EARTHBOUND (1940)

In his film guide, Leslie Halliwell calls this "Topper without laughs," and I couldn't describe it better. Warner Baxter is a businessman who is vacationing with his wife (Andrea Leeds) in the mountains. He is called back to town by his trusted assistant (Henry Wilcoxon) to take care of an important matter, but it turns out that Wilcoxon's wife (Lynn Bari), an old flame of Baxter's, forged the telegram. She wants to leave Wilcoxon and rekindle their affair. Baxter turns her down and she shoots him dead in his apartment. Wilcoxon, who comes upon the scene, takes the blame and stands trial, but Baxter's restless ghost (who doesn't realize right away that he's actually dead) tries to influence the proceedings so that justice is done. Charley Grapewin is a ghostly angel figure who carries a Bible and serves as a (not terribly helpful) guide to Baxter, who comes to realize that he is now "a dead man haunted by the living," a theme which has been explored by recent films like THE SIXTH SENSE and THE OTHERS. The ghost effects are pretty good, though Baxter is rather wooden and perhaps just a bit long in the tooth to be fought over with such passion by two lovely young women. Also with Elizabeth Patterson and Ian Wolfe. Interesting, mostly because it doesn't seem to be very well known; it would have been a better movie if the Wilcoxon and Grapewin characters had been more fleshed out. A remake of a 1920 silent film. Fox Movie Channel is showing it this month.