Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Sam Buchwald, Seymour Kneitel, Isadore Sparber (uncredited)
Short Synopsis
In a deserted house, a small ghost, Casper, is reading How to Win Friends. Every night at midnight his brothers and sisters go out to scare people, but Casper hates scaring anyone; he wants to make friends with the living. So he says goodbye to his cat and runs away from home. The next morning everyone he greets runs from him: a rooster retreats, a mole puts on his glasses and dives back into his hole, a mouse and a cat flee into the barn, and a flock of chickens flies off with their henhouse and pelts him with eggs. By a railway line, miserable that he is "just a scary old ghost", Casper lies down in front of an oncoming train to end it all, forgetting that he is already dead; the train passes through him and he bursts into tears. Then two children, Johnny and Bonnie, come up and ask him to play, and he is overjoyed. But when they take him home, their mother screams and orders him out. As Casper leaves, a greedy banker arrives to collect the mortgage; seeing a ghost, he tears up the mortgage in terror and flees. The grateful mother takes Casper in, and he finally has the friends he wanted.
Why It Matters
- The train scene, a ghost trying to kill himself out of loneliness, is startlingly dark for a children's cartoon, and it gives Casper's search for friendship a real ache that the later, softer series rarely matched.
- It is the first appearance of Casper the Friendly Ghost, who became one of Famous Studios' best-known characters, then the mascot of Harvey Comics, with television series, comics and a 1995 feature film. The story was co-written by Otto Messmer, the animator behind Felix the Cat.
Notes and Trivia
- The book Casper reads is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.
- See also: The Henpecked Rooster (1944), Feline Follies (1919).