‘But that’s sacrilege! Man would be both God and Devil!’
An accomplished physician and scientist becomes obsessed with separating the good and evil sides of man. His researches take a dangerous turn when he begins to experiment on himself…
The first feature-length adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic published in 1885. This prestige production from Famous Players-Lasky starred famous stage and screen actor John Barrymore in the title roles.
Henry Jekyll (Barrymore) is a top London physician who divides his time between experimental research and a free clinic he operates for the poor. His apparent selflessness irks aristocrat Sir George Carewe (Brandon Hurst), whose sheltered daughter Millicent (Martha Mansfield) has fallen in love with the young paragon. When Barrymore’s work at the clinic makes him late for a dinner engagement with the family, Hurst determines to undermine Barrymore’s ideals and expose him as no better than anyone else. To this end, he takes the young doctor to a backstreet music hall run by Louis Wolheim and arranges a liaison with the main attraction, dancer Miss Gina (Nita Naldi). Barrymore backs out quickly, but Hurst’s talk of man’s dual nature gets him thinking.
Working tirelessly in his laboratory, Barrymore develops an experimental potion, which he hopes will separate the good and evil sides of a man. However, when he tries it himself, he transforms into a twisted hunchback, the personification of his long-suppressed baser impulses. Taking on the identity of Edward Hyde, he returns to the music hall and fulfils his rendezvous with Naldi. Although his appearance initially repels her, his money is a persuasive argument. After making appropriate arrangements with his butler, Poole (George Stevens) and lawyer, Utterson (J Malcolm Dunn), Barrymore is free to pursue his new double life. However, Hyde’s personality quickly becomes stronger and threatens to overwhelm the virtuous Jekyll and run out of control.
By 1920, there had already been over half a dozen screen versions of Stevenson’s morality tale, most closely based on the stage play by Thomas Russell Sullivan and Richard Mansfield. This had arrived on the stage barely a year after Stevenson’s work was published and was such a popular show that it ran for 20 years. The events of the play are substantially those of the novel, just reordered somewhat, but it does introduce the character of Jekyll’s fiancé, Agnes. She’s the daughter of respected churchman, Sir Danvers Carew, who gets a bigger slice of the action than his brief showing in the original tale. Most of these films are lost to time, and only one of the two surviving examples offers a minor tweak to events. ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ (1913) has the first appearance of the charity hospital, which serves as a neat representation of the vague ‘good works’ that Stevenson attributes to his character in the story. The author’s original text is actually rather light on many story details, presumably to spare the blushes of his late 19th-century audience.
Similarly, cinema patrons in 1920 weren’t going to be ready for anything too salacious, but screenwriter Clara S Beringer still managed to take things up to the next level. Hyde’s relations with a ‘fallen woman’ are now such a part of the Jekyll & Hyde story that it may shock first-time readers of Stevenson to find that she’s notable by her complete absence from his short novel. She seems to make her first appearance here, neatly establishing the familiar ‘good girl/bad girl’ paradigm that reflects Jekyll’s own fractured nature. Although she’s only ever referred to as a dancer, there’s little doubt about her primary source of income. Unsurprisingly, then, the film spends very little time with them as a couple, but at one point, Hyde throws her out of his rented rooms, demonstrating they’ve been living together outside of marriage. As far as we know, these moments of emotional cruelty are as bad as it gets for Naldi, but she is clearly distressed at being shown the door. Obviously, living with Hyde has some compensations!
In general, Hyde’s life of depravity consists entirely of hanging around in dodgy bars and chatting up ladies of easy virtue. Again, Stevenson was highly vague about Hyde’s exploits, mentioning his ‘vile life’ and ‘strange associations’ but never getting into specifics, likely because of the era in which his story appeared. The author also places Hyde’s first act of violence, the stamping of the child, at the start of proceedings as a flashback. This is possible because the events of his story take place over a long period. However, films at this point were still committed to linear storytelling, and this forces changes to the narrative. Instead of Jekyll’s experiments taking place over ten years, Barrymore is obliged to come up with his formula in a month or two (the exact passage of time is never specified), and all the real action is confined to the final act. This makes for a terrific last 20 minutes, but the first hour may seem a little sedate to some, likely emphasised by over-familiarity with the story.
Beringer’s other major story innovation did not stand the test of time in the way of her ‘fallen woman’, disappearing immediately and barely appearing in subsequent years. The absence is likely because Brandon Hurst’s cynical Sir George Carewe is Oscar Wilde’s Lord Henry Wootton in all but name, leading Jekyll down the dark path in the fatal footsteps of Dorian Gray. The character may not have Wootton’s polish or witty turn of phrase, but he fulfils exactly the same function in the story. He may not speak in the smart epigrams of Wilde’s aristocrat, but his line ‘The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it’ is a neat summation of his self-serving philosophy, and has since been attributed by some as originatingwith Wilde himself. To Beringer’s credit, she does try to put a new spin on the character, presenting him as a crude boor who reads the gossip columns in cheap newspapers, which he hides from his family. That such a man could have raised the sweet and innocent Mansfield is a bit of a stretch, though, especially as there’s no mother in evidence. Of course, you could argue that, in tempting Jekyll, he’s just vetting a prospective suitor for his sheltered daughter. However, his obvious enjoyment of the good doctor’s discomfort makes it seem far more likely that he is defended his own cynical worldview which under threat from Jekyll’s philanthropy.
Of course, the success of a Jekyll and Hyde movie largely falls on the shoulders of the leading man, and Barrymore does not disappoint. The early stages of the transformations were realised by the actor using his face alone. Even the final version of Hyde largely eschews the heavier makeup favoured in the Frederic March and Spencer Tracy versions, although the eyes and teeth are emphasised, and the face is framed by long locks of stringy, black hair. The most striking aspect, though, is the shape of the head, which is stretched into an exaggerated widow’s peak, and it resembles nothing so much as the shape of a skull so often favoured by Ancient Alien Astronaut conspiracy theorists. It’s incredibly effective and also works because it doesn’t impede Barrymore’s performance.
To modern eyes, that performance might seem a little outlandish, with its exaggerated gestures and physicality. However, it never becomes ridiculous because of the intensity that Barrymore brings to the table. When Hyde finally explodes into violence, he’s a ferocious prospect and appears so genuinely unhinged that you could be forgiven for worrying about Barrymore’s mental health. These moments are undoubtedly the film’s highlights, aided by some surprisingly effective practical SFX. Yes, there are the inevitable moments when he drops off camera to allow for an edit during the transformation scenes, but the climactic one happens in the blink of an eye on camera. It’s a masterful example of film editing that must have sent 1920s moviegoers home with a serious quantity of nightmare fuel.
The hypocrisy of Victorian society was quite understandably mostly buried beneath the lack of details in Stevenson’s story, but the years in between allowed for its appearance as a more prominent subtext here. However, the most significant instance in the book does not appear here and is absent from almost all subsequent screen versions right up to the present day. In Jekyll’s original confession, he admits to already indulging his Hyde-like proclivities before he even begins his experiments; it’s actually one of his primary motivations for pursuing his line of research. Of course, there are no details of what he’s been up to, but it’s clear that the Hyde persona is already an active part of his character and everyday life. Conversely, the films infer that Hyde is buried so deep within Jekyll’s psyche that he’s effectively a creation of the chemical formula that he imbibes. It’s an obvious choice for filmmakers as it helps place Jekyll as a tragic, misguided figure deserving of our sympathy, but it does dilute the complexity and clarity of the author’s original vision.
Although Barrymore’s towering, almost constant, presence leaves little room for the rest of the cast, there’s good work from the smug, superior Hurst and the sweet, angelic Mansfield. She is the recipient of one of Hollywood’s most tiresome tropes, though, which was present in many genres of the film of the period and ever since. Yes, it’s the steady, second-string suitor hanging around purely to provide the audience with an assurance of a future ‘happy ever after’ after the heroine has recovered from the loss of the tragic, misguided hero. Here, it’s lawyer Dunn, who is so dense that he can’t see Mansfield is smitten with Barrymore and proposes marriage. ‘Is there someone else?’ he asks like an idiot. Despite that, he does get his moment in the sun at the end of the film, hiding Jekyll’s face from Mansfield after he has changed back from Hyde at the point of death. This action both spares her feelings and assures the audience that he’s a decent chap and a suitable husband for her once the dust clears.
There are a couple of odd moments which are also worthy of note. There is a curious scene where Naldi shows Barrymore her poison ring. This entails a brief flashback to the Renaissance, where we see it in use as an assassination tool. It’s clumsy foreshadowing, of course, but seems pointless in such detail. Perhaps a 1920 audience needed a quick heads-up on this charming murder device. There is also a highly unusual scene in Jekyll’s bedroom. While the exhausted doctor sleeps, Hyde’s spectral form rises from his body and transforms into a giant spider before crawling back onto his body. It was likely intended to demonstrate a dream, but it feels distinctly out of place in Robertson’s film, which presents the events in as grounded a way as possible, with no conscious flourishes of artistic flair or style.
Barrymore was born in Philadelphia in 1882. Both his parents and grandparents were on the stage, and his elder siblings, Lionel and Ethel, would carve out long and highly successful acting careers on stage, radio and screen, winning Academy Awards. By 18, John was already treading the boards with his father, and he worked his way up through supporting roles until being offered his first Broadway lead in 1907. He likely debuted on screen in 1912, but his first significant role was in ‘An American Citizen’ (1914). Although he continued appearing in film, it was his performance in John Galsworthy’s play ‘Justice’ (1916) that took his career to new heights, and further successes in both media made him a household name by the end of the decade. ‘Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde’ (1920) was such a tremendous hit that, rather bizarrely, the U.S. Navy used stills of Barrymore from the movie for its recruiting posters. His appearance as ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (1922) was also popular with cinema audiences, but it was on the stage as Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ in 1920 and ‘Hamlet’ in 1922 that he received his greatest acclaim.
Despite further theatrical ventures, he became increasingly involved in film, and although the results were variable and divided critics, they were popular with the public. The arrival of sound was not a problem, and he scored his first big success as ‘Svengali’ (1931), following that with a starring role in the box-office blockbuster ‘Grand Hotel’ (1932). However, the prestigious ‘Rasputin and the Empress’ (1932) failed at the box office, and his increasing alcoholism became a significant problem. Dropped by MGM in 1933, he signed with Universal for ‘Counsellor At Law’ (1933). The film was successful, but Barrymore needed help remembering his lines during filming, a recurring problem that saw him dropped from RKO’s ‘Hat, Coat and Glove’ (1934) after production had begun.
Further health issues, financial problems and a public scandal involving 19-year-old Elaine Jacobs (who later became his last wife) tarnished his reputation still further. However, he pulled himself together and began a second film career as a character actor, taking prominent supporting roles in films such as ‘True Confession’ (1937) and ‘Marie Antoinette’ (1938). He also had a recurring role in the first three entries in Paramount’s ‘Bulldog Drummond’ series starring John Howard. However, the years of drinking had done their work, and he passed away from kidney and liver failure in May 1942 at the age of 60.
There’s a lot to like in this well-mounted production, but it’s Barrymore that catches the eye.