The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

In early twentieth-century Britain, a young widow named Lucy Muir leaves London for a quiet cottage by the sea, taking her daughter and her housekeeper with her. The rent is surprisingly low, and the reason soon becomes clear: the house is haunted by its former owner, Captain Daniel Gregg, a merchant seaman who died there. He tries to scare her off, but Lucy refuses to be frightened, and an unusual arrangement grows between them. He dictates a book about his life at sea, and their friendship deepens as she builds a new life for herself, complicated by the arrival of another suitor.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed the film, the second of the fourteen he made, following Dragonwyck and preceding House of Strangers. Philip Dunne wrote the screenplay, and Fred Kohlmar produced it for 20th Century Fox. Gene Tierney plays Lucy, with Rex Harrison as the captain, George Sanders as Miles Fairley, Edna Best as Martha Huggins, Vanessa Brown as the grown Anna Muir, and Anna Lee as Mrs. Fairley. The film runs 105 minutes and blends comedy, drama, fantasy and romance.

Reception across the decades has been strong. On IMDb it holds 7.8 out of 10 from roughly 22,000 votes, and on TMDB it stands at 7.5 from a much smaller base of 368 ratings. A critics' rating of 8.6 from 21 reviews places it higher than either audience measure, suggesting that reviewers have long regarded it as one of the director's most accomplished early works.