The Live Ghost

The Live Ghost is a 1934 American short film starring Laurel and Hardy, directed by Charles Rogers and produced by Hal Roach.

Plot

A tough sea captain (Walter Long) is unable to hire on any new crew because his ship is reputed to be haunted, so he persuades fish-market workers Laurel and Hardy to shanghai a crew for him at the local bar, offering the pair a dollar a head to do so. There is initial success, but Stan and Ollie themselves get shanghaied, and the other kidnapped sailors vow revenge on the pair. The captain sternly tells his new crew that Stan and Ollie are never to be harmed while they're on the boat, and further warns no one to ever say the word "ghost" to him again, or he'll twist their head around, so that when they're walking north, they'll actually be looking south (an obvious re-emerging of a grisly "body-part rearranging" trait for Long's "tough-guy" character; in his previous film, Going Bye-Bye!, he threatens to "break off their legs and wrap 'em around their necks"). Stan and Ollie never go ashore, and so while the members of the crew are at another bar, they secretly plan to sneak back aboard the ship to "fix" Stan and Ollie, while the captain is away at a different bar and picks up Maisie, a dockside floozy (Mae Busch). An alcoholic sailor (Arthur Housman) who is a member of the captain's original crew (and who is later revealed to be Maisie's wayward husband who had left her and run off to sea sometime earlier) sneaks ashore to go to a bar, and while drunkenly staggering back to the ship, trips and falls into a tub of whitewash, completely coating himself in white. After various complications, Stan and Ollie mistakenly think that they've accidentally shot and killed the drunken sailor, and so they stuff him into a weighted sack and throw him overboard; however, the sailor escapes unharmed from the bag and makes his way back onto the ship --- still covered in whitewash --- and terrifies Stan and Ollie (and also frightens the returning sailors, who immediately jump overboard and swim frantically back to shore), who think he is a ghost. The captain also returns at that same time with Maisie in tow; she was reluctant to marry him because she had heard the stories of his ship being haunted, so he is showing her around the ship to try to prove to her that it is perfectly safe and normal, with no ghosts on board. The boys tells the captain about their having seen a ghost, and the exasperated captain (by now feeling additionally vexed at Laurel and Hardy for causing him to not only lose his "new" crewmembers but now his one "original" sailor, as well --- Maisie recognizes the drunken sailor's face despite his ghastly "make-up", and drives him off the ship with her furled umbrella) irately carries out his promise of twisting their heads around after they say the word "ghost".

Cast

• Stan Laurel
• Oliver Hardy
• Walter Long
• Arthur Housman
• Charlie Hall
• Mae Busch
• Leo Willis

External links

• The Live Ghost at the Internet Movie Database