The Invisible Man (1933)

Formerly from the Modern Props Science Fiction Collection. This company supplied props for film and TV for over four decades.

This poster was produced by Leader Press, a printing company based in Oklahoma City that devised a solution to a distribution problem in the early years of sound cinema. In the early 1930s, once films had finished showing in the major cities, the prints were sent by bus to rural areas, with posters intended to accompany the film reels. However, the prints often didn’t arrive until a few days before the film opened, and the posters frequently turned up torn and weather-beaten, if the theatre manager remembered to include them at all. Leader Press stepped in and offered their own versions of the studios’ posters, which could be shipped a couple of weeks in advance of the screening date, allowing more time for promotion and cost only a fraction of the price of the studio one-sheets. (This was before the National Screen Service became the governing body for film poster distribution in the 1940s, prohibiting other companies from printing their own.) Under an agreement with the studios, Leader Press was permitted to design and print its own posters, provided they did not include any studio logos or credits.

To-date this is the only known surviving example of this poster.

This film was directed by James Whale and stars Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart and William Harrigan. This classic science fiction horror follows a brilliant scientist who discovers the secret of invisibility, only to descend into madness as his extraordinary power drives him towards violence and murder. Based on H. G. Wells' celebrated novel, it remains one of Universal's greatest horror classics.