Columnist: ‘Nutty professor’ a classic tale

Monday, July 8, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

WHAT's the matter with me? What is this strangeness? Has my face changed?"

These words were not spoken by Dr. Jekyll in the classic 1886 novel, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

They were the last words spoken by 44-year-old author Robert Louis Stevenson before he died 102 years ago on the Samoan island of Upolu after lifelong battles with several illnesses.

Stevenson was more famous for his classic novel, "Treasure Island," which sparked the imaginations of countless young readers and would later serve as the theme of a major Strip hotel.

But it was the alter-ego of Jekyll and Hyde that was to become indelibly forged into the consciousness of English-speaking Western World.

From 1908 to 1932, new fewer than 11 different film versions of the book were produced.

Distinguished actors who played the good Dr. Jekyll have included John Barrymore, Spencer Tracy, Boris Karloff, Mel Ferrer, Christopher Lee and ... Jerry Lewis.

Jerry Lewis?

His performance as Jekyll and Hyde represented what is arguably the comedian's best performance before the camera, only most of 1963 America who saw the original version of "The Nutty Professor' thought Lewis was playing the nerdy Prof. Julius Kelp and his sinister alter-ego, Buddy Love.

It's been suggested the Lewis created the character of slick womanizer Love to put down former partner Dean Martin or even as a parody of the comedian's own dark side.

Nonsense.

Love was the '60s version of Dr. Jekyll.

And he's also the '90s version of Stevenson's famous villain -- thanks to Eddie Murphy's remake of "The Nutty Professor," one of the summer's biggest films.

After dumping on Murphy for his recent flops such as "Harlem Nights" in 1989 and last year's "Vampire in Brooklyn," the critics are falling over each other praising Murphy for his dual performance as 400-pound campus scientist Sherman Klump and his potion-induced brash bad guy Love.

Yes, Murphy did a great job -- as Lewis did 33 years ago.

But much of the credit should go to the great story that inspired both actors.

It's a story that relates to nearly all of us who work hard at our 9-to-5 jobs, spend weekends with family members and loved ones, strive to save for retirement, and sometimes during those restless late-night hours we wonder what would it be like to break the rules.

No wonder Frederic March as Mr. Hyde shouts, "Free! Free at last."

That 1932 performance earned March an Oscar and captured the interest of millions of Americans who were in the throes of the Great Depression and probably were more than a little tempted to stop playing by society's rules and play Hyde for a while.

So, who is this Mr. Hyde?

Is he an outdated Victorian monster brought to life only in the pages of a classic novel by a writer who battled more than his share of troubles and illnesses during his brief life?

Or is he an all-too-familiar representation of the dark side of each of us?

Few of us have read Stevenson's classic novel. I confess that I hadn't read it in more than 25 years.

So I borrowed a copy from the local library.

At first, like many who try to read a classic, I had to force myself to go on.

But before I had finished the book, I realized what a great story Stevenson had devised.

Most who are vaguely familiar with the story realize that Jekyll brings on his dark side by drinking a potion.

But Mr. Hyde is stronger than Jekyll, and the dark side begins to take over, until he begins to surface on his own. And by the end of the novel, Jekyll can't take enough doses of his ready-made antidotes to keep his dark side away.

The story is all too familiar to anyone who has battled an addiction to smoking, alcohol, drugs or any vice that started as a "harmless" recreation.

At first we engage in the seemingly harmless vice to help us cope with the horrors of the real world.

And so a corporate executive takes an evening drink. A struggling single-parent rolls a joint when the kids are asleep. A bored family man starts a supposedly harmless but illicit extramarital affair.

Just as the nerdy professor creates a slick character to help him get along in society and win the love of an attractive young woman.

But, eventually, something goes wrong with the formula, and the drinking and carousing increase. The dark side begin to takes over.

It's just a side of human nature. And not the good side.

"Under the strain of this continually impending doom," Stevenson writes, "and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self."