Boris Karloff turned down the central role for the very reason that the actor’s face would not be seen until the final few seconds.

R. C. Sherriff was the writer assigned to adapt the novel; LH had read his autobiography:

‘...he describes with quiet relish how in 1933 he was beckoned to Hollywood to adapt H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man into a film… the story editor at Universal handed Sherriff fourteen different scripts… but when the writer timidly asked for a copy of the original novel the man barely remembered that there had been one…’

Sherriff scoured Los Angeles’ bookshops and eventually found a copy for fifteen cents, and produced his own script which, upon submission –

‘…delighted expatriate English director James Whale… Sherriff’s faithful pages were hailed by everyone from Carl Laemmle down as a work of original genius.’

The sequels, with principal actors, were: The Invisible Man Returns (Vincent Price, 1940), The Invisible Woman (Virginia Bruce, 1940), Invisible Agent (John Hall, 1942), and The Invisible Man’s Revenge (John Hall, 1944).  Abbot & Costello also ‘met’ the invisible man, played by Arthur Franz, in 1951.