Yes, it's at that point the scene was removed and did you hear an audible 'pop' in the soundtrack?
I can only imagine that some time after it was first aired on television in the late 1950's (with the scene intact) and the films transfer to videocassette by MGM/UA Home Entertainment in 1991, it was cut out. Why? Certainly not for running time concerns, if anything, scenes are restored when a film is transferred to video and disc and as much information as possible is added for the film lovers who buy them.
Even if the scene had been removed by a television station due to viewer objections, and lets assume lost, it would still be intact in the master print held by the studio who supplies the copies, which at that time period would have been the original MGM Studios. And, if that is true why would the scene be removed from the master print (if it was)??
For those of you who never saw it, I will tell you it bordered on gruesome and captured that first transformation as no other version has before or since. Its shock value didn't depend on physical theatrics or false teeth, but a tight arrangement of set atmosphere, lighting, camera position and utter silence in the soundtrack as he rises from the floor after his collapse and we see his face only as a reflection in a mirror. With the judicious use of make-up to accentuate the shadows in Tracy's self-contorted features, his face is revealed as a hideous, gleeful image of degeneracy. He wipes an area of the mirror clean with his sleeve studying his reflection and speaks; (words to the effect) "I feel no shame. . .this evil is a _good_ thing. . .this evil is a FINE thing."
Before Richard Speck, before the assassinations, the news clips of the dead in Viet Nam and before the Manson slaughters, or even the premiere of Psycho; audiences must have felt genuine shock by the visual imagery and those words spoken from an actor who up until then was known for his roles as Priests, and American heroes. . .I know I was. And so, that is what censors have deprived future audiences of, a brilliant and defining moment in an actors craft and visual continuity that if left intact, would have made the difference between a good film and a great one.
...Motion Picture History
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