THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (1940)

Improbably reviving his career by kidding his way around a third-class farce on tour* (MY DEAR CHILDREN), a deathly ill John Barrymore was called back to Hollywood (ashamed they hadn’t pumped him dry?) for four films at four separate studios before he died in 1941.  More improbably, this second of the four, a Universal comic-horror programmer, not only best of the lot, but kind of fun.  (Admittedly, Universal’s bar set very low on these things.)  Virginia Bruce is the dress salon model willing to give invisibility a try.  John Howard the wealthy benefactor to Barrymore’s research scientist.  Charlie Ruggles an unfunny ‘comic’ valet, and the always alarming Oscar Homolka a gangster who wants to go invisible so he can sneak back into the country.  (Note he uses Hitler’s barber.)  None of this particularly funny even of its type, but damned if Barrymore isn’t up for the challenge, giving everything just the right touch.  He even looks relatively healthy: sprinting, falling to his knees, hiding his cue cards.  Maybe having A. Edward Sutherland as director helped.  No comedy technician behind the camera, but being W. C. Fields’ regular director obviously helped him know how to get the best out of hopeless drunks on their last legs.*  John Fulton got an Oscar nom. on the special effects, but telltale outlines remain all too visible.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Orson Welles was merely being a loyal pal when he observed that if he had a child he would send him to Chicago, chain him to a seat and make him watch every performance.  ‘Then I’d tell him he knew everything there was to know about acting.’   But it was NYTimes critic Brooks Atkinson, giving the show its sole decent notice, who laid it all out: ‘He is still the most gifted actor in this country.  During the seventeen years he has spent away from Broadway he has held his talents cheap, and the record is no pretty one in appearance.  He has aged more than seventeen years.  But whether he has wasted a great talent or not -- and that is his own business -- the fact remains that he has all the gifts an actor needs and can use them with extraordinary versatility.  In contrast with the Barrymore who dominated the theatre by memorable works twenty years ago, he is a ravaged figure now.  But the fact remains he can still act like a man whom the gods have generously endowed and like a man who knows the art and the business of stage expression.  The Barrymore breeding keeps him master of silly material, and the tricks he plays on it are the improvisations of a man of sharp and worldly intelligence.  No doubt it would be more exhilarating to see an eminent actor in a part of dramatic eminence.  Failing that, it is something to see him witty and gay.  Although he has recklessly played the fool for a number of years, he is nobody’s fool in MY DEAR CHILDREN but a superbly gifted actor on a tired holiday.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The film does let you see why Bette Davis thought Barrymore might still be able to co-star with her on THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER/’42.  Alas, he was failing too rapidly and she ended up with the play’s stage star Monty Woolley.