Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
About Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dr. Henry Jekyll, played by King Baggot, skips the opera with his fiancée Alice to stay with charity patients. That night he swallows a drug and becomes a hunched Mr. Hyde, who terrorizes a tavern and injures a crippled child. He writes a will leaving everything to Hyde, then changes without the drug and attacks Alice's father. Lawyer Utterson and Dr. Lanyon watch Hyde drink the antidote and turn back into Jekyll. When the antidote runs out, Hyde dies and Alice weeps over Jekyll.
Cast & crew
More about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Herbert Brenon wrote and directed it for Carl Laemmle's IMP company. The Universal Film Manufacturing Company distributed the two-reel picture. It was re-released in the United States in August 1927. Brenon also appears, uncredited.
Themes
Background
Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella had already been a stage warhorse. This was IMP's two-reel version, sold through Universal.
Making
Brenon stages the transformation as a dissolve while Baggot holds still in the new makeup.
Reviews
George Blaisdell, in Moving Picture World, wrote that the dissolving process made the change "peculiarly effective" and that "you see the change of the man of good to the man of evil right before your eyes."
Look
The Jekyll-to-Hyde change is a dissolve, which Moving Picture World singled out.
Technique
A dissolve carries Baggot from Jekyll to Hyde in one shot.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A print is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- Jane Gail plays Alice. Howard Crampton plays Dr. Lanyon. William Sorelle plays Utterson. Matt B. Snyder plays Alice's father.
- Baggot used greasepaint and a tangle of crepe hair for Hyde.
- The change is done with a camera dissolve, not a cutaway.
- Universal re-released it in the United States in August 1927.
Scenes
- Baggot convulses and the dissolve turns him into Hyde.
- Hyde drinks the antidote in front of Lanyon and becomes Jekyll.
Influenced by
- Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
Also available
- Internet Archive (DrJekyllAndMrHyde1913)
