The Ghost Breakers: Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard Star

Main cast:

 

Bob Hope as Larry Lawrence

Paulette Goddard as Mary Carter

Richard Carlson as Geoff Montgomery

Paul Lukas as Parada 

Willie Best as Alex

Pedro de Cordoba as Havez

Virginia Bissac as the mother of the Zombie

Noble Johnson as the Zombie

Anthony Quinn as Ramon Mederos & Francisco Mederos

Paul Fix as Frenchy Duval

This 1940 comedy/horror film has crime gossip radio celebrity Lawrence Lawrence Lawrence saying his names are the same because, "my folks had no imagination." After a broadcast about a major racketeer, Larry, as he is commonly known, is to go see the crime boss at a hotel. Larry's valet, Alex, gives him a gun to take along, just in case. Inside the hotel, as he searches for the room, a man in the hallway opens a door just a short distant away and is shot. Larry turns and fires his gun just in time to see the man crumple to the floor. Larry thinks he has killed the guy, and that the man had fired at him, because he was one of the racketeers sent to kill him. Larry ducks into a room, which happens to be the room of Mary Carter, who is about to leave on a ship for Cuba (this was long before Fidel Castro) to claim her newly inherited castle there on a small island with no electricity, built by her great-great grandfather. The castle is believed to be haunted and the name of the island is "Black Island."

A short time before Larry barged into her room, Mary had gotten the deed to her castle from a Cuban man named Parada who says he's been authorized by a nameless person to offer her $50,000 for the castle. Remember, this was 1940, when such an amount would be worth more than $800,000 in today's money. She can't understand why someone would offer so much for a castle located on a small island off the Cuban coast, with no electricity, but complete with its own spooks. During her conversation with Parada, she gets a phone call from a Ramon Mederos who tells her not to sell the castle. Mary wants to know more, so she tells Mederos she'll meet him in 20 minutes. Parada is suspicious about the call, but says nothing. When Larry goes to the hotel, it is Mederos who is shot and killed by Parada, with Larry mistakenly believing he killed the man.

When Larry goes into her room, he tells Mary (they hadn't known each other) that he killed a man who fired at him. Mary is satisfied that he's not a murderer, so she tells him to hide when the police come to check her room. They find no one, but near the end of their check, the baggage attendant comes and takes Mary's trunk to be sent to the ship. Of course, Larry is hiding in the trunk, and we later have Larry, Mary and Alex, who came looking for his boss, all bound for Cuba. Parada is also on the ship and whenever he talks with Mary, he tries to scare her about the castle. He also talks to Larry and tells him about zombies and voodoo. As the ship enters Havana, at one point when Mary returns to her cabin, there is a voodoo death symbol stuck to her door with a knife. A man is outside of her door listening, but he is chased off by Geoff Montgomery, an acquaintance of Mary, who spends most of his time in Cuba and so is familiar with the area and with voodoo. While having a drink with Geoff in the ship's lounge, Mary thinks she sees the ghost of Ramon Mederos, the man shot and killed at the hotel earlier (she had seen his picture in the newspaper), but the man introduces himself as Francisco Mederos, the twin brother of the murdered man. He demands to know why his brother was killed, but Mary tells him she doesn't know. Mederos goes off to a table, and when Geoff goes to take a telephone call, Mary writes him a note excusing herself.

The scene shifts to Black Island as Larry and Alex arrive in a row boat. They see an old woman and when they look through the window of her old house, they see a man lying there, and they figure this is the woman's son, the zombie they had heard about. I'll tell you, you never know what kids will become when they grow up. Larry and Alex go to the castle and enter. On the wall hangs a large portrait of Mary's great great grandmother. Mary looks almost exactly like her ancestor. The guys see what appears to be a ghost emerge from a crypt, but Larry is skeptical. Mary arrives in a boat, but she has to swim to shore, as the boatman will not go any closer to the island, due to its reputation. The old woman sees Mary arrive and awakens her son. Mary goes inside the castle, but here comes the zombie son into the castle too. Mary goes to the upstairs to get away. A wall panel opens and we see Parada observing Mary, but then a hand covers his mouth and Parada disappears. Mary looks down and sees her great great grandmother's portrait and a slight smile comes over her. Meanwhile, Larry and Alex continue through the castle when the zombie, in a suit of armor, tries to kill them. As he moves toward the two guys, down the staircase comes Mary, dressed as her great great grandmother. Larry and Alex are able to overpower the zombie and lock him in a room. Mary feels that her great great grandmother is pointing to something in her portrait; that is, the secret of the castle, and the reason people have been trying to keep her away from her inherited castle. Geoff shows up and talks with Alex, but then leaves when he hears a motor boat. Larry and Mary investigate further and they find Parada dying from a stab wound. They then find musical notes on the wall, which when played on the castle's organ, causes a large section of the wall to open, exposing a stairway to an underground room, complete with a burning lantern. The two find nothing of value, but then out steps Francisco Mederos with a gun, only another panel opens and out comes Geoff with a gun, and he wounds Mederos. Geoff tells them there is a large vein of silver under the castle and he will have to kill them now to protect the secret and get the silver. Suddenly a trap door opens and Geoff falls through. Alex asks Larry if he pushed the right button. So, Mary, Larry, Alex and Mederos leave the island in Geoff's motorboat and Larry proposes to Mary. They ask Mederos how Geoff had arranged the walking ghost, but he tells them Geoff had nothing to do with the that, it was the real ghost of Mary's ancestor.       

Photo is of the 2002 Universal Studios Home Video DVD

WORD HISTORY:
Fetch-This verb, distantly related to the nouns "vat" and "foot," goes back to the Indo European root "ped/pod," which meant, "foot," and in an extended sense, "support;" thus, "hold." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "fatjanan," which meant, "to grasp, to grip, to hold." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "fetian/fatian" (by dialect), meaning, "to bring to, to bring near, to take on," which developed further into, "to marry" (bring together in life). The basic verb developed the variations, "feccan/fæccan" (also by dialect), which meant, "to bring to (someone or some place), to go and get, to fetch." This then became "fecchen," before the modern form. While the word is still alive and kicking, it once was much more extensively used in many senses, and it's only been in the last century or two that its role diminished. The other Germanic languages have: German has "fassen" (to grasp, to hold onto), ^ Low German Saxon has "faten" (grasp, hold on to), West Frisian "fetsje" (take, grasp [including in the sense, "understand"] ), Dutch has "vatten" (grasp, seize). The North Germanic languages seem to have only noun forms that are more closely related to English "vat," rather than to "fetch."

^ German uses "holen" to mean, "to fetch," and Dutch uses "halen." Both are close relatives of "haul."

The Oxbow Incident & Vigilantism

This excellent black and white movie based on the book of the same name by Walter van Tilburg Clark, was released in 1943, but it is just as relevant today, as in the past, because how justice is administered is always relevant. It received an Oscar nomination for best picture. The film starred Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes, Harry Morgan (later of "Dragnet" and "MASH" fame) and Anthony Quinn, with a couple of other well known faces in supporting roles: Jane Darwell (of "The Grapes of Wrath" fame) and Harry Davenport (of "Gone With The Wind" fame), along with some others. As was not uncommon in those times, the film was a relatively short 75 minutes in length.

If you've never seen this movie, be aware that this contains the basic story, ending and all. The crux of the story, set some 20 years after the Civil War, is about a group people from a small western town, who take out after the men they believe murdered one of the nearby ranchers to steal his cattle. Even before leaving town the calls for revenge and hanging fill the air, as reason and legal rights take a back seat to emotion and ego. When the posse captures three men, they indeed have the rancher's cattle, but the head of the group (played by Dana Andrews) tells the posse he bought the cattle, but did not get a bill of sale. This becomes the main evidence against the men, who are told the rancher was murdered. The man tells the posse they did not kill the rancher, but by this time a former Confederate army major, dressed in his old uniform, pushes for hanging the men, which goes against the order of the judge who authorized the posse. So we have a spit and polish military man who doesn't want to follow orders of a superior in an attempt to relive his past. The brooding Major had forced his adult son to come along with the posse in order to instill some "masculinity" into his sensitive son, who shows no inclination to be anything like his father (sometimes the apple falls further from the tree than the saying implies, or does it?). The Major's fear of weakness shows, when the head of the captured men whimpers a bit, and the Major tells him "you're taking it like a woman." One man (played by Harry Davenport) wholeheartedly opposes the vigilante justice being pushed by the Major, but he finds it difficult to rein in the escalating calls for the executions, although the Major's son joins him in opposing his father, as do a couple of others. One of the captured men is a Mexican (played by Anthony Quinn), which adds an element of racism and bigotry to the emotional mob, as they call him, "the Mex." The last of the three is an old man not completely in possession of his faculties, played by Francis Ford.* The three men are trapped in a nightmarish drama as the posse decides their fate, complete with one of the posse who likes to carry one of the nooses and hold it up and then make the distorted face of a man being strangled to death. Such is the further torture of the desperate men.

Instead of taking the men back to town to await the sheriff, who was at the rancher's home, the angry group, stirred by the Major and a couple of others, votes to hang the men, with only a few having the courage to oppose the action. The Major gives the head man time to write a letter to his wife and two children, which he then gives to the man who had tried so hard to save their lives, so that he can get it to the man's family. This man reads the letter and tries to get the Major to read it too, but to no avail. The Major tries to force his son to chase the horse out from under one of the doomed men, but the son can't do it. The men are hanged and then shot to make sure they are dead. The shots bring the now nearby sheriff and a deputy galloping up. The posse tells the sheriff how they got the killers and hanged them. The sheriff then tells them that the rancher is not dead and that he has the men who wounded the rancher. The sheriff hears that only seven men opposed the hangings, which brings him to say, "God better have mercy on you; you won't get any from me."

The posse returns to town and the Major heads home, followed a bit distantly by his son. The Major enters the house, but then locks the door so his son can't follow. When the son tries the door but can't get in, he yells into his father, calling him a "depraved, murderous beast," and adding, "You can't feel pity, you can't even feel guilt. You knew those men were innocent, but you were cold crazy to see them hanged and to make me watch it.... How does it feel to have begot a weakling Major? Does it make you fearful there may be some weakness in you too that other men may discover and whisper about?" The Major goes into another room and shoots himself.

The other members of the posse go to the saloon, where one of the seven who opposed the hangings (played by Henry Fonda) reads the hanged man's letter to all present. The letter mentions the man who tried to help them so much, and that, "I suppose there are some other good men here too, only they don't seem to realize what they're doing... Man just can't naturally take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurting everybody in the world... 'cause then he's not just breakin' one law, but all laws.... (Law) is everything  people have ever found out about justice... it's the very conscience of humanity ... There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience?"

* Francis Ford was the brother of famous movie director, John Ford.

This photo is from the DVD released in 2003 by 20th Century Fox.

WORD HISTORY:
Vigil-This word, the source of the word, "vigilante," goes back to Indo European "weg," which had the notion of "be active."^ This gave its Latin offspring "vigil," which meant "alert, watching, awake," and which produced Latin "vigilia," meaning "a watch (noun, but not the time piece)." This was passed on to Latin-based Old French as "vigile," with the meaning "watch (in the sense "stand guard")," but it also came to be used in the religious sense as "evening before a holy day." English borrowed the word from the French carried to England by the Normans, but not until the 1200s, and with the religious meaning, which has since broadened beyond religion to mean "observance of a cause, or in observance of a departed one," often with the use of lighted candles. 

^ "Vigil" is related to "vigor," a Latin-derived word borrowed by English from French, and distantly to "velocity," a word borrowed from Latin, and it is also distantly related to "waken," "wake" (verb) and "watch" (both noun and verb), all from the Germanic roots of English.