Submitted by Nox Arcana on
Rosemary’s Baby was originally penned by Ira Levin, a New York City-based novelist who also wrote The Stepford Wives. In a 2003 afterword for the New American Library edition of Rosemary’s Baby, Ira said he was simply “struck one day by the thought that a fetus could be an effective horror.” After researching witchcraft, he set about writing the book.
Although Ira didn’t specifically mention any situations that inspired his novel, there are several similarities between Rosemary’s story and the story of the Devil Baby of Hull House.
That urban legend originated in Chicago in the early 1900s at the Hull House, which was founded by social worker extraordinaire Jane Addams. In the story, a Catholic woman hung a picture of the Virgin Mary in her home. Her atheist husband grew enraged and tore the image down, proclaiming he would sooner have a devil child than Christian iconography in his home. When the couple later had their first child, the baby was born with pointed ears, horns and a tail. The desperate parents took the baby to the Hull House, where they tried to baptize the spawn. After the baby fought back, it was reportedly locked in the attic until its death. (Jane Addam’s adamantly denied this story.)
Ira Levin died in 2007, taking with him the truth about just how much of Rosemary’s Baby is inspired by other stories. It is, however, known that Ira’s tale inspired dozens of other horror stories. Shortly before his death, he actually said he regrets contributing to this trend:
The movie of Rosemary’s Baby attracted some of the hostility I had worried about while writing the book. A woman screamed “Blasphemy!” in the lobby after the first New York preview, and I subsequently received scores of reprimanding letters from Catholic schoolgirls, all worded almost identically. The Legion of Decency condemned the film, but the film turned around and condemned the Legion; when the film became a major hit despite, or because of, its C rating, the Legion, already on its last legs, was disbanded.
Lately, I’ve had a new worry. The success of Rosemary’s Baby inspired Exorcists and Omens and lots of et ceteras. Two generations of youngsters have grown to adulthood watching depictions of Satan as a living reality. Here’s what I worry about now: if I hadn’t pursued an idea for a suspense novel almost forty years ago, would there be quite as many religious fundamentalists around today? - Ira Levin
Excerpts from:
http://starcasm.net/archives/271651