Robert Louis Stevenson published the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886. The fascinating tale of an upstanding doctor whose hedonistic impulses are unleashed after he drinks a potion he develops in his laboratory was an immediate hit with the public. Within a year the first two stage adaptations opened in Boston and London and were also great successes.

By the time MGM decided to make their own film version of the story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had already been brought to the silver screen several times. There had been a handful of silent versions, the most notable of which starred John Barrymore in 1920. In 1931 the first sound version of the classic was released through Paramount Studios starring Fredric March in the dual role. The film was a huge hit and won March the Academy Award as Best Actor for his remarkable performance.

A decade later MGM, the most powerful studio in Hollywood, wanted to do a remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They bought the rights to Paramount's 1932 version which had been such a success for them and planned to give Dr. Jekyll the MGM treatment, which meant big budget, big stars and high gloss.

To play both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde MGM wanted one of its top stars, Spencer Tracy. A serious actor with decidedly non-matinee idol looks, Tracy had joined MGM in 1935 and quickly won the Academy Award as Best Actor twice for his roles in Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938). Being under contract, Tracy was assigned the role, but he did not want to do it. Tracy was a naturalistic actor, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde would require him to wear extensive make-up and play his part in a much more over-the-top style than he desired. Besides, Fredric March had won the Academy Award for playing the role ten years earlier and was still famously associated with the character of Jekyll/Hyde. Tracy didn't want his performance to be compared to such a definitive one. He resisted, but MGM pushed.

Finally MGM convinced Spencer Tracy to make the film. Tracy had relented when he found out that his old friend Victor Fleming was going to direct. Fleming had directed Tracy earlier in Test Pilot (1938) and Captains Courageous which had won him the Oscar® for Best Actor. Tracy made it clear that his interpretation would be different from Fredric March's performance and that he would make the part his own. He also made the stipulation that unlike March, he would use minimal make-up for his Mr. Hyde character. He wanted to use his face and body language to convey the monstrous nature of Hyde more than special effects and MGM agreed.

Ingrid Bergman was under contract to David O. Selznick when she was loaned out to MGM for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Bergman was new to Hollywood at the time and had only made three American films up to that point. Back in Sweden, her home country, she had been a big star playing a wide variety of roles and she was trying to launch a new career in America.

Bergman was thrilled when she was told by Selznick that she would be co-starring with Spencer Tracy, whom she had always deeply admired as an actor. When she found out that she was supposed to play Dr. Jekyll's innocent fiancée Beatrix, she was disappointed. She wanted to play the saucy barmaid Ivy, which was already assigned to MGM "Sweater Girl" Lana Turner. "Naturally, as always, I'd been given the part of the sweet fiancée," Bergman wrote in her 1981 autobiography My Story, "because now I had played three parts almost the same. In Intermezzo [1939] I played the nice piano teacher. In Adam [1941] the nice housekeeper, in Rage in Heaven [1941] I was the nice refugee. Now they gave me the part of another sweet girl in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and I really was fed up having to play it again."

Bergman went to director Victor Fleming and asked if she and Lana Turner could switch roles. "That's impossible," said Fleming according to Bergman. "How can you with your looks? It's not to be believed." Bergman replied, "What do you know? You look at me and you look at the three pictures I've done and you know it's the same part I'm playing, but I am an actress!" She asked if she could do a screen test doing the part of Ivy to prove that she could handle the role. Fleming told her that Selznick would never agree to let her do it. She asked to do one anyway without telling Selznick. Fleming was still skeptical, but he agreed to arrange for a secret test. "In great secrecy Victor [Fleming] got a cameraman and a crew one night and I did the test," said Bergman. "A lot of people afterwards asked me why. To begin with I loved this girl, this barmaid Ivy. I thought about her all the time. I thought how she would react, how she would behave. Besides, I simply had to get a different part; I could not remain typed as a Hollywood peaches-and-cream girl."

To his great surprise, Victor Fleming loved the test and agreed for Bergman and Lana Turner to switch roles, but first he had to get David O. Selznick's approval. Selznick resisted, however. "You see," explained Bergman in her autobiography, "David believed the Hollywood legend: the elevator boy always plays the elevator boy, the drunk's a drunk, the nurse always a nurse. In Hollywood you got yourself one role and played it forever. That's what the audience wants to see, they said, the same old performance, the familiar face." Fleming assured Selznick that once he saw Bergman's test he would agree that she was right for the part of Ivy and he was right. Finally Selznick agreed to allow Bergman to play against type, and Bergman was elated. Doing the role meant everything to her. It would allow her to prove that she was an actress of great range, capable of much more than the nice ingenue roles. "Dr. Jekyll was the first part I played in American films in which I completely changed my character," she later said.

Lana Turner didn't have any objection to playing Dr. Jekyll's fiancée Beatrix. Like Ingrid Bergman, Turner was relatively new to the Hollywood scene and had been immediately typecast in eye candy roles, showcasing little more than her beautiful face and figure. When she first heard that she had been assigned the role of Ivy, she was apprehensive. "When I read the script," she wrote in her 1982 autobiography Lana, "I recognized the range of emotions the part required. I wasn't sure I had the strength to play it." She went to MGM head Louis B. Mayer to express her reservations. "If you want me for Ivy," she said, "I don't think I can do it. I'm too young, and well...I'm afraid. That role is so deep, I don't know if I could trust a director enough to let me try to reach those emotions." Without offering any argument, Mayer told her that she could play the good girl role of Beatrix instead. Ingrid Bergman's desire to switch parts was never mentioned in the meeting, according to Turner, and she had no idea at the time how much Bergman wanted to play Ivy. "They didn't hire [Bergman] until I begged out of the part," said Turner. "Now that I know how much she wanted the role, I'm pleased for her sake that I withdrew."

by Andrea Passafiume