The Invisible Woman (1940 film)

The Invisible Woman
Directed by	A. Edward Sutherland
Screenplay by	Robert Lees Fred Rinaldo Gertrude Purcell
Story by	Kurt Siodmak Joe May
Produced by	Burt Kelly (associate producer)
Starring	Virginia Bruce John Barrymore John Howard Charlie Ruggles Oscar Homolka
Cinematography	Elwood Bredell, A.S.C
Edited by	Frank Gross
Music by	Charles Previn (musical director)
Production company	Universal Pictures Company, Inc.
Distributed by	A Universal Picture
Release date	27 December 1940 (1940-12-27)
Running time	72 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	≈$660,000

The Invisible Woman is a 1940 American science fiction comedy film directed by A. Edward Sutherland. It is the third film in Universal Pictures' The Invisible Man film series, following 1933's The Invisible Man and The Invisible Man Returns, which was released earlier in the year. It is structured as a screwball comedy, rather than the melodrama of the previous two films. Universal released The Invisible Woman on December 27, 1940.

The film stars Virginia Bruce, John Barrymore, John Howard, Charlie Ruggles and Oscar Homolka, with Margaret Hamilton, Shemp Howard and Charles Lane among those in the supporting cast.

Plot

George, a nervous and eccentric butler, is carrying a tray while walking down a mansion staircase, but steps on a bottle and takes a pratfall as the doorbell rings. He opens the door to Hudson, estate manager for George's employer, irresponsible playboy Richard Russell. Hudson angrily shows George a newspaper with the headline "Playboy Russell Hooked Again / Showgirl Wins $100,000 Heartbalm / Scion of Wealthy Family Throws Wild Party Following Court Action".

As Russell appears, Hudson calls him an "extravagant, girl-crazy young idiot" and announces, "you're broke", telling him, "no more girls, no more parties and no more Professor Gibbs". Gibbs, another eccentric character, is an elderly scientist who lives in a guest house on Russell's estate and has been working on unspecified inventions for decades. "He's practically an heirloom... I inherited him from dad", explains Russell.

George, who feels the Professor is taking advantage of his kindly benefactor, happily takes the note in which Russell is forced to deny the Professor's request for $3000 and walks across the courtyard to slip it under the guesthouse door. The Professor's stern housekeeper, Mrs. Jackson, brings it to the laboratory and the Professor, upon reading it, goes into town.

At the Daily Record newspaper's "want - ad dept.", the Professor asks the clerk to change his ad, which states, "WANTED - A HUMAN BEING, WILLING TO BECOME INVISIBLE. $3000. REMUNERATION". The Professor crosses out "3000" and writes "NO". Upon the clerk's query, "Do you really want this in?", he replies, "Yes, of course, unless that you would like to try the experiment." The clerk raises his arms, "No, no, no, thank you" and the Professor comments, "No sense of adventure."

Some days later, the Professor drives into the city and picks up a large pile of want-ad replies. In front of the guesthouse, he tells the car, "Put yourself in the garage, lazybones" and the car drives off, forcing Russell, who is carrying a fishing rod, to jump out of its path. "A little invention of mine", explains the Professor. Russell apologizes for not providing the $3000 and tells him, "It's simply that I'm flat... busted". The Professor invites him into the guesthouse, shows him the pile of replies to the ad and says, "My boy, all your troubles are over... you'll make millions out of this... millions". However, the replies are not promising — "You're Cuckoo ! Yours truly, John Doe" and "If you promise to make my wife disappear you can have her Yours hopefully Henpecked Husband". The disappointed Professor tells Russell that the machine does work since he tried it on the cat who briefly disappeared. Russell spots one promising letter, "I am willing to submit to your experiment on Friday afternoon... Please let me know your address... K. Carroll... 1132 North Vista."

Returning to the mansion, Russell tells Hudson, who is preparing an inventory of possessions for sale of the mansion, and George, who is packing, that "We're not leaving".

In the laboratory, the Professor tells Mrs. Jackson that the letter is being sent to a gentleman named "K. Carroll".

At a boardinghouse, model Kitty Carroll receives a letter which, she tells her landlady, Mrs. Patten, is "a call to adventure" and rushes to her job at "Continental Dress Co. Model Dept." where the supervisor, Mrs. Bates, tells her, "You're late". Kitty asks her fellow models, Jean, Peggy and Marie, "What would you do if you could become invisible?" The door marked "MR. GROWLEY / PRIVATE" opens and the irascible owner comes with a mean-spirited speech, "Now remember... we're not in business for your amusement... every minute wasted means money lost... every second delayed keeps a buyer waiting." Seeing Kitty, he tells her, "All right, Carroll... don't try to sneak by... you were two minutes late this morning... you're docked an hour's pay". When she protests, he threatens to fire her and, when Mrs. Bates gently defends her, he threatens to fire her too.

As the models parade in front of elegant buyers, one of the women pulls at Kitty's dress, tearing it. When Growley approaches, Kitty says, "She tore it". The buyer tells Growley, "I came here to do business, not be insulted." Growley threatens to fire Kitty and her fellow models, who approach to silently support her. Having no choice, Kitty grudgingly apologizes. Going into the back, Kitty tell the models and Mrs. Bates that she is leaving, "...we can't go on being stepped on like this for $16.50 a week... treated like dogs... yelled at... humiliated... I'll be back and if I have any luck, nobody will see me".

Arriving at the guesthouse, Kitty introduces herself to Mrs. Jackson and then to the Professor who is extremely flustered to find that his subject is female.

While the Professor and the invisible Kitty are off visiting Russell's lodge, gangster Blackie Cole sends in his gang of moronic thugs—including “Hammerhead’—to steal the device. Once the machine is back at their hideout, they cannot get it to work. Kitty is now visible, and Blackie sends the gang to kidnap her and the Professor. Kitty learns that alcohol will restore her invisibility, and, with Russell's help, she exploits this to defeat the gang.

Kitty has married Richard and become a mother. After an alcohol rub, their infant son begins to fade from view. “Hmmm,” the Professor says to the audience. “Hereditary!”

Cast

Cast is sourced from the book Universal Horrors:

• Virginia Bruce as Kitty Carroll
• John Barrymore as Professor Gibbs
• John Howard as Richard Russell
• Charlie Ruggles as George
• Oscar Homolka as Blackie
• Edward Brophy as Bill
• Donald MacBride as Foghorn
• Margaret Hamilton as Mrs. Jackson
• Shemp Howard as Frankie
• Anne Nagel as Jean
• Kathryn Adams as Peggy
• Maria Montez as Marie
• Charles Lane as Grawley
• Mary Gordon as Mrs. Bates
• Thurston Hall as Hudson
• Eddie Conrad as Hernandez

Uncredited

• Harry C. Bradley as want-ad clerk
• Kay Linaker as showroom buyer
• Sarah Edwards as fashion show buyer

Introduction by AMC host Bob Dorian

"Hello again, welcome to American Movie Classics. I'm Bob Dorian, today is Monday and each of our films today... stars a show business legend. In our first feature, the dynamic stage and screen actor John Barrymore gives a terrific performance... he always had a memorable performance... this time he's a wacky inventor... he was pretty wacky... Virginia Bruce and Charles Ruggles co-star in this comedy fantasy that's centered around invisibility... I can't see it..."

"When the make-up people were finished with John Barrymore for his role in The Invisible Woman, he took one look into the mirror and he said, 'My Gawd, I look like Lionel'... Lionel, of course, being his brother, Lionel Barrymore. John sent Lionel a picture of himself in full make-up with a note that said, 'This is undoubtedly the best picture you have ever made'. Unlike its predecessor, The Invisible Woman... ah, The Invisible Man, rather, was the predecessor, The Invisible Woman is played strictly for laughs and John Barrymore was really pleased with that. He preferred comedy over drama, saying that 'in comedy there is really more room for an actor to ad-lib and give his own interpretation of the role'... something which John Barrymore always loved to do because he hated to memorize his lines."

"Virginia Bruce had the lead and the title role in this movie, but she spent very little time on the soundstage as most of her scenes called for her to be invisible so a good portion of the acting was really done inside of a recording studio, sitting in front of a microphone. She said that the challenge was to make the audience kind of visualize the character and her actions, which made it more like doing a radio show than doing a film."

"John Fulton, the special effects man who handled the original Invisible Man, took over the responsibilities of creating the image for The Invisible Woman" Ah, he designed and built ah... the Electrical Invisibility Machine which you'll see in this muse... this picture, which threw sparks over six feet long. According to studio publicity, the machine was built behind closed doors to insure secrecy. Ah... when you come to think of it, I'm not really sure why anybody would want to steal an idea like that, but that's what they said."

"Oh, Three Stooges fans will be thrilled to see Shemp Howard as Hammerhead in this movie. Shemp, of course, was a member of the vaudeville act of Ted Healy and His Stooges" and he was the guy that brought his brother Moe and his friend Larry into the act and they later went on, of course, to... to history forever as The Three Stooges. Here's John Barrymore and Virginia Bruce in... The Invisible Woman."

Closing comments by Bob Dorian

"When The Invisible Woman was reissued, it was a surprise to Virginia Bruce and to everybody connected with the picture to find out that Maria Montez was now considered to be the star of the film. When The Invisible Woman was made in 1940, Montez was working as an extra for Universal. In this picture, she played Marie, one of the models in the early scenes but, two years later, Montez was the studio's top female star. Studio publicity for the reissue jumped on this popularity and they tried to make it look as though she played the lead. I guess it wasn't too outrageous a lie... except for that one scene, she was invisible throughout most of the movie."

"Montez made a lot of Universal's Technicolor pictures in the 1940s, including the Arabian Nights but, by the end of the decade, her popularity waned and she started making films in Europe. She was only thirty-one years old when she died of a heart attack."

Production

Theatrical advertisement from 1941

After the success of The Invisible Man Returns, Universal Pictures began work on a followup and signed Curt Siodmak to develop the idea in 1940 with comedy writers Frederic I. Rinaldo and Robert Lees. Universal gave the film a $300,000 budget. Margaret Sullivan had originally been slated for the role of the invisible woman because she owed Universal one more film in her contract. Director John Cromwell approached Sullivan about playing the lead in So Ends Our Night, and she failed to report to Universal for The Invisible Woman. Sullivan received a restraining order preventing her from working elsewhere. Eventually, she was allowed to finish So Ends the Night, as long as she continued work on two films for Universal. Virginia Bruce was cast as the invisible woman and signed her contract on September 12, 1940.

John Barrymore began to have trouble memorizing his dialogue. According to John Howard, Barrymore began cutting up the script and placing pieces on the set—behind vases, phones or other props—so he could read the lines.

Howard reminisced that "Barrymore was an ordinary fellow. He wasn't stuffy and he had no pretense whatsoever. Even in pictures that you felt weren't up to snuff, I don't think he showed any disdain. We knew perfectly well The Invisible Woman wasn't going to be an award-winning picture, but it was fun to do. No one took it seriously".

Billed 12th in the cast list, Maria Montez plays one of Grawley's models, alongside Virginia Bruce. This was her second film appearance, following Boss of Bullion City, a Johnny Mack Brown western, released nine months earlier.

Reception

The film was nominated for the 14th Academy Awards for Special Effects. (At the time, the category embraced photographic and sound effects.) The photographic effects were by John P. Fulton and the sound effects by John Hall. I Wanted Wings won the Oscar for Special Effects.

At the time of its release, this film was considered slightly risqué because much is made of the fact that the heroine, though invisible, is naked during much of the action.

On its release, The Invisible Woman grossed a total of just under $660,000. Universal followed it with Invisible Agent on July 31, 1942.

Theodore Strauss of The New York Times called the film "silly, banal and repetitious ... The script is as creaky as a two-wheeled cart and were it not for the fact that John Barrymore is taking a ride in it we hate to think what The Invisible Woman might have turned out to be". Variety called it "good entertainment for general audiences". Film Daily called it "laugh-packed", "brightly dialogued" and "a lot of fun". Harrison's Reports declared it "a pretty good comedy for the masses ... but it does not offer anything new to those who saw the other pictures in which the character became invisible". John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote: "The old stunt is still good, yet it's not used to much advantage here ... In fact, this is the feeblest example so far of that stunt which the camera can so easily make funny".

Reboot

In November 2019, a spin-off film centered around the female counterpart to Invisible Man was in development. Elizabeth Banks will star in, direct, and produce The Invisible Woman, based on her own original pitch. Erin Cressida Wilson will write the script of the reboot of the female monster, while Max Handelman and Alison Small will serve as producer and executive producer, respectively. Banks was allowed to choose a project by Universal Pictures from the roster of Universal Monsters, ultimately choosing The Invisible Woman.

See also

• John Barrymore on stage, screen and radio
• List of science fiction films of the 1940s

References

Sources

• Hallenbeck, Bruce G. (2009). Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914-2008. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-3332-2.
• Haugland, Vera (28 September 1941). "Maria Montez Puts On Best Show Without Benefit of Camera". The Washington Post. p. L2.
• Weaver, Tom; Brunas, Michael; Brunas, John (2007) [1990]. Universal Horrors (2 ed.). McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-2974-5.

External links

• The Invisible Woman at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• The Invisible Woman at IMDb
• The Invisible Woman at the TCM Movie Database