conversation."
Although we have been seeing
strictly wire effects here,
Sherriff and Whale mix it with intriguing
travelling-matte work you've just seen,
for the cigarette lighter, the handling
of the cigarette and smoking effect.
William Harrigan, the actor playing Kemp,
was a last-minute substitute
for Chester Morris,
who had been scheduled for the role.
Morris was a leading player, who had
come from the theatre to Hollywood.
He had starred in
The Big House, The Bat Whispers
and The Red-Headed Woman
opposite Jean Harlow,
just before being slated
for The Invisible Man.
But, when newcomer
to American films Claude Rains
was signed and given top billing,
Morris, who already was unhappy with
his unsympathetic and colourless role,
after finally reading the script,
bowed out around mid-June,
shortly before the start of filming.
Harrigan and Claude Rains
had recently appeared
in the well-received Theatre
Guild production on Broadway
of the Irish drama,
The Moon in the Yellow River.
It's possible that Rains recommended him
to Whale after Morris pulled out.
Harrigan had become a leading man on
the Broadway stage by his 21st birthday.
His family was one
of the oldest in theatre history,
having been on the stage
uninterruptedly since 1660.
Some of Harrigan's films include
'G' Men with James Cagney,
The Farmer's Daughter, with Loretta
Young, Desert Fury with Burt Lancaster
and Flying Leathernecks
with John Wayne.
He created the role of the Captain
in the stage production
of the extremely popular
Mister Roberts in 1948,
and stayed with it
during its original three-year run.
His sister was film
and stage actress Nedda Harrigan.
The actor died in 1966 at age 79.
I would like to talk about the person who
wrote The Invisible Man novel in 1897,
HG Wells.
Herbert George Wells.
An English novelist and journalist,
who was known for his science fiction,
his satirical novels and
his popular books on history and science.
He was a vigorous advocate
of socialism, feminism,
evolutionism, nationalism
and the advancement of science.
Often called the first
great writer of science fiction,
Wells wrote The Time Machine, The
Island of Dr Moreau, The Invisible Man,
The War of the Worlds, The First
Men in the Moon, among many others.
They were all published at the end of the
19th century and beginning of the 20th.
Wells was not the first to write
about a person becoming invisible.
In 1833, James Dalton composed
an ambitious cautionary tale
in a three-decker novel
called The Invisible Gentleman.
Later, Edward Page Mitchell
dealt with the subject
in a story called The Crystal Man in 1881.
And CH Hinton wrote a tale of invisibility
titled Stella in 1895.
These are just a few examples.
In The Invisible Man novel,
Wells writes about Griffin's experiments
that involve a fourth dimension,
in this case, light.
Refraction, reflection.
He goes into pigment research
and optical density, which determines
the degree of visibility of things.
There is a two-phase process
using a drug and a mechanical device.
By an ingenious use of scientific patter
it all seems perfectly logical and feasible,
especially since Wells wrote
in a very straightforward style.
Of course, his books contain
highly imaginative ideas
that have been the basis for
many films over the past 100 years.
In the film, the invisibility
experiments are reduced to
Griffin talking about trying "a thousand
experiments, a thousand failures",
and mentioning "a mixture of drugs".
Add to this Dr Cranley discussing
monocane in an earlier scene,
and that takes care of what
the audience is allowed to know.
The scene between Griffin and Kemp
was used for Claude Rains' test.
He had been appearing in the play Peace
Palace in New York in early June 1933,
so the test probably was made in New
York