Mel Gordon - The Grand Guignol

[dem]

Mel Gordon - The Grand Guignol: Theatre Of Fear And Terror (Amok, 1988)

Beth Escott

Mel Gordon - Introduction
Mel Gordon - The Grand Guignol: A History
Mel Gordon - 100 Plots Of The Grand Guignol
Mel Gordon - Photo Documentation Of Three Plays
Andre de Lorde - Fear In Literature, An Essay

Two Plays

Andre de Lorde - The System Of Dr. Goudron & Prof. Plume
Andre de Lorde & Henry Bauche - The Laboratory Of Hallucinations.

Wasn't sure quite where to post this but as the Grand Guignol had arguably a bigger influence on film than it did literature, this seemed as good a place as any.

Mel Gordon's book tells the story of the tiny (285-seat) Parisian theatre which survived from the late 1890's through to the early 1960's by providing the audience with what they wanted to see - onstage eye-gouging, face-melting, brain-drilling, blood by the bucket-load and, on the evidence of a still from Orgy At The Lighthouse, buxom mademoiselle's with their knockers out, too. All good, sensational stuff in other words. Gordon is excellent at piecing together the history of this commendable project but perhaps my favourite chapter is that dealing with the plots of these lurid productions, because not only are they incredibly violent, sometimes they make little or no sense whatsoever. A fine example is Andre de Lorde & Alfred Binet's A Crime In The Madhouse (1925):

In the cell of an insane asylum, three lunatics surround the innocent and fearful Louise during her last night at the institution. Hunchback, the Normandy Woman and One-Eye gag Louise, whom they believe has imprisoned a cuckoo bird behind her eyes. One-Eye gouges out Louise's eyes with a knitting needle. Suddenly, terrified of One- Eye's violent character, Hunchback presses her face against a red-hot stove plate and watches One-Eye's face sizzle away.

Two panels from the 'photo-documentation' of family favourite Orgy At The Lighthouse.

Perhaps the best known exponent of the form in literature is Maurice Level (see Hugh Lamb, or better still, 'X'!) and the '100 Plots' summarise his self-penned stage adaptations of A Kiss In The Night, Under The Red Light and The Bloody Trunk. Level was a master of the Conte Cruel and a huge influence on the great Charles Birkin, particularly in the latter's Creeps days. Andre de Lorde seems to have been by far the most prolific of the playwrights, and his titles alone (The Final Torture, The Dead Child, a Concert At The Madhouse, The Coffin Of Flesh, etc) tell their own story of dementia and depravity. If I add that, like Birkin, his favourite theme would appear to have been infanticide ....

Joubert's drowned wife, back from the dead and up for smooching in A Kiss Of Blood

It's left to M. de Lorde to round off the book with his brief history of horror fiction, first published in La Reviue Mondiale (March, 1927) - inevitably,he favours Poe and his French disciples - and the scripts for two of his more sensible offerings.

A very entertaining read!

[jkdunham]

Oct 25, 2008 19:50:00 GMT dem said:

...Hunchback, the Normandy Woman and One-Eye gag Louise, whom they believe has imprisoned a cuckoo bird behind her eyes...

That's genius! What better motivation could anyone possibly ask for a senseless act of horrific violence?
Incidentally, is there any suggestion in the book as to the significance of the Normandy Woman? I believe that, like Hunchback, she may have been a recurring character in The Grand Guignol. Does Gordon give any indication as to her background?

And would I be right in saying that de Lorde's The System Of Dr. Goudron & Prof. Plume was an adaptation of Poe's "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether", or did I just make that up?
Reminds me anyway that I've been meaning to write up something about the film, The Mansion of Madness (AKA Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon) from the same source. Anyone seen that?

[dem]

You're spot on concerning the origins of The System Of Dr. Goudron & Prof. Plume - it's the Poe story. I don't recall Gordon making any reference to the Normandy Woman whatsoever, but will scan through it later to make sure.

I should like to have met Maxa, 'the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror' in her heyday. "A glamorous actress with an instinctive understanding of the macabre, Maxa was said to have played all her roles 'as if she were carrying a torch'. During her relatively brief career, she was murdered more than 10, 000 times and in some 60 ways. A few examples: devoured by a ravenous puma, cut into 93 pieces and glued back together, smashed by a roller-compressor, cut open by a travelling salesman who wanted her intestines ..."

Ever get the feeling you were born too late and missed your calling in life?

A Crime In The Madhouse

Just had my first taste of Thrillpeddlers Grand Guignol site and discovered that the second edition of Gordon's book substitutes The Laboratory Of Hallucinations with the script for A Crime In The Madhouse!

[jkdunham]

Oct 26, 2008 14:26:46 GMT dem said:

Ever get the feeling you were born too late and missed your calling in life?

I like to think that it's never too late, Dem. Have you considered approaching the hideously deformed Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber with an idea for a Grand Guignol musical, complete with ravenous puma and travelling intestine salesman? Obviously you might have to be prepared for a bit of artistic compromise - he might want to put the puma on roller skates or something...

[dem]

Actually, if you gave him an eye-patch and put him in a dress *, he'd make a perfect One-Eye after she's had her face held against the hot stove ring. Incidentally, Lord Webber - and I know you're reading this! - Leave our Eurovision entry alone, you gargoyle faced old fiend!

* I realised how pervy that sounded even as I typed it!

[andydecker]

Mel Gordon - Theatre of Fear and Horror (Feral House, 2016, 219 p.)





Here is the expanded version from 2016.
Great book.

 

I like the plots. A lot of the plays were written by the owners, and while it is hard to say how well they materialized on the stage, some of the short synopsis are intriguing.



The Obsession
André de Lorde and Alfred Binet, 1905

A two-act horror play.



Jean is cursed with the obsession to kill his young son, Pierre. A Parisian psychologist explains that he is the victim of a progressive and incurable hereditary disease. Within a short period of time, Jean will be totally insane and unable to curb his murderous impulse. The Psychologist advises that Jean commit himself to a mental asylum immediately. Jean, however, refuses to do so and returns home.



He confesses to his wife that he, not his daughter, accidently hit Pierre the other day. She thinks little of it and sends him into Pierre's room to apologize and bid the boy goodnight. In the room Jean strangles his son.



Rapid 13

Jean Sarténe, 1921



An embittered switchman of the railroad company decides to wreck one of the newest trains, the Rapid 13, when it passes his station by not pulling the proper lever. In the control room with his daughter the switch-man is at the last minute that his granddaughter is on the oncoming Rapid 13. He suffers a paralyzing heart attack and cannot grip the necessary switch. Responding to his gestures and nods, the railman's daughter throws a switch, but it is the wrong one. As the two hold each other in desperation, the Rapid 13 hurls into still another train, undoubtedly killing the switchman's granddaughter, his daughter's daughter.



Here are a few scans:

 

 

[Dr Strange]

Aug 30, 2020 11:17:53 GMT andydecker said:

The Obsession
André de Lorde and Alfred Binet, 1905
A two-act horror play.

Jean is cursed with the obsession to kill his young son, Pierre. A Parisian psychologist explains that he is the victim of a progressive and incurable hereditary disease. Within a short period of time, Jean will be totally insane and unable to curb his murderous impulse. The Psychologist advises that Jean commit himself to a mental asylum immediately. Jean, however, refuses to do so and returns home.

He confesses to his wife that he, not his daughter, accidently hit Pierre the other day. She thinks little of it and sends him into Pierre's room to apologize and bid the boy goodnight. In the room Jean strangles his son.

Binet is a famous early psychologist, and the originator of the IQ test. I never knew he wrote plays. Google turned this up - The Horror of Alfred Binet

Quoted from above webpage:

"From 1901 to 1926, de Lorde was the chief playwright for the Grand Guignol (despite being forced to work as a librarian during the day to make ends meet). Of all the complex themes that de Lorde explored in his plays, the one recurring theme for which he is best known was insanity. In an era when mental illness was becoming better understood due to the rise of psychiatry and psychology as legitimate sciences, de Lorde often drew on actual psychiatric cases to flesh out his characters. He also explored many of the themes linked to mental illness and altered states of consciousness (including plays using exotic drugs or hallucinations as plot devices). Much like in Edgar Allen Poe’s stories, Grand Guignol plays also showed characters teetering on the very edge of sanity as they wrestled with their own dark selves. Some stories were even set in lunatic asylums, a novel innovation at the time. Hypnosis was also a popular theme and stories of sinister hypnotists enslaving innocent (and usually female) victims always went over well with audiences.

To ensure that his plays were as accurate as possible, de Lorde began researching mental illness and soon became acquainted with Alfred Binet. Discovering that Binet was an enthusiastic fan of Grand Guignol theatre, du Lorde quickly established a working partnership that would endure until Binet’s unexpected death in 1911. Many of the plays de Lorde and Binet wrote together involved maniacal characters who preyed on the innocent and the unwary. They also featured psychological themes and the graphic portrayal of sex and violence with such classics as Les Invisibles, L'Obsession, and L'Expériment Horrible. One later play, A Crime In The House of The Insane would be released by de Lorde in 1923 with Binet listed as co-author. All of these plays were marked by Binet’s personal experiences with mental illness as seen in his patients, giving them an air of realism that had never been shown before on stage. Not surprisingly, their productions were often shut down by censors."

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Blurb:

A companion to UEP’s Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (now in its third reprint). A genre that has left more of a mark on British and American culture than we may imagine” (Gothic Studies).

London’s Grand Guignol was established in the early 1920s at the Little Theatre in the West End. It was a high-profile venture that enjoyed popular success as much as critical controversy. On its side were some of the finest actors on the English stage, in the shape of Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson, and a team of extremely able writers, including Noël Coward.

London's Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror considers the importance and influence of the English Grand Guignol within its social, cultural and historical contexts. It also presents a selection of ten remakarble English-language Grand Guignol plays, some of which were banned by the Lord Chamberlain, the censor of the day, and have never been published or publicly performed. Among the plays in the book is a previously unpublished work by Noël Coward, The Better Half, first performed at the Little Theatre in 1922.

The reviewer in the journal Gothic Studies wrote, of the authors’ previous book: “having recently taught a module on Grand Guignol with third year drama students, it is also worth noting that this book captured their imaginations in a way that few other set texts seem to manage.”

[dem]

Thanks Princess, this looks excellent. Wasn't aware that London even had a Grand Guignol tradition.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Sept 30, 2021 18:37:34 GMT dem said:

Thanks Princess, this looks excellent. Wasn't aware that London even had a Grand Guignol tradition.

“When José Levy staged the world première of The Old Women by the ‘Prince of
Terror’ André de Lorde in 1921 as part of the fourth series of Grand Guignol at the
Little Theatre, he commissioned Aubrey Hammond to create a publicity poster in a
Beardsley style. So harrowing was Hammond’s poster that it was banned by Lon-
don Underground. Hammond also produced a publicity postcard for the theatre, a
cartoon drawing of a horrified audience, literally running screaming from the audi-
torium. As with the original Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Paris, stories circulated of
audience members fainting or being physically sick before the on-stage horrors
they witnessed. London’s Grand Guignol was a sensation and audiences ventured
there at their own risk to share in the thrills and chills on offer.”

from the first chapter of London’s Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror


I will look for an image of the poster.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

I assume this is it. It's in the book.

Also this:

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Has anyone ever seen a play with horror content?

I don't think The Tempest counts.

[helrunar]

I've seen Dracula on stage at least three times, once the celebrated Broadway production starring Frank Langella with sets by Edward Gorey. I've also seen Charles Busch's horror send-up Vampire Lesbians of Sodom which was just good fun.

In sixth grade I wrote and starred in The Mystery of Brentwood, which was a Dark Shadows pastiche (the year was 1970) involving a mansion haunted by a very malevolent ghost. There was a seance, an exorcism, and generally lurid goings-on. I guess I'm glad I don't remember more about it.

H.

[cauldronbrewer]

Sept 30, 2021 19:05:32 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

Has anyone ever seen a play with horror content?

I don't think The Tempest counts.

Does the Evil Dead musical count?

I also saw a musical titled Shockheaded Peter, based on German children's book Struwwelpeter, that was surprisingly grisly.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Sept 30, 2021 20:34:36 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

Sept 30, 2021 19:05:32 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

Has anyone ever seen a play with horror content?

I don't think The Tempest counts.

Does the Evil Dead musical count?

I also saw a musical titled Shockheaded Peter, based on German children's book Struwwelpeter, that was surprisingly grisly.

The stories in the book are the stuff of nightmares. I suppose the idea was to warn the unfortunate child of the consequences of acting naughty and disobeying adults.