AS SEEN ON TV: FRANKENSTEINS' CREATURES

CREATED BY:

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

AS SEEN IN:

"Frankenstein: The True Story"

PORTRAYED BY:

Michael Sarrazin

AS SEEN IN:

'Struck By Lightning'

PORTRAYED BY:

Jack Elam

TV STATUS:

Different characters, same nomenclature

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

From Wikipedia:

Frankenstein's monster (also called the monster or Frankenstein's creature) is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Prometheus was a god from Greek mythology who stole fire from the other gods of Mount Olympus and gave it to humans. Victor Frankenstein is the Prometheus figure.

In popular culture, the creature is often erroneously referred to as "Frankenstein", but in the novel the creature has no name. He does call himself, when speaking to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, the "Adam of your labours". He is also variously referred to as a "creature", "fiend", "the demon", "wretch", "devil", "thing", "being" and "ogre" in the novel.

The monster's namelessness became part of the stage tradition as Mary Shelley's story was adapted into serious and comic plays in London and Paris during the decades after the novel's first appearance. Mary Shelley`s husband had to put his name in the novel because at those times women were not allowed to be writers. Mary Shelley herself attended a performance of Presumption, the first successful stage adaptation of her novel. "The play bill amused me extremely, for in the list of dramatic personal came _________, by Mr T. Cooke,” she wrote to her friend Leigh Hunt. "This nameless mode of naming the unnameable is rather good."

The name of the creator—Frankenstein—soon came to be used to name the creation. That happened within the first decade after the novel was published, but it became firmly established after the story was popularized in the famous 1930s Universal film series starring Boris Karloff.

The film was based largely on a play by Peggy Webling, performed in London in 1927. Webling's "Frankenstein" actually does give his creature his name. The Universal film treated the Monster's identity in a manner that reflects its resemblance to Mary Shelley's novel: the name of the actor, not the character, is hidden by a question mark. Nevertheless, the creature soon enough became best known in the popular imagination as "Frankenstein". This usage is sometimes considered erroneous, but usage commentators regard the monster sense of "Frankenstein" as well-established and not an error.

O'BSERVATIONS:

Dr. Frankenstein and his Creature are two TV characters that can be recast many times over and still all exist in the same TV dimension (similar to the many Ugly Betties. Or is that Bettys?)
The Family Frankenstein has had many members in Earth Prime-Time, some of them sharing the name of Victor, and all of them dedicated to continuing the work of the original Dr. Victor Frankenstein (seen in "Frankenstein: The True Story".) And the same would apply to the Creature, each of them the results of those experiments.

The original Creature and Frank from Maine are just two of that group.....

The Frankenstein Monsters were inducted into the "Proto-Hall" version of the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame which existed before 1999, probably in a Tubeworld Dynamic post from October of 1998.  Herman Munster's icon is used to represent the group.

Two for Tuesday!

BCnU!