The Ghosts of Berkeley Square (1947)

Firmly in the fantasy groove previously plowed by such films as The Canterville Ghost and The Time of Their Lives is the 1947 British comedy The Ghosts of Berkeley Square. Robert Morley and Felix Aylmer play a pair of fatuous Colonel Blimp military types, whose efforts to shorten the war results only in getting the both of them killed. Summoned to a Heavenly court, Morley and Aylmer incur the wrath of Queen Anne. She orders them to haunt a mansion until they can prove themselves worthy of entering the Pearly Gates. For a film that practically no one has ever heard of, Ghosts of Berkeley Square is an embarrassment of riches in the casting department: among the British favorites appearing in the film are Martita Hunt, A.E. Mathews, James Hayter, Ernst Thesiger, and Wilfred Hyde-White. The film was based on the novel No Nightingales by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi