The wealthy lawyer Dick Russell funds the dotty old inventor Professor Gibbs to create an invisibility device. The first test subject for this machine is Kitty Carroll, a department store model who had been fired from her previous job. The machine proves quite successful, and Kitty uses her invisible state to pay back her sadistic former boss, Mr. Growley. While the Professor and the invisible Kitty are off visiting the lodge of the millionaire Russell, the gangster Blackie Cole sends in his gang of moronic thugs to steal the device. With the machine back at their hideout, however, they cannot get it to work. By now, Kitty has returned to visibility, and the thugs are sent in to kidnap her and Gibbs. However, she has learned that some alcohol will restore her to invisibility, and uses this to defeat the gang. At the end of the film, it is revealed she has married and become a mother. To top it off, she and the professor learn that her treatment has apparently become hereditary, as her infant son vanishes upon being rubbed with an alcohol-based lotion.
Cast
Cast is sourced from the book Universal Horrors.
Production
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. For the role of the invisible woman, Margaret Sullavan had originally been slated for the role of the invisible woman as she owed Universal one more film in her contract. Sullivan had been approached by director John Cromwell to play the lead inSo Ends Our Night which led to her failing to report to Universal for The Invisible Woman. Sullivan received a restraining order preventing her from working elsewhere. These details were later worked out allowing her to finish Cromwell's film, if she would continue work on two films of Universal. Virginia Bruce was as the role of the invisible woman and signed her contract on September 12, 1940. John Barrymore was cast as Prof. Gibbs, who was beginning to have trouble memorizing his dialogue. According to John Howard, Barrymore began doing lines by cutting up the script and placing it on set behind vases, behind phones, so he could look and find his lines. Howard states "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 distain. 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." Also among the cast was Maria Montez, in her first film role.
Release
The Invisible Woman was distributed by Universal Pictures on December 27, 1940. The Invisible Woman was nominated for the 1942 Academy Awards for Special effects for photographic Effects by John Fulton and Sound Effects by John Hall. The film lost the award to I Wanted Wings. On its release, the film grossed a total of just under $660,000. The film was followed by Invisible Agent on July 31, 1942.
Reception
From contemporary reviews, 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." 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.
Reboot
In November 2019, it was announced that a reboot of The Invisible Woman was in development. Elizabeth Banks would star in, direct, and produce the film. Erin Cressida Wilson would write the script, based on Banks' original pitch. Max Handelman and Alison Small would serve as producer and executive producer, respectively.
