Rip Van Winkle (1903 film) Rip Van Winkle (1903 film) Rip Van Winkle is a 1903 American short black-and-white silent compilation film written and directed by William K.L. Dickson. It is adapted from the play by his friend and investor Joseph Jefferson with Dion Boucicault based on the story of the same name by Washington Irving. The film features Joseph Jefferson as a ne'er-do-well, who wanders off one day into the Kaatskill mountains where he drinks some of a group odd men's mysterious brew and passes out only to find when waking up that 20 years have passed. The film is compiled from a series
Rip Van Winkle afterward, by John Miller, who went out of business immediately thereafter. With help from his friend Walter Scott, Irving was able to convince John Murray to take over British publication of the "Sketch Book". Following the success of Rip Van Winkle in print and on stage, later celebrated editions were illustrated by Arthur Rackham (Heinemann, 1905) and N.C. Wyeth (McKay, 1921). In the tenth chapter of his book "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers", the third-century AD Greek historian Diogenes Laertius relates the story of the legendary sage Epimenides of Knossos, who was said to have been a shepherd on