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Violent and sexually daring, director Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel—coming right on the heels of Hollywood’s horror craze kicked off by the one-two punch of Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein—remains iconic. Fredric March won a Best Actor Oscar for his titular performance, ably embodying the charismatic but edgy Jekyll and virtually disappearing into the beastly Hyde, the two sides of the man represented by the two women in his life: his upper class fiancée Muriel (Rose Hobart) and vivacious prostitute Ivy (Miriam Hopkins). DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE contains artful flourishes that enhance the narrative (wipes, dissolves, split screens, dreamy montages, and first person POV sequences), cinematography by Karl Struss, and ground-breaking make-up effects illustrating Jekyll’s transformation into the simian-like Hyde that are jaw-dropping to this day, but it’s the film’s explicit interpretation of Jekyll’s sexual repression— featuring an infamous strip scene performed by Hopkins— that prompted its content to be severely cut after Production Code enforcement began, the complete classic left unseen for decades.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
5228 Gravois Ave, St Louis, MO 63116-2310, United States, St. Louis, MO, United States, Missouri 63116, 5228 Gravois Ave, St Louis, MO 63116-2310, United States, Southhampton
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