GILDERSLEEVE’S GHOST

(director: Gordon Douglas; screenwriter: story & screenplay Robert E. Kent; cinematographer: Jack MacKenzie; editor: Les Millbrook; music: Paul Sawtell; cast: Harold Peary (Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve/ghosts), Richard LeGrand (Peavey), Marion Martin (Terry Vance), Emory Parnell (Police Commissioner Haley), Frank Reicher (Dr. Wells), Joseph Vitale (Wells’ henchman), Freddie Mercer (Leroy Forrester), Margie Stewart (Marjorie Forrester), Lillian Randolph (Birdie), Amelita Ward (Marie, Wells’ maid), Marie Blake (Harriet Morgan), Nick Stewart (Chauncey, Haley’s chauffeur); Runtime: 63; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Herman Schlom; RKO; 1944-B/W)

“Flimsy and unfunny comedy.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Gordon Douglas (“Them!”/”In Like Flint”) directs this flimsy and unfunny comedy based on the story by Robert E. Kent, who also writes the script.

In the Summerfield Cemetery, Harold Peary plays two ghosts who cook up a plan to get
their relative Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, also played by Peary, elected police commissioner from the incumbent Haley (Emory Parnell). They free a gorilla that the power-hungry mad scientist Dr. Wells (Frank Reicher) has made invisible but is given a pill to again become visible, and they bring the ape to Gildy’s house. The idea is for Gildy to become a hero when saving the small town from the gorilla.

When Gildy is called a nutcase for seeing an ape no one else sees, the ape vanishes but is located by Gildy and his grumpy campaign manager Peavey (Richard LeGrand) in Wells’ remote lab/house. Gildy gets help capturing the ape and Wells, from Peavey, the feisty young relatives he’s guardian to (Freddie Mercer & Margie Stewart), his chief supporter, the love-sick newspaper columnist Harriet Morgan (Marie Blake), Haley and Haley’s Black chauffeur Chauncey (Nick Stewart, playing the stereotyped Stepin Fetchit role) and his protective girlfriend Birdie (Lillian Randolph). Haley goes to the house to prove Gildy is nuts and unfit for the office and is startled to find there’s really an ape.

Wells has imprisoned and made invisible the frustrated chorus girl Terry (Marion Martin), who works with him in the hope he can make her permanently visible again. The mad scientist also keeps imprisoned on his isolated premise the maid Marie (Amelita Ward).

This sort of nonsensical genial comedy, a second-rate Abbott and Costello type of comedy, made Peary’s Gildersleeve popular on the radio but not in the movies.
 

REVIEWED ON 11/18/2024  GRADE: C
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