crammed his way into the University of California as a freshman. Unfortunately, his hobo ways caught up with him, because he didn't have any money and had to drop out. What little cash he did have was spent on alcohol "with which to relax the brotherhood of students and provide for their common entertainment."

Sometime, London quit a job at a cannery and became an oyster pirate aboard his sloop Razzle-Dazzle, which he bought from the legendary French Frank. Later, he claimed to have wooed Frank's mistress, but this was probably an exercise in modesty: my guess is she couldn't help but be drawn to his irresistable charms. Basically, he raided commercial oyster farms and sold his "catch" to the public for significantly less than the oyster establishment. He became somewhat of a local hero, all the while maintaining a feared image among the townsfolk.

Color pictures are definitely better than black-and-white ones.

Later on, he participated in the Klondike gold rush and wrote some books and short stories which were only mildly successful.