Lie Detector Reveals Allure of Brute Man Hyde
A class horror picture where Loew's East Coast sales stripped class aside and sold it like hoariest stuff off Poverty Row, proof again that any film's best friend was whoever took charge of exploitation. Jekyll-Hyde reeked of possibilities, being of man's fall from civility into pits of lust and violence. MGM could take more than usual liberties thanks to literary antecedent that was Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel. They taught that in schools after all, so where did censors come off suppressing content every student, plus parents, knew? Goods were there to trumpet --- Spencer Tracy juggling good girl, but kittenish, Lana Turner (one end of then-recent TNT combination w/ Gable in Honky Tonk), plus Ingrid Bergman, robust enough to overpower Spence if she took mind to, both GF's terrorized by Hyde/Tracy who is less ape-like as in F. March, but unforgivably rude at his worst. Loew's at first figured Jekyll-Hyde on two-a-day terms and at advanced prices for pre-release open at Broadway's Astor Theatre, but wisely went with grind policy and tix starting at thirty-five cents for early matinees. That turned out to be the click, for Jekyll-Hyde, which followed Sergeant York into the Astor on August 12, 1941, set a new record for the house (Film Daily: "More than 10,000 persons, representing absolute capacity plus numerous standees at every performance, attended the first day's showings"). How the show was sold was genius itself, lurid getting new definition from marketers who'd chuck dignity ordinarily accorded to MGM specials.
Idea was to target women, wire them in, as it were, to lover-brute that was Jekyll-Hyde. Call for volunteers went out through personal columns, and 100 plus subjects between age sixteen and twenty-five lent selves to Astor-experiment conducted by William Moulton Marston, inventor of the prototype for lie detectors who would now apply his science to sacred and profane love's effect upon the fair sex. Toward this research came blondes, brunettes, redheads, to be strapped into theatre seating and hooked onto "Hyde Detectors," object to "measure reaction to emotional stimulus" aroused by twenty or so minutes of the film's most intense passion. Process involved "blood pressure cuffs" and "pneumographs" tied to ankles and chests, respectively, after which "female emotions" would be allowed to "take their course." A trail of red ink on a long stretch of graph paper measured results. A bit of mad science this, and not unlike notions tried by the film's Jekyll, then Hyde. Outcome, "all in fun" said Loew's, told how women of each stripe (or hair color) might respond to Male impulse turned loose. Was there at least scintilla of truth to such screwball data?
"Blondes are most submissive to male aggressiveness," they concluded, "and redheads the least so." Brunettes, it seemed, had the most resistance to a caveman (or Hyde) approach, the redheads most likely to be combative where male hands got heavy. "Girls who are athletically inclined blunt their sensitivity --- not that they are less attractive themselves, but become less attractive to men." Participants were asked "what percentage of Hyde was contained in every man," theory being that "every man was a potential Hyde." The women agreed, indeed it was only a matter of degree so far as they figured it, range of percentages between low of 15% to high of 95%. Average came to 34%, which made Hydes of over a third of male population, so step gingerly, gentlemen, said researchers, even as the term "gentleman" seemed itself a misnomer in view of results here. "Dr. Marston, via MGM, lists a couple of rules for the weaker sex," each figured to protect them should their dates regress to Hyde-like misbehavior: "If a man gets out of control, laugh at him. Tell him it bores you, leaves you cold --- that's he's making a fool of himself." Then was this pearl: "Never let yourself be caught in an unprotected situation with a man you know to be strongly attracted to you." Stating the obvious perhaps, but Metro was pleased, "The experiment was a grand success. Science was promoted and so was "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
More Jekyll/Hyde Salesmanship Coming Friday.
