Thomas Edison's FRANKENSTEIN (1910)

Created in 1910, the Thomas Edison-produced FRANKENSTEIN is an almost impossible movie to evaluate. It's objectively bad by every definition of the word and rests on a disjointed narrative that suggests director J. Searle Dawley had only recently discovered the concept of storytelling. Running at a brisk 16 minutes in length, the movie still manages to waste the audience's time by including moments so unnecessary that even Peter Jackson would have left them on the cutting room floor (and that guy wastes NOTHING.)

Yet, it's place in history as the earliest adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel guarantees it will always have an audience, but first isn't always best. It's clear the idea of cinematic storytelling was still considered a novelty in 1910, and as artistically relevant in the eyes of some as the stereoscope. It might have been a fun ways to spend a few minutes, but nobody thought of it as art.

The movie opens with the inter-title card FRANKENSTEIN LEAVES FOR COLLEGE, and is followed just a few seconds later with TWO YEARS LATER FRANKENSTEIN HAS DISCOVERED THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. Not only does this revise the definition of "economical storytelling," it also seems to misunderstand what the word "discovered" means. Any asshole can "discover" a mystery ... it's not much of an accomplishment. Tripping over a dead body while jogging in Central Park doesn't make you Sherlock Holmes. It makes you an extra in a cold opening for LAW & ORDER.

Even though silent movies are, by necessity, about "show don't tell," the movie goes to great lengths to tell us everything instead of showing. The title cards tell us Frankenstein's mind is "evil" but we're expected to take its word for it because the doctor doesn't do or say much of anything. I was thrown for a loop by how much of the story was cut for expediency. Yes, the medium of filmmaking was in its fetal stages in 1910, but goddamn, Edison ... invent some sense of cinematic scale, already.

What the movie gets right, and the primary reason why people still seek it out, is the presentation of the "monster." Here, the creature is a bizarre, androgynous freak, a being who was - all jokes aside - shortchanged in the genetic department by its "parent." It's a far cry from the monstrous superman of the Universal Pictures series. With a nice set of clothes and some clever accessorizing, Boris Karloff's monster could probably pass for human in modern society. The same certainly couldn't be said for Edison's monster, who's a misshapen hodgepodge of lifeforms. He's a sad, pathetic wretch, and the performance by Charles Ogle (as well as the inventive, if overlong, "creation sequence") are worth the time you'll put into watching the movie.

Frankensteinia, the flagship blog for all things FRANKENSTEIN, has an interesting look at the "roving" props for this film, which can be seen on screen in at least one other Edison production.

Jack Pierce, Wally Westmore mentioned in 1931 column

(Note: The following column is reprinted as it was first published, complete with typographical errors.)

Hollywood Sights and Sounds
The Carroll Daily Herald, Oct. 20, 1931

Sometimes it just happens that screen stories are timely, even though writers comb the newspapers for plot suggestions.

"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring Frederic March, as in production weeks before the so-called "Ape Man" broke into Hollywood news with a series of attacks on women.

But the marauder's cruelty parallels the methods of Robert Louis Stevenson's fiction character, the bestial Mr. Hyde, who was the high-minded Dr. Jekyll's lower nature.

Another screen story long in preparation, "from an original story by Edgar Allan Poe," as the trade would say, has for its murdering villain a huge ape. It's called, of course, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

Another Thriller
Unrelated tr. apes and "apemen," but similarly of the movie cycle of horror stories following up on the success of "Dracula" is "Frankenstein," which features a monster created by a scientist from fragments of dead humans and given by mistake the brain of a criminal.

All these horror tales are giving studio make-up men opportunity to exercise their genius along macabre lines. Wally Westmore makes Frederic March such a grotesque Mr. Hyde that March, when in that character, shuns the studio lunchroom.

And Jack Pierce who spends three hours each morning tranforming Boris Karloff into the "Frankenstein'" monster, did weeks of research in  medical libraries to perfect his conception of an "undead"' pieced-together being.

When made-up Karloff goes to the set under a sheet, and it is just as well. I witnessed the make-up process and can report that I'd rather not meet this "monster" in a dark deserted srreet or anywhere except the screen.

The ape of Rue Morgue will be comparatively simple, but "The Invisible Man" (not a horror story) will present a real problem. This character is supposed to have ability to render himself invisible, but I am told, cannot restore himself to normalcy, although his clothes.

Terror in Grayscale: FRANKENSTEIN print ads (1931)

Newspaper advertising design used to be an artform. Today, desktop publishing allows almost anyone to create stunning visual designs without ever getting their hands dirty, but once upon a time it was a physical medium that required artists to understand photography, printing press limitations, and graphic design. All of that is still true today, to a certain extent, but most of these issues can be digitally automated. Once your software is loaded with the proper press settings, most designers never have to give the issue another thought.

When FRANKENSTEIN was released in 1931, newspapers were presented with samples of artwork that could be used to promote their films. The advertising room could chop these elements into individual components and use them to build their own display ads to fit any dimension, using glue or wax to fix them to the page templates. Because of this process, a single movie could have an unlimited variety of ads running in different newspapers across the country. Movie studios would slowly demand more control over how their films were marketed, but early graphic designers left us a treasure trove of visual inspiration. I've attached several examples to this post.

FRANKENSTEIN is the "shocker of the season," 1931

 

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON
By Molli Merrick
The Montana Standard, Nov. 10, 1931

"FRANKENSTEIN" as made by Universal is proving the shocker of the season. A preview audience made up of stoic press members were a bit pale about the gills when the film reached its conclusion. When it was previewed in Santa Barbara one hears strange tales of fainting women, irate men and sobbing children.

None of these things deterred Carl.Laemmle Jr. from showing Frankenstein exactly us was. It is the studio's contention that 'Dracula"—famous for its horrific content, went over big. "Dracula" pales into insignificance in view of the ghoulish qualities of this Mary Shelley story.

Colin Clive is one of the handsomest of the English acting contingent but the film contains no sex-appeal whatsoever. Its plain blood-curdling grand-guignol material nnd you are warned about it before it unfolds, Boris Karloff as the monster does a magnificent piece of acting' and his make-up surpasses even the expert work of this kind by Lon Chaney. But ye sadists will have a very, very pleasant evening of it, what with the digging up of dead bodies, torturing of the living, the hangings, drowning of an unsuspecting 4-year-old in a peculiarly romantic manner, and final burning and crushing of the monster himself in a finale that is just "booful" if you're given to that kind of entertainment.

When there was a brief torture scene in "Moby Dick" I remember quite a loud howl of protest. And when Lon Chaney made "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" public spirit ran high over the flogging scene. But times, apparently, have changed and we may devote five or seven reels to such gay themes without protest.

Paramount is planning to film the  "Portrait of a Man With Red Hair'" by Hugh Walpole—a tale which has a sinister torture chamber as one very important angle of the plot. In fact, that room and what goes on in it, explains the man with red hair, so it would be difficult to eliminate it from the picture.

Perhaps gang-war pictures accustomed us to bloodshed and cruelty. If so, the new cycle of Hollywood horrors will carry on the good work. Since producers arc making them on the strength of previous box-office records of like things, there's no argument as to the public's acceptance of them.