HOLD THAT GHOST
US, 1941, 86 minutes, Black and white.
Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Richard Carlson, Joan Davis, Mischa Auer, Evelyn Ankers, Marc Lawrence, Shemp Howard, Russell Hicks, Ted Lewis, the Andrews Sisters.
Directed by Arthur Lubin.
1940 and 1941 were important years for the film careers of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. They were introduced in 1940 as supporting players in One Night in the Tropics, a screwball romantic comedy. They had previously played vaudeville and were successful on radio. They brought their comic style and patter to Universal Studios who gave them a contract and very quickly made a number of films in 1941, including this film.
They played garage attendants who have an opportunity to work as waiters in a fashionable club, with a fair amount of slapstick comedy and verbal argument. The club is really an opportunity for Ted Lewis to lead his band, singing in his idiosyncratic style and introduce a ballad by the Andrews Sisters. The sisters appeared also in Buck Privates and Buck Privates In the Navy at the same time.
The club also introduces the theme of criminals which comes to a head when they are back at their service station work and have some tangles with a criminal called Moose Matson who is cornered by the police and dies in police fire. The irony is that his will states that whoever was with him at his death will inherit everything. That includes a mysterious, now abandoned, luxury hotel and resort, with gaming facilities.
Other criminals want the money and decide to follow the heroes to find it in the house. The assassin is played by Marc Lawrence, a criminal in many films, even up to his sinister role in the comedy, Foul Play, 1978.
A variety of guests goes in the bus and has to stop at the hotel, leading to a variation on ghosts and haunted house films.
The supporting cast is better than average, including Richard Carlson as a very, very serious-mind doctor who finds romance with Evelyn Ankers. Also in the cast is comedienne Joan Davies, later in a variety of comedies including If You New Susie. She has a lot of comedy routines with Lou Costello.
It is a dark night, there is a storm, there is a sinister basement, there are many, many rooms which with levers can transform from bedrooms to gambling rooms, Lou Costello experiencing all this with Bud Abbott’s disbelief.
As with their many routines, there is another one about Bud Abbott cheating Lou Costello of money. And there are various arguments and slapstick situations.
This one is possibly more amusing than many of the others.
