Those of you who surmise this to be a high school yearbook photograph of me before plastic surgery know exactly what you can do. Sheesh!
But Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley’s classic novella deserves a respectful look.
The story Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (Prometheus having been the Greek Titan who first created humankind, then, defying Zeus, purloined fire from Mount Olympus for man’s benefit, suffering eternal punishment thereafter) came about as the result of a playful competition.
Young Mary Godwin (as she was then), the Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley (her lover and future husband) and George Gordon Noel Byron (Lord Byron), and Byron’s personal physician John William Polidori spent the summer of 1816 at Byron’s villa near Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
The weather that entire summer season was so rainy and dreary that they were forced indoors most days, and one night, as they sat enjoying a log fire and engaging in endless philosophical and metaphysical discussions involving, among other things, the nature of the principle of life and the possibility of unlocking its secret, Byron proposed they each write a “ghost story”.
Theories such as galvanism and its potential use in animation had also been in the air, and travelling to Switzerland had involved ambling through stark, foreboding landscapes in Germany, some not far from a certain Castle Frankenstein where, it was reputed, experiments in alchemy had taken place.
The sombre environment, the memories of the trip, and the topics in play caused Mary Godwin to suffer a nightmare in which all the elements of her future novella fell into place (and this in itself almost reads like a wonderful short-story premise). Hers was the only fully-developed narrative to emerge from this contest, though Polidori produced a preliminary treatment of what would become his novella The Vampyre (which would influence Bram Stoker’s Dracula).
Frankenstein is barely recognizable as the source of more than a score of stage and screen adaptations. It’s a serious, often profoundly melancholy telling of the consequences to both creature and creator of an attempted usurpation of the prerogatives of God. Add to this the novelistic conventions and near-archaic linguistic style of the nineteenth century and you’ve got what stacks up as a tough read for casual twenty-first century book browsers.
But for the aficionado of the Romantic impulse, the Gothic style, Enlightenment philosophy, and more unremitting angst than you could cram into a U-Haul, it’s nothing short of sheer joy. And it’s free on Kindle! Give it a look; you might surprise yourself. Be warned, though: to a modern reader, Frankenstein will feel torturously long for a short novel, especially the Monster’s monologues. (You didn’t think he spoke?)
You’ve probably already caught one or more of the cinematic adaptations of the novella, especially Universal’s 1931 classic featuring Boris Karloff in his iconic turn as the Monster. But here’s what might have been instead.
Universal had begun work on Frankenstein once the blockbuster success of Dracula became apparent. The public’s phenomenal response to Dracula had been so welcome to habitually cash-poor Universal (which had initially hesitated to cast Bela Lugosi to reprise his acclaimed stage role for fear his marked accent would be off-putting) that they rushed to publicize their upcoming companion film without much idea of where they were going with it. The first poster announcing the forthcoming Frankenstein showed an indistinctly defined creature in foreground with, very distinctly in background, a city skyline with modern skyscrapers(!).
The studio planned to capitalize on Lugosi’s surprise stardom by casting him as the Monster, with Leslie Howard as Frankenstein, Bette Davis as his fiancée Elizabeth, and Dracula carryovers Edward van Sloan and Dwight Frye in supporting roles, all under the direction of French-expatriate Robert Florey, who completed substantial work on the script, which itself was an adaptation of a stageplay.
But then came new Universal golden-boy director James Whale, given carte blanche by studio chief Carl Laemmle Jr. to choose his own projects. He chose Frankenstein. Meanwhile, after a disastrous screen test with makeup chief Jack Pierce, Lugosi, who harboured a strong disinclination to be cast as a nonspeaking brute, negotiated his exit from the studio.
By the time preproduction began, Howard and Davis were elsewhere committed, replaced by Whale veterans Colin Clive and Mae Clarke (whom you’ll better remember as the target of a half-grapefruit in the face from James Cagney in The Public Enemy). Whale spotted Karloff (familiar from previous screen appearances) in the studio commissary and knew he’d found his Monster.
Whale then substantially reworked Florey’s script (Florey never did get screen credit) and added some of the neoexpressionist touches he’d later develop into even more memorable imagery in the sequel Bride of Frankenstein. But Frankenstein's single most startling moment, which most movie audiences at the time doubtless (mis)attributed to Whale, came about altogether unintentionally.
That moment occurs in a scene where the Monster encounters a little girl playing beside a lake. The girl innocently invites him to join her in tossing daisies into the water and watching them float. When his supply of daisies runs out, he tosses the girl into the water instead. But she does not float, the Monster is uncomprehending, and he roams off in angry bafflement, while the camera slowly segues to the town square, where villagers dancing to loud music (celebrating Frankenstein’s upcoming nuptials) come into view.
Frankenstein was an early sound film, entirely free of the ubiquitous background music we’ve since grown accustomed to. The only sounds were ambient, and the transition from the quiet lakeside to the joyous merriment was smooth—at least until Universal held previews of the film before general release. The test audiences reacted with noticeable disfavor to seeing little Maria thus despatched, however innocently. State censorship boards agreed. So Laemmle ordered an edit, far too late in production to do anything other than cut from the moment Karloff reaches toward Maria (in dead silence) to the scene of villagers (very loudly) dancing.
I happened to be seated in a Philadelphia moviehouse revival of Frankenstein in 1965, eight years after the film had been released to American television and quite probably seen more than once by most of my fellow-attendees. When that moment came and the silence abruptly, almost violently, broke, I heard language I’d never heard before in a cinema. One man actually jumped out of his seat. And all unintentional, though you can bet James Whale got the credit when movie patrons, asked how they’d found the film, most probably responded, “I nearly had a stroke!”
That brutal edit may have had an unforeseen, equally brutal impact on its audience. The Monster was a creature of utter innocence when his hands extended toward the little girl. But absent the remainder of that scene, which was shortly followed by a shot of the girl’s father carrying her lifeless body into the village, audiences may well have inferred the nature of her demise to have been quite different. Just ask yourself: What would you have imagined?
Incidentally, Karloff, off-camera the gentlest, least-sinister of men, had earlier pleaded with Whale to make exactly the same cut (Whale had demurred). Karloff didn’t quite get it, either. But, no matter—he surely was a magnificent Monster.
