The following notes on Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were written by Shannon Weidner, PhD Student in the Department of Communication Arts at UW-Madison. A recently restored 4K DCP of Dr. Jekyll will screen at the Cinematheque on Saturday, October 12 at 7 p.m. Location is 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Avenue. Admission is free!
By Shannon Weidner
According to Sir Graham Balfour’s biography of his famed cousin, the Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, upon being woken from a vivid nightmare, exclaimed, “Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.” Stevenson’s dreadful dream of double-lives and death in an eerie corner of Victorian London was first published in 1886 as Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A year had barely passed before the first adaptation of the sought-after “shilling shocker” premiered in Boston in 1887, a four-act stage version written by Thomas Russell Sullivan. Since the late nineteenth-century, the novella has continued to enjoy international popularity through its numerous iterations across radio, theater, television, comics, video game platforms, and film. Of the more than 100 adaptations of the canonical Gothic horror classic, perhaps none are as famous as Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 version, simply titled Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Looking to compete with the runaway success of Universal Pictures’ Dracula (1931), starring Bela Lugosi, Paramount enlisted the talents of young Broadway visionary-turned-film director, Mamoulian, to breathe new life into the story on screen. The thirty-four-year-old Armenian-American director had found success in theater with acclaimed productions of Porgy, Marco Millions, and R.U.R. among others, before being approached with a film directing deal. Having enjoyed a singular degree of creative control over his theatrical work, the young director was no stranger to asserting his cinematic visions, whether or not they aligned with the opinions of the studios. Casting became an issue early in the film’s production. Mamoulian’s first-choice for the titular roles was Racine-native and UW-Madison alumnus Fredric March, despite the objections of both Paramount and March himself. Nevertheless, the headstrong director successfully wore down the studio and wooed the actor, casting the matinee idol March as the mild-mannered scientist and his monstrous alter-ego.
Mamoulian received a budget of $500,000 (approximately $10 million in 2024 dollars), of which he spared little expense in a seven-week shoot. Overseen by Mamoulian and Art Director, Hans Dreier, thirty-five distinct sets were constructed to give the film the dark, foggy, and stifling atmosphere of Victorian London. In addition to the film’s numerous and richly furnished sets, the director is said to have overseen eighty-one actors and five hundred extras, reportedly including a nephew of Robert Louis Stevenson. In addition to the financial costs of such a production, large amounts of time and comfort were forfeited by March in getting into costume as Mr. Hyde. In Mamoulian: Life on Stage and Screen, David Luhrssen notes that “March called Hyde his most ‘unpleasant’ role ever because of the makeup.” A normal day of shooting scenes as Hyde required being in the chair of makeup artist Wally Westmore by 6:00AM and having his eyes forced open with surgical cotton to achieve the “drooping” Neanderthal-inspired expression the director desired.
Of particular interest to many after the film’s release was the way in which Jekyll’s transformation into Hyde was achieved. Mamoulian kept his visual secrets well-hidden, remaining tight-lipped on the subject until well into the 1960s. Finally, in an interview, the director explained the technique behind the famed illusion: Mamoulian and Academy Award-winning cinematographer Karl Struss exposed the actor’s heavily made-up face in a particular sequence of colored lights and filters to get the transformation effect. Though the film showcases highly stylized diagonal wipes, it is all the more noteworthy that neither cuts nor dissolves were used to show Hyde’s beastly transfiguration.
Despite the initial production difficulties, Paramount’s $500,000 gamble seemed to pay off. The film went on to receive three Academy Award nominations for the 1931-1932 film season, including a Best Cinematography nomination for Struss, Best Adapted Screenplay for writers Percy Heath and Samuel Hoffenstein, and Best Actor for Fredric March, who ultimately won the award. In addition to the film’s domestic Oscar accolades, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde found international success, taking home first prize at the inaugural Venice International Film Festival.
While there was great initial praise for Mamoulian’s adaptation, the film’s later exhibition was marred by challenges from the Production Code Administration and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Under the Motion Picture Production Code, or the Hays Code, film studios were obligated to self-censor any content which could be considered morally questionable so that state governments did not censor their work instead. Initially, the film received only a few warnings for dialogue considered “overly brutal” or “too suggestive” between bar singer Ivy Pierson and Hyde, but it was otherwise released without cuts. However, upon re-release in 1935, a much stricter interpretation of the code resulted in harsher cuts to the film, especially to an early scene in which Ivy attempts to seduce Dr. Jekyll in her rented boarding room.
Though the constraints of the Production Code significantly altered the original cut of the film, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) almost succeeded in making Mamoulian’s adaptation vanish entirely. In 1941, the studio sought to add another name to the already long list of Jekyll and Hyde adaptations. Their version was to star Ingrid Bergman as the lascivious Ivy Pierson and Spencer Tracy as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In a battle of the Jekyll and Hyde adaptations, MGM purchased the rights to both the 1931 Mamoulian version and the 1920 silent version starring John Barrymore and promptly removed both from circulation to avoid any potential competition. For many years after, the remarkable adaptation was believed to be lost. Different prints of the censored 1935 version were said to have surfaced, including one screened by the archivist and film historian William K. Everson for the New York-located Theodore Huff Film Society in 1966. Though a fully restored print was not made publicly available until 1992, the “lost” film’s haunting and technically dazzling mythos continued to grow among classic horror aficionados. Nearly ninety-years after the release of the film and over a century since the original publication of Stevenson’s novella, Mamoulian’s atmospheric take on the author’s “fine bogey tale” continues to shock and amaze.