The Invisible Man - comment & question

[SSI01]

Saw "The Invisible Man" from 1933 w/Claude Rains yesterday on TCM. His fiance - or significant other - in the film is the same woman who was the aged "Rose Dawson" in Titanic - Gloria Stuart.


I have a question - the film used the old Universal Pictures logo with the airplane circling the globe - not the one seen on "The Sting" or "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." This one is different:

70317

Can anyone identify the aircraft? I thought it looked like a Northrop Gamma. This is from about 1933.

[srgalahad]

Something close to a Gamma, probably taken using one of those pen-stand (remember what a pen is? that old-fashioned implement for making marks on paper...) or trophy sculptures that the properties department had lying around...:icon_lol:
Here's a better view -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UyQDqonQq8&feature=relmfu

[SSI01]

Ha! Indeed I do. The parochial grade school I attended back in the '60s required us to have a fountain pen we filled from an ink reservoir kept in the classroom. Does that bring back memories!

That round tail and long nose make it also resemble Lindbergh's Lockheed Sirius, too . . .

[T Square]

We had these wooden sticks with pieces of carbon called lead in them called pencils ! You could use a rubberry thingy called an eraser to remove the marks the pencil made ! Imagine all of this right at your fingertips without touching a "Key" or "Keyboard" or needing electricity, amazing the technology back then wasn't it.

[SSI01]

I can remember working for the Chessie System RR back in the late 70s-early 80s as (among many other things) a freight agent and demurrage clerk, and actually keeping a hand-written ledger of accounts with local businesses we serviced. Made the entries in ink for legal purposes. Impervious to computer drive crashes and data loss.

BTW - that's where I first saw the RR clerk's version of your "Load Toad" doggerel. It went something like this:

We the unwilling
Led by the unknowing
Are doing the impossible
For the uncaring
And the ungrateful.
We have done so much
With so little
For so long
We are now qualified
To do everything
With nothing -
For nothing.

[beana51]

Great Classic Flick...I seen it in 1937 I think.?...one character really stands out...the House Keeper who "SCREAMS"...This Women had the best "SCREAM " ever...She was the Great Irish actress "UNA O'Connor"..was in the 1938 "Robin Hood", "Bride of Frankenstein in 1935....and many more....I think that plane is a figment of someones imagination,a composite of some planes of the day.

[SSI01]

Could very well be - and you're right, she elevated that scream to an art form. The director of the film was not above poking a little fun at the hysteria Mr. Griffin was causing, and if you watch carefully in the film Uma O'Connor's repeated use of the scream was one of the aspects of this the director utilized.

What a pity Griffin wanted to cause so much harm with his invisibility - it would have been much more fun to use it to embarass the right people, at just the right time

[Eoraptor1]

Question: Since the Invsible Man's retinas are transparent, wouldn't he be blind?

If you like classic horror films, check out a documentary called Universal Horror, narrated by Kenneth Branagh. It used to be on available on YouTube, but I don't know if it's been removed by now or no. It's usually on TCM around Halloween.

A few tidbits from the documentary:

The makeup in The Phantom of the Opera was based on the thousands of WWI veterans with disfiguring facial injuries, who were given discreet life-masks to wear in public. If you're a fan of Boardwalk Empire, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The "rats" in Dracula's tomb in the 1931 Tod Browning version of Dracula, were actually opossums. Real rats were consdered to be in "poor taste."

There exst test shots of Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster (Frankenstein is the scientist; not the creature) shot in color.

JAMES

[T Square]

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I can remember working for the Chessie System RR back in the late 70s-early 80s as (among many other things) a freight agent and demurrage clerk, and actually keeping a hand-written ledger of accounts with local businesses we serviced. Made the entries in ink for legal purposes. Impervious to computer drive crashes and data loss.

BTW - that's where I first saw the RR clerk's version of your "Load Toad" doggerel. It went something like this:

We the unwilling
Led by the unknowing
Are doing the impossible
For the uncaring
And the ungrateful.
We have done so much
With so little
For so long
We are now qualified
To do everything
With nothing -
For nothing.


The "Loaders Creed" came about when a MSgt I worked for who was pretty good doodler did a drawing (attached) of my load crew one day while training a on a loading slot. Happened to see a poster that had a similar (highly plagerizied) diddy as the one above, and it just seem to stick (Officers and Pilots are an extremely ungrateful lot) .