The Ghost Breakers
                         
Director: George Marshall
Year: 1940
Rating: 7.5
“A zombie has no will. You see them walking around blindly with dead eyes”
"You mean like Democrats”

Hope giving equal time to the Republicans after The Cat and the Canary quip.

After the success of The Cat and the Canary, Paramount looked around for a similar project and found it in a 1909 play. It had been made two times already (both lost films), but now it wasn’t silent film and they had Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. Later it was remade again with Lewis and Martin with the female played by Lizabeth Scott, retitled as Scared Stiff. This is Hope on all cylinders – charming, courageous, romantic and spitting out funny cracks like a machine gun on automatic. It is a brilliant performance and I can’t think of another up to that point that combined all those traits so seamlessly. Of course, it is thanks to a terrific script adapted from the play that is a near perfect example of the comedy-horror genre. Everything is in this film from gangsters to ghosts to zombies to an old haunted house and Hope and Goddard glide through it all effortlessly.




And then there is Willie Best. The third wheel. I would have to guess that Jerry Lewis takes his role. He was a black actor and as black actors had to at the time, he falls into that “yes suh”, eyes popping in fear stereotyped category, usually in small roles – but here he gets the third largest role and is the only one with any sense. There are the mandatory racial jokes – when the lights go off Hope says to him “You are like a blackout in a blackout” and others – but you get a sense of why he was a big star in the black community. Hope called Best, “The best actor I know”. Best said of his roles (over 100 film credits) “Most of them are pretty broad. Sometimes, I tell the director and he cuts out the bad parts, but what’s an actor going to do? Either you do it or get out”. Mitchell Leisen said of him “he is the most natural actor I have seen”.  He gets some good lines here as well as Hope. At one time while in the creepy old house, Hope says to him, if you see two people running by you, hit the second one because the first will be me. Best replies, “If you see someone passing you that will be me”.




Best plays Hope’s manservant who goes with him everywhere and gets him out of trouble when he has to. Girl trouble usually. They have great rapport. Hope is a fast-talking smart alec with a gossip radio show where he imparts things he has heard – sometimes about gangsters that he gets from a guy called Raspy Kelly (Tom Dugan). On his show he lets something out that doesn’t please one such gangster who asks Hope to come see him after the show. This sets the film in motion. In the same hotel is Goddard who has just inherited a castle on Black Island off of Cuba. There are offers to buy it from her and to scare her away. Hope ends up in her trunk on the way to Cuba and Best is right there. Once Hope is out of the trunk and the boat is on the way, he decides to help her, smitten immediately.  They have a fine battle of clever witticisms as they dance and their chemistry is obvious. Goddard was probably a bigger star than Hope at the time. Married to Chaplin (later to Burgess Meredith and Erich Maria Remarque) and appearing in two of Chaplin’s classics – Modern Times and The Great Dictator, but Hope is still the star of this film.




The set-piece in the castle is a classic. Nicely decorated with skeletons, suits of armor, portraits, mummified ancestors, a zombie, a ghost and cobwebs. Hope shows a surprising amount of bravery that was often absent in his future films and Best and Goddard are there as well. The quips keep coming and Hope gets the girl. Something that was also often absent in his future films, especially those with Crosby. This runs a sleek 85 minutes – I actually wish it was longer – directed by George Marshall. Also in the cast are Anthony Quinn in two roles, Paul Lukas, Richard Carlson, Virginia Brissac and Noble Johnson as the zombie.