Roman later claimed he supported Harte from the beginning, but that Harte was willing to make the editorial changes without question until Roman's wife read the tale and approved of it. Harte called those claims "lies" in 1879. Fellow "Overland" contributor Ina Coolbrith recalled there was a confrontation between the two at the time and that Harte threatened to resign. "The Luck of Roaring Camp" was soon included as the centerpiece of Harte's collection "The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches". The compilation was published by James Thomas Fields of Fields, Osgood, & Co. at about the same time that Harte's poem "The Heathen Chinee" was published. Those simultaneous publications caused Harte's popularity to skyrocket nearly overnight and Fields offered Harte a $10,000 exclusive contract to contribute to "The Atlantic Monthly". After the collection's publication April 1870, Fields rushed a compilation of Harte's poetry for the Christmas market to capitalize on the success of "The Heathen Chinee". Local presses in California were unimpressed by "The Luck of Roaring Camp". The "Alta California", for example, described simply as "a pleasant little sketch". Publications closer to the east coast, however, soon raised the story's popularity. The "Springfield Republican" called it "a genuine California story" that was "so true to nature and so deep-reaching in its humor, that it will move the hearts of men everywhere". Mark Twain wrote in the "Buffalo Express" that it was "the best prose magazine article that has seen the light for many months on either side of the ocean". It was only after these endorsements that "The Luck of Roaring Camp" found a strong audience in California. "Since Boston endorsed the story, San Francisco was properly proud of it", Harte wrote. Years after its publication, Harte said that conservative readers thought the story lacked morality: "Christians were cautioned against pollution by its contract", he wrote, and "business men were gravely urged to condemn and frown upon this picture of California society that was not conducive to Eastern immigrants." There have been several short film adaptations of "The Luck of Roaring Camp", and a small number of feature films. The first film adaptation was "The Luck of Roaring Camp" (1910), which was a short film produced by Thomas Edison Motion Picture Company. The film was adapted and directed by character actor Frank McGlynn, Sr.; his son Thomas played the role of Tommy Luck.