Ghost Watch: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

Watched: 08/16/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR (Alicia Malone hosting)

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Considered a bona fide classic, I knew the basics of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), but had never managed to get around to the film.  I had no predictions going in - just knew it was a romantic comedy about a widow who moves into a house haunted by the ghost of a former sea captain played by Rex Harrison.

I'm not sure how *funny* this movie is.  It's *charming* and there's humor, but it's more of what Alicia Malone, hosting with TCM, rightfully included into the now very popular genre of Supernatural Romance.  

Gene Tierney plays a widow (Mrs. Lucy Muir) and mother to a young Natalie Wood.  She has some income from her husband's holdings in a gold mine, and so chooses to leave her in-law's house in London to move to the sea-side and live a new life - pushing against turn-of-the-century decorum.  

Against the advice of her realtor, she rents a cottage  - the former home of a sea captain.  We're to understand the place is haunted.

She soon comes face-to-face with the ghost, a Captain Gregg in the form of a bearded Rex Harrison.  Harrison plays a character not so far off in spirit from his Professor Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady.  He's got his ways, and it's through the charms of a woman with a fiery spirit that he allows new feelings to enter his heart.  Only, here, as a ghost.

When her financial fortunes turn, he works with her to write an honest story of his life at sea - and apparently it's a doozy.  Working together and in constant contact, Tierney and Harrison fall for each other, but it's a challenge with him being a ghost.

She takes the book to a publisher where she meets George Sanders, who makes a play for her.  And she's receptive.  

Honestly, the movie wasn't deliriously funny, but I get the appeal - it's very romantic.  And has been borrowed from here and there, including in Hallmark movies and one particularly horny and infamous Star Trek: The Next Generation episode.  And I recall a classmate in film school basically writing a pretty similar script, but about a kilted Scotsman's ghost.

This is an A-movie from the studio, with top-flight talent, location shooting, period sets, and some phenomenal cinematography by Charles Lang -  it's always a treat to see the engines firing in a studio picture from this era even when the story is smaller and more personal.  

Gene Tierney is really spectacular, and it's a shame she's mostly only known in classic film circles.  Here, she's two years off Laura, and already she's turning in a performance I think could maybe only really be topped in this era by Stanwyck.  She's so good at underplaying her emotions, while also clearly communicating her readiness for a new world, and the heartbreak that comes later in the film.  

For his part, Harrison's Captain Gregg is also an oddly sweet take, complete with a much better take on the kiss from Superman 2 that's a bit heartbreaking.  

I always love a movie that knows how to stick the ending, and this one knocks it out of the ballpark.  Well done, movie.