There have been two adaptations of the Studs Lonigan saga, one in 1960 for the screen and one in 1978 as an NBC miniseries. The film version is notable only for the fact that the money from the film rights saved Farrell from bankruptcy in the early 1960s. The cast was weak, and the story almost mercilessly truncated, to the point that the sense of realism is lost, and the film romanticizes Studs in a way that Farrell refused to do.

The television miniseries, some six hours long, could more closely recreate the books, and a much stronger cast was able to create characters that were real, not romanticized caricatures. Even so, the miniseries of necessity had to select which portion of Studs's life to focus on, for to produce a literal rendering of the novels would require more broadcasting time than any network would be willing to devote. As...