By ANN WINTERHOLTER
The Daily Sentinel
The air is crisp and full of fall, making it the perfect time of year for discovery.
“Huh?” you say.
Well, let me explain.
One: Fall is a great time for books, films, snuggling under blankets and drinking hot apple cider.
Two: With Halloween coming up at the end of the month, consider taking the mask off of some classic characters from movies and books. You may know the film face of a character, but the book face remains a mystery, or vice versa.
Three: Contrast and compare. Talk among yourselves.
You may be surprised. You may be scared. You may discover some new faces you’ll never forget.
Here are a few titles to get you started.
“FRANKENSTEIN”
Mary Shelley
Here’s a perennial Halloween favorite, “Frankenstein.”
He walks rather like a zombie (probably smells like one too, but that’s beside the point) and is famous for his neck electrodes and a forehead the size and shape of several concrete blocks.
The “criminal” brain between his ears also seems to be about as bright as those blocks, too.
Well, that’s the 1931, Boris Karloff movie monster, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.
In honor of James Whale’s “Frankenstein,” Universal released a DVD anniversary edition of the film in September. It includes a biography of Karloff, the actor who starred as the monster.
It’s an iconic movie, no doubt, but Mary Shelley’s fiend is another horror entirely.
Compare, for example, the language capabilities of the two monsters.
The 1931 film: Garrrr, grararrara, aruggggggg grrrrr. (Or something like that.)
The 1818 book: “When I looked around I saw and heard none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?”
Or how about this line: “Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock.”
Shelley’s monster is quite passionate, articulate and agile with superhuman strength and speed. He is elusive and crafty. He is a bundle of emotion.
He wishes for a mate and designs to hurt his creator, Victor Frankenstein, in the worst possible ways when the scientist refuses to make him one.
Frankenstein is, frankly, a self-absorbed pantywaist.
He fulfilled incredible scientific dreams “with an ardour that far exceeded moderation,” but ran in “breathless horror” from his creation after it opened its watery eyes for the first time. (Note: Frankenstein doesn’t use lightning to bring his fiend to life. In fact, Shelley never says exactly how he does it.)
Instead of doing something about or for or with his creation, Frankenstein continues to run away from his past actions and creature for much of the book.
Even after the monster began his killing, Frankenstein didn’t consider taking his pistols out for target practice so he could at least get off an accurate shot and possibly save another innocent from death.
Amazingly, there are many times you’d like to like Frankenstein, if he’d only be a man instead of a monster behind a monster, which is a tribute to Shelley’s storytelling.
Various Frankenstein films over the years have improved on staying closer to Shelley’s tale, but the 1931 movie has burned the form of Frankenstein The Monster into the collective culture consciousness.
While that film may have scared the bacreepers out of audiences in the ’30s, it’s hard to imagine someone screaming at it now.
The black-and-white filmography is wonderful, but some of the lines and scenes are cheesy in the way entertainment becomes when it ceases to be scary.
And Fritz, the hunchbacked assistant, is a great character you won’t see in the book.
“Crazy am I? We’ll see if I’m crazy!” Ah, Frankenstein.
“THE JUNGLE BOOK”
Rudyard Kipling
Kaa is one sweet snake.
He’s a hero. The python saves Mowgli the man-cub from being killed by “evil, dirty, shameless” monkeys in the 1894 book.
How’s that for a movie-to-book switch-a-roo?
Thank goodness, because in the 1967 Disney animated movie, Kaa’s simpering manner and swirly eyeballs really annoyed me.
The book Kaa is 30 feet of muscle and mesmerizes his prey, mostly jungle-trash monkeys, by doing an intricate coil dance. He is an intelligent, proud and noble character.
Take away the Indian jungle and the characters’ names and the movie isn’t Kipling’s “The Jungle Book.”
Baloo the bear, Bagheera the panther, Shere Khan the tiger, the wolves, even Mowgli certainly don’t follow in the footsteps of their book counterparts singing, “I want to walk like you oo, oo! Talk like you oo, oo!”
King Louie (the book monkeys “were always just going to have a leader,” but could never remember anything like that for long enough to do it), the elephant jungle patrol and the four vultures that bear an odd resemblance to the Beatles, aren’t in the book. Neither is the water-pitcher girl the height of a toddler with the hips and eyes of an 18-year-old.
And they aren’t needed.
“The Jungle Book” book is more exciting, the characters sharp and more dangerous.
Mowgli isn’t a kid in a red diaper tossing rocks into ponds and describing things as “swell.”
He’s a hunter like his wolf brothers. He grows up knowing either he will have to kill Shere Khan or the tiger will eat him. Clothes aren’t a “bare necessity.”
There is a community in the jungle, the Free People. There are rules, pacts and councils.
They don’t sing.
Not that singing is bad. Disney has some catchy tunes.
But...
“THE LITTLE MERMAID”
Hans Christian Anderson
Last Tuesday’s release of the new platinum DVD edition of “The Little Mermaid” may spawn more little mermaids this Halloween.
It’s easy to see why.
Ariel always has great hair, even in the most dangerous situations. She has a great voice ... well, when she has it. She’s funny, surrounded by supportive animal friends and there’s a prince on the line.
Basically, she’s a princess with a sweet tale.
At least that’s how it seems ... until you meet the Hans Christian Anderson version, published in 1836.
“The Little Mermaid” is a sad, sad, sad story.
Instead of wedding the handsome prince, taking back her beautiful voice and singing off into the sunset, the little lovelorn mermaid of the book actually contemplates murdering the prince. She eventually becomes sea foam, then some sort of spirit air creature.
Sigh. Yeah, it’s not Disney.
Did I mention it’s sad? It’s sad.
And the prince is rather a playboy. He’s forever kissing her, leading her on, taking her everywhere with him. She even sleeps on a velvet cushion outside his bedroom door. What’s up with that, Mr. Anderson?
I’ve got to side with the wicked sea witch when it comes to the mermaid princess’ desire to win this prince. “It’s a stupid wish, but you shall have it, for it will bring you bad luck, my pretty princess,” she says.
Still, you’ve got to feel for this mermaid and her sheltered royal life under the sea. Her proper name is never given. She’s described as “a strange child, quiet and dreamy” and fascinated with the human world. It’s no wonder she became so naively enamored with the prince she first saw through a ship’s porthole.
Honestly, I’m not sure of the point of Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid.”
The best I could come up with is that perhaps it’s an attempt to get children to be good.
In the end of the book, the mermaid becomes an “airy spirit” destined to look for good children for 300 years so she can win an immortal soul. Apparently, mermaids don’t have souls.
It’s so convoluted, it made me wish for some Disney dilution.
“MARY
POPPINS”
P.L. Travers
According to Jane Banks, Mary Poppins has black hair “rather like a wooden Dutch doll.”
She’s thin, with large feet and hands and small blue eyes.
She’s vain, always looking at the reflection of herself in a new hat or shoes while walking by a glass storefront with the four Banks children in tow.
She sniffs a lot, too.
Julie Andrews greatly improved Mary Poppins’ looks ... and voice and smile.
The nanny from the 1934 book seems to specialize in looks that are cross, offended, of disgust and that generally shut kids’ mouths up tight.
But both the 1964 musical movie and the book Mary Poppins are positively irresistible.
They slide up banisters, talk to animals, jump into sidewalk chalk pictures and ride the wind.
Jane and Michael Banks love her, as do the two other Banks children of the book: twins John and Barbara.
They are babies and don’t do a whole lot in the book other than sit in the perambulator (baby carriage) and talk to animals, which apparently very, very young children can do until about age 1 or so.
Mary Poppins is “the Great Exception” to that rule.
“She’s something special, you see. Not in the matter of looks, of course. One of my own day-old chicks is handsomer than Mary P. every was —” said a starling to John and Barbara through the window one day.
Of course, Mary Poppins got cross at that statement.
Mr. and Mrs. Banks are pretty different and not as prominent in the book as they are in the musical movie. Mrs. Banks doesn’t march around the house shouting “votes for women!” Mr. Banks isn’t as stuffy. He’s more of a worrier.
The role of Bert, played by Dick Van Dyke, is greatly expanded in the film. It’s a nice move, considering how fun Van Dyke is to watch as the roaming chimney sweep/musician/chalk artist ... uh, what else does he do?
Anyway, his appearance in the book further confirms my suspicions since childhood that he is, indeed, Mary Poppins’ boyfriend.
However, I somehow doubt the Mary Poppins of the book would have thought Andrews, or anyone, a fitting actress to portray her. She’s just too particular.
“But nobody ever knew what Mary Poppins felt about it, for Mary Poppins never told anybody anything. ...”
(Note: Elsa Lanchester, who starred as the furious Katie Nanna in the movie “Mary Poppins,” also played the monster’s mate in the 1935 film “Bride of Frankenstein.”)
“THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ”
L. Frank Baum
Silver slippers become ruby pumps.
The old and short Witch of the North becomes the young bubble-gum pink Glinda.
In the 1939 film it was all a dream, over the rainbow.
In L. Frank Baum’s book from 1900, Dorothy really did go to Oz.
For the most part, though, the book and the movie plots aren’t too different.
Dorothy rides a cyclone to Oz, kills a couple witches, follows a yellow brick road with her dog Toto and a Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and a Cowardly Lion, then exposes the humbug Wizard of Oz.
The book has considerably more details and adventure, though.
Did you know the Tin Woodman used to be a real man?
Have you heard of Kalidahs?
“ ‘They are monstrous beasts with bodies like bears and heads like tigers,’ replied the Lion.”
Ah, an animal Napoleon Dynamite would love to practice his drawing skills on.
And about the Emerald City, it’s not actually green. But everyone who lives or visits the city is required to wear green glasses so everyone thinks it is.
Along with Munchkins, there are Winkies and Quadlings. There’s also a country inhabited by people made of china and another country where armless Hammer-Head people live.
The Glinda of the book is the beautiful and good red-headed Witch of the South. Fortunately, she dresses in white.
In the end, Dorothy and Toto get home to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.
That’s it for movie viewers.
It’s not for bookworms.
There is “The Marvelous Land of Oz,” “Ozma of Oz,” “The Road to Oz,” “The Emerald City of Oz,” “The Patchwork Girl of Oz,” and more to explore.
