Sun 25 Jun 2017
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE SMILING GHOST (1941).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[5] Comments
THE SMILING GHOST. Warner Brothers, 1941. Wayne Morris, Brenda Marshall, Alexis Smith, Willie Best, Alan Hale, David Bruce. Written by Kenneth Gamet and Stuart Palmer. Directed by Lewis Seiler.
A recent review here of Secret of the Blue Room (1933) got me wondering: Universal used this story again in 1938 (The Missing Guest) and 1944 (Murder in the Blue Room). So how did it turn up at Warners in 1941?
In all fairness, Ghost takes a wholly different comic approach to the story and introduces characters not found in any blue room — some of them rather well-realized — but when we get to the series of murdered fiancés and the eventual solution, we are on very familiar ground indeed.
Wayne Morris starts the film as an impecunious engineer looking for any sort of job, who hires on to be engaged to Alexis Smith for a month, unaware that each of her previous fiancés has met a horrible fate. By the time he’s wised up by reporter Brenda Marshall he has narrowly escaped murder at the hands of the eponymous ghoul .
Okay, never mind the improbability of this guy getting a scientific degree and having two intelligent women fall in love with him. They do it for the sake of the plot, so let’s just get on with the skulking shadows, eyes peering through secret passages, brushes with death and all the rest of it.
The proceedings are enlivened considerably by subsidiary characters like Charles Halton as an eccentric uncle who collects shrunken heads, and especially by Alan Hale as a detective posing none-too-convincingly as a butler. Lewis Seiler directs without distinction but he keeps things moving, and the rest of the cast are the usual Warners reliables, with everyone pitching in to keep things going efficiently and forgettably.
But I still can’t figure out how writers Gamet and Palmer passed this off as their own…..

Editorial Comment: Walter Albert has also reviewed this film for this blog, nearly six years ago. Check it out here.
June 25th, 2017 at 9:39 pm
I’m a big fan of Stuart Palmer, and have read most of his mystery books. But have seen only a few of the films he scripted. Haven’t seen this one.
Alan Hale was a gifted comedy actor. Would like to see him as a phony butler.
June 25th, 2017 at 10:06 pm
I know I’ve seen this one, and I remember enjoying it. It was long enough ago, though, that believe it or not, I don’t remember the ending.
Not even when I watched SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM not so very long ago did I match how it came out with this one.
Or did I? The ending of SECRET came as no surprise to me, something that only occasionally happens.
June 25th, 2017 at 10:09 pm
Mike’s comment about Stuart Palmer and the films he was involved me had me scurrying to IMDb to check out his resume there. It’s quite a bit more extensive than I realized. In reverse chronological order:
A Very Missing Person (1972) (TV) (novel “Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene”)
“The Millionaire” (1 episode, 1958)
– The Wally Bannister Story (1958) TV episode (story)
“Fireside Theatre” (1 episode, 1954)
– Fight Night (1954) TV episode (teleplay)
Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone (1950) (story “Once Upon A Train, or The Loco Motive”)
Step by Step (1946) (screenplay)
Petticoat Larceny (1943) (screenplay)
Murder in Times Square (1943) (story)
The Falcon Strikes Back (1943) (story)
X Marks the Spot (1942) (original screenplay)
The Falcon’s Brother (1942) (original screenplay)
Halfway to Shanghai (1942) (original story and screenplay)
Home in Wyomin’ (1942) (story)
Pardon My Stripes (1942) (screenplay)
Secrets of the Lone Wolf (1941) (story and screenplay)
The Smiling Ghost (1941) (from an original story by) (screen play)
Who Killed Aunt Maggie? (1940) (screenplay)
Opened by Mistake (1940) (screenplay)
Seventeen (1940) (screenplay)
Emergency Squad (1940) (screenplay)
Death of a Champion (1939) (screenplay)
Bulldog Drummond’s Bride (1939) (screenplay)
Arrest Bulldog Drummond (1938) (screenplay)
Bulldog Drummond’s Peril (1938) (screen play by)
Hollywood Stadium Mystery (1938) (story and screenplay)
Forty Naughty Girls (1937) (story)
The Plot Thickens (1936) (from a story by)
Yellowstone (1936) (screenplay)
Murder on a Bridle Path (1936) (from the novel by)
The Nitwits (1935) (story)
One Frightened Night (1935) (original story)
Murder on a Honeymoon (1935) (novel “The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree”)
Murder on the Blackboard (1934) (story)
The Penguin Pool Murder (1932) (from the novel by)
June 25th, 2017 at 10:20 pm
I don’t know if this is worth anything, but the AFI page for the film says:
“According to a pre-production press release included in the file on the film at the AMPAS Library, the film was based on a mystery story by Philip Wylie and B. A. Bergman. The SAB does not credit them, however, and the extent of their contribution to the completed film, if any, has not been determined.”
June 27th, 2017 at 10:01 pm
The best of the film is Willie Best. His superb tining is almost enough for you to forget the stereotype he has to play. Good little film of its kind with better cast than not.