Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1912)
Dr. Jekyll secretly drinks a formula that unleashes the violent Mr. Hyde, who knocks down a child in the street and later murders the father of Jekyll's fiancée. When his supply of antidote runs out, Jekyll takes poison rather than remain trapped as the monster.
Produced by the Thanhouser Company barely a generation after Stevenson’s 1886 novella, this brisk one-reel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is among the earliest surviving film versions of the story, predating the more widely seen John Barrymore feature by nearly a decade.
Background
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was produced by the Thanhouser Company and directed by Lucius Henderson in 1912, with James Cruze and Florence La Badie in leading roles. The film is a one-reel adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella, made within a generation of its publication. Thanhouser was a New Rochelle, New York company, and this is among the earliest surviving versions of the story. It predates John Barrymore’s 1920 feature film version by about eight years.
What to watch for
The film compresses the novella into about eleven minutes, so the transformations and key confrontations come quickly. Watch how the early film stages Jekyll’s secret drinking and Hyde’s violence, including the moment Hyde knocks down a child in the street. The later plot, in which Hyde murders the father of Jekyll’s fiancee, builds toward the final decision, when Jekyll takes poison because his supply of antidote has run out. The transformation effects are the main technical interest, and comparing the staging with later versions shows how much of the story’s shape this early film already established.
