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Casper the Friendly Ghost

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Casper the Friendly Ghost is the protagonist of the Famous Studios theatrical animated cartoon series of the same name. As his name indicates, he is a ghost, but is quite personable. According to the 1995 feature film Casper, his family name is McFadden, making his "full" name Casper McFadden.

Nature[]

Given that Casper is depicted as a ghostly, portly little boy, there is a controversy among fans of the series about whether or not he is a dead child. Early Casper cartoons seemed to suggest this, as they portrayed him "living" beside a gravestone. Specifically, the short There's Good Boos To-Night featured Ferdie, a fox befriended by Casper, coming back from the dead as a ghost. Casper's death (as well as the reason why he became friendly) have been disputed since that time.

This somewhat macabre premise was later abandoned in favor of the idea that ghosts were merely a type of supernatural being, similar to ghouls, goblins, etc. He was thereafter portrayed with feet and shown to have ghostly parents & became slightly slimmer. In the 1960s and 1970s, the stock answer provided by Harvey Comics in response to those wondering how Casper died was that he was a ghost simply because his parents were already ghosts when they were married.

The 1995 feature film Casper, however, revived the notion that Casper was a deceased human and provided a brief account of his death. According to the film, Casper was sledding in the snow and stayed out for too long, dying of pneumonia at the age of eleven. The first direct-to-video film to follow the feature, Casper: A Spirited Beginning, showed Casper's early days as a ghost, not showing how he died and ignoring the story provided in the previous film, although it does explain how he became friendly.

History[]

Creation and success at Paramount[]

Casper was developed by Seymour Reit and Joe Oriolo, the former devising the idea for the character and the latter providing illustrations.[1] Initially intended as the basis for a children's storybook, there was at first little interest in their idea and the book went unpublished.

In the original Harveytoons animation, Casper has been seen standing next to a grave inscribed with "Casper", that supports the theory he is indeed a ghost. Originally, stories have shown that his visibility is due to wearing a sheet. In the Casper live-action film, this is not shown and it is implied that he is naturally visible to humans as a white creature.[2] When Reit was away on military service during World War II before the book was released, Oriolo sold the rights to the book to Paramount Pictures' Famous Studios animation division for a total of $175. This one-time payment was all that he received, missing out on a share of the revenue earned from the films, comic books and merchandise to come.[3]

The Friendly Ghost, the first Noveltoon to feature Casper, was released by Paramount in 1945 with a few differences from the book. In the cartoon adaptation, Casper is a cute ghost-child with a New York accent who inhabits a haunted house along with a community of adult ghosts who delight in scaring the living. Casper, in contrast, is a nonconformist among ghosts: he would prefer to make friends with people. He packs up his belongings and goes out into the world, hoping to find friends. However, the animals that he meets (a rooster, a mole, a cat, a mouse named Herman, and a group of hens) take one horrified look at him, scream: "A ghost!" and run off in the other direction. Distraught, Casper attempts suicide (apparently forgetting that he is already dead) by lying down on a railway track before an oncoming train, before he meets two children named Bonnie and Johnny who become his friends. The children's mother, apparently widowed and impoverished, at first is frightened of Casper, but later welcomes him into the family after he unintentionally frightens off a greedy landlord, who, unwilling to own a "haunted" house, tears up the mortgage and gives her the house outright. The short ends with the mother kissing Bonnie, Johnny, and Casper as she sends them off to school, with Casper wearing clothing as if he were a living child The Friendly Ghost Known as He or Him.

Casper appeared in two more subsequent cartoons, There's Good Boos To-Night and A Haunting We Will Go. There's Good Boos To-Night differs wildly from later Casper cartoons: although the theme of Casper trying to find a friend and failing in these attempts before succeeding also occurs in later cartoons, the tone of this short turns remarkably dark when a hunter and his dogs appear, chasing the little fox cub named Ferdie that Casper has befriended. Although Casper scares the hunter and dogs away, Casper discovers Ferdie dead after a harrowing chase scene. Happily, however, Ferdie returns as a ghost to join his friend Casper in the afterlife.

Harvey Comics, television, and films[]

Casper went on to become one of the most famous properties from the Famous Studio. Casper was first published in comics form in 1949 by St. John Publications; Alfred Harvey, founder and publisher of Harvey Comics began producing Casper comic books in 1952, and in 1959, Harvey purchased the rights to the character outright.

After Harvey bought the rights to Casper and many other Famous properties in 1959 (including Herman and Katnip, Little Audrey, and Baby Huey), they began broadcasting the post-September 1950 theatrical Famous shorts on a television show sponsored by Mattel Toys titled Matty's Funday Funnies on ABC in 1959 which introduced the Barbie doll to the public. The other Famous produced Casper cartoons had already been acquired by television distributor U.M.&M. T.V. Corp. in 1956. U.M.&M. retitled just "A Haunting We Will Go", but credited "Featuring Casper The Friendly Ghost" as "Featuring Caspers Friendly Ghost".

New cartoons were created for The New Casper Cartoon Show in 1963, also on ABC. The original Casper cartoons were syndicated under the title Harveytoons (initially repackaged as Casper and Company) in 1962 and ran continually until the mid-90s. Casper has remained popular in reruns and merchandising, and Hanna-Barbera produced two holiday specials, Casper's First Christmas (which also starred Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Quick Draw McGraw, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy) and Casper's Halloween Special (aka Casper Saves Halloween), and also the Saturday morning cartoon series Casper and the Angels (a animated takeoff on two live action hit shows Charlie's Angels & "CHiPS") in the autumn of 1979, all on NBC. Also featured on the NBC version was a big ghost named Hairy Scary (voiced by John Stephenson). None of Casper's original co-stars appeared in the show.

Numerous Casper cartoons were released on home video by Universal Studios (via MCA Inc.), which also adapted the friendly ghost into a live-action feature film entitled Casper in 1995, where he and his wicked uncles, the Ghostly Trio, were done with computer animation. The film constructed a back-story for Casper and is the only time in the series that the question of his death has been addressed. According to the film, Casper was a twelve-year-old boy living in Whipstaff Manor with his inventor father J.T. McFadden until he died from pneumonia after playing out in the cold until it was past nightfall. Much of the backstory he is given in the film is contradicted by other Casper media. Whipstaff Manor appears to represent the historic Schroeppel Mansion in Syracuse, New York, which is a national monument. McFadden seems to be the name the writers used because the actual family named von Schroeppel lost a twelve year old son named Casper to drowning in Morristown, New York, who is said to haunt the family's estate in Syracuse. Casper was a name that could be used but not the actual name of the family.

In 1996, Amblin Entertainment & Universal Cartoon Studios created a new Casper series for Fox Kids, based on the 1995 feature, that lasted two years and was never seen on television again after 1998. Two live-action direct-to-video follow-ups, Casper: A Spirited Beginning and Casper Meets Wendy, which introduced Hilary Duff, to the film were later made. They were followed by Casper's Haunted Christmas (starring Spooky and Poil from the animated spinoff of the first movie), and Casper's Scare School, which were done entirely in CGI with no live-action elements. These films are often referred to as being "sequels" to the 1995 feature despite the fact that they heartily contradict the feature and do not appear to even take place in the same universe.

In 2001, Harvey Entertainment was acquired by Classic Media which continues to license the Harvey properties including Casper.[4]

In 2007, MoonScoop Group, in association with Classic Media, TF1 et DQ, produced a TV show of 52 X 12' named (Casper's Scare School).

In 2009, a new Casper comic was published, called Casper and the Spectrals by Arden Entertainment. Much like The Man of Steel and Batman: Year One did with their respective characters, it revamped Casper and several other Harvey characters for a new audience. After selling 6,400 copies of the first comic, the last two issues were published in 2010.

Supporting characters[]

Enemies[]

Comic book titles[]

This is a list of comic book titles that featured Casper as the main character (or main co-character). He also appeared in back up stories and made guest appearances in many other Harvey comic books like; Little Audrey, Paramount Animated Comics, Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch, and The Ghostly Trio.

  • Casper'
  • Casper Adventure Digest
  • Casper and...
  • Casper and Friends
  • Casper and Friends Magazine
  • Casper and Nightmare
  • Casper and Spooky
  • Casper and The Ghostly Trio
  • Casper and Spooky
  • Casper: A Spirited Beginning (film adaptation)
  • Casper Big Book
  • Casper Digest
  • Casper Digest Stories
  • Casper Digest Winners
  • Casper Enchanted Tales Digest
  • Casper Ghostland
  • Casper Giant Size
  • Casper Halloween Trick or Treat
  • Casper in Space
  • Casper in 3-D
  • Casper Magazine
  • Casper Movie Adaptation
  • Casper's Ghostland
  • Casper's Spaceship
  • Casper Special
  • Casper Strange Ghost Stories
  • Casper, the Friendly Ghost
  • Casper TV Showtime
  • Famous TV Funday Funnies
  • The Friendly Ghost, Casper
  • Harvey Two-Pack
  • Nightmare and Casper
  • Richie Rich and Casper
  • Richie Rich, Casper, and Wendy
  • TV Casper and Company
  • Casper and the Spectrals
  1. ↑ Template:Cite news
  2. ↑ Template:Cite web
  3. ↑ Template:Cite book
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