Peggy Webling and the Story behind Frankenstein

The 1931 Universal Pictures film adaptation of Frankenstein directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff as the now iconic Monster claims in its credits to be ¿Adapted from the play by Peggy Webling¿. Webling¿s play sought to humanize the creature, was the first stage adaptation to position Frankenstein and his creation as doppelg¿ers, and offered a feminist perspective on scientific efforts to create life without women, ideas that suffuse today¿s perceptions of Frankenstein¿s monster. The original play script exists in several different versions, only two of which have ever been consulted by scholars; no version has ever been published. Nor have scholars had access to Webling¿s private papers and correspondence, preserved in a family archive, so that the evolution of Frankenstein from book to stage to screen has never been fully charted. In Peggy Webling and the Story behind Frankenstein, Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum (Webling¿s great grandniece) and Bruc