Writes J. Maarten Troost, in "Headhunters on My Doorstep: A True Treasure Island Ghost Story" #CommissionsEarned.
"He raged at her myopic imbecility. They had a colossal argument, and then, pointing to the ashes of his work, he conceded that, well, perhaps on second thought, she’d been right after all, and he returned to his room, to his laudanum, and wrote a new draft, again in three days. I have a special affection for Dr. Jekyll, of course. I think anyone who has engaged in a course of action that violated their moral code, and did so not with remorse but rather great enthusiasm, will empathize with the tale. That it was written during the height of the Victorian era, with its buoyant belief in the inevitability of progress and rectitude, makes it all the more remarkable. Stevenson, clearly, had a dark side, and perhaps this too explains his wandering ways. The contented stay put. The disaffected always have one foot out the door...."
I read Troost's book a while ago, but I'm rereading that part because I just watched the 1931 movie — part of the Criterion Channel's "Pre-Code Horror" collection — starring Fredric March. Highly recommended. Excerpt:
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36 comments:
Really, yet another video from Hunter Biden's laptop?
What a great clip!
“The cause of science.”
In the clip when he comes back to the mirror at 2:40 it's clear what has happened. The serum has turned him into a Trump voter.
Such great character actor. I didn't really recognize him here, this young; but he looks nothing like Brady, in Inherit the Wind, or Dr.Favor, in Hombre
The 1941 version starring Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman is superior. Transforming into a Homo erectus with dental issues strikes me as needlessly improbable. Tracy did the work by just putting on an expression of overheated malice and mussing his neatly combed hair (plus a bit of soft-focus work by Joseph Ruttenberg). That said, my favorite take on the story was produced by Dan Curtis, the creator of the famous gothic soap opera, "Dark Shadows". That one stars Jack Palance as the good Doctor Henry Jekyll who invents a drug that releases mankind's evil doppelganger and discovers he likes it very, very much. See it, and you'll you will not be so impressed with Frederick March's interpretation. In my estimation, the summit of March's career was as Henry Drummond in "Inherit the Wind". Do you suppose Stanley Kramer pitted one Mister Hyde against another just to see what would happen?
Didn't RTA but, some people do get an invigorating effect from opioids. Being in poor health (per Wikipedia), that might have been just what he needed to just feel good enough to accomplish the task.
It's an alcohol tincture of opium. Very popular in the 19th century.
He didnt die of TB, it was a cerebral hemorrhage, at only 44. Perhaps brought on by that drug combo that made him so prolific a writer.
My wife and I hiked to Stevenson's grave in Vailima, Samoa. It still got regular upkeep, grass mowed, real flowers, kids jumping from the cliff into the stream below the memorial. They loved their tusitala.
Why aren’t we making this stuff now
NOW we use Adderall and Prozac..
Oh! also dosing oneself with Testosterone should generate a euphoria; so there's THAT.
J. Maarten Troost has never heard of a speedball?
My favorite Jekyll is the TV series written by Steven Moffat, starring James Nesbitt. Thanks for making me think of it, it's about time for another rewatch.
Impressive acting and direction.
Since I'm an odd duck, I'll say that I was unexpectedly pleased by the seemingly effortless penmanship ~24 seconds into the video. It probably has been thirty years since I was able to write quickly and without error in the cursive style.
I think I will watch the whole movie.
RLS--the grandfather or godfather of modern recreational wargaming, with descent through Wells and Pratt.
He was also venerated by Nabokov, though not for his playing with miniature soldiers.
There's also the Tom and Jerry version: "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse."
I saw the Spencer Tracy version many years ago and didn't like it, but maybe I'd like it now.
But this is interesting, about the 1931 movie:
"John Barrymore was asked by Paramount to play the lead role in an attempt to recreate his role from the 1920 version of Jekyll and Hyde, but he was already under a new contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Paramount suggested Irving Pichel for the role, but the director felt that while he would deliver a fine performance, he was not handsome enough and suggested March. Paramount then gave the part to March, who was under contract and who bore a physical resemblance to Barrymore.... March, following stage tradition, overplayed both Jekyll and Hyde to emphasize their contrasts, and he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance of the role. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer remade the film 10 years later with Spencer Tracy in the lead, the studio bought the negative and the rights to both the Mamoulian version [the 1931 film] and the earlier 1920 silent version, paying $1,250,000. Every print of the 1931 film that could be located was recalled and destroyed, and for decades, the film was believed lost.The Tracy version was much less well received, and March jokingly sent Tracy a telegram thanking him for the greatest boost to his reputation of his entire career."
That makes me think the March version is better, and damn them for trying to destroy March's film. Imagine deliberately destroying *every copy* of a movie with an Academy Award winning performance.
It does resonate with Stevenson's burning of the manuscript though.
I liked Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor. Buddy Love.
Althouse writes, "That makes me think the March version is better..."
A matter of taste, but the March version, and several other low-budget and comedic takes, is perhaps more sociologically significant. The notion that Hyde is a reversion to a subhuman caveman is founded on the widespread and persistent misconception that evolution is a progression to something better than the forebears, witness the revival of Devo and Obama's confessed "evolved" opinion of homosexual marriage. This and derived ideas like eugenics and social Darwinism underpin antisemitism and modern racism generally.
The Tracy version and the 1968 Jack Palance television special are morally and scientifically superior in these interpretations support the evident truth that evil is, if anything, more a part of modern, evolved humanity than what went before us.
Imagine deliberately destroying *every copy* of a movie with an Academy Award winning performance.
Imagine not being able to imagine this behavior.
"i'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille."
Seriously, bring back laudanum! Or at least Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup.
Damn the war on drugs all yo hell.
Tracy paid him back in spades in Inherit the Wind, though.
Quaestor said...
The 1941 version starring Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman is superior. Transforming into a Homo erectus with dental issues strikes me as needlessly improbable. Tracy did the work by just putting on an expression of overheated malice and mussing his neatly combed hair (plus a bit of soft-focus work by Joseph Ruttenberg).
He did shove wads of cotton under his lips but holy shit that guy could act. Best done and probably best ever will be done.
Stevenson was a wonderful writer, his prose just flows with a deceptive simplicity.
The 1920 film with John Barrymore is more impressive - less makeup and way less racist in my opinion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Jekyll_and_Mr._Hyde_(1920_Paramount_film) start at 26.18 for the transformation scene.
It's a shame that the 1931 "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is not generally known.
March's performance is impressive. He not only makes his Dr. Jekyll a bit of a phony, his acting style as Dr. Jekyll is also more stagy. His Mr. Hyde on the other hand seems authentic, even with all the makeup.
Miriam Hopkins as Ivy is also very good, and her acting is never stagy. But the authenticity of her character is the opposite of March's--when she is with the authentic Mr. Hyde, Ivy is inauthentic just to survive, but when she is with the inauthentic Dr. Jekyll, she is authentic in who she is and what she wants.
I don't really like Tracy in many things especially his "serious" roles. Like where he plays that Portuguese fisherman...cringe.
At the end of the clip of the old movie, there was a photo of Barack Obama. Whether intended or not, that helped me understand Obama's role in our politics.
The best part Of The story is the description Of the first sighting of Hyde by the narrator.
The narrator observes a slightly irregularly dressed "gent" colliding with a woman on the sidewalk/pavement. He is quite rude to her. Even knocks her down, IIRC.
Narrator is seriously shocked by this.
Brings the later "Altered States" to mind.
Typo alert: The Tracy version and the 1968 Jack Palance television special are morally and scientifically superior in [that] these interpretations support the evident truth that evil is, if anything, more a part of modern, evolved humanity than what went before us.
Edward Hyde, and extreme example of the Frederick March concept.
Jack Palance as Edward Hyde. I think you'll see what I mean. BTW, that's Billie Whitelaw beside him. This was a high-quality production co-starring Denholm Elliot, Leo Genn, Torin Thatcher, Oskar Homolka, and Billie Whitelaw as Hyde's kept woman.
There have been numerous stage adaptations of Stevenson's novella. One of the first was created by Richard Mansfield, an Anglo-American actor based in Boston. He acquired the rights to the novella and hired Thomas Russel Sullivan to write a script with a more expansive and romantic plot. (The 1941 MGM film derives largely from Mansfield's adaptation.) After success in America, Manfield took his play to London in time for the Jack the Ripper murders. He perfected a means to transform from Jekyll to Hyde in full view of the audience using special makeup and lighting effects not dissimilar to the transformation effects used in the Frederick March film version. It is reported that women fainted and men jumped from their seats in alarm during this transformation scene, though it is not unlikely that these "horrified" theatergoers were themselves actors paid to enhance the drama onstage from the stalls. (William Castle probably didn't invent the modern spook show.)
Mansfield's performance as Hyde was so notorious that the Metropolitan Police interviewed him in connection with the Whitechapel killings.
I've always thought that the one key indication of Spencer Tracy's greatness, as an actor, was that nobody ever seemed to try to do an impersonation or impression of him. Almost every other lead actor from that period was often subject matter for impressionists - but not Tracy. Or March, for that matter.
"In my estimation, the summit of March's career was as Henry Drummond in 'Inherit the Wind'."
For me, it's his portrayal of the greasily ambitious corporate controller Loren Shaw in EXECUTIVE SUITE, angling desperately to be named head of the Tredway Corporation in the wake of the prior head's abrupt sudden death on the street while in NYC for a business meeting. It sounds like a dry scenario for a movie, but the story manages to reap great suspense and drama out of the fate of the company as the various factions within the company do what they can to prevail.
I have a special affection for Dr. Jekyll, of course. I think anyone who has engaged in a course of action that violated their moral code, and did so not with remorse but rather great enthusiasm, will empathize with the tale. That it was written during the height of the Victorian era, with its buoyant belief in the inevitability of progress and rectitude, makes it all the more remarkable. Stevenson, clearly, had a dark side, and perhaps this too explains his wandering ways.
If Mr. Hyde was wearing shorts the horror would be complete!
1149 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)
B+
Most of your classic horror figures--Dracula, Werewolf, Mr. Hyde--are all about the dangers of unbridled male sexuality. Keep a lid on it, pal. Don't let your monster out.
Catwoman, on the other hand, is all about the dangers of unbridled female sexuality. She's not a horror figure, I guess cause unbridled female sexuality isn't as horrible as unbridled male sexuality. She's just a super-villain. Not even super, actually. Just a villain. With a mask and a whip. Damned if I know how I managed to switch the topic to Catwoman. I like Catwoman.
#3763 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
C-
So this guy, Victor Fleming, has to cast a virgin and a whore. And he's got Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner. So Victor's like, "Okay, Lana, you play the virgin." Oh my God! Have you lost your mind? It's Lana Turner, the bad girl of the century. Are you a man, Victor Fleming? Come on.
So Ingrid Bergman is that romantic, empathetic, crying prostitute, and Lana Turner is that hot virgin fiancé who's got nothing to do. You're killing me, Victor Fleming. And then Spencer Tracy has a dream where both Lana Turner and Ingrid Bergman are mares, and they're hooked up to his carriage. And he's smacking the ladies with his whip, going "Hi-ya!" You think I’m kidding. I swear, it's got to be the first and only G-rated S & M soap opera I've ever seen. And this is 1941 and the government is censoring all the sex. Joseph Breen, what the hell? How'd you miss that one? If you're gonna censor art, you have to get out of the house more. Read up a little.
Anyway, this movie is miscast all to hell. Spencer Tracy plays normal better than anybody. But casting him in your monster movie is moronic. Lana Turner is the virgin? Spencer Tracy is the monster? No wonder Breen gave this the thumbs up; it's a comedy.
As my literature professor always said about drugs and writing (Romantic Poets, Stevenson, Freud, etc.), sure, go ahead and try to use opium or cocaine or both to enhance your writing. But first, learn a couple of foreign languages, read the classics in their original languages, and master the skill of writing.
First.
"As my literature professor always said about drugs and writing . . . ."
OTOH some people don't want to be on the tenure track, and those people are more likely to be remembered than a lit prof.
Just sayin'.
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