Word: shockers
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...Early Shocker...
...your review of the picture, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in the Sept. 1 issue, you say there have been two previous cinema versions of this famous shocker, one by John Barrymore in 1920 and the second one by Fredric March in 1931. Please permit me to correct you; there was still another version, which as a small boy I saw in 1912 or 1913. The picture made such an impression on me, resulting in several nightmares, that I still have vivid recollections of it; the name of the actor who portrayed the dual role was King Baggot...
James Mallahan Cain's first novel (The Postman Always Rings Twice) was a tawdry, expert shocker. His second (Serenade) was a highly spiced account of singing and sex in Mexico. His third (Mildred Pierce) is the most interesting of the three. It is about almost ordinary people: a Glendale, Calif, housewife, her husband, her two lovers, her business, her daughter. It is as ugly as Hitler's My New Order, even nearer home, and much more readable...
Jekyll and Hyde was an instant bestseller and a boon to hundreds of sermon-seeking clerics. Richard Mansfield read it and induced his friend Thomas Russell Sullivan to adapt the "shilling shocker" for the stage. He played it in London and all over the U.S. until he died 20 years later. Two notable film versions of the play were made: one by John Barrymore in 1920-looking like a fur cap-the other by Fredric March-looking like Gargantua-in 1931. Both cinemactors played it successfully as pure horror, without fretting over the psychological implications...
...probably the world's No. 1 literary detective), his fearlessness in publishing what he finds, have resulted in some shocking reversals of U. S. cultural myths. In two of his books, Roberts has heroized Traitor Benedict Arnold. This week the same qualities resulted in another first-class historical shocker. Oliver Wiswell is a sustained and uncompromising report of the American Revolution from the Tory viewpoint. It will start Union Now advocates turning handsprings, may well set the D. A. R. to plaiting nooses...