Frankenstein (1910 film)
1910 film by J. Searle Dawley
Frankenstein is a 1910 American short silent horror film produced by Edison Studios. It was directed by J. Searle Dawley, who also wrote the one-reeler's screenplay, broadly basing his "scenario" on Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. This short motion picture is generally recognized by film historians as the first screen adaptation of Shelley's work. The small cast, who are not credited in the surviving 1910 print of the film, includes Augustus Phillips as Dr. Frankenstein, Charles Ogle as Frankenstein's monster, and Mary Fuller as the doctor's fiancée.
Plot
Described as "a liberal adaptation of Mrs. Shelley's famous story", the film shows young Frankenstein (his first name in the book, Victor, is never mentioned) discovering the "mystery of life" after two years at university. He gives life to a creature built by mixing different chemicals, and the monster follows Frankenstein back to his parents' house. The conclusion, completely different from Mary Shelley's book, shows the creature disappearing after seeing its own reflection in the mirror, and without killing Victor's younger brother or his fiancée Elizabeth, as happened in the novel.
The film's plot description in a 1910 issue of the studio's trade periodical Edison Kinetogram provides considerable detail about the company's screen adaptation:
Frankenstein, a young student, is seen bidding his sweetheart and father goodbye, as he is leaving home to enter a college in order to study the sciences.
“Frankenstein (1910 film)” enters the record as 1910 film by J. Searle Dawley. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Frankenstein, film and Searle can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1135816. The Library of Congress control number is n2017070084. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1910 and 1818.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frankenstein (1910 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.