| The Friendly Ghost | |
| Director: | I. Sparber[1] [2] Animation director: Nick Tafuri (uncredited) |
| Producer: | Sam Buchwald I. Sparber (uncredited) Seymour Kneitel (uncredited) Bill Tytla (uncredited) |
| Story: | Adaptation: Bill Turner Otto Messmer[3] |
| Based On: | [4] |
| Animator: | Nick Tafuri Tom Golden John Walworth Character design: John Walworth Joe Oriolo (uncredited) |
| Layout Artist: | Shane Miller Lloyd Hallock Jr. John Walworth (uncredited) |
| Background Artist: | Shane Miller Lloyd Hallock Jr. |
| Narrator: | Frank Gallop |
| Starring: | Cecil Roy Mae Questel Jackson Beck Jack Mercer |
| Music: | Winston Sharples |
| Studio: | Famous Studios |
| Distributor: | Paramount Pictures |
| Color Process: | Technicolor |
| Runtime: | 8:57 |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
The Friendly Ghost is a Famous Studios cartoon released on 16 November 1945 as part of its Noveltoons series of animated short films. It is the first cartoon to feature the character Casper the Friendly Ghost.[5]
Casper is seen reading the book How to Win Friends, a real book by Dale Carnegie. Every night at midnight his brothers and sisters scare people, except for Casper, who doesn't want to scare people, so he stays home instead; he would rather make friends with the living. While his family is off scaring people, Casper bids his pet cat goodbye and leaves home.
The next morning, he meets a rooster to whom he says hello but the rooster retreats. Casper next meets a mole. At first the mole is happy to befriend him but when he puts on eyeglasses, he sees that Casper is a ghost and jumps back in his hole. Casper later meets a mouse and a cat (who each resemble Herman and Katnip) and who flee into the barn upon seeing him. Casper then sees a flock of chickens who fly away with their hen house and splatter eggs on him.
Near some rail tracks, Casper grows sad that his attempts to make friends have been fruitless because he's "just a scary old ghost". When he hears a train whistle he decides to kill himself by having the train run over him, apparently forgetting that he is already dead. After the train passes over Casper without harming him, he begins crying. Casper is approached by a boy and a girl named Johnny and Bonnie who want to play with him, which makes Casper very happy.
After a game of ball and jump rope, Bonnie and Johnny introduce Casper to their mother, who screams and tells Casper to leave. Casper picks up his sack and is about to go through the door when a banker opens it. The banker orders Casper to tell the mother he has come for a mortgage payment, but then he realizes that Casper is a ghost. Terrified, he tears up the mortgage which he tells Casper to keep (because he doesn't want to have a "haunted" house on the market) and runs off in fright, so fast that he sets a bridge on fire.
Despondent, Casper decides to go back home to his own family, accepting that he will never be anything but "a scary old ghost without any friends". He is about to leave in despair when the mother picks him up with a smile on her face, accepting him for saving her and the children from having their home repossessed. The short concludes with the mother seeing Casper now wearing schoolboy clothes, Bonnie, and Johnny off to school together.
Despite being designed as a one-shot character, Casper's appearance in this short lead to a flurry of future appearances as a staple for Famous Studios and Paramount, including his own animated short film series. Casper has been regarded as an "iconic supernatural ghost character in children's literature and television".[6] The release of this short in 1945, according to Nathalie Op de Beeck, coincided with the end of World War II and subsequently reflected the times with its imagery as she asserts that "[t]he film links supernatural horror to an acknowledgement of actual weaponry".[7]
The short had an initial copyright notice, but it was not renewed.[8] [9]