The Ghost Breakers

1940
Written by Walter DeLeon
Based on a play by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard
Directed by George Marshall

I am a big fan of Bob Hope comedies, from the Road movies to the My Favorite movies to just the random wacky situations that are send ups of popular genres. Hope regularly brings the entertainment, sometimes just enlivening dull scripts and sometimes making classic cinema.

The Ghost Breakers is a murder mystery and a haunted house movie, but much of that is just setting for events to happen that Bob Hope and Willie Best can react to. A huge mansion in Cuba is gifted to a distant relative, and she returns in the midst of murder and deception. Featuring a Scooby-Doo-style plot by the villains to scare the owner away to seize the treasure in the house for themselves.

“You look like a blackout in a blackout” – Bob Hope to Willie Best

The Ghost Breakers is a product of it’s time, with Willie Best as Larry’s black man servant Alex. Alex isn’t really Shuckin’ and jivin’, but he plays up being the scared character during the haunted house scenes. His character is not a moron, he continually saves Larry and Bob Hope has spoken very highly of Willie Best. It is hardly as embarrassing as other black roles from the 1940s, but not the kind of role you’d hold up as a good example.

A bit more disturbing is the portrayal of the housekeeper at the mansion, the old black woman (who is a blackfaced Virginia Brissac) and her son the zombie. Not the brain eating zombies, but old school voodoo zombies. Sure, this is Cuba and not Haiti, but we’re in the era when no one bothered to keep track of which Afro-Caribbean country was which.

Noble Johnson plays the zombie. He’s another black entertainer of old Hollywood who had quite his own storied career. As we briefly mentioned when we covered the Oscar Micheaux film The Girl From Chicago, Noble Johnson and his brother George Perry Johnson founded their own studio in 1916 to produce black films for black audiences. The Lincoln Motion Picture Company created films where blacks were depicted as actual people and not the racist caricatures found in mainstream cinema. Though not the first black owned film company, it is among the first. Their first picture was the now lost 1916 short The Realization of a Negro’s Ambition, and the company lasted until 1921 (Johnson resigned a year earlier to focus on his acting career.) Johnson had parts in the classic films The Mummy, King Kong, and Son of Kong.

Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard teamed up once prior in The Cat and the Canary (1939), and would reteam again in Nothing But the Truth (1941), along with Willie Best. Paulette Goddard not afraid to show some skin, constantly stripping to her nightie, and later wearing a swimsuit. She even has part of her dress rip off when being chased by the zombie. At this time she was married to Charlie Chaplin.

This is the third (of four) film adaptations of the play “The Ghost Breaker” by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard. The first two – 1914 (by Cecil B. DeMille) and 1922 – were both silent productions and are considered lost. The fourth was George Marshall directing again in 1953’s Scared Stiff with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (Bob Hope made a cameo appearance!) Bob Hope liked this role (which was heroic instead of his usual cowardly roles) and reprised it in two separate radio versions of the play, both on Screen Director’s Playhouse (a 30 minute version in 1949, and a 60 minute version in 1951)

Larry Lawrence (Bob Hope) – Lawrence Lawrence Lawrence goes by the name Larry Lawrence because it’s easier to remember. A radio personality who has made his fame by exposing dirt on criminals (thanks to getting tipped off), those same mob stories get him and trouble and soon he’s on the run. Which involves him in the actual plot, about a haunted house. Because the mob and haunted house goes together, as the mob kills people, thus making houses haunted. Mary Carter (Paulette Goddard) – Just your average woman who inherits a mansion called Castile Mardido on Black Island in Cuba that her Great-great-grandfather built not long before Castro comes to power and she’s forced to flee. But that would be in the never-made sequel… Alex (Willie Best) – Larry’s faithful driver who is really an assistant and friend. But because this is the 1940s he’s just a driver despite obviously filling those other roles. Geoff Montgomery (Richard Carlson) – A Cuban native that Mary knows, oddly enough returning to Cuba just as she is. Hm…. He also begins bumbling around the haunted mansion. Hm… Ramon Mederos / Francisco Mederos (Anthony Quinn) – Anthony Quinn plays both the murdered Ramon Mederos and his non-murdered twin brother Francisco, who wants answers.

Larry Lawrence is a fearless radio jockey who exposes all sorts of news on the mob and other criminal empires. His latest exposé causes him to get an “invitation” from a mobster. Through a series of comic and tragic misunderstandings, Larry thinks he murdered a mob guy, but he really just bumbled into a separate murder having to do with a Cuban mansion.

The very same Cuban mansion that Mary Carter is inheriting and about to go see. But Larry slips into her hotel room to hide, and soon the two are entangled in each others business. Larry hides in her luggage, which is inadvertently brought to the docks for the boat to Cuba. This is the era before air travel, where an x-ray machine would expose Larry, assuming the TSA pervs weren’t yanking grandmas out of line to get enhanced pat downs.

Alex tries to rescue Larry, but is too late as the luggage is brought aboard. So Larry comes along for the ride to Cuba. “Cuba? Hot Congo!” says Alex, a statement that explains everything so well I don’t have to explain it.

Larry is cleared soon after because the gun he was holding wasn’t the gun that killed the murdered Ramon Mederos. Larry then decides to save Mary, because Mary saved him. He deduces since there are trust breakers and home breakers, he should be a Ghost Breaker! Who you gonna call? Bob Hope and Willie Best!

A ghost breaker would be needed due to the rumored spirit of Don Santiago that haunts the castle, and also the voodoo zombies that lurk on the grounds.


Larry and Alex row to the haunted castle at night (mostly Alex rows while Larry complains). It’s an atmospheric and gothic spooky castle with a “colored caretaker” and her son the zombie. He’s an actual zombie and not just a lost participant of a zombie walk.

Larry and Alex wander around, being menaced by bats and the darkness. There is a spooky ancestor painting that looks identical to Mary. Another ancestor is wandering around that’s an actual ghost – Don Santiago! Mary also swims to island thanks to her bathing suit and a guy dropping her off halfway.

The zombie is sent after Mary, thus is puts on a suit of armor and sits in wait to jump out at her. This would be the end, except Mary is saved by Alex dressed as her ancestor as Alex and Larry scare off the zombie. Geoff then shows up as well, which is not suspicious in the slightest!

They find Mr. Parada, the Cuban solicitor overseeing the inheritance, stabbed! It turns out there is a treasure in the castle. The secret is to play a song on the organ that will reveal a hidden passageway. Holy crap, The Goonies stole this! Or maybe The Goonies stole it from The Secret of Magic Island! Or both stole it from The Ghost Breakers! Whatever the story, it’s massive theft! Throw everyone in jail.

The treasure is a mine under the castle. With a lit lantern! Hello, Ghost Breakers, there is a lit lantern in an abandoned mine, it’s time to be suspicious!

Of course, the obvious suspect is the guilty one, but he is defeated as Alex saves the day once again. After it is all said and done, Larry freaks out a bit when he realizes the one ghost was a real ghost. But not enough to not get married to Mary!

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