the Canterville ghost (1944) MGM
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film notes
Charles Laughton was heavily criticized in England for spending the World War II years in the U.S. The charges were unfair. Like many in Hollywood's British colony, he spent most of those years making films that helped the Allies' propaganda effort, including The Canterville Ghost (1944), a rather unlikely adaptation of an Oscar Wilde short story.
Wilde's story focused on a cowardly ghost forced to haunt the family manse until someone in his family became a hero. But where the original story played up the hypocrisy of an American minister who buys the Canterville castle, MGM turned the film into a flag-waving effort in which the ghost is confronted with a troop of American soldiers stationed in his ancestral home. Released a month before the D-Day invasion, it was one of many popular films designed to foster good relations between the U.S. and Great Britain. With Laughton as the lovable specter and Margaret O'Brien, the studio's top child actor of the 1940s, as the castle's modern-day owner, it couldn't help but generate good will, along with some impressive box-office returns.
Wilde's story focused on a cowardly ghost forced to haunt the family manse until someone in his family became a hero. But where the original story played up the hypocrisy of an American minister who buys the Canterville castle, MGM turned the film into a flag-waving effort in which the ghost is confronted with a troop of American soldiers stationed in his ancestral home. Released a month before the D-Day invasion, it was one of many popular films designed to foster good relations between the U.S. and Great Britain. With Laughton as the lovable specter and Margaret O'Brien, the studio's top child actor of the 1940s, as the castle's modern-day owner, it couldn't help but generate good will, along with some impressive box-office returns.