Parody Because audiences had seen these classic Westerns, they had expectations for any new Westerns, and when these expectations were inverted, the audience laughed. Perhaps the earliest parody film was the 1922 "Mud and Sand", a Stan Laurel film that made fun of Rudolph Valentino's film "Blood and Sand". Laurel specialized in parodies in the mid-1920s, writing and acting in a number of them. Some were send-ups of popular films, such as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"—parodied in the comic "Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde" (1926). Others were spoofs of Broadway plays, such as "No, No, Nanette" (1925), parodied as "Yes,
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920 Paramount film) trade papers. Some of those reviewers, like the title characters in the film, were "split”, harboring both decidedly positive and negative opinions about the production. "Photoplay", a widely read New York-based monthly, provides one example of such mixed reactions. In the magazine’s June 1920 issue, critic Burns Mantle describes two of his friends’ diametric responses to the picture. One friend praised it as “a perfect sample” of filmmaking, destined to be a “classic” in cinematic history; the other friend was appalled by it. As to his latter friend, Mantle adds that she “insists as strenuously that 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr.