By Hank Reineke
On March 31, 1931 Variety
reported that Paramount had secured, for an undisclosed sum, the sound rights
to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the estate
of Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson’s
classic short story of 1886, Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, had
already been filmed by Paramount as a well-regarded 1920 silent featuring John
Barrymore. But it was curious to some industry watchers why Paramount went to
the trouble to secure rights: the novella was, after all, already in U.S.
public domain status.
Though true, it soon became apparent why Paramount’s
legal team wisely chose a formal rights lockdown. One week following the studio’s announcement
– to feature actor Fredric March in the titular double-role – a British
filmmaker, I.E. Chadwick (described by Variety
as “an independent producer inactive three years”), announced he too was planning a sound version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Chadwick’s competing version would not see
the light of day. On June 23, the trades
reported his production had been summarily derailed by Paramount’s buying out all
British rights to the story.
Though Fredric March was touted as Paramount’s new Dr.
Jekyll as early as April 1931, a challenger would soon surface. On May 12, Variety picked up on a syndicated Hollywood gossip report that Paramount
was interested in having John Barrymore reprise the role. Though a Barrymore reconsideration seemed an
unlikely prospect, on May 5, Louela O. Parsons of the Motion Picture Editor
Universal Services teased that Paramount was looking to woo Barrymore from Warner
Bros. for their new “talkie” version of Hyde.
It’s altogether possible that Parsons, an old friend of
Barrymore’s, was sending out a trial balloon on the actor’s behalf. Barrymore’s contract with Warner Bros. had in
fact not been renewed following completion of Michael Curtiz’s The Mad Genius in May of 1931. The high- salaried and hard drinking actor
was now casting about for new work and a new contract. Warner Bros. was already expressing
unhappiness with the dwindling box office appeal of the former matinee
idol. In the final tally, Barrymore’s last
two pictures for Warner’s, The Mad Genius
and its predecessor Svengali (1931),
had combined for revenue losses totaling a reported half-million dollars. Following his ousting, Variety was kinder in their assessment of the actor’s continuing public
appeal, reporting only that, “Sales reports on Barrymore have been mild.”
There had to be a measure of professional disappointment
on Barrymore’s part. While Fredric March’s
star was in the ascendant, his own was dimming. March, an equally handsome and talented actor, had even played a
thinly-disguised character based on Barrymore in both the stage and film
versions of The Royal Family of Broadway.
Barrymore was good-naturedly impressed by March’s gift of impersonation and
mimicry. Following his attendance at a
stage performance of The Royal Family of
Broadway, Barrymore conceded March’s performance had captured, “my
mannerisms, exaggerated but true to life.”
But by May’s end it was clear that Barrymore would not be
returning to the Jekyll/Hyde role. Gossiper
Parson sourly rued that while, “never has any actor had more matinee fans
flocking to his side than our John, […] the flapper age yearns for Fredric
March and Paramount knows it.” In fact,
“flapper” appeal aside, March wasn’t the first pick of Paramount co-founder Adolph
Zukor or of West coast studio boss B.P. Schulberg. Paramount’s front-office had initially considered
either Barrymore or contract actor Irving Pichel considered for the role. But director Rouben Mamoulian insisted that
while the naturally sinister-looking Pichel might have made a suitable Mr.
Hyde, he simply couldn’t convincingly pull off the handsome, pheromone-inducing
romantic that was Dr. Jekyll.
It was a bold if immovable position for Mamoulian to
take. The director had only recently
signed with Paramount, delivering two Pre-Code pictures of modest success: Applause (1929) and City Streets (1931). He had also
boldly demanded – and was granted - a stipulation in his contract that he be
given extended leave-of-absences from Paramount so he could continue working on
Broadway back in his beloved New York City. Stagecraft aside, Mamoulian did possess an eye for filmmaking. Upon the news that Mamoulian was to direct Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the editors of Film Weekly cheered, calling him, “a
wizard with the camera.” They promised
the Mamoulian Dr. Jekyll, “promises
to outdo even the weirdness of the celebrated “Dr. Caligari.”
March was to return to Hollywood from Astoria, Queens,
New York, to begin production of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde directly following work on George Abbott’s Morals and Marriage (later re-titled as My Sin). Production on Jekyll was originally
slated to commence on August 3, though delays seemingly caused a schedule push-back
to September 1935.
In August it was announced one of March’s doomed victims,
Ivy Pierson, was to be played by the fetching blond ingénue Miriam Hopkins,
just off her assignment playing opposite Maurice Chevalier in Ernst Lubitsch’s The Smiling Lieutenant. By late summer
nearly all of the film’s principal and auxiliary players had been cast: Rose
Hobart, Edgar Norton, and Halliwell Hobbes among them. This was to be a production of major
scope. There were reports that Paramount
was planning the hire of some six hundred screen extras, with as many as
eighty-one to be given speaking parts. Both of those estimates were certainly possible: the film features large
crowds attending both prim society dinner parties and déclassé backstreet
London music halls.
To successfully mount such an unwieldy production,
director Mamoulian desperately wanted a trusted assistant, in this case Robert
Lee, to help him out. Though the trades
reported Lee had only recently been given “full director” status at Paramount, the
budding helmsman agreed to put off this promotion – an opportunity which was,
sadly, not offered again. Mamoulian’s
direction was – as always - nothing if not inventive, with Karl Strauss’s acrobatic
camera roaming restlessly through POV tracking shoots, half-screen swipes and
the sorts of extreme close-ups later found in Sergio Leone films.
Though some film historians and fans believe – not
unreasonably – that John S. Robertson’s silent version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the more groundbreaking effort, few
would argue that Mamoulian’s was the finest of the several sound versions that
would follow. Though the various film
adaptations were not always true to Stevenson’s original storyline, they were
far more cinematic in presentation. Following
in the wake of Universal’s horrific caricatures of Dracula and Frankenstein,
Paramount chose to eschew the original tale’s Jekyll’s split-psychologic
dichotomies and instead highlight Mr. Hyde’s physical appearance as a hideous, feral
beast. Mamoulian’s film was also
envelope-pushing in its Pre-Code depictions of implied - and sometimes more-
than-implied – scenes of on-screen debauchery and salacious sexuality.
The iconic make-up conjured by Wally Westmore for March’s
Hyde was certainly top-notch, as great as anything Jack Pierce had conjured for
Universal. Newspaper accounts contemporary
to the film’s production suggested March withstood nearly two-hundred hours in both
Westmore’s make-up chair and on set for the filming of the “eight” mind-blowing
transformation sequences expertly rigged by Mamaoulian and Struss. (If eight
transformations were photographed as reported, only six would make pass the
film’s final cut, the final one a mostly unconvincing time-lapse).
It was later revealed by Strauss that the justifiably
famous transformation sequences near the film’s beginnings had been created by a
novel use of panchromatic film stock and a blend of colored filters. Strauss was certainly the man for this
particular photographic effect. The
cinematographer had had already earned a well-deserved Academy Award for his photographic
work on F.W. Murnau’s German Expressionism masterpiece Sunrise (1927). Upon completion of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s fifty-one shooting days, Mamoulian celebrated
in style, throwing a huge party for the film’s cast and crew members at
Hollywood’s swanky Russian-American club.
Mamoulian’s Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was released during Christmas week of 1931. It was off to a good start, though
Universal’s Frankenstein (released
November 21, 1931) was still holding strong at cinema box-offices. Paramount brass continued to hold their
collective breaths through mid-January to see if Jekyll might have the same staying power. The film proved that it had, ultimately
bringing in earnings that made it one of studio’s highest grossing successes of
1932. One casualty of the runaway
box-office successes of Frankenstein
and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was, sadly
and ironically, Barrymore’s The Mad
Genius, released only a couple of weeks previous to the former. It’s interesting to note that both Frankenstein and The Mad Genius featured a struggling, middle-aged actor who would
receive absolutely no screen credit for the latter and only back-end credits of
the former – Boris Karloff.
Though Paramount would never become the fright-factory
that Universal was in the 1930s and 1940s, the studio would follow Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a few genre
classics and semi-classics of their own: Island of Lost Souls (1932), Murders in the Zoo (1934) and The Monster and the Girl (1941). No subsequent Paramount horror other than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde would earn the
prestige of the Academy however. The
film would earn no fewer than three Oscar nominations at the 1932 ceremony
(Best Actor, Best Cinematography and Best Adaptive Writing). But only March would walk off with the
coveted trophy in the first category.
This Warner Bros. Archive Collection issue of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is presented in
1080p High Definition 16x9 with an aspect 1.19:1 and in DTS-HD Master 2.0 mono
audio. The film looks brilliant; if
there was a single visual on-screen blemish, it escaped my notice. Ported over from the film’s digital DVD issue
of 2004 is a commentary by Author/Film Historian Greg Mank and the Friz
Freleng/Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes cartoon
short Hyde and Hare (1955). New to this Region-free Blu-ray set is a second impressive commentary featuring
screenwriter Steve Haberman and filmmaker Constantine Nasr. A very
special feature included is a Theatre Guild of America radio play of the tale,
first broadcast on November 19, 1950. This
radio show is of particular interest since it finds Fredric March reprising his
role as Jekyll/Hyde nearly twenty-years on, with Barbara Bel Geddes and Hugh
Williams assisting in the principal supporting roles. Essential.
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