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The Frankenstein we know is not Mary Shelley's creature at all. Rather it is an amalgam of over 200 years of images and dramatizations that range from the ghoulish fiends of nineteenth-century sensation dramas to Boris Karloff's movie monster to Mel Brooks's tap-dancing giant. These versions treat the Frankenstein myth with varying levels of horror, hysteria, and humor, but all of them attest to its enduring power. In Hideous Progenies, Steven Earl Forry offers a historical overview of the legend's transformation over time—beginning with Shelley's original and the earliest popular dramatizations of it (which transformed the myth, adding a burlesque quality and simplifying its moral allegory) and continuing on through the advent of cinema. He also documents this development with actual texts of seven pre-1931 dramatizations, a sampling of cartoons and playbills, and a shooting script for the first cinematic version, Thomas Edison's Frankenstein (1910). Forry's rare materials and interesting survey offer a valuable resource for scholars and students of theater history, literary history, and popular culture.
In this volume, Amnon Kabatchnik provides an overview of more than 150 important and memorable theatrical works of crime and detection between 1925 and 1950. Each entry includes a plot synopsis, production data, and the opinions of well known and respected critics and scholars.
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There is now no use learning revolver shooting. That form of pistol is obsolete except in the few instances where it survives for target shooting, or is carried for self-defence; just as flintlock muskets even now survive in out-of-the-way parts of the world. If a man tries to defend himself with a revolver against another armed with an automatic pistol he is at a great disadvantage. The automatic is more accurate than a revolver, as the “blow-back” does not vary as much as does the escape of gas past the cylinder in a revolver. The bullet in the revolver has to jump into the cylinder, whereas in the automatic it is already fitted up against the rifling, before being fired. The single-sh...
Includes Part 1, Number 1 & 2: Books and Pamphlets, Including Serials and Contributions to Periodicals (January - December)
In 1930 John L. Balderston was hoping to repeat his huge success with the American version of Dracula. Before production started on the 1931 Universal film version he wrote a play of "Frankenstein" with screenwriter Garrett Fort. Although it was never produced it is still an important document in American Theater history. It is here, in this play, that we discover how the name Frankenstein was attributed to the monster instead of his maker.