The Body Disappears

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....

(1941) The Body Disappears COMEDY

It has yuppie and jokester, Peter DeHaven (Jeffrey Lynn) engaged to be married and having a bachelor party with his friends, George "Doc" Appleby (Herbert Anderson), Terence Abbott (DeWolf Hopper) and Jimmie Barbour (David Bruce). When as soon as it was time to leave, the only person who was passed out was Peter. Because Peter earlier played some jokes on his friends, while he was passed out they decide to put one on him by letting him sleeping it off in the college morgue. It is during then Professor Reginald X Shotesbury (Edward Everett Horton) instructs his assistant, William (Willie Best) to go into the college morgue next door to carry a body out into his lab, and it happens to be Peter DeHaven. The professor then pricks a needle into him calling his discovery a breakthrough, and it was at this point Peter disappears or turns invisible- hence the title "The Body Disappears". This was also during the time, the professor's daughter, Joan Shotesbury (Jane Wyman) happens to come home too. She becomes his eventual love interest.

Very amusing comedy with many gags that involves Peter's invisibility. It begins to be routine and it gets better.

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.

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.