Phil Shaw

Here’s a story for you. We started filming without owning the title and had to do alternates. Taft Broadcasting owned the title Ghostbusters as part of their half-hour sitcom starring Larry Storch and Forrest Tucker (F-Troop) and a gorilla chasing ghosts. I had never heard of it. They didn’t have proton packs or Bill Murray. Columbia paid $500,000 to buy the name, but they really should have paid Dean Martin, from whom I first heard the term. In the film Scared Stiff (1953), he and Jerry Lewis (check out his acrobatic stair descent) are in an old haunted castle, and Lizabeth Scott asks Dean: “Who are you guys?” And Dean answers: “You’ve heard of Trustbusters and Gangbusters, we’re Ghostbusters!” For my research writing the first movie, I watched every single ‘ghost’ comedy ever made. Bowery Boys, Hope and Crosby, Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis all did such films. Happy Halloween 2026.