Allen Reisner | Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / 1955

enjoying being mr. hyde

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gore Vidal (teleplay, adapted from the fiction by Robert Louis Stevenson), Allen Reisner (director) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / 1955

 

The CBS live dramatic series, like several others on TV in that industry’s often described “Golden Years,” presented regular live dramatic productions of new and classic works on its “Climax!” series sponsored by Chrysler, hosted by Bill Lundigan.

   For this Jekyll/Hyde production, Gore Vidal wrote the teleplay, so I imagined given his homosexuality that I might find some vestiges in this version of the original Stevenson work with its coded gay references.

      At first it appeared to follow the pattern of the dozens of dreary films I had been watching, although this did get the final scene—in this case where Hyde (Michael Rennie), found in Jekyll’s laboratory is shot to death—immediately out of the way, shifting our attention from the plot to the issue of how Hyde might be caught to the dilemma of Jekyll’s transformations. Here too Jekyll, after creating and drinking his accidental potion—as in some of the versions, it was a manufacturing error that had provided the serum with its horrible effects and ability to permit the transformation from one persona to the other—goes on a wild heterosexual spree, visiting Soho dives and molesting women, in particular one girl (May Sinclair), whose fiancé Hyde later kills when he is physically attacked by the man.

       Vidal also restored the work’s original narrator, Mr. Utterson (Cedric Hardwicke), this time playing the role of narrative mind by reading Jekyll’s journal which outlines for us the story.

     But I soon begin to realize that while obviously in 1955 there could have been no way around associating the “wicked” Hyde (perhaps the “wickedest man in all of London”) with champagne, low-life bars, and women—drugs, homosexuality, Sadomasochism, and any other vision of devilish behavior was absolutely forbidden, particularly on the family-oriented TV set—the video demonstrated very little interest in outlining what precisely Hyde did with women other than ordering them about and perhaps manhandling them, let alone how he had established his reputation. Mostly he seemed simply to want to sit down, have a drink, and growl a bit over the girl’s beauty.

 

       The heterosexual incidents here are no more part of the real story than were Cary Grant’s romances with Katherine Hepburn or Irene Dunne. What truly matters in this version of the story is what was happening within himself and regarding his good friend, in this case, as opposed to his arch-enemy in other productions, Dr. Lanyon, who Jekyll describes as an “innocent” who as performed by Lowell Gilmore, is quite attractive.

        Indeed, it is his visit to Lanyon as Hyde that might be said to be the central scene of this dramatic version. Having given a box of the chemicals to Lanyon ahead of time, Jekyll has prepared for just the situation he faces after committing the murder.

        Having already established that Jekyll perceives each man as carrying within him both an angel and a monster, and that in taking the drug with which he hoped to release the angel from his soul that he has succeeded only in rousing the monster from its pit, in his conversation with Lanyon after transforming himself back into Jekyll, the doctor still admits: “I could not help myself. I enjoyed being Mr. Hyde.”

       No other Jekyll until that moment has described himself as enjoying the role of Hyde; various Jekylls cannot resist the serum and some are determined to continue the experiments simply out scientific interest, but not one has previously admitted to “enjoyment,” which the dictionary defines as “the action of state of enjoying,” the possession and use of joy, or “something that gives keen satisfaction.”

     Lanyon, who cannot believe the transformation he has seen with his own eyes and can hardly believe the words he is hearing—words if we listen closely are very much those of a man coming out to a friend, admitting his homosexuality—asks his friend: “Who are you? How can you be two men?

       Jekyll repeats his belief: “Each man is both a monster and an angel.”

       Lanyon asks outrightly, “Is it like a drug? Must you become Hyde despite of your better self?”

     And Jekyll quickly gets to the crux of the problem: “There’s something in me that craves to be Hyde and I can’t stop,” even while admitting, “I know that if I do it again I shall die. I’m being torn apart.”

       Unlike what I have described as the “residual language” of the homosexual that is retained in the 1931 film production, a language of regret and a deep belief in conversion, these are the words of a man who has discovered his true identity, or least part of it, and cannot deny himself that being.

      Lanyon’s words, those of a true homophobe or perhaps in this case a self-loathing homosexual, safe in his innocence from knowing of his own nature, utterly shocks and hurts the suffering Jekyll: “Then Jekyll I think it better that you die”

      Their further conversation says it all:

 

      Jekyll:    Can I help what this Hyde does?

      Lanyon: You are Hyde and you chose of your own will to be Hyde.

                     Never see me again.

      Jekyll:    We are old friends. Every man has a Hyde in him.

      Lanyon:  I have kept mine caged.

      Jekyll:     I experimented in innocence.

      Lanyon:  Innocence? You reek of Hell. Get out.

 

    If the superficial elements of the plot would convince the average viewer that these two men are discussing the impossible transformation of a man who has just murdered another man into an old friend who admits he rather enjoys being the womanizing murderer—in other words, a gothic horror contrivance—it sounds to me far more like a very realistic conversation between two men in a time in which gay men were condemned to never speak of their hidden desires and the lives they lived to satisfy those desires. The love-hate relationship between the gay individual and his supposedly sensitive, perhaps closeted. friend, seems quite realistic, even with its occasional Victorian moralist aphorisms.

     When a supposedly re-converted Hyde determines to test himself by returning to the scene of the crime nearly a full year later, it is inevitable that he will again become Hyde and in recognition of this run from the place in shame, returning home knowing that he must now face his death. Vidal clearly knew long before Vito Russo so brilliantly explained it to us that gay men in films and fiction mostly had to die.

     Despite Rennie’s excellent acting and his threshing around as the suffering doctor as he turns into his other self, this television drama, with its crude technical capabilities and experiments in early TV video techniques used to suggest the bodily changes Jekyll and Hyde must suffer (even though this Hyde, as Jekyll admits, is much younger and more daring than he is—closer to the Hyde we will encounter in Terence Fisher’s 1960 remake of the story) this work is generally clumsy and unconvincing except in its language and its excellent musical score by Jerry Goldsmith.

 

Los Angeles, December 10, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2021).