The Ghost And Mrs. Muir (1947)

 

The Ghost And Mrs. Muir - 1947

Coming up next we have 1947's "The Ghost And Mrs. Muir", the story of a young widow who moves into a seaside house, only to find it haunted by its former occupant.

The film's cast includes Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, George Sanders, Edna Best,  Natalie Wood, Isobel Elsom, and Victoria Horne.

Mrs. Lucy Muir is a widow with a young daughter.  She's just decided to leave the home of her domineering in-laws.  She finds a property she's interested in, "Gull Cottage".  A real estate agent nearly refuses to take her to it, but she is insistent.

Once at Gull Cottage, Lucy takes an instant liking to it.  The seaside setting is just what she feels she needs.  However, the real estate agent is reluctant to let her sign a lease.

Apparently, the house is haunted by the ghost of a sea captain, who committed suicide in the house.  This doesn't deter Lucy one bit.  She still wants the place.

As they finish up their tour of the house, Lucy and the real estate agent hear maniacal laughter coming from somewhere, proving the place really is haunted.  Lucy doesn't care.  She obtains Gull Cottage for herself, her daughter, and her maid/friend Martha.

While napping on her first day at the cottage, Lucy is visited by the ghost of the sea captain, who watches her.  Lucy's dog can feel his presence.

And on the first night, the sea captain appears to Lucy after she demands he do so following some disturbances he was making.  "You'll forgive me if I take a minute to get accustomed to you," says Lucy as she searches for a chair to sit on.

After resisting all of Captain Daniel Gregg's insistencies to leave, Lucy tells him she is staying.  Daniel is impressed that she is so strong-willed.  Lucy says that he must not appear to her daughter.  Daniel just laughs and says, "No woman has ever been the worse for knowing me."

As time passes, they form a close friendship.  She calls him Daniel, and he calls her Lucia.  They both grow comfortable with their relationship.

When financial hardship befalls Lucy, Daniel decides to come to her rescue.  He dictates his memoirs to her, entitled "Blood And Swash".  He wants her to use the proceeds from the book for her expenses.

Lucy takes the book to a publisher.  He reluctantly begins to read it and is pleasantly surprised by how much he enjoys it.  He enthusiastically agrees to publish the book.

After her triumph at the publisher, Lucy meets and hits it off with fellow author Miles Fairley.  He's charming and debonair, and he thoroughly sweeps Lucy off her feet.

Daniel, however, has been watching unseen, and he intensely dislikes Miles.  Lucy smiles when she realizes Daniel is a bit jealous.

Miles comes to visit Lucy at Gull Cottage, and the two become even closer.

Daniel comes to the painful realization that he must let Lucy go so that she is free to be with the living.  "You must make your own life amongst the living and, whether you meet fair winds or foul, find your own way to harbor in the end," he says.

While she is napping, Daniel comes to her and puts the thought in her mind that he has just been a dream, that it was her idea for the book.

Before he takes his final leave of Lucy, Daniel muses over what could have been.  "How you'd have loved the North Cape and the fjords and the midnight sun...to sail across the reef at Barbados, where the blue water turns to green...to the Falklands where a southerly gale rips the whole sea white!  What we've missed, Lucia.  What we've both missed."

Sadly, Lucy journeys to London to visit Miles.  There, she finds that he is married.  She leaves and closes that chapter of her life behind her.

She returns to Gull Cottage, where she gazes at places that Daniel used to be.  She doesn't understand that he was real.  She still thinks it was a dream.

The years roll by.  Lucy's daughter, Anna, comes to visit with news that she is to be engaged.  Lucy discovers that Anna came to know Daniel when she was a little girl.  Anna makes Lucy remember how she felt about Daniel and that he was once a real part of their lives.

The years continue ever onward.  Lucy, now an old woman, is sick and under the care of a doctor.  After telling her maid/friend Martha that she is tired, she sits down and dies.

Daniel appears and says, "And now, you'll never be tired again".  With his arms outstretched he says, "Come, Lucia.  Come, m'dear."

Lucy arises as the young woman that Daniel knew all those years ago, when she first moved to Gull Cottage.

Arm in arm, they stroll out of Gull Cottage and into the mists.  The door closes behind them.

Cast rundown:

   Gene Tierney...................................Lucy Muir

   Rex Harrison...................................Captain Daniel Gregg

   George Sanders...............................Miles Fairley

   Edna Best.......................................Martha Huggins

   Natalie Wood...................................Anna Muir

   Isobel Elsom...................................Angelica

   Victoria Horne.................................Eva

And that's it for The Ghost And Mrs. Muir.  It's a favorite of mine and one of the first older films that I can clearly remember watching.  While set on the seaside in England, this movie was filmed entirely in California along its central coast.  The film is listed at #73 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Passions" list.

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Midnight Lace (1960)

 

Midnight Lace - 1960

Our next film is 1960's "Midnight Lace", a stylish thriller in which a newly married American woman living in London receives strange telephone calls which foretell her impending death.  No one will believe her, and the perpetrator of the crime is someone whom she doesn't even suspect.

The film's cast includes Doris Day, Rex Harrison, John Gavin, Myrna Loy, Roddy McDowall, John Williams, Hermione Baddeley, Anthony Dawson, Natasha Perry, Herbert Marshall, Doris Lloyd, Hayden Rorke, and Richard Ney.

American Kit Preston is walking home in a thick fog.  Her address is well known Grosvenor Square.  As she walks, Kit hears a man's strange mechanical-like voice that announces that he will kill her when the time is right.  In a panic, Kit immediately runs home.

When she arrives home, Kit tells her husband Tony what happened.  He calms her fears by telling her it must've been a practical joker.  The thick fog brings out the worst of those kind of people.  With her fears assuaged, Kit embraces her husband and makes plans to have lunch with him the next day.

Kit goes on a shopping spree before lunch the next day and buys a negligee called "Midnight Lace".  She shows it to Tony, and he's very enthusiastic about it.  Unfortunately, he won't be able to have lunch with her.  Disappointed, Kit goes home.

As she arrives home, a falling girder nearly drops on top of Kit.  She's saved by a Mr. Brian Younger.  Kit thanks him and continues on her way.

As she takes her leave, Kit is startled to know that Brian knows her name and has been asking around about her.

Inside her apartment, Kit is confronted by her maid's son, whose oily personality grates on her.

After he leaves, the telephone rings, and Kit hears the mechanical voice telling that she is to be killed.

She talks with her friend and neighbor Peggy about it.  Peggy advises Tony to take Kit's story to Scotland Yard and make a police report.

Tony does just that.  When the inspector gets Tony alone for a moment, he suggests that since know one has heard this voice but Kit, she must be doing it for the attention.  Tony feels the inspector may be right.

A bright spot in Kit's life comes in the form of her Aunt Bea, who is visiting London.  The two laugh in the cab on the way to drop Bea at her hotel.  "Oh, Bea, don't ever change," smiles Kit.  Bea replies, "I try not to, but the bills at the beauty parlor get bigger every year."

The phone calls from the mechanical voice keep coming, and Kit begins to feel like she is unraveling.

She's particularly distant when she and Tony go out with Bea and her date.  While Kit goes dancing with Bea's date, Tony talks with Bea about how the police feel Kit might be making up the whole thing.  Bea dismisses it as utter nonsense.

However, the more she tries to make sense of it, the more Tony's suggestion seems to be the only logical thing that makes any amount of sense to Bea.

One day, Kit gets trapped in the apartment elevator when a blackout occurs.  She hears rapid footsteps on the stairs and sees a man's silhouette outside the elevator door.  She nearly has a breakdown.  It's only Brian Younger, who came to tell her that the workmen blew a circuit.

He takes her to a pub across the square for a stiffener.  Brian tells of some of his World War II experiences that caused him blackouts and nightmares.  Kit is wary of him because of his intense manner.

After Kit leaves, the owner of the pub asks Brian if she should put certain phone calls he made the previous night on his bill.

Tony, Bea, and her date Charles continue to try and cheer Kit up.  They take her to a gala performance at the ballet, and everything seems to go swimmingly.

However, at one point during the evening, Kit is left alone in the box, and her maid's son Malcolm corners her and asks for money.  When she refuses to give it to him, he threatens her.

And still, the phone calls keep coming.  Kit is at her wit's end and on the verge of hysteria.

And what's worse, she can't seem to make anyone believe the phone calls are actually legitimate since she is the only one that has heard them.  The police inspector basically tells her that she's making them up.

To add to the confusion, during an outing in the city, Kit is pushed in front of an oncoming bus and narrowly misses being run over.

Bea decides to answer the phone when it rings one evening.  It turns out to be the mechanical voice, but the voice is questioning why Kit hasn't called.  Bea and Tony decide that Kit must be delusional and insist she see a psychiatrist.

At the pub one night, Brian sees an ominous looking man in the corner who gets up and leaves after a while.  The pub owner Dora tells him that he comes in and just stares across the street in the direction of the apartment building with a no good look in his eye.

As part of a plan to help Kit, Tony wants to take her to Venice.  On the night before their departure, the phone rings again.  Kit answers it, and Tony picks up the other extension.  It's the mechanical voice.  Now Tony hears it and knows Kit is telling the truth.

As a way of drawing out the murderer, Tony makes plans to pretend to leave for the office.

After she bolts the door behind Tony, Kit is left alone in the empty apartment.

The apartment goes black and an intruder appears through the window followed closely by a second man.  A gun-fight ensues, which terrifies Kit.  Still more terrifying is the identity of the person behind the phone calls.

Kit escapes from a window and climbs onto some scaffolding.  While up there, Brian comes to the rescue and guides her down the treacherous pilings.

Bea is waiting on the sidewalk and wraps Kit in her coat.  The three of them walk away from the building as the police have come to take the murderer away.

Cast rundown:

   Doris Day...............................Kit Preston

   Rex Harrison...........................Anthony Preston

   John Gavin.............................Brian Younger

   Myrna Loy..............................Bea Coleman

   Roddy McDowall......................Malcolm Stanley

   John Williams.........................Inspector Byrnes

   Hermione Baddeley..................Dora Hammer

   Anthony Dawson.....................Roy Ash

   Natasha Perry.........................Peggy Thompson

   Herbert Marshall.....................Charles Manning

   Doris Lloyd............................Dora Stanley

   Hayden Rorke.........................Dr. Garver

   Richard Ney............................Daniel Graham

And that's it for Midnight Lace.  Myrna Loy told that story that when Doris Day filmed a scene on the staircase, she became so hysterical and overcome with emotion that she couldn't stop crying after the director yelled "Cut". She had to be carried to her dressing room.  Doris Day vowed never to make another thriller after this movie.  She kept her word and only appeared in comedies until her retirement.

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