THE GHOST COMES HOME

US, 1942, 75 minutes, Black and white.
Frank Morgan, Billie Burke, Ann Rutherford, Nat Pendleton, Donald Meek, John Shelton, Reginald Owen.
Directed by Wilhelm Thiele.

The Ghost Comes Home is a slight MGM film of the early 1940s, a brief entertainment, a supporting feature.

The film is based on a play by Georg Kaiser and the screenplay was written by Richard Maibaum (later a writer for several of the James Bond films).

The film is a star vehicle for Frank Morgan, playing a pet shop owner, a rather meek man, dominated by his family. His wife is played by Billie Burke. (They had both appeared in The Wizard of Oz, he as the wizard and she as Glenda the kindly witch.) Their daughter is played by Ann Rutherford, a popular actress in small MGM films including the Andy Hardy series.

When a call comes from Australia that the town where Morgan lives is to be granted half a million dollars by a benefactor, he is asked to go to Australia to work out the details of the bequest. However, in New York, he is put upon by people in a bar, he being very good-mannered, but drinking at the urging of two women and losing his money. He finds himself in jail for sixty days. In the meantime, one of his brothers-in-law, an insurance salesman, has taken out insurance against his death. When Morgan returns to his town, the ghost returning, he finds that they have spent the money. The family decides to hide him and there is comedy in the various devices that they use to keep him from the town. However, he finds himself much more assertive and relies on dominating the family for his own comfort, his wife becoming very obedient, another brother-in-law (Nat Pendleton) being forced to marry the harridan widow of the town.

However, he had befriended a bandleader, played by John Shelton, who helps him in New York, meets him when he gets out of jail, agrees to bring him back to the town. He also falls in love with Morgan’s daughter – even though they go through some of the skirmishes of the sexes.

The other difficulty in the town is that it is dominated by a banker, played by Donald Meek. He expected to gain by banking the money of the bequest, and has also been buying up land. The bandleader, with the help of members of his band (especially Reginald Owen), impersonates and tricks the banker into exorbitant deals and paying out big money for lands. At a banquet, the town welcoming the stranger back to the town – with the story that he was washed overboard and saved from the stricken vessel, the whole truth is revealed. When Morgan attacks Meek at the banquet, all the townspeople are in support of him – which means that the whole film has a happy ending.

The film is an opportunity to see the kind of B-budget pictures that were popular as supports in the late 30s and the early 40s.