Victor Frankenstein or Henry Frankenstein?

[CalMeacham]

@MrAtoz

As I said, it’s a pretty vague memory. I may be thinking of the Mina/Lucy name switch in the Deane-Balderston Dracula play.

I like what film historian Tom Weaver says about the setting/time period of the Universal films: they take place in their own nether-worldish sort of “Universal-land.” That’s why you can have films set in middle Europe through the late 30s and early 40s with no hint of Nazis or war, where the population wear contemporary business suits and drive modern automobiles, and yet still fearfully recite ancient superstitions and werewolf rhymes as if they’re codified legal codes, and occasionally break out into spontaneous medieval harvest festivals.

It’s even weirder when you really look into it – Frankenstein is set in the then-present day of the early 1930s, but the next film, Bride of Frankenstein, starts out with Percy Shelley, Mary, and Lord Byron in Switzerland in what must be 1816, and she tells the story from the first film in flashback. Mary Shelley really WAS writing Science Fiction. She then goes on to tell another story set in the same future time period. And then, of course, all the sequels and interlocking monster films have telephones and other such 20th century trappings.
It gets even weirder with the Mummy films. The first Mummy film (which was also written by Balderston! The man was everywhere! He wrote Gaslight, too!He even wrote the play that On a Clear Day You can See Forever was based on. But I digress) stands alone. The follow-up films seem to be wholly unrelated to the first film, and tell sorta the same story, only now with a different mummy - Kharis, in place of Karloff’s Im-ho-Tep – who has his tongue torn out and thus can’t speak. He also, unlike Im-ho-Tep, stays in his wrappings through the entire series, shambling along and not passing for present-day human. Nevertyheless, over the course of four movies, he seeks out the reincarnation of his love, too, as in the first film.

But the time scale! The first one, The Mummy’s Hand, is contemporary, set in 1940, presumably. The second film, The Mummy’s Tomb (1942) takes place thirty years after the first one – so, about 1970, although the world looks a lot like the 1940s. The next one, The Mummy’s Ghost(1943), takes place immediately after, but the hext film, The Mummy’s Curse (1944), takes place twenty five years after these, so about 1995. the world STILL looks like the 1940s, however.
This was followed b y Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy in 1955. Arguably it’s not the same Mummy – he’s “KhLaris”, not “Kharis” (Costello’s character keeps calling him “Clarence”), and it sure feels like the 1950s, not the late 1990s. In fact, the whole series was showing its age – the supporting actors – Richard Deacon, Michael Ansara – are more familiar to me and other Baby Boomers as Television actors, not film stars. It was the last film Abbott and Costello made for Universal, and the last gasp of the Universal Creature cycle (except for their wholly 1950s franchise, The Creature from the Black Lagoon).

[burpo_the_wonder_mutt]

@MrAtoz

As I said, it’s a pretty vague memory. I may be thinking of the Mina/Lucy name switch in the Deane-Balderston Dracula play.

I like what film historian Tom Weaver says about the setting/time period of the Universal films: they take place in their own nether-worldish sort of “Universal-land.” That’s why you can have films set in middle Europe through the late 30s and early 40s with no hint of Nazis or war, where the population wear contemporary business suits and drive modern automobiles, and yet still fearfully recite ancient superstitions and werewolf rhymes as if they’re codified legal codes, and occasionally break out into spontaneous medieval harvest festivals.

You know the most prosperous man in town was the guy who sold all those torches.

[TriPolar]

The Frankenstein movies were “based on” the Mary Shelley book, and we all know what “based on” means. The movies have created their own fantastical world out of any known time and place, and a story of their own where the deeper philosophical aspects of the book have been lost in favor of the simplistic “Frankenstein Syndrome” and “Oh boy! Torch and pitchfork time!”.

Let’s not forget though, Mary Shelley never met the real Frankenstein or his monster, they lived, if at all, two centuries prior. So who knows what liberty she took with the truth herself

[burpo_the_wonder_mutt]

@MrAtoz

I like what film historian Tom Weaver says about the setting/time period of the Universal films: they take place in their own nether-worldish sort of “Universal-land.”

<snip>

Ah, “Universal-land,” where the trees grow straight out of the ground and a forest has the sonics of a soundstage.

And fog that never rises above your shins.

[MrAtoz]

@CalMeacham

The second film, The Mummy’s Tomb (1942) takes place thirty years after the first one – so, about 1970, although the world looks a lot like the 1940s.

A nice touch is that at one point in The Mummy’s Tomb, we see the hero receiving his draft notice. Must have been for Vietnam!

[CalMeacham]

@MrAtoz

I want to say, although I can’t prove it, that the name change first appeared in one of the plays–possibly Peggy Webling’s play on which the Universal screenplay was based. This is one of those things I feel like I read somewhere at some time. How’s that for a rock-solid cite?

You’re right that there was no “Von” until Son of Frankenstein. For that matter, in Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was not a Baron, either (nor was his father). They were a prominent family, but not nobility. He was also not a doctor, despite people sometimes calling him “Dr. Frankenstein.” He was in his first year at the University of Ingolstadt–the equivalent of a college freshman–when he created the Monster.

I have gone through my collection, and in the Universal Script of Frankenstein – which contains much supplementary material – it says on p. 22 that “…a new dramatic version of Frankenstein, by Peggy Webling, opened in London in 1927. In 1930 there was a popular revival in London of the play, with Henry Hallat as Henry Frankenstein…” They reproduce the cast from the playbill on the same page. Sure enough, there’s the name – HENRY FRANKENSTEIN.

So your memory runs true. It certainly WAS in Webling’s play. I honestly don’t recall it being earlier, but then, I don’t recall reading about any versions except those that came out right after the novel.

The reference is to "MagicImafe Filmbooks presents Frakenstein. Universal Filmscripts series (1989)

[MrAtoz]

@CalMeacham

I have gone through my collection, and in the Universal Script of Frankenstein – which contains much supplementary material – it says on p. 22 that “…a new dramatic version of Frankenstein, by Peggy Webling, opened in London in 1927. In 1930 there was a popular revival in London of the play, with Henry Hallat as Henry Frankenstein…” They reproduce the cast from the playbill on the same page. Sure enough, there’s the name – HENRY FRANKENSTEIN.

So your memory runs true. It certainly WAS in Webling’s play. I honestly don’t recall it being earlier, but then, I don’t recall reading about any versions except those that came out right after the novel.

The reference is to "MagicImafe Filmbooks presents Frakenstein. Universal Filmscripts series (1989)

Thanks for looking that up. I’m glad to see that my memory was correct. Of course, it only pushes the question back one level–we’re still left to wonder why Webling decided to change Frankenstein’s name to Henry. It may well have been simply because “Henry” seemed less Germanic and thus more sympathetic, perhaps.

[Tim_R.Mortiss]

@CalMeacham

I think the folks at Universal thought that “Victor” sounded too foreign to Americans, whereas “Henry” was a friendly, familiar name that they thought audiences could identify with…

You may be right! I did some snooping around at IMDb in the “trivia” section for the original Frankenstein movie, and found this tidbit:

The leading character of Mary Shelley’s book, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, was renamed Henry because it was decided Victor would sound too “severe” and “unfriendly” to American audiences at the time.

Of course, this is an uncited and unsourced anonymous claim, so who knows what veracity it may have, but it kind of makes sense. Thanks for all the replies!!

[CalMeacham]

I just did a quick search using the Google Books N-Gram Viewer (which, thoughtfully, has “Frankenstein” as one of the demonstration Search items), looking for “Henry Frankenstein” prior to 1950. All of the references from prior to 1929 that it lists are either:

1.) References to Webling’s play, or

2.) (by far the larger number of calls) People actually named “Henry Frankenstein”. Actually, in most cases “Henry” seems to be a middle name. But it’s kinda scary to think that, once upon a time, "“Frankenstein” was a much more common name.

There’s even a Henry Frankenstein that was grant a patent – #181,464, granted February 23, 1920. It’s for a “Device for Cleaning Bristle Brushes and Brooms”. (Well, I suppose a large green monster could do that…)

The idea of Henry Frankenstein as an inventor, getting patents from the USPTO strikes an odd chord.

Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office