Famous Mad Doctors

[Spiny Norman]

After the Mad Musician, there's also the Mad Hatter...

You've got Mad Doctors going back to Melies, even Melies blowing up and enlarging his own head was basically a Mad Doctor part.

Were there Mad Scientists before Nikolas Tesla?

[entredeuxguerres]

Were there Mad Scientists before Nikolas Tesla?

Sure...Ben Franklin. (Making yourself the "ground" in an electrical storm seems quite mad to me; and his European fame in the 18th C. was as a scientist, not a diplomat, statesman, etc.)

[Richard M Roberts]

After the Mad Musician, there's also the Mad Hatter...

You've got Mad Doctors going back to Melies, even Melies blowing up and enlarging his own head was basically a Mad Doctor part.

Were there Mad Scientists before Nikolas Tesla?

You're forgetting when Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN (hint: way before Tesla). They called them "Alchemists" and "Wizards" before they got coined with " Mad Scientists".



RICHARD M ROBERTS (The Mad Film Historian, though I prefer to be called a "Filmmonger")

[Spiny Norman]

You're forgetting when Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN (hint: way before Tesla). They called them "Alchemists" and "Wizards" before they got coined with " Mad Scientists".

Well, yes, but it's really the movie adaptations that have them laughing manically and crying out "It's alive it's alive it's alive!" and that line about god. I can't remember if he even had a lair (in secret headquarters style). So the book version is rather different, and anyway, more people will see movies than read books, or chances are they'll have seen the movie before they open the book.
Another example is Igor. An iconal henchman, but there's no such person in the book. (Not even in the first universal film, at least not by that name.)

[greta de groat]

Trying to keep this on the same thread, besides Jekyll and Hyde, can anyone think of the first silent 'mad doctor' role, and then the first 'mad scientist' part in the silent era?

Of course the first Frankenstein adaptation was 1910, and Richard has already pointed out Melies. One i like to remind folks of (in the vain hope that it will turn out to be extant) is the 1914 World film Lola (AKA Without a Soul), where Clara Kimball Young's character is killed in a car accident, but her scientist father brings her back to life. So, he means well, as in The Fly example. But unfortunately her soul didn't get revived as well, and she becomes an evil vamp, so it doesn't turn out so well. I've got a page on it here: http://www.stanford.edu/~gdegroat/CKY/reviews/lola.htm" target="_blank
I thought it was remade, but i'm not finding any reference to it. But, yes, Jekyll and Hyde and Frankenstein seem to be the literary origins of the genre, with the related Golem story more on the well-meaning alchemist end.

greta