Moby Dick (1956 film) actor Walter Huston as Ahab, but he had died in 1950. Peck went on to play the role of Father Mapple in the 1998 television miniseries adaptation of Melville's novel, with Patrick Stewart as Ahab. Welles later used the salary from his cameo to fund his own stage production of "Moby Dick", in which Rod Steiger played Captain Ahab. Gregory Peck, comparing his performances in this film and the 1998 "Moby Dick" miniseries, said he liked the miniseries better because it was more faithful to the novel. During a meeting to discuss the screenplay, Ray Bradbury informed John Huston that
Moby-Dick and his works, or at least those that could still be fairly easily obtained or remembered. Other works, especially the poetry, went largely forgotten. In 1917, American author Carl Van Doren became the first of this period to proselytize about Melville's value. His 1921 study, "The American Novel", called "Moby-Dick" a pinnacle of American Romanticism. In his 1923 idiosyncratic but influential "Studies in Classic American Literature", novelist, poet, and short story writer D. H. Lawrence celebrated the originality and value of American authors, among them Melville. Perhaps surprisingly, Lawrence saw "Moby-Dick" as a work of the first order despite his