Written decades later, in 1950, David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd has also been compared to Lewis's writings. Critical reception The social critic and satirist H. L. Mencken, an ardent supporter of Sinclair Lewis, called himself “an old professor of Babbittry” and said that Babbitt was a stunning work of literary realism about American society. To Mencken, George F. Babbitt was an archetype of the American city dwellers who touted the virtues of Republicanism, Presbyterianism, and absolute conformity because "it is not what he [Babbitt] feels and aspires that moves him primarily; it is what the folks about him will think of him. His politics is communal politics, mob politics, herd politics; his religion is a public rite wholly without subjective significance." Mencken said that Babbitt was the literary embodiment of everything wrong with American society. In the cultural climate of the early 20th century, like-minded critics and Mencken's followers were known as "Babbitt-baiters". Despite Mencken's praise of Babbitt as unflinching social satire, other critics found exaggeration in Lewis's depiction of the American businessman. In the book review “From Maupassant to Mencken” (1922), Edmund Wilson compared Lewis's style in Babbitt to the more “graceful” writing styles of satirists such as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain and said that, as a prose stylist, Lewis's literary “gift is almost entirely for making people nasty” and the characters unbelievable. Concurring with Wilson that Lewis was no Twain, another critic dismissed Babbitt as “a monstrous, bawling, unconscionable satire” and said “Mr. Lewis is the most phenomenally skillful exaggerator in literature today.” Nonetheless, in its first year of publication, 140,997 copies of the novel were sold in the U.S. In the mid-1920s, Babbitt-baiting became an irritant to American businessmen, Rotarians, and the like, who began defending the Babbitts of the U.S. by way of radio and magazine journalism. They emphasized the virtues of community organizations and the positive contributions that industrial cities have made to American society. AdaptationsBabbitt has been converted into films twice, a feat Turner Classic Movies describes as "impressive for a novel that barely has a plot." The first adaptation was a silent film released in 1924 and starring Willard Louis as George F. Babbitt. According to Warner Bros. records it cost $123,000 and made $278,000 domestic and $28,000 foreign, being a total of $306,000. The second was a 1934 talkie starring Guy Kibbee. That version, while remaining somewhat true to Lewis's novel,