[Ads-l] Further Antedating of "Mad Scientist"

[Rich Lowenthal]

The Times first use of the phrase appears to be the January 13, 1933 
review of "Island of Lost Souls." Once the writers had added the phrase 
to the paper's vocabulary, they could not let go: the term appears again 
in the February 18 review of "The Mystery of the Wax Museum," and again 
in a July review of "A Shriek in the Night." The July review is notable 
as the picture is applauded because "there's not a single mad 
scientist," suggesting the phrase and the idea had quickly grown 
hackneyed.


------ Original Message ------
>From "Jonathan Lighter" 
<00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
To ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Date 8/3/2026 6:20:46 PM
Subject Re: Further Antedating of "Mad Scientist"

>The story in "Tit-Bits" was reprinted in the U.S in the Weekly Kansas Chief
>(May 21, 1896) [N].  Absolutely a Mad Scientist. But I find no early
>newspaper characterizations of Wells's Dr. Moreau as a "mad scientist."
>This suggests to me that the phrase and concept were not yet a cliche.
>
>The phrase, however, is suddenly and frequently attached to Viktor
>Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau in reviews of the 1931 "Frankenstein" and the
>1933  "Island of Lost Souls."
>
>I'll go out on a limb and assert that these movies, their reviewers, and
>their successors were initially responsible for the spread of the Mad
>Scientist as a cliche-cum-cultural meme.
>
>A lady who saw lots of movies as a teenager in the '40s assures me that by
>1945 the  Mad Scientist was a familiar cultural concept, and there were
>lots of them.  Besides Frankenstein and Moreau, she instanced Dr. Jekyll,
>as well as John Carradine manufacturing zombies for the Nazis in the
>Louisiana swamps and using science to turn a dangerous gorilla into a
>sultry sex goddess. Somebody else put the hero's human brain into a
>gorilla's body.
>
>I'll let S. J. Perelman to speak for me (New Yorker, Jan. 20, 1940):
>
>"Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a
>beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee,
>and I care not who writes the nation's laws."
>
>JL
>
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