This issue contains descriptions of animal experimentation.
Life Returns opens on a block of text. “Everything shown is absolutely real,” it begins. “The animal was unquestionably and actually dead, and was brought back to life.” It goes on to thank four assistants by name, before offering “Respectfully submitted” as a complimentary close. Dr. Robert E. Cornish’s signature appears at the bottom.
After brief credits, more text — this time set against footage of a wheat field waving in the wind. “Since time began, man has tried to solve the great mystery of life,” it begins. “An uncanny young scientist, Dr. Robert E. Cornish of California, has recently astounded the world with his amazing experimental success.”
What follows is an hour of meandering storytelling and bad dialogue competently acted. It’s a light affair, even by the standards of mid-30s films — particularly when contrasted with the similarly themed classic, Bride of Frankenstein, also produced by Universal in 1935. Rising 17-year-old British starlet, Valerie Hobson, appears in both films, giving a far less memorable performance as the wife of Dr. John Kendrick than her turn as the wife of Victor Frankenstein – or for that matter – the wife of Dr. Wilfred Glendon, the titular lead of Universal’s Werewolf of London, in which she also starred that year.
The film’s centerpiece arrives with roughly 10 minutes left. Cornish, playing himself, leads the procedure, captured on location at the University of Southern California a year prior. A group of stern-faced surgeons observe as a dead terrier is placed on the operating table. As with Cornish, Scooter the dog plays itself, having been killed with ether offscreen. While the Hays Code had arrived in the industry a year before release, American Humane wouldn’t begin monitoring film sets until the following decade.
A white sheet is draped over the dog, as Cornish gives Scooter mouth-to-mouth, sucking oxygen from a tube and blowing it into the animal. Real operating room footage is spliced with a scene of two actors preparing a solution in flasks on a laboratory set. Notably absent is the best-known aspect of Cornish’s approach: a teeterboard, which rocks the animal to restart blood flow. The procedure is, predictably, a success. “The heart is now beating,” one of the doctors announces, removing the stethoscope from the dog’s chest. “I’ve got the pulse.”
Shaking the doctor’s hand, Cornish declares, “good stuff.”
Critics disagreed. “Pretty sketchy as a film,” The Los Angeles Times noted in a brief review that gives higher marks to a pair of comedy and animated shorts that played before the picture. “Every performance is plodding, colorless, and it’s a pic much longer to the audience than its accredited running time would indicate,” Variety griped.
Universal felt similarly. Following production, the studio called the $40,000 film a “freak picture, not suitable for the regular Universal program.” Director Eugene Frenke, on the other hand, considered it a rousing success and quickly attempted to engage the studio in conversations about a sequel also starring Cornish. After the film was shelved, he sued Universal for nearly four times its price, noting that he had contributed to production costs, in return for portion of the box office.
Despite passable acting, Life Returns would be Cornish’s only film credit. The one-time medical wunderkind had agreed to star in the picture to promote his experiments. Contemporary reports of his progress are a mixed bag. Popular Science repeated claims that had almost certainly come directly from Cornish, declaring that the dogs had resumed a “normal life.” Seemingly more credible stories describe myriad ill effects, including, comas, blindness, paralysis and brain damage.
Still, the doctor already had a flair for the dramatic, reportedly declaring “Lazarus is alive!” following one resuscitation. Cornish considered the results successful enough to repeat the experiment with a human patient. “[T]he actual restoration of life in a man known positively to be dead has not yet been accomplished,” Popular Science explains. “Dr. Cornish, elated at the sensational success of his experiments with dogs, wants to make the attempt.”
The article adds that the Cornish was currently in the process of procuring permission to perform his experiments on a death row inmate. "I feel that some of these men might welcome an opportunity to do a final good deed for humanity and civilization," he wrote, adding that the patient "would not object to spending the remainder of his life in prison if brought back to life." State governors were staunchly opposed to the suggestion, whether for ethical concerns or worries that keeping the convict in prison post-execution might constitute double jeopardy.
It would be a decade before he found a suitable subject.
Confessed killer Thomas McMonigle wrote to the doctor, hoping to become a test subject. “He wants me to bring him back to life after his execution, in the interest of science,” Cornish said of the inmate, who was set to be put to death in San Quentin’s newly erected gas chamber. Cornish proposed the experiment to the prison warden, who explained that it took roughly half an hour to clear out the gas, before cheekily suggesting that the doctor sit in a chair next to McMonigle to speed up the operation.
“Maybe I will at that!” Cornish yelled, exiting the office.
Over the years, hundreds of “mostly single men” outside of prison volunteered to be killed and resuscitated for the procedure, seeking scientific fame or fiscal compensation. Cornish, however, never managed to find a suitable human subject.
Sources:
Universal Studios Monsters by Michael Mallory
How to Make a Zombie by Frank Swain
Sketchily Treated https://www.newspapers.com/image/380583223/?clipping_id=95912815
Can Science Raise the Dead? https://books.google.com/books?id=ricDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA12&dq=dr.+robert+e+cornish