matched in viewpoint, perspective
and action to a fraction of an inch."
"Several of the negatives
required hand retouching."
"And last, but far from least,
the action had to be figured out
so that the hands of the actor did not
pass between himself and the camera
or between
the reflection and the camera."
"It was as difficult
a shot as I have ever made."
In some scenes it was possible
to leave small eyeholes
in the black headpiece the person
in the all-black outfit had on.
But for other shots, such as
the close shots of the head unwrapping,
this was not possible,
and the actor had to work blind.
Sometimes the actor was Claude Rains,
but often it was a double.
Air was supplied through tubes,
as in a diving suit.
The tubes were mostly concealed,
running up a trouser leg.
Fulton recalled
that on at least one occasion
either the air supply developed a problem,
or the summer heat
along with the units lighting the set...
In any case, something. The double
was overcome and he fainted mid-scene.
Fulton recalled "In nearly all of these
scenes, though they were made silent,
it was difficult, sometimes impossible,
to direct the actor."
"The helmet muffled
the sound from outside,
and the air tubes made
a roaring rumble in his ears,
which drowned out any sounds which
might filter through the padding."
"When I used a large megaphone,
and shouted at the top of my voice,
he could just barely hear a faint murmur."
"Accordingly, we had to rehearse, and
rehearse, and then make many takes."
"As a rule, by take 20 of any such scene,
we felt ourselves merely well started
toward getting our shot."
Also, care had to be taken
to get the actor to move naturally,
yet in a way that did not present,
for example,
an open sleeve-end to the camera,
which would destroy the illusion.
Also, the actor couldn't pass
his hands in front of himself.
Of course, there were small imperfections
that were not detected until those
involved
viewed the developed
and printed film the next day.
Fixing these slight problem areas
was accomplished
by individuals who carefully
retouched the film, frame by frame,
with a very small brush and opaque dye.
According to Fulton, approximately
64,000 frames were retouched in this way.
Until Universal's
The Invisible Man Returns in 1940,
there was no attempt to deal with such
spectacular invisibility effects in films.
But, on a somewhat
less spectacular level,
in 1937 producer Hal Roach made
his first of three Topper features.
The story related the humorous
adventures of two ghosts,
husband and wife, played by
Cary Grant and Constance Bennett.
They sometimes appeared
in a transparent mode,
other times they were invisible, and they
often appeared to be completely visible.
Roy Seawright's effects weren't as
elaborate as those in The Invisible Man,
but they were well done.
One of the challenges for John Fulton,
when he was doing his special invisible
shots against a black velvet background,
was matching the lighting
on the visible part of the shots
with the general lighting used by
the cinematographer, Arthur Edeson,
on the normal parts of the production.
The Invisible Man was
the last of five pictures
Arthur Edeson
photographed with James Whale.
The two apparently got along well.
There were never any
arguments or disagreements.
Whale learned a lot from Edeson,
beginning with their first film together,
Waterloo Bridge in 1931,
and then Frankenstein that same year.
But Edeson moved elsewhere
after The Invisible Man.
One of his major productions soon after
was the 1935
Mutiny on the Bounty at MGM.
Then there was the classic 1941
Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart,
and he just happened to photograph
a picture called Casablanca in 1942.
Here's John Carradine again.
He was born Richmond Reed Carradine,
but his name was changed
to John Carradine