Rant #2,615: Frankenstein

It’s Thursday, March 18, the 77th day of 2021, and what better day than today to talk about—
 
Frankenstein.
 
Now remember, Frankenstein is the doctor, Victor Frankenstein, who created the monster, and is not the monster, although you probably wouldn’t know that from the name of the very first novel featuring this duo, “Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus,” which was written by Mary Shelley way back in 1818, or some of the many adaptations later on, where the Frankenstein monster is figured prominently, often without the doctor, and so the Frankenstein monster and the doctor are almost one and the same.
 
The legend goes that the author was at some type of gathering with fellow British upperclassmen and she was challenged to write a gothic horror story that would scare the socks off of readers. That dare led to probably the most famous of all the monster novels, and certainly along with Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” the otherworldly; creature that has been featured in the most different types of media up to the present day.
 
When I say “media,” I mean everything from movies to stage shows to comic books to popular music to TV shows to part of our jargon—when you create a “Frankenstein monster,” you have created s problem that lurks, from nothing to something that needs to be taken care of.

 
There are all different types of Frankenstein monsters in the various media that the monster has appeared in, from the true monstrous creature in the 1931 Universal Pictures “Frankenstein” movie with Boris Karloff as the monster to Mel Brooks’ 1974 film “Young Frankenstein,” where Peter Boyle played the monster to the hilt of comedy.

 
And then you have everything in between—from 1948’s “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” where Glenn Strange plays the monster, a patsy to Boris Karloff’s Dracula versus the comedy duo, to “The Munsters,” where Fred Gwynne plays a Frankenstein-like character as a family man.
 
I read the original novel years and years ago, and honestly, I kind of lean toward the movies and TV shows that have featured the monster more than I do the book, which I found a bit tedious to read.
 
So the reason that today is a good day to speak about the legend of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is that today is the 111th anniversary of the very first movie to feature these characters and put them on screen.
 
I know that you don’t have this date circled on your calendar—I certainly don’t—but let me tell you, what I found out about this first film taught me that we owe more to Thomas Edison than his better-known inventions.
 
His Edison Studios—which also produced the first "pornographic" films, or shall we say, adult films, with some female nudity and little else—also took a flyer on the Frankenstein characters back in 1910, when movies were in their infancy and soundies were still years off.
 
After at least three stage adaptations featuring the doctor and his creation had some about from 1823 to 1897, the characters literally were dormant for the next 13 years, only reachable through the novel that spawned them.
 
Film was the new media at the time, and Edison—in between all of his other inventions—had fallen in love with the new media, filming everything from slight dramas and scenic films to women cavorting around with some very slight nudity their main draw.
 
But in 1910, Edison Studios—inn New Jersey—produced the first Frankenstein movie, directed by someone by the name of J. Searie Dawley, who also wrote the one-reeler.
 
Augustus Phillips played Dr. Frankenstein, and the monster was played by Charles Ogle.
 
There is a love angle in the film, and the doctor’s fiancés is played by Mary Fuller.
 
There is actually a print that survives of this film. I have seen it, and it is kind of strange, but I am sure that it set the template for all “Frankenstein” films that followed, even though it lasted just about 11 to 16 minutes or so. You can access it at https://youtu.be/w-fM9meqfQ4.

 
The Ogle portrayal of the Frankenstein monster looks quite a bit different from the character with the square forehead and the electrodes sticking out of his neck, and I guess that is why I think the whole thing is so strange.
 
The film was preserved, and is said to be in the public domain, but I think its worth is more for film historians and “Frankenstein” buffs than for the general public.
 
But anyway, you can say that today is “Frankenstein Movie Day,” because today is a significant anniversary related to those characters created by Shelley more than 200 years ago.
 
Even with Dracula and Godzilla and even Hannibal Lechter chomping at the bit, the Frankenstein monster is the greatest movie monster of all time, but it needed steps to reach that level, and this 1910 short silent movie was certainly its stepping stone to greatness.