Whale was originally set to direct.
In 1939 he wrote the excellent script
for Korda's Technicolor production
of The Four Feathers.
Other credits include
the Robert Donat Goodbye, Mr Chips,
That Hamilton Woman with
Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh,
and Odd Man Out with James Mason.
He died in 1975.
Kemp's car going over the cliff
was another of Charlie Baker's,
and his Universal
miniature department's efforts.
As usual, a first-rate one.
This scene was also reprised
in other Universal films,
including Jungle Woman in 1944
and a 1945 Sherlock Holmes entry,
The House of Fear.
The British actor playing
the chief of police is Holmes Herbert.
This policeman is played
by Monte Montague, an American,
who speaks here with a British accent.
He was an actor
and stunt man for decades.
After a long absence,
since the main title, actually,
music returns as underscoring
for the last seven minutes of the film.
Composer Heinz Roemheld
also did original scores
for two other Universal
horror films at the time,
The Black Cat in 1934
and Dracula's Daughter in 1936.
In case the score
sounds somewhat familiar,
but you can't quite
place where else you heard it,
how about trying Universal's 1930s
Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials
with Buster Crabbe?
The music you're hearing
provided a perfect accompaniment
to the intrepid interplanetary adventures
of Flash, Dale and Dr Zarkov.
And The Invisible Man main title music
was put into service
whenever a rocket ship
in those serials raced here and there.
The farmer is Robert Browner,
who goes back to 1909 as a film actor.
Although The Invisible Man was always
thought to be Claude Rains' first film,
it was confirmed recently
that he had a supporting role
in a silent British feature production
of 1920 called Build Thy House,
which apparently is a lost film.
But based on items in the files
of the British Film Institute
Rains was eighth billed
and played a drunken loafer who,
while applying for a job,
gives some revealing and dramatic
information about the leading character.
After his success in The Invisible Man,
Rains did two more pictures for Universal:
The Man Who Reclaimed his Head,
which he had done earlier on the stage,
and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, based
on Charles Dickens's unfinished novel.
And Whale thought of him for the role
of Dr Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein,
but we know
that Ernest Thesiger played that part.
In 1936 he signed with Warner Brothers.
It was unusual in that he was paid
only when actually working on a picture.
When Rains finished shooting,
he would head immediately
for his beloved farm in Pennsylvania.
Also, his deal was non-exclusive.
He played the villainous Prince John
in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood,
photographed in Technicolor.
He was nominated for
an Academy Award for his performance
as the suave but corrupt senator in Frank
Capra's Mr Smith Goes to Washington.
Then he returned to Universal
to be top billed in The Wolf Man.
No, he wasn't the wolf man, but his father.
Rains played the title role in Universal's
opulent 1943 Technicolor remake
of The Phantom of the Opera.
There followed Now, Voyager,
Casablanca, for which he won his second
best supporting actor nomination,
and Mr Skeffington,
yet another Oscar nomination.
Rains gave one of his finest performances
in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious,
for which he was
Academy-nominated for the fourth time.
The eminent George Bernard Shaw
personally chose him
to star opposite Vivien Leigh
in the British production of Shaw's
Caesar and Cleopatra, released in 1946.
He also did another HG Wells story,
The Passionate Friends,
released in America as
One Woman's Story in 1949.
It was directed by David Lean.