The Movie

In early 1900s England, a young widow, Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney), moves to the seaside village of Whitecliff and into Gull Cottage with her daughter Anna (Natalie Wood) and her maid Martha (Edna Best), despite the fierce disapproval of her mother- and sister-in-law. She rents the house despite discovering that the house is haunted. On the first night she is visited by the ghostly apparition of the former owner, a roguish sea captain named Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison), who reluctantly promises to make himself known only to her; Anna is too young for ghosts. When Lucy's source of investment income dries up, he dictates to her his memoirs, entitled Blood and Swash. His racy recollections make the book a bestseller, allowing Lucy to stay in the house. During the course of writing the book, they fall in love, but as both realise it is a hopeless situation, Daniel tells her she should find a real (live) man.

When she visits the publisher in London she becomes attracted to suave Miles Fairley (George Sanders), a writer of children's stories known as "Uncle Neddy" who helps her obtain an interview. Despite a rocky beginning, the publisher agrees to publish the captain's book. Fairley follows her back to Whitecliff and begins a whirlwind courtship. Captain Gregg, initially jealous of their relationship, decides finally to disappear and cease being an obstacle to her happiness. He ends their relationship and convinces her that he was all a dream whilst she sleeps. Shortly thereafter while visiting her publisher in London (the book has become a bestseller), Lucy pays a surprise visit to Fairley's home and discovers that not only is Miles already married with two children, but that this sort of thing has happened before with other women. Lucy leaves heartbroken and returns to spend the rest of her life as a single woman in Gull Cottage with Martha to look after her.

About ten years later, Anna (Vanessa Brown) returns to the cottage with her Navy Lieutenant fiancee and tells her mother that she knew about Captain Gregg and Miles Fairley all the time, rekindling faint memories in her mother of the captain (we also learn that Miles Fairley has become fat and bald and that his wife and children finally left him).

After a long peaceful life spent at the cottage, Lucy dies. Captain Gregg appears before her at the moment of her death – reaching out, he lifts her young spirit free of her dead body. The two walk out of the front door arm in arm, into the mist. She is finally united with her captain.