The Body Disappears

The casting of Edward Everett Horton as a nutty professor is reason enough to watch The Body Disappears. Horton has been experimenting at the small college he teaches with both invisibility and resurrection.

He and his trusted assistant Willie Best steal Jeffrey Lynn's body from the morgue and bring it back to Horton's laboratory at home. Lynn isn't dead, just completely ossified from his batchelor party and his buds thought it would be fun to have him wake up at the morgue.

Horton gives the invisibility potion to Lynn instead of his experimental resurrection concoction and Lynn goes invisible like Claude Rains. Also like a monkey that he had tried it on earlier who escapes.

Meanwhile when he leaves his bride Marguerite Chapman at the altar a manhunt starts for him with the suspicion of foul play in the air.

The Body Disappears is a nice item from the B picture unit at Warner Brothers with none of their big box office stars. Jane Wyman who plays Horton's daughter falls for Lynn invisible though he may be. Lynn has a good line of patter that gets her.

This one really is Horton's film and it is nice to see him carry a film for once as brilliant as he in support.

...For I have never seen such a physically nondescript and dramatically bland actor as Mr. Lynn. And yet Warner Brothers gave him a pretty good build up in the late 30s and early 40s, including unbelievably having him play a character that Priscilla Lane prefers over the enigmatic brooding John Garfield in "Four Daughters". But I digress.

Here Lynn plays wealthy sportsman Peter DeHaven who is to be married the next day, and this is his bachelor party. He likes to play all kinds of corny jokes on his friends and fellow party goers, like exploding cigars and hand buzzers. And then he passes out from drinking too much. Three of his friends and fellow medical students decide to carry him over to the Medical College dissecting room, lay him out on a slab, and place a lily in his hand. They figure he will freak out when he wakes up the next morning, thus repaying him for all of the jokes he played on them.

Meanwhile, eccentric chemistry professor Shotesbury is testing a potion that is supposed to bring dead animals and people back to life. He has just been successful at bringing a monkey back to life, and decides to move abruptly to human testing. So he goes to fetch a body from the dissecting room which turns out to be Peter. He gives what he thinks is a dead person the injection, and Peter comes to. Shotesbury thinks he has succeeded when a previously unknown side effect of the drug appears - invisibility of both the monkey and Peter. Complications ensue, not the least of which is that the police figure that something criminal has befallen Peter when he turns up missing the day of his wedding.

Edward Everett Horton is really the lead here as the confused professor of chemistry. Interesting note here - this film was released the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor. I originally thought the film was released in 1943, the middle of the war, mainly because it is an object lesson in how to make a movie when there are no leading men to be found. All of the younger men have very small supporting roles with just a few lines. The lead is actually a 55 year old man, Horton, and Jane Wyman as his daughter. Lynn's voice is present during the entire film, but most of the time Lynn is not physically present at all - he is invisible. Actually anybody could have been playing Lynn's part when you can't see him.

This one is actually pretty funny for what is obviously a Warner Bros. B effort of the time. Horton is comically befuddled as always, workhorse Willie Best is funny and gets to flex his comic muscles here more than in most of the films he was in, and the plot has some interesting twists and turns. Also this film has something I thought I'd never see in the production code era - Actor Willie Best driving around New York City with Jane Wyman's bra on his head. Watch this one for the fun of it all and in spite of one rather obvious plot hole towards the end. See if you can find it.

I'd recommend this one. It was unexpectedly entertaining.

Jeffrey Lynn was one of the most attractive and interesting actors of the 1940s and early fifties. What a shame that he is invisible for most of this silly endeavor.

Be assured that this is no "Invisible Man." Claude Rains was a great actor and he was superb in the excellent movie. This one is lightweight and silly.

Movies like this and "Topper," as well as "Blithe Spirit" suffer today from something fro which they cannot be blamed: We are very much accustomed to people disappearing and reappearing and voices coming from nowhere while household objects are moved: We grew up on "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie." Edward Everett Horton gets billing under Lynn and Jane Wyman, quite good playing Horton's daughter. But he is the central figure. And he is surprisingly unappealing. He dithers as usual but he is a scientist who seems to have no regard for life so long as he gets his experiments completed.

Willie Best, so often cast and directed to play the most embarrassing stereotype of a black man, here comes through better than many, certainly better than Horton: Before the tile (human) body disappears, Horton is experimenting on a monkey named Charlie.

His character shows no concern for the animal's well being or comfort. Best does.

The movie is entertaining enough but it is a one-note joke. As it moves on, its 72 minutes begin to feel as if they need a roadshow-style intermission -- during which much of the audience would flee..

In addition to the original "Invisible Man" and its later sequels, Universal Studios made some comedic versions of the Invisible Man stories. "The Invisible Girl" was a comedy starring John Barrymore, there was "Abbott & Costello Meet the Invisible Man" and here we have "The Body Disappears"...yet another comedy using the same invisibility gimmick.

The story begins in a courtroom and the story is told through flashbacks as the folks testify. Apparently, they believe someone killed Peter (Jeffery Lynn) and they explain how he's not dead...just invisible. What follows is a silly story that is extremely enjoyable and cute...and well worth seeing.

E.E. Horton, the pro, was already 55 when he made this one... he's still in pretty good shape, and this caper movie required a lot of energy! if you haven't seen him in my favorites "Lost Horizons" or "Top Hat", you gotta rent those! The first 1/2 hour is fast paced, and things move right along. You don't have time to get bored. Pretty good special effects too, as the Professor and Willie turn Peter DeHaven (Jeff Jynn) invisible.... of course, his daughter Joan (the lovely and talented Jane Wyman) catches them, and now they have to explain what they are up to.... and these crazy goings on threaten to interrupt the wedding of DeHaven and Christine Lunceford (Marguerite Chapman). AND, it's got invisible monkeys, too! Fun, if you can keep up with it. A little silly, but what the hey. We don't hear much about this one, probably because it was released ONE day before Pearl Harbor Day, December 1941.... Directed by Ross Lederman, who was married to "Doris Warner"... I wonder if that's the same Doris, daughter of Harry Warner... This WAS a Warner Brothers film....