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
Washington Irving the offer down, opting to stay in England to pursue a writing career. In the spring of 1819, Irving sent to his brother Ebenezer in New York a set of short prose pieces that he asked be published as "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." The first installment, containing "Rip Van Winkle", was an enormous success, and the rest of the work would be equally successful; it was issued in 1819–1820 in seven installments in New York, and in two volumes in London ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" would appear in the sixth issue of the New York edition,