The Canterville Ghost **** (1944, Charles Laughton, Robert Young, Margaret O’Brien) – Classic Movie Review 6845

Sir Simon de Canterville: ‘Excuse me, I really must gibber at the oriole window.’ Director Jules Dassin’s 1943 fantasy comedy is freely based on the delightful Oscar Wilde story and is full of lighthearted whimsy and gentle humour.

Charles Laughton has great fun and is very funny as Sir Simon de Canterville, an easily scared 300-year-old ghost giving World War Two billeted GIs a fright in this extremely entertaining, popular haunted house comedy.

Robert Young, in his last MGM movie, is the lead male as Cuffy Williams, a visitor who emerges as a far-flung relative, but young, apple-pie-cute Margaret O’Brien steals every scene she appears in as Laughton’s descendant Lady Jessica de Canterville, who shows the Americans round the stately home.

Also in the cast are William Gargan, Reginald Owen, Rags Ragland, Peter Lawford, Una O’Connor, Donald Stuart, Elisabeth Risdon, Frank Faylen, Lumsden Hare, Mike Mazurki and William Tannen. Norman Z McLeod worked uncredited on the direction.

The Canterville Ghost is directed by Jules Dassin, runs 95 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Edwin Harvey Blum, based on the Oscar Wilde story, is shot in black and white by Robert Planck, produced by Arthur L Field and scored by George Bassman.

It has been remade several times, but most notably for British TV with John Gielgud in 1986.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6845

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