Transcript
Capital One Bank Guy (0:00)
Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One Bank Guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too. Oh really? Thanks Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com Bank Capital One NA Member FDIC.
Erin Menke (0:34)
Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.
Aaron Manke (0:42)
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Erin Menke (1:06)
Prolific authors leave behind a great deal when they die. Not just their completed works, but every piece of paper that ever touched their pen suddenly becomes valuable for their next of kin. Going through the notes and assembling a legacy for the deceased writer can be a lifelong duty. In 1912, an Irish woman named Florence fell into this very situation. She became a widow at the age of 54, her husband succumbing to disease almost immediately. She had work to do, not just in arranging his funeral or comforting his bereaved friends, but she also had to manage his literary estate for work. Her husband, Abe, had been a theater manager for most of his life and the assistant to a famous stage actor, and while the short stories and books were well received, they never sold quite as well as he had hoped. Florence hoped in her own way that she could provide literary success for her husband in death that he had not achieved in life. So throughout the 1910s, she edited together collections of his short stories and negotiated with publishers to keep his novels in print. They provided the same modest income that they always had, never quite enough. And then, in 1922, 10 years after her husband's death, she received a strange letter in the mail. The envelope contained a handbill advertising an upcoming motion picture screening in Berlin. It wasn't an invitation. She lived in London, after all. But looking at the handbill, there was no denying that it was meant for her. Emblazoned underneath the film's title was her husband's name. They had changed the title and many plot elements, but the film was undeniably based on the book that abe had written 25 years before, and Florence was insulted. Despite making a screen adaptation of her husband's work, the producers had not asked for her permission or made any effort to secure film rights for the material Florence didn't have the money to hire a lawyer herself, but she couldn't let this sort of behavior stand. She contacted the British Incorporated Society of Authors, imploring them to sponsor a copyright lawsuit against the production company, Prana Film. They accepted and engaged a Berlin based lawyer to take on Florence's case. As you'd imagine, the case dragged on for years. But as it did, the offending film spread from country to country. The case rolled on for more years to come. Prana Film fought Florence every step of the way, but ultimately the court found the case in the widow's favor. There would be no payout. However, in the course of the lawsuit, Prana Film ran out of money and declared bankruptcy. They couldn't afford to pay Florence even if the court ordered them to. So he she had to get justice some other way. In July of 1925, at her own request, the court ordered the producers to destroy all copies of the film in circulation. Unfortunately for her, this order would be difficult to enforce. Each copy of the film was 7 reels of 35 millimeter film stock. And once they were sent abroad, tracking them down required a lot of legwork. The film had already played in Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, and By the late 1920s, copies were already spreading to the United States and Great Britain. Ultimately, a great many copies of this offending film would be destroyed, but at least one print would survive, preserving the adaptation for a hundred years to come. You may have already guessed by now that the Florence of this story is Florence Balcombe, who had become the wife of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. She managed his literary estate for the rest of his life. The motion picture that she tried so hard to destroy is Nosferatu, the silent film that today is considered a landmark in the history of horror cinema. In a strange way, the result of Florence's Stoker lawsuit is a historical compromise. The producers of Nosferatu never made a profit from her husband's work. Yet the groundbreaking art that resulted from their copyright infringement survived to the present day. The value of a work of art is greater than the amount of profit it makes in its lifetime. Bram Stoker's Dracula, despite being one of the most beloved novels of its era, was not enough to guarantee financial security for his family. If it had been, maybe Florence wouldn't have pursued Prana films so aggressively. But Dracula and Nosferatu by extension, is a tenacious tale. Even when you try to kill it, it'll just rise up from the dead again, ready to spread the vampire's curse to a whole new generation.