CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 6/13/08

A Changed Man:
Seven Variations on Jekyll & Hyde

By peter clines

With exactly 100 years since his first silver-screen appearance, CS Weekly takes a look at several versions of a classic literary and cinematic archetype, one of which is about to smash its way into theaters again.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde was published in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson. As the story goes, the author scribbled out the novella over three days to help cover his late rent, and it so horrified his wife that he destroyed the manuscript (only to rewrite it later from memory). His non-linear tale of a meek and proper chemist who creates a potion to unleash his dark side—emotionally and physically—became an instant classic and was one of the first pieces of dramatic fiction ever committed to film way back in 1908.

Since then, the archetype of Jekyll and Hyde has become a screenwriting mainstay, and over a hundred variations of the tale have appeared in films, television, and even cartoons. Because of this, Stevenson's tale can be seen as a template for the many ways a story can be adapted or interpreted, usually in forms that get the label "high concept." As one of the most well-known interpretations of this dual role, The Incredible Hulk, prepares to change things at the box office, CS Weekly looks back at a century of cinema to show the many different takes writers can have on the same basic idea.

The Classic

All interpretations start with the original. As it would happen, though, the "classic" version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde is somewhat different from the novella. In these very early days, films owed much more to stage traditions, and an 1887 stage version of the story by Thomas Russell Sullivan had been running for over 20 years. In this popularly known interpretation of Stevenson's work, the story was given a more straightforward telling, a love interest was introduced, and familial relationships were created between many of the modified characters. These alterations became the basis for the majority of the film versions that followed.

More than half a dozen silent film versions of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde were created, including the famous 1920 performance by John Barrymore. The first "talkie" in 1931 is the film most people tend to think of as "the classic." Dr. Jekyll (Fredrick March, who won an Oscar for his performance) is engaged to Muriel (Rose Hobart), but still can't resist the consequence-free temptations of booze, loose women, and murder that Hyde lets him enjoy. This version, written by Samuel Hoffenstein (Phantom of the Opera) and Percy Heath is also noteworthy because it's the only film that uses the original Scottish pronunciation of "Jee-kull," later replaced by the more familiar "Jeck-ill."

Formula Notes: While the screenwriters had access to the original novella, the decision was to go with the version of the story their general audience knew. Hofferstein and Heath realized that the "true" story was not necessarily the "right" one to tell. As such, their screenplay is not a point-for-point adaptation of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, but retains many of the themes and individual plot points.

The Gender Swap

Almost since the film industry began, a standard practice for creating new stories is to take an old one and reverse the gender roles. Bridesmaids become best men, fearless vampire hunters become nubile vampire slayers, and G.I. Joe becomes G.I. Jane. However, gender politics and ratings codes have always played a role in what would be "appropriate" for a wild and uninhibited woman on screen. The first attempt at applying this take to Stevenson's tale was the loosely adapted 1915 silent film Miss Jekyll and the Madame Hyde by Charles L. Gaskill, where the fiendish and evil Madame Hyde (Helen Gardner) would…smoke.

The BBC touched on the idea a bit more extensively with a children's show called Julia Jekyll and Harriet Hyde, created by Jeremy Swann and co-written by Swann and Jim Eldridge. Julia (Olivia Hallinan) is a brilliant, pigtailed little girl at Rocket Academy until jealous students sabotage her chemistry experiment with a dose of hair tonic. Now, when Julia becomes angry or outraged, a startling…no wait, that's coming up. At pretty much random times, Julia will turn into the huge, hirsute, and uncontrollable Harriet Hyde (played by full-grown adult John Asquith). There have also been a fair number of, shall we say, more "late-night Cinemax" versions of this interpretation, but it's safe to say none of them were very plot-intensive.

Formula Notes: While simplistic at best, and completely childish at its worst, Julia Jekyll ignored the good and evil aspects of the transformation and dealt with the simple terror of changing bodies. Just as Buffy the Vampire Slayer cashed in on the fact that "high school is hell," Swann's show dealt with the time of life all young women dread, when they know they're going to change and everyone will look at them differently.

The Comic-Relief

In these days of scary movies, epic movies, and superhero movies, it's hard to remember (or admit) that Hollywood has been making fun of anything successful and popular since its earliest days. "The roast" was a time honored tradition before vaudeville, and the deeper and more serious a subject is, the more of a target it becomes. Over a dozen film versions of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde had appeared on screen when the first major spoof appeared in 1925.

Starring a young Stan Laurel (still a few years away from his famous partnership with Oliver Hardy) in both titular roles, Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde was penned by a young Tay Garnett (who later went on to direct The Postman Always Rings Twice) and mocked both the acting and special effects of its predecessors. Essentially a live action Warner Bros. cartoon, the short has Pyckle transforming into Pryde to terrorize (or at least annoy and inconvenience) the local villagers. Hyde got the comic treatment again from Jerry Lewis (and later Eddie Murphy) in The Nutty Professor, and even the Jim Carrey comic-book film The Mask can easily be seen as a Jekyll and Hyde story.

Formula Notes: The best comedies usually have a serious thread to them, because the best laughs often come with a hint of sadness. Many of these iterations take the angle that many of "Hyde's" qualities are actually positive ones that "Jekyll" has been repressing for one reason or another. These stories show that success doesn't come from destroying the "other," but from embracing it.

The Montage

Combining earlier versions of a story is another standard for creating a new one. Producers and writers have been cherry-picking ideas since the silent film era. With man changing into evil man and then woman changing into evil woman, it seems a bit odd that it took so long for 1971's Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde to appear. Then again, the early '70s was probably the first time the idea of a transgender Jekyll and Hyde could actually be sold to the film going public.

In this version by screenwriter Brian Clemens (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad), Jekyll (Ralph Bates) is searching for a universal cure-all using various female hormones gathered from corpses. The potion transforms him into an uninhibited and somewhat violent woman (Martine Beswick) whom he claims as his widowed sister to explain her presence in his home. Alas, Hyde is soon fighting to become the dominant personality, even going so far as to kill several girls to obtain the hormones she needs for more doses of the potion. Clemens even ties Jack the Ripper and legendary graverobbers Burke and Hare into his screenplay. This version of the formula (so to speak) was used again in the 1995 comedy Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, which gives credit to two teams of writers and the director and Stevenson. Here, Jack (Tim Daly) is a perfume chemist who tries to alter the legendary potion with estrogen to lessen the "aggressive male" aspect of it, and Sean Young is typecast as the mentally unstable Helen Hyde that results.

Formula Notes: Clemens' story hits a careful balance with a screenplay that borrows elements from a range of sources—from Stevenson's classic to history to Abbott & Costello's run-in with Dr. Jekyll. Rather than playing the transgender change for cheap laughs, he deals with the true horror such a transformation would be for a prudish Victorian. It's this memorable grounding in reality that earns the film a place in almost every Jekyll & Hyde retrospective.

Going Big

Pushing the envelope is another tried and true Hollywood process, although a tricky one to pull off. Increasing the risk by making diseases more deadly, or giving Batman three or four villains to fight, can pay off well or push a film into complete lunacy. The 1931 film mentioned above was the first to truly push the idea of Hyde being a beast, and several versions have gone further with the idea. It was comic book creator Stan Lee, however, who put a completely inhuman spin on the Jekyll & Hyde relationship. The Incredible Hulk had been a comic book mainstay for over a decade when it was first adapted into a live-action hit television series by Kenneth Johnson (Alien Nation), one that ran for almost five years.

David Banner (the late Bill Bixby) is a scientist trying to discover why, in times of stress, some people are capable of superhuman feats of strength. A connection is finally found, a test devised, and a mislabeled dial causes Banner to give himself what should be a lethal overdose of gamma radiation. Instead, he's found the strength he was looking for in the form of a mindless and almost limitlessly powerful juggernaut (Lou Ferrigno) that he transforms into when he becomes angry or outraged. Believed to be dead in a lab explosion, Banner looks for a way to cure or control the raging beast that dwells within him.

Formula Notes: It would've been easy to write the Hulk as just an animalistic thing, closer to a werewolf than to Hyde. Yet, despite Banner's insistence they were separate beings, it became apparent the not-so-jolly green giant's first order of business was always dealing with whomever or whatever had caused the doctor to change, while ignoring any innocents in the vicinity. By keeping the Hulk's intelligence subtle, the screenwriters were able to make viewers pity the monster just as often as the man.

The New Angle

A simple shift in perspective can effectively create a new story without major changes to the original. Seen through the eyes of someone with a memory disorder, a basic murder mystery becomes an intricate puzzle, and getting to see Star Wars from a stormtrooper's point of view can be quite funny. At heart Mary Reilly is an interesting take on Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (even though its stars were almost universally reviled for their performances) adapted by Christopher Hampton (Atonement) from the novel by Valerie Martin.

The title character (Julia Roberts) is a maid in the home of Dr. Jekyll (John Malkovich) who harbors growing feelings for her employer, feelings she thinks may be returned. Alas, the strict class structure of the Victorian era makes such a romance improper to consider, let alone speak of. Even greater scandals occur when she gets to know the doctor's hot-blooded, young "assistant," Edward Hyde (Malkovich again), and discovers an undeniable—and purely sexual—attraction developing. As days go by and Jekyll grows more and more secretive, Mary realizes her emotional three-way is the least of the problems in this household.

Formula Notes: Despite the different view of events in the doctor's home, Hampton's story is very faithful to Stevenson's. In fact, Mary's romantic plight(s) emphasizes many of the reasons Jekyll develops his formula in the first place—a burning desire to escape England's rigid social structure.

The Sequel

Making "Part 2" has been a screenwriting mainstay for years, and these days is almost the foundation of the industry. However, despite the number of sequels that have spawned from films with very definitive endings, Hollywood has somehow shied away from making follow-ups to almost every iteration of this classic story (perhaps for the sheer reason that there are so many versions). The Son of Dr. Jekyll (1951) and Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957) were two of the rare instances where screenwriters and studios decided to posit what happened after the conclusion of Stevenson's story, with both films having next to nothing to do with the original novella's tone…or even with the original plot.

One of the most noteworthy sequels, however, was last year's BBC production of Jekyll, written by Hugo and BAFTA award-winner Stephen Moffat (Doctor Who). The miniseries is not so much a new interpretation of the novel as it is a sequel to a new interpretation. Dr. Tom Jackman (James Nesbitt) inherits the curse of his ancestor Jekyll—a man all evidence says he cannot possibly be related to—and finds himself transforming into the primal, superhuman, and gleefully savage Hyde (also Nesbitt). While Jackman and his alter-ego come to an uneasy truce, scheduling "shifts" in their shared body, the doctor discovers that huge portions of his life have been manipulated to achieve this very end. Some people, it seems, have been awaiting Hyde's re-appearance for over a century.

Formula Notes: While many sequels are simply rehashings of the previous material, Moffat's screenplay moves the overall story of Jekyll's legacy forward. It deals with some of the unanswered questions of Stevenson's story while logically expanding the tale into the modern world.

In the end, these are only seven of the many ways to interpret a story, and nowhere near the total number of versions Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde has accumulated over the years. The trick now is for someone to come up with a new formula to change the good doctor…

Peter Clines has had a lifelong love affair with the movies. He grew up in New England, where he studied English literature and education, and now lives and writes somewhere in Southern California. If anyone knows exactly where, he would appreciate a few hints.

The Incredible Hulk (2008) courtesy Universal Pictures

Jekyll courtesy BBC Warner

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