The Elephant Man Behind The Scenes

John Hurt, the actor who portrays the Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, played the role without pay. Upon being interviewed for the part, informed of the story, he told the producers, "Don't tell my agent, but I will do this role for nothing."

Following the death of the real John Merrick, parts of his body were preserved for medical science to study. Some internal organs were kept in jars, and plastic casts were taken of his head, an arm and a foot. Although the organs were destroyed by German air raids during the second world war, the casts survived and were kept at the London Hospital. The makeup for John Hurt who played Merrick in the film, was designed from those casts.

This film was executively produced by Mel Brooks who was responsible for hiring Director David Lynch solely on the basis of his one previous film, the highly surreal cult movie Eraserhead. He also obtained permission to film in black and white. He deliberately left his name off the credits as he knew that people would get the wrong idea about the movie if they saw his name on the film, given his fame as a satirist.

Director David Lynch originally tried to do the makeup for the elephant man himself but simply wasn't able to.

Know some good info about the making of The Elephant Man?
Use our simple iRewind system to add it to this page in just a few clicks.

Click here to start...

I know of two deleted scenes from David Lynch's 'The Elephant Man', 1) Because I saw a preview screening of the film at 20th Century Fox Studios and that pre-release print contained two scenes which were later deleted, and, 2)Because I have an old VHS tape of Anthony Hopkins on a TV talk show and one of those two deleted scenes was shown on the program.

One of the two scenes was of Hopkins reading poetry aloud with John Hurt, back and forth, with each of them reading a stanza. I don't know the name of the poem, but a bit of it is still used at the end of the film and contains the phrase "Nothing will die."

The other deleted scene is between Hopkins and Hannah Gordon, as his wife, and takes place in their bedroom as Dr. Treves questions the ethics of his own motivations in his helping Merrick. That is the scene I still have on video.

There is a huge new release of various Lynch films and other supporting materials in a pricey collection called the "Lime Green Boxed Set" and there's a chance that those deleted scenes MAY be included there, but I'm not sure.