Man Alive

A quite funny and charming minor comedy, with O'Brien as a neglectful husband who, reported drowned in a car accident while drunk, takes to posing as a ghost to prevent his wife from marrying an old flame. One particularly good sequence has O'Brien reviving after being fished out of the river, unaware that he is aboard a showboat, to be confronted by a 'Green Pastures'-style representation of heaven; convinced he is dead and distractedly going to the door, he this time finds himself in hell (the stokehold, given an added touch of conviction by the fortuitous presence of Menjou, sporting his Mephistopheles costume from the show). Invention flags latterly, though, as the lies and deceptions he gets up to instead of owning up (at Menjou's meddlesome suggestion) lead to rather tiresome complications.