40 Fun Facts About The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

Which actor, fresh from the ghost comedy Blithe Spirit, plays the spectral Captain Gregg in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Rex Harrison had only just arrived in Hollywood: the studio brought him over from England the year before to star in Anna and the King of Siam.

Which star of the film noir Laura plays the young widow Lucy Muir in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Gene Tierney was at her peak: she had just earned a Best Actress nomination for playing the jealous femme fatale Ellen in Leave Her to Heaven.

What really killed Captain Gregg, whose death was put down as a suicide, in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Gas from a heater did it: he kicked the valve open by accident while he slept. His ghost flatly dismisses the story that he took his own life.

The English seaside of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was filmed entirely in which American state?

California stood in for England throughout: scenes were shot at Palos Verdes and on a beach near Stillwater Cove in Pebble Beach.

What did the lead actress of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir break during filming, finishing the shoot in a hidden cast?

Her foot was broken in an accident that shut the production down in February 1947. She came back to work in a cast, which her costume kept out of sight.

Which star did Variety report in 1994 would play the Captain in an unmade remake of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Sean Connery was attached to the remake for years: it was reportedly still in the pipeline in 1997, but no version with him was ever filmed.

Which child star of Miracle on 34th Street plays Lucy's young daughter Anna in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Natalie Wood was eight and both films came out the same year. Her director here said that in all his years in the business he had never met a smarter child.

The American Film Institute ranked The Ghost and Mrs. Muir among the 100 greatest American films of which kind?

Love stories were the subject of the institute's 2002 list, 100 Years...100 Passions, where the romance between a widow and a sea captain's ghost placed 73rd.

When The Ghost and Mrs. Muir came to American television in 1968, what kind of show had the story become?

A sitcom is what viewers got: the story moved to a modern American coastal town, and the romantic fantasy gave way to broad humor.

Where does Lucy Muir first see Captain Gregg's face while viewing the haunted house in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

In a portrait of the former owner, seen moments before a ghostly laugh rings through the house. Lucy, unafraid, decides to rent the place anyway.

What is the name of the haunted seaside house that Lucy Muir rents in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Gull Cottage kept its name when the 1960s TV series moved the story across the Atlantic to an American fishing village.

What is the title of the salty memoir Captain Gregg dictates to Lucy in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Blood and Swash is bawdy enough that the publisher reads it in one sitting, and the advance lets Lucy buy the house she has been renting.

Under which pen name does the suave Miles Fairley write children's books in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Uncle Neddy is the cosy name on the covers. The man behind it is a smooth talker who meets Lucy at her publisher's office and follows her back to the coast.

Which actor, later the voice of Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book, plays Miles Fairley in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

George Sanders got the part late, after Richard Ney was cast first and left the production. Three years later the same director gave him his Oscar-winning role, a venomous theatre critic.

Which director made The Ghost and Mrs. Muir a few years before winning two Oscars for All About Eve?

Joseph Mankiewicz was famous as a writer, yet the screenwriter said his only addition to this script was a couple of excellent lines for the story's smooth-talking cad.

Which composer, later famous for Psycho, called his music for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir his finest score?

Bernard Herrmann had started in films only six years earlier with Citizen Kane, and he went on to work with Alfred Hitchcock on nine pictures.

Before leaving her, what does Captain Gregg's ghost make the sleeping Lucy believe he was in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Only a dream, he suggests as she sleeps, and that she wrote the book alone. He leaves because he thinks he stands between her and a life with a living man.

Which investment, Lucy Muir's only income, stops paying dividends early in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

A gold mine had kept her afloat, and when it fails her in-laws arrive to take her back to the city. The ghost's answer is a book they can write together and sell.

What does Lucy Muir discover when she pays Miles Fairley a surprise visit in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

He has a wife and two children, and Lucy is not his first affair. The discovery sends her back to the coast, where she lives quietly for the rest of her life.

Josephine Leslie signed the novel The Ghost and Mrs. Muir as R. A. Dick; whose initials did she borrow?

Her father's initials, in fact: he was a sea captain named Robert Abercromby Dick Rowley, who died the year she was born.

To which English seaside village does the widowed Lucy move from the city in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Whitecliff is her escape from her late husband's family: she leaves over her sister-in-law's sharp disapproval, taking her daughter and her housekeeper along.

What does Captain Gregg want his house to become, the reason he scares off tenants in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

A haven for old seamen was his plan for the place, so he drove every tenant out. Lucy's stubbornness and her fondness for the house persuade him to let her stay.

What is the first name of Lucy Muir's loyal housekeeper, who stays with her for life in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Martha is played by Edna Best, whom The New York Times singled out as giving by far the best performance in the film.

Which Hollywood studio turned the novel The Ghost and Mrs. Muir into the 1947 film?

20th Century-Fox bought the rights in 1945, the year the book came out. Studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck first wanted John M. Stahl to direct it.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir earned a single Oscar nomination, losing to Great Expectations, in which category?

Cinematography was the category, for Charles Lang's black-and-white photography. He had been borrowed from Paramount specially for the film.

Which fashion designer, then married to the film's lead actress, made her costumes for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Oleg Cassini had eloped with her in 1941 and designed for several of her films. He later became famous for dressing Jacqueline Kennedy in the White House.

Robert Coote, the estate agent in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, later created Colonel Pickering in which Broadway musical?

My Fair Lady brought Coote a Tony nomination, and four years later he created another Broadway role, King Pellinore in Camelot.

Which actress won two Emmys as the widow in the 1968 TV series The Ghost & Mrs. Muir?

Hope Lange won in both of the show's seasons, yet the ratings never matched the trophies and two different networks cancelled it.

In which US state is Schooner Bay, the fishing village of the TV series The Ghost & Mrs. Muir?

Maine was familiar ground for one cast member: Reta Shaw, who played the housekeeper, was born there, in the town of South Paris.

Which Match Game regular played Claymore Gregg, the cowardly landlord in the TV series The Ghost & Mrs. Muir?

Charles Nelson Reilly was hired only for the first episode's rental scene. His co-star enjoyed working with him so much that she urged the producers to keep him.

Which actor, later Devon Miles in Knight Rider, played Captain Gregg in the TV series The Ghost & Mrs. Muir?

Edward Mulhare was following the film's ghost for the second time: in 1957 he had taken over the same actor's starring role in a Broadway hit.

At the end of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Lucy's granddaughter is engaged to a captain of what kind of craft?

An airplane, which amuses her mother Anna, who had herself chosen a naval officer: a liking for captains, she decides, must run in the family.

What drink does the elderly Lucy Muir wearily refuse moments before she dies in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Hot milk, brought up by her housekeeper, is turned away with a complaint that she is tired. Moments later the Captain's ghost comes back for her.

What was the profession of Edwin, Lucy Muir's late husband, in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

An architect, whose mother and sister expect his widow to go on living with them in London. Her answer is to take her daughter and move to the coast.

Which French star played Captain Gregg in two American radio versions of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Charles Boyer starred in the Lux Radio Theatre version of 1947 opposite Madeleine Carroll, then returned to the part in 1951 with Jane Wyatt.

For which actress did the studio's production chief see Lucy Muir as a comeback role in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?

Norma Shearer had one great picture left in her, his memo argued, and could repeat the comeback Joan Crawford had just made in Mildred Pierce.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir reunited its director and lead actress from which gothic film, his first as director?

Dragonwyck fell to him only because Ernst Lubitsch, who was meant to direct it, became ill and chose to produce the picture instead.

Which screenwriter of How Green Was My Valley adapted the novel The Ghost and Mrs. Muir for the screen?

Philip Dunne earned Oscar nominations for How Green Was My Valley and David and Bathsheba, and was a leading organizer of the Screen Writers Guild.

In the TV series The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, what first name replaced Lucy for the story's widow?

Carolyn was not the only change: the children became Jonathan and Candace, where the novel had called them Cyril and Anna.

Anna Lee, a supporting player in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, later played matriarch Lila Quartermaine on which soap opera?

General Hospital paid her a rare tribute: after she died in 2004, the show aired a memorial service for her character.