I’ve always been fascinated by transformations either in fiction or in real life but what do I mean by transformations? Well, I have written about transformations before in a previous post. I talked then about Professor Higgins who helped Eliza Doolittle change from a street flower seller to a lady in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion but with this new post I thought I’d start with the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson published his novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Hyde in 1886. It concerns Dr Jekyll who creates a potion which transforms himself into Mr Hyde, another personality in which he is free to enjoy his vices without fear of detection. In the book Mr Hyde must take more of his serum in order to change back to his original self. Eventually Hyde finds it is not possible to revert back and commits suicide.
The Jekyll and Hyde story was filmed many times but the most famous version was in 1920 starring John Barrymore. In one scene Barrymore as Jekyll changes into Hyde entirely without special effects. It is an extraordinary scene all achieved by facial contortions which may seem a bit laughable today but back in 1920 audiences were amazed. A 1941 version starred Spencer Tracy in the title role and there have been many other film versions.
One of my favourites was the comedy Carry on Screaming in which police officer Sergeant Bung played by Harry H Corbett is investigating some strange goings on. His investigations lead him to an eerie rest home run by Kenneth Williams as Orlando Watt and his sister Valeria played seductively by Fenella Fielding. In one scene Valeria gives Harry a potion which turns him into Mr Hyde with hilarious results.
Bruce Wayne and Batman
A pretty obvious transformation is one I could pick up from any superhero comic, that of an ordinary member of the public transformed by some accident or circumstance into a crime fighting hero. I’ve chosen two you might already be familiar with from pretty much opposite sides of the super hero spectrum.
Bruce Wayne was a young child when his parents were murdered by a criminal. The story first appeared in issue #33 of Detective comics in 1939. Dr Thomas Wayne and his wife Martha were wealthy socialites living in Gotham City. Their son Bruce enjoyed a privileged existence at the family home, Wayne Manor, until he was eight years old when the family encountered small time mugger Joe Chill on the way home from the cinema. Joe shot Bruce’s parents dead and the young lad swore to avenge his parents’ death by fighting crime.
Batman. Picture courtesy Wikipedia commons.
When he is ruminating on this decision and thinking that he must be able to strike fear into the hearts of the criminal fraternity a bat flies in through the window and Bruce wonders if the image of the bat might be something he can use.
The Batman origin story has changed over the years; in a later comic we find that the murder of the Waynes was organised by a mob boss as revenge for when Thomas Wayne gave testimony which sent the mob boss behind bars.
In the Tim Burton film Batman, we find that the killer was actually Jack Napier who later becomes the Joker, one of Batman’s arch enemies.
In the later Dark Knight Batman films things change again with Bruce travelling to Asia to learn martial arts from the League of Shadows. He later splits from the group and as Batman, he has to battle against them.
Peter Parker and Spiderman
Spiderman was a different kind of superhero made to measure for the teenagers of the 1960’s. Peter Parker was a quiet nerdy kind of teenager. He was a high school student who lived with his aunt and uncle as his parents had died in a plane crash. He was attracted to Mary Jane Watson, a gorgeous redhead but he knew he had no chance whatsoever with the muscle-bound Flash Thompson on the scene. Anyway, one day he and his fellow pupils are visiting the Midtown school of Science and Technology and he comes across a radioactive spider. Yes, not something you run into every day.
Anyway, Peter gets bitten by the spider and as a result develops superhuman powers; super strength and agility and also a sort of sixth sense he calls his spider sense. In the comics Peter makes a special gadget that shoots out a strong web on which he swings through the heights of the city. Peter uses his new found powers and becomes a wrestler, but after his uncle Ben is killed by a mugger, he decides to fight crime as Spiderman.
Back in the 1960’s there was a cartoon TV Spiderman show and I can even remember most of the theme tune.
Spiderman, Spiderman, Your friendly neighbourhood spiderman
Spins a web any size
Catches thieves just like flies
Is he strong, listen bud
he’s got radioactive blood.
They just don’t write them like that anymore.
Tobey Maguire starred as Peter Parker in a film trilogy that was quickly rebooted with Tom Holland as the web swinging hero.
Personally, I still prefer the old cartoon version.
Elton John and Reginald Dwight
Reginald Dwight was born on the 25th March 1947. He lived in Pinner in Middlesex with his mother and father, Stanley and Sheila. Stanley Dwight joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 and elected to stay on after World War II ended. Elton John seemed to think in his autobiography that that was a good thing as together, his mother and father spent a lot of time arguing. While Stanley was away in the air force Reg lived with his mother and his maternal grandmother at 55 Pinner Hill Road, his grandmother’s council house. Elton seems to have been reasonably happy there but understandably distressed at the numerous arguments between his mother and father whenever Stanley came home.
Stanley left the air force and his mother and father divorced when Reg was 14.
One thing that had a very positive effect on the young Reginald was his parents’ love of music and records. He began tapping out tunes on his grandmother’s piano and the age of 11 won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.
At the age of 15 Reg got himself a job playing the piano at the local pub and in 1962 he and some friends formed a small band called Bluesology and they soon picked up a regular gig supporting singer Long John Baldry.
In 1967 Reg answered an advertisement in the New Musical Express. It had been placed by Liberty Records and they were looking for new talent. Reg went to audition for the A & R manager, Ray Williams but he appeared to be unimpressed when Reg sang an old Jim Reeves hit and by way of ending the interview Ray handed Reg a sheaf of unopened lyrics written by someone who had answered the same ad.
That someone was Bernie Taupin. He and Reg hit it off instantly and Reg began writing music to Bernie’s lyrics. Six months later Reg changed his name. He took the name Elton from saxophonist Elton Dean and John from Long John Baldry and put them together to become Elton John.
In 1969 Elton’s album Empty Sky became a minor hit and was followed by the eponymous Elton John in 1970. ‘Your Song’, a single from the album went to number 7 in the UK singles chart and Elton John had arrived.
Norma Jeane and Marilyn Monroe
I should mention that one of Elton’s big hits was Candle in the Wind which leads me nicely into this next section as the song was about Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn was born Norma Jeane Mortensen on June 1st 1926. Her mother was a Hollywood film cutter and her father was a married man named C Francis Gifford who Gladys, her mother, had an affair with.
Gladys divorced her husband who had deserted her some years earlier and she reverted to her previous name, Baker, that of her first husband.
Marilyn on the cover of the celebrated book by Norman Mailer
Norma Jeane had a troubled upbringing. Her mother was mentally unstable and was in and out of various institutions, leaving young Norma to be taken into care. On one occasion in her late teens Norma Jeane was living with a friend of her mother, but this friend was moving away and rather than send Norma back into a home, an idea came about which seems a little mad in retrospect. The idea was for Norma to get married to a local boy, Jim Dougherty. The marriage went ahead only eighteen days after Norma’s sixteenth birthday.
The war finally came to came to the USA when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. Jim joined the navy and Norma was working in a war factory when an army photographer called David Conover came round looking for a photo article for a magazine. He asked Norma to pose for him and found that she had a natural affinity with the camera. More photo shoots came her way and soon Norma was convinced by Emmeline Snively, head of the Blue Book Modelling Agency that she was wasting her talents in a defence factory. Within weeks of quitting her job in the factory Norma Jeane became one of the Blue Book’s busiest models.
In 1946 she divorced Jim Dougherty and only a matter of weeks later she went for a screen test at Twentieth Century Fox and Ben Lyon, head of new talent at Fox, offered her a seven-year optional contract. The next issue was her name as Lyon felt that Norma Jeane was not film star material. Lyon suggested the name Marilyn and Norma Jeane provided her mother’s maiden name, Monroe. Norma Jeane had made the transformation into Marilyn Monroe and had begun the long road to film stardom.
Coming in third in my all-time most read posts was one from 2014 about the
Monty Python team. The diary talks about Palin giving up smoking, making the first series of Monty Python and various other film and TV projects. It was interesting especially the peripheral things Palin mentions, the Apollo 11 moon landings, the strikes, the three day week and so on and it also brought back a lot of memories of my schooldays when my fellow pupils and I were great fans of Monty Python. 
There are plenty of other stats that I’ve gleaned from my WordPress stats page. In my first year of blogging, 2014, I wrote 58,895 words. That figure has gradually expanded and this year, up to the 26th of December as I write this, I published 76,659 words (plus however many words are in this post). Average words per post in 2014 were only 633 words so these days at an average of 1446 words per post the reader is getting real value for money. I say value for money but as SteveHigginsLive.com is an entirely free service that’s not strictly true but I like to think I am doing something towards keeping readers amused during this locked down, mask wearing, hand sanitising time.
Well, there goes another year. 2019. Was it a good one for you? Hopefully, it was. For me, 2019 was probably the year I became a carer. OK, I’d looked after my mother before but it was only this year that I became aware of how much help she really needed. Anyway, time for a quick look back focussing on my blog posts from this last year. All the links open up into another page to reunite you with my past posts.
So just what makes us bloggers and why do we blog?
Quite a few people have asked me about my novel. What’s it about? is a frequent question. Well, it’s set in the late 1970’s and it’s about a young man in South Manchester and his small group of friends. He goes from working in an insurance company to finding himself as a bus conductor in a short space of time and the background to the book tells us about life in the seventies: Music, drink, pubs and Mancunian night life.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 