October 30, 2018 (XXXVII:10) David Lynch: Elephant Man (1980, 124 min.) Online versions of The Goldenrod Handouts have color images & hot links: http://csac.buffalo.edu/goldenrodhandouts.html

DIRECTED BY David Lynch WRITING screenplay by Christopher De Vore, Eric Bergren, and David Lynch; Frederick Treves (book) (as Sir Frederick Treves), Ashley Montagu (in part on the book "The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity") PRODUCED BY Stuart Cornfeld (executive producer), Jonathan Sanger (producer), and Mel Brooks (executive producer, uncredited) MUSIC John Morris CINEMATOGRAPHY Freddie Francis (director of photography) FILM EDITING Anne V. Coates PRODUCTION DESIGN Stuart Craig ART DIRECTION Robert Cartwright SET DECORATION Hugh Scaife COSTUME DESIGN Patricia Norris MAKEUP DEPARTMENT hairdressers: Paula Gillespie and Stephanie Kaye; makeup artists: Beryl Lerman and Michael Morris; makeup application: 'Elephant Man' / makeup supervisor: Wally Schneiderman; makeup creator: 'Elephant Man' / makeup designer: 'Elephant Man': Christopher Tucker The film received eight nominations at the 1981Academy Awards: Best Picture: Jonathan Sanger; Best Actor in a Leading Role: John Hurt; Best Director: David Lynch; Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium: Christopher De Vore, Eric Bergren, David Lynch; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration: Stuart Craig, Robert Cartwright, Hugh Scaife; Best Costume Design: Patricia Norris; Best Film Editing: Anne V. Coates; Best Music, Original Score: John Morris. CAST Anthony Hopkins...Frederick Treves John Hurt...John Merrick Anne Bancroft...Mrs. Kendal John Gielgud...Carr Gomm Wendy Hiller...Mothershead Freddie Jones ...Bytes Michael Elphick...Night Porter Hannah Gordon...Mrs. Treves Helen Ryan...Princess Alex John Standing...Fox Dexter Fletcher...Bytes' Boy Lesley Dunlop...Nora Phoebe Nicholls...Merrick's Mother Pat Gorman...Fairground Bobby Claire Davenport...Fat Lady Orla Pederson...Skeleton Man Patsy Smart...Distraught Woman Frederick Treves...Alderman Stromboli...Fire Eater Richard Hunter...Hodges James Cormack...Pierce Robert Lewis Bush...Messenger Roy Evans...Cabman Joan Rhodes...Cook Nula Conwell...Nurse Kathleen Tony London...Young Porter

Alfie Curtis...Milkman Bernadette Milnes...1st Fighting Woman Brenda Kempner...2nd Fighting Woman Carol Harrison ...Tart (as Carole Harrison) Hugh Manning...Broadneck Dennis Burgess...1st Committee Man Fanny Carby... Mrs. Kendal's Dresser William Morgan Sheppard...Man In Pub (as Morgan Sheppard) Kathleen Byron...Lady Waddington Gerald Case...Lord Waddington David Ryall...Man With Whores Deirdre Costello...1st Whore Pauline Quirke...2nd Whore Kenny Baker...Plumed Dwarf Chris Greener...Giant Marcus Powell...Midget Gilda Cohen... Midget Lesley Scoble...Siamese Twin (as Lisa Scoble) Teri Scoble...Siamese Twin Eiji Kusuhara...Japanese Bleeder Robert Day...Little Jim Patricia Hodge ...Screaming Mum Tommy Wright...First Bobby Peter Davidson...Second Bobby John Rapley...King In Panto

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Hugh Spight...Puss In Panto Teresa Codling...Princess In Panto Marion Betzold...Principal Boy Caroline Haigh...Tree Florenzio Morgado...Tree Victor Kravchenko...Lion / Coachman Beryl Hicks...Fairy Michele Amas...Horse Lucie Alford...Horse Penny Wright...Horse Janie Kells...Horse Lydia Lisle...Merrick's Mother

DAVID LYNCH (b. January 20, 1946 in Missoula, Montana) is one of the few contemporary filmmakers to inspire an eponymous qualitative term: Lynchian. The late American novelist and cultural critic David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) said that in film “a regular domestic murder is not Lynchian. But if the police come to the scene and see the man standing over the body and the woman's 50s bouffant is undisturbed and the man and the cops have this conversation about the fact that the man killed the woman because she persistently refused to buy, say, for instance, Jif peanut butter rather than Skippy, and how very, very important that is, and if the cops found themselves somehow agreeing that there were major differences between the brands and that a wife who didn't recognize those differences was deficient in her wifely duties, that would be Lynchian.” Lynch went to art school in a particularly violent and run-down area of Philadelphia which inspired Eraserhead (1977),*** a film that he began in the early 1970s (after a couple of shorts) and which he would work on obsessively for five years. The final film was initially judged to be almost too weird for release, but thanks to the efforts of distributor Ben Barenholtz, it secured a cult following and enabled Lynch to make his first mainstream film (in an unlikely alliance with Mel Brooks), though The Elephant Man (1980)* was shot through with his unique sensibility. This film also led to Lynch’s first Academy Award nominations for Best Director and for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. Its enormous critical and commercial success led to Dune (1984),* a hugely expensive commercial flop, but he was nominated, again, for the Academy Award for Best Director in 1987 for, arguably, the definitive “Lynchian” film Blue Velvet (1986). From 1989 to 1991, Lynch collaborated with Mark Frost to create the iconic television

program, Twin Peaks,* a show that raised the bar of what was expected from television, setting the stage for an era of “premium television” that some would argue has not surpassed Lynch’s initial accomplishment. In 2017, Lynch brought Twin Peaks back to television, directing and co-writing all 18 episodes in the new series, prompting some to consider the work an eighteen-hour film. In 1990, Lynch took the distinguished Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or for Wild at Heart (1990). He was nominated, in 1992, for the Palme d'Or for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)* and, again, in 1999 for The Straight Story (1999). At the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, he was, again, nominated for the Palme d'Or, and he won, in a tie, Best Director for Mulholland Drive (2001), for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director in 2002. Lynch has directed 80 films, video shorts, documentaries, and television series. Some of his other directorial works include: Six Men Getting Sick (1966, Short), Sailing with Bushnell Keeler (1967, Short), Fictitious Anacin Commercial (1967, Short), Absurd Encounter with Fear (1967, Short), The Alphabet (1968, Short),** The Grandmother (1970, Short), The Amputee (1974, Short),* The Cowboy and the Frenchman (1988), Chris Isaak: Wicked Game, Wild at Heart Version (1990, Video short), Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Brokenhearted (1990, TV Movie),*** Premonition Following an Evil Deed (1995, Short), Lost Highway (1997),* Eraserhead Stories (2001, Video documentary), Darkened Room (2002, Short),** Coyote (2002, Documentary short),** Inland Empire (2006),**** Working with Marilyn Manson (2007, Video documentary short), David Lynch Cooks Quinoa (2007, Documentary short), Blue Green (2007, Video short), Ballerina (2007, Short),** Moby: Shot in the Back of the Head (2009, Video short), Dream #7 (2010, Short), 42 One Dream Rush (2010, Short), Ariana Delawari: Lion of Panjshir (2010, Video short), Nine Inch Nails: Came Back Haunted (2013, Video short), Duran Duran: Unstaged (2014, Video documentary), and Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (2014).* *Indicates films and television series Lynch acted in **Indicates films Lynch did cinematography for ***Indicates films Lynch composed music for ****Indicates films Lynch acted in and did cinematography for He has written 41 films and other video projects and produced 41 films and other video projects. He has also acted in 25 films and television series, including: Heart Beat (1980), Arena (1987, TV Series documentary), Zelly and Me (1988), Nadja (1994), BlueBob: Thank You, Judge (1999, Video short), The Disc of Sorrow Is Installed (2002, Short), DumbLand (2002, TV Mini-Series short), Hollyshorts Greeting (2008, Short), Peixe Vermelho (2009, Short), Louie (2012, TV Series), The Cleveland Show (2010-2013, TV Series), Family Guy (2010-2016, TV Series), Girlfriend's Day (2017), Lucky (2017), and The Black Ghiandola (2017, Short). He has also done cinematography for 14 films and shorts, some of which are: The Pig Walks (2002, Short), Factory Mask (2002, Short), Dead Mouse with Ants (2002, Documentary short), Bees (2002, Documentary short), Lamp (2003, Documentary short), BlueBob Egg (Short), Early Experiments (2008, Short), and The 3 Rs (2011, Short). He has also composed music for 9 films and shorts, some of which are: No Frank in Lumberton (1988, TV Movie documentary), BlueBob: Thank You, Judge (1999, Video short), Lady Blue Shanghai (2010,

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Short), Good Day Today (2011, Video short), David Lynch & Chrysta Bell: Bird of Flames (2012, Video short), Star (2014, Short), and Night Ride The Director's Cut (2017, Short). FREDDIE FRANCIS (b. December 22, 1917 in Islington, London, England—d. March 17, 2007 (age 89) in Isleworth, Middlesex, England) did cinematography for 36 films and directed 37 films. He won two Academy Awards: one for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White in 1961 for Sons and Lovers (1960) and Best Cinematography in 1990 for Glory (1989). These are some other films he did cinematography for: Hell in Korea (1956 director of photography), Time Without Pity (1957 as Frederick Francis, photography), Room at the Top (1959 director of photography), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960 director of photography), The Innocents (1961 director of photography), Night Must Fall (1964), The Elephant Man (1980 director of photography), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981 director of photography), The Executioner's Song (1982 TV Movie), The Jigsaw Man (1983), Dune (1984 photographed by), Return to Oz (1985 uncredited), Code Name: Emerald (1985), Clara's Heart (1988), Her Alibi (1989 director of photography), Brenda Starr (1989), Peter Cushing: A One-Way Ticket to Hollywood (1989 TV Movie documentary), The Man in the Moon (1991 director of photography), Cape Fear (1991 director of photography), School Ties (1991), Princess Caraboo (1994), Rainbow (1995), The Nail File: The Best of Jimmy Nail Video Collection (1997 Video), and The Straight Story (1999 director of photography). ANTHONY HOPKINS (b. December 31, 1937 in Margam, Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, Wales) has acted in 133 films and television series. He won the Academy Award in 1992 for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Silence of the Lambs (1991), and he was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1994 for Remains of the Day (1993) and in 1996 for Nixon (1995). He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1998 for Amistad (1997). These are some of his other films: A Matter of Degree (1960 TV Series), The Man in Room 17 (1965 TV Series), The Lion in Winter (1968), Hamlet (1969), The Looking Glass War (1970), Young Winston (1972), War & Peace (1972-1973 TV Series), A Doll's House (1973), Juggernaut (1974), The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case (1976 TV Movie), Victory at Entebbe (1976 TV Movie), A Bridge Too Far (1977), International Velvet (1978), Magic (1978), The Elephant Man (1980), A Change of Seasons (1980), Othello (1981 TV Movie), The Bounty (1984), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Desperate Hours (1990), Howards End (1992), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Chaplin (1992), The Trial (1993), The Innocent (1993), Shadowlands (1993), The Road to Wellville (1994), Legends of the Fall (1994), Nixon (1995), Surviving Picasso (1996), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Meet Joe Black (1998), Instinct (1999), Titus (1999), Mission: Impossible II (2000), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Hannibal (2001), Bad Company (2002), Red Dragon (2002), The Human Stain (2003), Alexander (2004), Bobby (2006), All the King's Men (2006), Beowulf (2007), The City of Your Final Destination (2009), The Wolfman (2010), The Third Rule (2010 Short), You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010), Bare Knuckles (2010), Hitchcock (2012), RED 2 (2013), The Dresser (2015 TV Movie), Misconduct (2016), Collide (2016),

Transformers: The Last Knight (2017), King Lear (2018 TV Movie), Westworld (2016-2018 TV Series), and The Pope (2018 post-production).

JOHN HURT (b. January 22, 1940 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England—d. January 25, 2017 (age 77) in East Runton, Cromer, Norfolk, England) acted in 207 films and television series. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1979 for Midnight Express (1978) and for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1981 for The Elephant Man (1980). He also acted in films and television series such as: Young and Willing (1962), The Contact (1963), This Is My Street (1964), Love Story (1964, TV Series), A Man for All Seasons (1966), 10 Rillington Place (1971), Cry of the Penguins (1971), The Pied Piper (1972), The Ghoul (1975), I, Claudius (TV Mini-Series), Midnight Express (1978), The Shout (1978), Watership Down (1978), The Lord of the Rings (1978), Alien (1979), The Elephant Man (1980), Heaven's Gate (1980), Night Crossing (1982), The Osterman Weekend (1983), Champions (1984), The Hit (1984), 1984 (1984), After Darkness (1985), Spaceballs (1987), White Mischief (1987), The Bengali Night (1988), Romeo.Juliet (1990), Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound (1990), Monolith (1993), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), Dead Man (1995), Wild Bill (1995), Contact (1997), New Blood (1999), Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), Miranda (2002), Crime and Punishment (2002), Dogville (2003), Hellboy (2004), Manderlay (2005), V for Vendetta (2005), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Outlander (2008), New York, I Love You (2008), The Limits of Control (2009), 44 Inch Chest (2009), Brighton Rock (2010), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010), Melancholia (2011), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Jayne Mansfield's Car (2012), Sightseers (2012), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Hercules (2014), Jackie (2016), My Name Is Lenny (2017), That Good Night (2017), and Damascus Cover (2017). ANNE BANCROFT (b. September 17, 1931 in The Bronx, New York City, New York—d. June 6, 2005 (age 73) in New York City, New York) acted in 86 films and television series. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 1963 for The Miracle Worker (1962), and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 1965 for The Pumpkin Eater (1964), in 1968 for The Graduate (1967), in 1978 for The Turning Point (1977), and in 1986 for Agnes of God (1985). She also acted in films and television series such as:

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Suspense (1951, TV Series), The Ford Theatre Hour (1951, TV Series), Studio One in Hollywood (1950-1951, TV Series), The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1951, TV Series), Don't Bother to Knock (1951), Gorilla at Large (1954), Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), The Raid (1954), New York Confidential (1955), A Life in the Balance (1955), The Naked Street (1955), The Last Frontier (1955), Walk the Proud Land (1956), Nightfall (1956), The Restless Breed (1957), The Girl in Black Stockings (1957), Slender Thread (1965), 7 Women (1966), The Young Winston (1972), Blazing Saddles (1974), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), The Hindenburg (1975), Lipstick (1976), Silent Movie (1976), Fatso (1980), Shogun (1980, TV Movie), The Elephant Man (1980), To Be or Not to Be (1983), Garbo Talks (1984), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Love Potion No. 9 (1992), Point of No Return (1993), The Simpsons (1994, TV Series), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), Home for the Holidays (1995), Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), G.I. Jane (1997), Critical Care (1997), Great Expectations (1998), Antz (1998), Up at the Villa (2000), Keeping the Faith (2000), Heartbreakers (2001), The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003, TV Movie), and Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004, TV Series). JOHN GIELGUD (b. April 14, 1904 in South Kensington, London, England—d. May 21, 2000 (age 96) in Wotton Underwood, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England) acted in 134 films and television series. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1982 for Arthur (1981), and he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1965 for Becket (1964). He also acted in films and television series, such as: Who Is the Man? (1924), The Clue of the New Pin (1929), Insult (1932), The Prime Minister (1941), Julius Caesar (1953), Romeo and Juliet (1954), Richard III (1955), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Nude with Violin (1956, TV Movie), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957), Saint Joan (1957), Becket (1964), Hamlet (1964), The Loved One (1965), Chimes at Midnight (1965), Alice in Wonderland (1966, TV Movie), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Assignment to Kill (1968), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Julius Caesar (1970), Lost Horizon (1973), Frankenstein: The True Story (1973, TV Movie), Gold (1974), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Galileo (1975), Aces High (1976), Providence (1977), Joseph Andrews (1977), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977), Romeo & Juliet (1978, TV Movie), Richard II (1978, TV Movie), Les Miserables (1978, TV Movie), Murder by Decree (1979), Caligula (1979), The Human Factor (1979), The Conductor (1980), The Elephant Man (1980), The Formula (1980), Lion of the Desert (1980), Sphinx (1981), Arthur (1981), Priest of Love (1981), Brideshead Revisited (1981, TV Mini-Series), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982, TV Movie) Inside the Third Reich (1982, TV Movie), Gandhi (1982), Marco Polo (1982, TV Mini-Series), The Scarlet and the Black (1983, TV Movie), The Wicked Lady (1983), The Far Pavilions (1984, TV Mini-Series), Scandalous (1984), The Master of Ballantrae (1984, TV Movie), Frankenstein (1984, TV Movie), The Shooting Party (1985), Invitation to the Wedding (1985), Plenty (1985), Leave All Fair (1985), The Theban Plays by Sophocles (1986, TV Series), The Whistle Blower (1986), Appointment with Death (1988), Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988), A Man for All Seasons (1988, TV Movie), Getting It Right

(1989), War and Remembrance (1988-1989, TV Mini-Series), Strike It Rich (1990), Prospero's Books (1991), Shining Through (1992), The Power of One (1992), First Knight (1995), Shine (1996), Gulliver's Travels (1996, TV Mini-Series), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), Hamlet (1996), David (1997, TV Mini-Series), A Dance to the Music of Time (1997, TV Mini-Series), The Magic Sword: Quest for Camelot (1998), The Tichborne Claimant (1998), and Elizabeth (1998). WENDY HILLER (b. August 15, 1912 in Bramhall, Cheshire, England—d. May 14, 2003 (age 90) in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England) acted in 58 films and television series. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 1959 for Separate Tables (1958). She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 1939 for Pygmalion (1938) and for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for A Man for All Seasons (1966). She also appeared in films and television series, such as: Lancashire Luck (1937), Major Barbara (1941), 'I Know Where I'm Going!' (1945), Outcast of the Islands (1951), Something of Value (1957), Sons and Lovers (1960), Toys in the Attic (1963), From Chekhov with Love (1968, TV Movie), David Copperfield (1970, TV Movie), When We Dead Awaken (1970, TV Movie), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Voyage of the Damned (1976), The Cat and the Canary (1978), Richard II (1978, TV Movie), The Elephant Man (1980), Making Love (1982), Witness for the Prosecution (1982, TV Movie), Attracta (1983), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), A Taste for Death (1988, TV Mini-Series), and Screenplay (1992, TV Series).

FREDDIE JONES (b. September 12, 1927 in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England) acted in 214 films and television series, including: Androcles and the Lion (1960, TV Mini-Series), Marat/Sade (1967), The Avengers (1967, TV Series), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), Goodbye Gemini (1970), Kidnapped (1971), Antony and Cleopatra (1972), Son of Dracula (1974), Juggernaut (1974), Old Dracula (1974), Nicholas Nickleby (1977, TV Mini-Series), Zulu Dawn (1979), The Elephant Man (1980), Firefox (1982), Krull (1983), And the

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Ship Sails On (1983), Dune (1984), Comrades (1986), Erik the Viking (1989), Wild at Heart (1990), Royal Deceit (1994), Cold Comfort Farm (1995, TV Movie), It Could Be You (1995, TV Movie), Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1995, TV Series), The Count of Monte Cristo (2002), Ladies in Lavender (2004), Come on Eileen (2010), and By Our Selves (2015).

Lavorco Maric: “’The Elephant Man’: A Portrait of an Outcast Defeating His Fears and Deformities with Creativity, Wit and Compassion” (Cinephilia & Beyond) David Lynch, a name that is for many film enthusiasts the epitome for weird, surreal, and bizarre, surprised many people when he had characterised himself as a Boy Scout from Missoula, Montana. He is also known as “Jimmy Stewart from Mars,” or “Jimmy Stewart on acid”—a very polite, happy-go-lucky, enthusiastic individual, who unironically uses words and phrases like “Golly!,” “Holy jumping George!,” “Howdy!” etc., and who just happens to have a vivid imagination that has been the basis of nightmares for many of his viewers. Contrary to popular belief, Lynch is not the type of a guy who, for instance, chops off his fingernails in his grandmother’s basement and then puts them in his dinner salad, but is somebody who is actually trying, through foundations, meditation recommendations and charity work, to promote, and achieve without a hint of irony, peace and prosperity. But Lynch’s worlds are full of such contradictions, full of idealists who also happen to be scoundrels below the surface, and Lynch is fascinated with the dark and perverse facet of the human condition, but also on the profound and gentle side of humanity, a soulful aspect of his work that doesn’t get nearly mentioned as the former one. The oblique and mysterious nature of Lynch’s work draws many to become obsessed with finding a universal explanation or an enlightened meaning to his films. But Lynch insists on never revealing what the abstractions in his films “mean,” and he suggests to his viewers that they also try to find out for themselves more on an intuitive than a rational level as to what the disturbing visuals, the labyrinthian plots and the unreliable characters truly convey. Lynch claims that everybody is a detective, but it is also important to note that Lynch’s movies are not merely a puzzle to be solved: they are to be experienced, after which a powerful cinema-going epiphany may come out of his best work. This set of essays will try and derive certain interpretations and explanations of Lynch’s ideas, but they are in no way to be understood as definitive or let alone indicative of what the director himself was thinking. Every reader should be an autonomous detective indeed….

Fate, luck, and new acquaintances who happened to have access to people with influence brought David Lynch to the limelight. In an odd way, it parallels the story of the protagonist of his sophomore movie, John Merrick (based on the actual historical figure named Joseph Merrick), who has reached the very heights of Victorian England society after being ridiculed and humiliated for years as a kidnapped circus freak, due to his body being riddled with tumours and other deformities which gave him his nickname. After failing to find finances for a script he had himself developed called Ronnie Rocket, Lynch went on a search for scripts he could direct. Immediately as he heard the name The Elephant Man, Lynch, the intuitive eccentric that he is, didn’t want to hear of any other scripts—didn’t even bother to read the bloody thing before he said yes—and the rest is history. This, therefore, marks the first writing collaboration in Lynch’s career, namely with fellow writers Christopher DeVore and Eric Bergren, developing a story that was pitched to the American comedy guru Mel Brooks of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, of all people. Brooks had infamously organized a screening of Eraserhead to check out “this David Lynch” and whether he would be qualified for this project, while the frightened young director morosely waited in the hallway expecting to be sacked out of the project pretty much as soon as Eraserhead started. Brooks defied Lynch’s expectations in proudly declaring to him in his extroverted manner after experiencing the nightmare of Eraserhead: “I love you, you’re a mad man! You’re in!” Thus, an Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana, known for a dark, avant-garde film with sparse dialogue, was on his way to England to direct a Victorian drama with mammoth actors such as Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, Dame Wendy Hiller and Sir John Gielgud. The Elephant Man has over the years acquired the reputation of a David Lynch movie for movie fans who do not like David Lynch. It is based on strictly linear storytelling with a minimal amount of bizarre, surreal and/or violent sequences. But even if one would reduce the term “Lynchian” to these two tropes, The Elephant Man is thematically and stylistically integrated far more into the director’s oeuvre than it would seem on the surface. While Lynch is arguably more famous for themes of revealing a dark underworld of deceit, debauchery, and perversion below a seemingly ideal American way of life, as represented in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, The Elephant Man does the opposite: it reveals decency and dignity below that which seems ugly and degenerate on the surface, and this pertains primarily to John Merrick, the title character played by the recently deceased, great English thespian John Hurt. Due to his disturbing appearance, Merrick is first ridiculed and humiliated, but after finding an unexpected social anchor in the form of Doctor Frederick Treves, played by Anthony Hopkins, he manages to discover–and give back–human kindness and compassion. Nevertheless, Lynch is not shy to show here a more despicable side of humanity as well, particularly through two characters: one the self-appointed ruthless “owner” of Merrick, the other a crass hospital orderly, who spends no idle time in exploiting Merrick and his condition to obtain profit. Despite this, there is a profound warmth to the movie, as even the Victorian aristocracy, not a stranger to hypocrisy and condescension, proves to be welcoming and understanding of Merrick in Lynch’s vision, particularly through Anne Bancroft’s

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character of Mrs. Kendal, the elite actress who even makes the narcissistic notion of giving away her picture as a present seem noble and gracious. Whereas Eraserhead encompassed themes of escapism, The Elephant Man is, to an extent, about integration. Even though Merrick is a misunderstood outcast, he begins to form sincere friendships and his inner circle becomes less judgmental and less prone to irrational fear as time goes on. Hurt’s performance goes to lengths in never allowing Merrick to become a caricature and not making him exclusively an object of pity, since the actor has brief moments of unabashed fun with the character, giving him that much-needed personality and thus avoiding plunging the movie into the slippery territory of cheap sentimentality. The make-up by Christopher Tucker must be mentioned as well in hitting the right notes of not making Merrick ridiculous or too frightening, and Hurt’s distinguished voice, along with the emphatic look in his eyes, gives the Elephant Man the emphasis on the “man” and less on the “elephant.” Anthony Hopkins complements him in the role of a man haunted by the dilemma of being ambitious and exploitative for the purpose of ambition and recognition, while having a guilty conscience due to the fact that he cannot cure Merrick’s condition and that he perceives himself as much of an exploiter as Freddie Jones’ manic Mr. Bytes, the Elephant Man’s cruel slave master. Hopkins’ performance here is subtler and less flashy, using his eyes to reveal the torment behind the introverted persona, providing an interesting contrast to, for example, his more exaggerated work as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Some of the more memorable shots in Lynch’s movies involve heavy close-ups of faces, and Hopkins is right to the task at making them some of the more definitive ones in Lynch’s career. Hopkins was infamously antagonistic towards the 32-year-old Lynch, refusing to shave his beard and in general feeling alienated by the young director’s approach to actors, but nevertheless giving a performance that just might prove to be the pinnacle of his career, giving Lynch an early and consistent reputation of getting great performances from his actors, even though Hopkins claimed he was listening more to his own instincts than yielding to Lynch’s demands (years later, Hopkins sent Lynch a somewhat redemptive fan letter). Lynch was faced with many challenges during his stay in England, including a failed attempt at Merrick’s makeup before the production officially started, which even had him contemplate suicide for the first and only time in his life. The persistence of his vision resulted in a slowly gained confidence, earning the trust of his cast and crew, including the always reliable Sir John Gielgud and Brooks’ wife Anne Bancroft, and ultimately giving way to an essential humanistic piece of Lynchian cinema. One of the key pieces of the puzzle was the cinematographer; the stunning monochrome palette of The Elephant Man is the work of Freddie Francis, while the

familiarly creepy sound design is again the work of Lynch and Alan Splet. The Elephant Man shares some of its mood with Eraserhead with its depictions of smokestacks and sooty factories; while the industrial, macabre post-world of Eraserhead was more suffocating and isolationist in nature, Lynch’s London in The Elephant Man presents the success of the Industrial Revolution, taking boastful pride in its expansion and the rise of technology, mirroring Merrick’s rising awe of the world around him which is slowly but surely revealing itself in a manner

proportional to how he opens more to the society around him. In Lynch’s eyes, as explained in Chris Rodley’s Lynch by Lynch, Merrick’s body is the extension of these factories, seeing his tumorous growths akin to explosions, declaring that the human body is the greatest and most fearless factory of them all. Merrick is, therefore, more integrated into this Lynchian world than any of the “normal” people he has surrounded himself with. The use of symbolism may seem at

times on-the-nose, particularly in the unusually unambiguous dream sequences in the beginning and end, but the use of the cathedral model that Merrick is building is a tasteful summary of the movie’s themes—Merrick only sees the top of the bell tower from his window, and he will try to reach it by letting his imagination flow, conquering the heights with his creativity and wit instead of his deformed physicality. The use of music in the crucial moments of the film also brings Lynch’s impeccable sense of mixing sound and picture to the forefront. For instance, the scene where both the viewer and the characters of Hopkins and Gielgud realise that Merrick is indeed intelligent and literate brings out with the introduction of a musical cue an emotional resonance that continues on with the sequence where Merrick is harassed by whores and deviants in a perverse drunken ball, all the way to the carefully orchestrated, affecting ending, with Lynch choosing “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber, a theme that has been exploited in movies endlessly since (Oliver Stone using it most famously in Platoon six years later), but holding its timeless poignant impact in this film. These examples show that Lynch’s work has a deep emotional truth to it, which is most visible in his most plainly heart-rending movie that is The Elephant Man, but also in his other later work, behind all the layers of alleged incoherence, inaccessibility or plain weirdness that seem to alienate Lynch’s skeptics. Even though his attempts of connection with the audience may seem weirdly sentimental at times, they mostly seem sincere, unironic and are rarely manipulative in a Hollywood sense of the term. Some of Lynch’s later work—The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive in particular—will ensure that the emotional connection to the story is essential in the journey of his characters; one could say that the genesis of Lynch’s maturity as a deeply emotional filmmaker started with this film. Naturally, the movie was marketed in Hollywood (after some difficulties of trying to market it as a “monster movie”

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when it was, in fact, the opposite, as John Hurt has stated), won eight Oscar nominations and gave Lynch the keys to the kingdom, whose doors he unlocked to confront his first artistic and commercial failure. The architect of nightmares on the screen was now in a dune of a creative nightmare from which he cringes on even to this day.

Chris Alexander: “Is The Elephant Man David Lynch’s Best Film? (ComingSoon). As of this writing, the first four episodes of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks revival have run their course and those of us who have responded enthusiastically are on the edges of our seats, hungry for more. The new Twin Peaks takes everything that made the landmark original ABC series so memorable and goes even further into the ether, with the unobstructed non-network outlet (the series is a Showtime production) allowing Lynch to go as far into the odd as he wants. Here, he has almost total freedom to respect fan expectations while radically expanding and inverting that world, lapsing into the avant garde, totally liberated and with complete creative freedom. It’s mesmerizing. It’s energizing. Because out of all the elite directors who managed to infiltrate the Hollywood machine, Lynch remains one of the few that were working artists first, visionaries who developed a language all their own during a formative time and who use that singular language to make films their way, only giving cursory consideration to the suits who keep an eye on him, hoping to keep his work at least somewhat commercial. And while seeing this new Twin Peaks standing tall as the pure, unfiltered wellspring of the Lynchian aesthetic, citing the times when Lynch has had to collaborate and enlist a more disciplined approach to his vision, yields no real criticism. I mean, the fact that Twin Peaks ever ended up on general stream network television in 1990 at all, is a marvel. It was way out there and defied what anyone wanted or expected from a prime time program. But going even further back, right back to 1980, to Lynch’s second feature film, we see what might very well be his greatest achievement, a movie that he was brought into and yet was given enough of a long creative leash to ensure that the motion picture he was hired to make, was indeed his and yet was also greater than him. A movie that likely educated the director

and taught him that introducing strong human emotion into his nightmarescapes and populating the frames with the finest of performers, could result in a work that was art and product in equal measure. That movie was 1980’s The Elephant Man, Lynch’s follow-up to his fearless, unclassifiable midnight sensation Eraserhead. And 37 years later, looking back, it’s still a bold, brave and immaculately produced motion picture that offers the best of what Lynch could do and bears early evidence of the tropes and themes that would define his subsequent works. As the story goes, Mel Brooks, he of scatological, smart and silly comedies Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, had just started a company called Brooksfilms wherein the producer could make “real movies” while hiding in the background so as not to mislead his fan base. His partner, producer Jonathan Sanger, got his hands on first draft script called The Elephant Man, which told the loosely true story of Joseph “John” Merrick, a wildly deformed young man who was rescued from the sideshow circuit in Victorian England and who became first a case study for a prominent London doctor and then, a national celebrity. The story was dark, evocative and sharply moral and for whatever reason, Sanger — who had recently seen and swooned over Eraserhead — thought Lynch would be a good bet to bring the steam-soaked tale to life. He met with Lynch who adored the script and agreed to do the film and, after a few re-writes, the movie was put into production. With the budget and muscle of Brooks, Sanger and Paramount Pictures behind him, Lynch was able to amass a remarkable cast of British talent, first class performers like Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sir John Hurt, Sir John Gielgud, Anne Bancroft (Brooks’ wife) and Freddie Jones. But most importantly, The Elephant Man allowed Lynch to work with a man widely considered to be one of the greatest living directors of photography, Freddie Francis, a man who had worked as both DP and director on a myriad Hammer Horror movies and British exploitation pictures, including Joan Crawford’s final film, Trog. Shooting in stark black and white to better paint a picture of the Victorian period but also give the production’s limited designs a more dream-like feel, Francis and Lynch essentially dragged Eraserhead to turn of the century England and grafted that film’s horrific, hallucinatory style to a potent story of pain and grace. Francis was never a conventional artist and with Lynch he was allowed to fully embrace his own eccentricities. I firmly believe that Francis’ influence on Lynch was an invaluable experience and heavily influenced Lynch’s sense of cinema and visual storytelling. From the beginning of The Elephant Man, we know that we’re in that very same world first found in Eraserhead, where, after the tinkling, circus-steeped strains of John Morris’ lovely score and images of a face floating in space (a Lynch trademark), we are treated to a nightmarish, impressionist sequence where a group of slow motion-moving elephants either trample or gang-rape a screaming woman, meant to be Merrick’s mother. This is not a scene to be taken literally, but rather is a dream that metaphorically illustrates Merrick’s life of trauma and exploitation, where the love of his mother and his own upbringing have long been distorted by the scream of his carnival-barking owner (the great Freddie Jones, who is at his most despicable here). From this passage of savagery, we are thrust into the tawdry back-alleys of London where Lynch expertly juxtaposes the grime with the kind-eyes of doctor

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Frederick Treves (Hopkins, who has never given a more moving performance on-screen) and from here, our tale unfolds. Hearing tales of the horrifying “Elephant Man,” Treves’ professional curiosity and interest in helping the needy, spur him to bring the unfortunate Merrick (who is brilliantly played by John Hurt, buried under Christopher Tucker’s intense prosthetic make-up) to the hospital where he works in order to study him and present him to his peers. First thinking the disfigured wretch an imbecile, Treves soon learns that Merrick is in fact a gentle, educated man who, despite the horrors he has endured is graced with a childlike sense of wonder and a hard-wired humanity and heart full of hope, instilled there by his late mother. As Treves treats Merrick, he is lauded for his work and “The Elephant Man” becomes famous. But despite the kindness and grace the unfortunate Merrick receives at the hands and hearts of his benefactors, there are blacker forces at hand that aim to drag the young man back into the cesspool. The Elephant Man is a perfect movie and, as John Hurt once said “If you’re not moved by the time The Elephant Man is over…then you’re not someone I want to know.” I agree. Lynch’s interest in holding frames and not giving into quick edits allows sequences of Hurt reacting to the kindness he is suddenly being shown to become almost religious experiences. We feel this man’s pain, his gratefulness, his empathy. There’s a humanity at work here that Lynch would later weave into the harsh worlds of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, real, profound emotion and sadness over just how cruel men can be to other men. The story is clear, elemental and driven by its talented cast and, again, the period is richly realized by Lynch and Francis. And when Lynch steers the imagery towards dreams, when he begins fetishizing belching smoke stacks, grinding machines and the horror and coldness of the factory, they serve to not only tie the movie into Eraserhead but also comment on the hostile, anti-human world that Merrick sadly came of age in, the one surrounds the refined, clean and kind world of Treves. The imagery is not self indulgent. It makes sense. By the time the movie winds down, an inevitable climax of grace, surrender, sadness and hope, all played out the strains of Barber’s Addagio, you feel The Elephant Man in your bones. You feel as though you have witnessed a one-of-kind amalgam of bold artistry, history and universal human drama. Of horror and beauty in equal measure. Lynch would bring much of what he did here to his failed adaptation of Dune, but he wasn’t ready for Dune. It was too big for him to control. Blue Velvet was more successful and yet it still suffers somewhat for its over-reliance on freakishness and kink. Still, what is Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) but a mutated version of Freddie Jones’ character in The Elephant Man? What is Bob and his followers in Twin Peaks, but a satanic riff on the human sludge that exploit and prey upon John Merrick and others like him? The new Twin Peaks is so-far a marvel and might just be Lynch’s final opus, his magnum. But for my money,

there was a kind of magic in The Elephant Man that looms the largest in his filmography. Where youth and talent and freedom of expression and education all met to make one brilliant and enduring motion picture like no other. Dennis Lim: “David Lynch’s Elusive Language” (New Yorker, 2015) One of the first video recordings of a David Lynch interview dates from 1979. The twenty-minute black-and-white segment was produced for a television course at the University of California, Los Angeles, and conducted in the oil fields of the Los Angeles Basin, one of the locations that constituted the barren wasteland of his first feature, “Eraserhead” (1977). This was the moment of Lynch’s first brush with cult fame: “Eraserhead” was a year into its three-year run as a midnight movie at the Nuart Theatre on Santa Monica

Boulevard. Against a backdrop of hulking tanks and rusted pipes, an eager student reporter named Tom Christie directs questions to Lynch and his cinematographer, Frederick Elmes. The thirty-three-year-old Lynch, in a voice so flat and nasal it verges on cartoonish, enthuses about all the “neat areas…down in the tanks,” explaining that he found the location while driving by one day: “I think this place is beautiful, if you look at it right.” He directs the camera’s attention to a blotch

on the ground: the remains of a cat, procured from a veterinarian for use in the film, that “got covered in tar and preserved itself.” Citing the vague tag line that describes “Eraserhead” as “a dream of dark and troubling things,” Christie asks Lynch: “Would you like to expound on that a little?” “No,” the filmmaker replies immediately, shaking his head and smiling. Christie reads from a review that likens the movie both to a dream and a nightmare. Lynch reacts with puzzlement. “I’m not sure I know what that means,” he says, before conceding, “That’s a fine statement, you know?” Affable despite his elusiveness, Lynch seems less to be stonewalling than striving to verbalize daunting concepts with a vocabulary that might politely be termed basic. “Eraserhead” was “a real, definite thing in my head,” he says. “It’s not like thrown-together abstract; it’s meant-to-be-that-way abstract.” Christie points out an apparent incongruity: Lynch the family man (he was then newly remarried, with a young daughter, Jennifer, from his first marriage) and Lynch the creator of the dark, weird “Eraserhead.” “I’m not all that strange, really,” Lynch responds. “Beneath a calm exterior is the subconscious, right? Everybody has their little—the denizens of the deep and all that.” He proposes a working theory of filmmaking as world-making: “No matter how weird something is, no matter how strange the world is that you’re making a film about, it’s got to be a certain way. Once you see how that is, it can’t be another way or it’s not that place anymore. It breaks the mood or the feeling.” Finally he gets in a good closing one-liner, explaining his decision to cast the unknown Jack Nance and not a name actor in the film’s lead role: “If you’re going into the netherworld, you don’t want to go in with Chuck Heston.”

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The David Lynch of today is, in many ways, not so far removed from this pale, polite young man, doing his best not to squirm under interrogation. The floppy hair would later swoop up into a signature quiff. The unfussy attire — a light shirt and zip-up jacket in the video — would be formalized as a uniform: khaki slacks, a slightly rumpled black suit, and, most distinctive of all, a white shirt primly buttoned to the top. (This getup has not escaped the attention of men’s magazines. GQ has called the no-tie, buttoned-up style “the David Lynch look.” Esquire went so far as to dub the filmmaker an accidental fashion icon: “David Lynch dresses badly, but he gets away with it and you can’t.”) In person, Lynch projects niceness. He has kindly eyes, a soft-featured handsomeness, an air of corn-fed good cheer. He has often sought out these very qualities in his actors, most notably Kyle MacLachlan, who bears a physical resemblance to him. But there is also something a bit strange about Lynch’s niceness — a heightened, golly-gee, stuck-in-the-fifties folksiness that some people think must be a put-on. The biography he typically uses for press releases consists of four words: “Eagle Scout, Missoula, Montana.” Whether innate or cultivated or both, the picture of David Lynch the straight-arrow square is striking for the obvious contrast with the darkness and extremity of the work, its obsession with grotesquerie and depravity. In view of the work, in fact, Lynch’s mild-mannered calm can seem somewhat creepy. This is the contradiction — David Lynch the all-American weirdo — that defines how we think about him. Not for nothing did Mel Brooks call him “Jimmy Stewart from Mars” and David Foster Wallace describe his voice as “Jimmy Stewart on acid.” That voice has become more caricatured over the years, even the subject of self-parody. Most of us know it from Lynch’s recurring cameo as the hard-of-hearing F.B.I. bureau chief Gordon Cole in “Twin Peaks,” whose foghorn delivery only slightly exaggerates Lynch’s speaking voice. So much about Lynch’s fraught relationship with language is summed up in that voice, in its unnervingly high volume and halting cadences. It’s clear from the 1979 footage — and from almost every interview he has done since — that words do not come easily to him. Both Lynch and his first wife, Peggy Reavey (née Lentz), have referred to his “pre-verbal” years, a phase that lasted into his early twenties, when he had a hard time stringing even more than a few words together. In his early short film, “The Alphabet,” verbal learning is a source of dread: a young girl is terrorized by the letters of the alphabet as she sleeps. The serial killer in “Twin Peaks” leaves lettered scraps of paper under the nails of his victims. Lynch’s films abound with gnomic pronouncements and incantations. “Now it’s dark,” the maniacal Frank Booth hisses in “Blue Velvet.” “This is the girl,” the mobster financiers keep insisting in “Mulholland Drive.” (The key to Transcendental Meditation, which Lynch has practiced for more than four decades, is the repetition of a personal mantra.) Lynch’s mistrust of words means that his films often resist the expository function and realist tenor of dialogue, relying instead on intricate sound design to evoke what lies beyond language. Conversely, his studio art is notable for a perverse preponderance of text. Many of Lynch’s large, tactile art-brut canvases feature variously cryptic, comic, and ominous inscriptions (“Suddenly My House Became a Tree of Sores,” “There Is Nothing Here, Please Go Away”). Especially in his recent series of smudgy black-and-white lithographs, the verbiage comes to seem obsessive: a

compulsion to name, label, and caption which, in heightening the absurdity of words, strips them of their power. In Lynch’s own speech and in the speech patterns of his films, the impression is of language used less for meaning than for sound. To savor the thingness of words is to move away from their imprisoning nature. Lynch has said, more than once, that he had to “learn to talk,” and his very particular, somewhat limited vocabulary seems in many ways an outgrowth of his aesthetic. In keeping with his interest in the intangible, he has a curious, syntactically awkward fondness for abstract nouns: “When you do something that works, you have a happiness.” “It’s such a sadness that you think you’ve seen a film on your fucking telephone.” If his films swing between extreme moods, so, too, does the tenor of his conversation, especially when he’s discussing his work. Great ideas are “beautiful” and “thrilling” and make you “fall in love”; when the creative process is impeded, it’s a “terrible thing” that can feel “like death.” (What Lynch, a prodigious coffee drinker, lacks in eloquence, he generally makes up for in caffeinated enthusiasm.) From Wikipedia Joseph Carey Merrick (5 August 1862 – 11 April 1890), often incorrectly called John Merrick, was an English man with very severe face and body deformities who was first exhibited at a freak show as the "Elephant Man", and then went to live at the London Hospital after he met Dr. Frederick Treves, subsequently becoming well known in London society. Merrick was born in Leicester, and began to develop abnormally during the first few years of his life: his skin appeared thick and lumpy, he developed enlarged lips, a bony lump grew on his forehead, one of his arms and both of his feet became enlarged and at some point during his childhood he fell and damaged his hip, resulting in permanent lameness. When he was 11, his mother died from bronchopneumonia, and his father soon remarried. Merrick left school at the age of 13 and gained employment at Freemans Cigar Factory in Leicester. Rejected by his father and stepmother, he left home and went to live with his Uncle Charles Merrick, a hairdresser. In December 1879, Merrick, aged 17, entered the Leicester Union Workhouse. In 1884, after four years in the workhouse, Merrick contacted a showman named Sam Torr and proposed that Torr should exhibit him. Torr agreed and arranged for a group of men to manage Merrick, whom they named the Elephant Man. After touring the East Midlands, Merrick travelled to London to be exhibited in a penny gaff shop on Whitechapel Road which was rented by showman Tom Norman. Norman's shop, directly across the street from the London Hospital, was visited by a surgeon named Frederick Treves who invited Merrick to be examined and photographed. After Merrick was displayed by Treves at a meeting of the Pathological Society of London in late

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1884, Norman's shop was closed by the police and Merrick joined Sam Roper's circus and was toured in Europe. In Belgium, Merrick was robbed by his road manager and abandoned in Brussels. He eventually made his way back to London, and to the London Hospital. Treves was in the hospital at the time and whatever conversation passed between them, Joseph was given a temporary bed in the hospital. Although his condition was incurable, Merrick was allowed to stay at the hospital for the remainder of his life. Treves visited him daily, and the pair developed quite a close friendship. Merrick also got visits from the wealthy ladies and gentlemen of London society, including Alexandra, Princess of Wales. Merrick died on 11 April 1890, aged 27. Although the official cause of his death was asphyxia, Treves, who performed the autopsy on the body, said that Merrick had died of a dislocated neck. Joseph was found at 3pm by Doctor Sidney Hodges. Joseph was lying across his bed, his lunch was where the maid had left it at 1pm, untouched. Joseph was found stretched across his bed which indicated he was awake and trying to get up when he suffered an event which caused his death. In absence of the possibility of genetic tests, the exact cause of Merrick's deformities has long been unclear, so that throughout much of the 20th century it was speculated that Merrick had been affected by other neurological syndromes. Only in 1986 was it conjectured that he had Proteus syndrome, a very rare congenital disorder also known as Wiedemann syndrome (named after the German pediatrician Hans-Rudolf Wiedemann). DNA tests on his hair and bones in 2003 in a study by Charis Eng were inconclusive. Merrick's life was depicted in a 1979 play by Bernard Pomerance and a David Lynch film in 1980, both titled The Elephant Man. In late 2014 and early 2015, Bradley Cooper starred in a Broadway revival of The Elephant Man, directed by Scott Ellis…. Merrick settled into his new life at the London Hospital. Treves visited him daily and spent a couple of hours with him every Sunday. Now that Merrick had found someone who understood his speech, he was delighted to carry on long conversations with the doctor…. It did not take Treves long to realise that, contrary to his initial impressions, Merrick was not intellectually impaired. Treves observed that Merrick was very sensitive and showed his emotions easily. At times Merrick was bored and lonely, and demonstrated signs of depression. He had spent his entire adult life segregated from women, first in the workhouse and then as an exhibit. The women he met were either disgusted or frightened by his appearance. His opinions about women were derived from his memories of his mother and what he read in books. Treves decided that Merrick would like to be introduced to a woman and it would help him feel normal. The doctor

arranged for a friend of his named Mrs. Leila Maturin, "a young and pretty widow", to visit Merrick. She agreed and with fair warning about his appearance, she went to his rooms for an introduction. The meeting was short, as Merrick quickly became overcome with emotion. He later told Treves that Maturin had been the first woman ever to smile at him, and the first to shake his hand. She kept in contact with him and a letter written by Merrick to her, thanking her for the gift of a book and a brace of grouse (a pair of birds), is the only surviving letter written by Merrick. This first experience of meeting a woman, though brief, instilled in Merrick a new sense of self-confidence. He met other women during his life at the hospital, and appeared taken with them all…. Merrick wanted to know about the "real world", and questioned Treves on a number of topics. One day he expressed a desire to see inside what he considered a "real" house and Treves obliged, taking him to visit his Wimpole Street townhouse and meet his wife. At the hospital Merrick filled his days with reading and constructing models of buildings out of card… Merrick's case attracted the notice of London's high society. One person who took a keen interest was actress Madge Kendal. Although she probably never met him in person, she was responsible for raising funds and public sympathy for Merrick. She sent him photographs of herself and employed a basket weaver to go to his rooms and teach him the craft. Other ladies and gentlemen of high society did visit him however, bringing gifts of photographs and books. He reciprocated with letters and hand made gifts of card models and baskets. Merrick enjoyed these visits and became confident enough to converse with people who passed his windows….Occasionally, he grew bold enough to leave his small living quarters and would explore the hospital. When he was discovered, he was always hurried back to his quarters by the nurses, who feared that he might frighten the patients. On 21 May 1887, two new buildings were completed at the hospital and the Prince and Princess of Wales came to open them officially. Princess Alexandra wished to meet the Elephant Man, so after a tour of the hospital, the royal party went to his rooms for an introduction. The princess shook Merrick's hand and sat with him, an experience that left him overjoyed. She gave him a signed photograph of herself, which became a prized possession, and she sent him a Christmas card each year…. Treves, with the help of Madge Kendal, arranged for him to attend the Christmas pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Treves sat with some nurses, concealed in Baroness Burdett-Coutts' private box. According to Treves, Merrick was "awed" and "enthralled". "The spectacle left him speechless, so that if he were spoken to he took no heed". For weeks following the show Merrick talked about the pantomime, reliving the story as if it had been real.

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2018 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS SERIES 37: NOV 6 KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI, THREE COLORS: BLUE, 1993….NOV 13 ALAN

MAK AND WAI-KEUNG LAU, INFERNAL AFFAIRS, 2002….NOV 20 MARTIN SCORSESE, THE DEPARTED, 2006….NOV 27 TOM MCCARTHY, SPOTLIGHT, 2015….DEC 4 JOHN HUSTON, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, 1975 CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu…email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto list@buffalofilmseminars.com....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

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Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.