Casper the Friendly Ghost

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, however, is a noncomformist 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 and run off in the other direction. Distraught, Casper unsuccessfully attempts to commit suicide (apparently forgetting that he is already dead) by laying himself 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.