Vincent Schiavelli as the Subway Ghost in Ghost (1990)

In Jerry Zucker’s Ghost (1990), the New York subway is where a newly dead man learns the rules of the afterlife, and the teacher is Vincent Schiavelli. His Subway Ghost is a furious, wisecracking spirit who has haunted a station since he died. He is one of the film’s most quoted supporting turns, and he has only a few minutes of screen time.

The character is not a gentle guide. When Patrick Swayze’s Sam Wheat first chases his killer onto a train, he is attacked by a hostile ghost who can move physical objects. Later, with Molly in danger and his own powers still useless, Sam goes back underground and talks that same ghost into passing on what he knows.

Where Schiavelli stood before 1990

By 1990 Schiavelli was a familiar face to anyone who watched American film closely. Born in Brooklyn on November 11, 1948, he studied acting at New York University’s School of the Arts. CBS News and the Associated Press later noted that he had worked for years in films by Miloš Forman, among them One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus.

He had also become a staple of 1980s comedy. NPR remembered his science teacher in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, who leads a class trip to a morgue. Casting directors knew him as an actor who could make a few lines stay in the memory, and Ghost needed exactly that for its subway scenes.

What the part asked of him

The Subway Ghost has to do three jobs in a short span. He is a menace in the first encounter, a comic figure in the second, and a teacher who explains the film’s central trick: a ghost moves things by focusing emotion, not muscle. Schiavelli had to carry that exposition without slowing the story, and he does it through sarcasm and impatience.

His scenes also give the film some grit. Ghost is a romance, written for the screen by Bruce Joel Rubin, and the rest of it moves between a Tribeca loft, a bank and a psychic’s parlor. The underground station lets a very different, harder New York into the picture. That is why the character is so closely tied to the city’s subway in popular memory.

The film around him

The studio did not expect what happened next. Paramount released Ghost on July 13, 1990, and it grossed about $505 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of the year. It earned five Oscar nominations, including best picture. Whoopi Goldberg won best supporting actress as the medium Oda Mae Brown, and Rubin won for original screenplay.

Reviews at the time were mixed, but the film’s audience was enormous. Because the Subway Ghost is the character who unlocks Sam’s powers, millions of viewers saw Schiavelli’s scenes.

What came after, and how he is remembered

The next years brought Schiavelli more visible work. He played the Organ Grinder, one of the Penguin’s henchmen, in Batman Returns (1992), the Chester in The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), and Dr. Kaufman in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). In 1997 Vanity Fair named him one of America’s best character actors. He also wrote three cookbooks and food articles for magazines and newspapers.

In his last years he worked mostly in Italian film and television. Schiavelli died of lung cancer on December 26, 2005, at his home in Polizzi Generosa, Sicily. He was 57. Leonard Maltin said at the time that many people would always remember him from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and that he had probably wanted richer roles than he was offered.

The film he helped make has stayed in circulation. A 4K Ultra HD disc came out in 2024, and a remastered 35th-anniversary version returned to a limited number of theaters from February 14, 2025.

FAQ

Who played the Subway Ghost in Ghost?

Vincent Schiavelli played the character in Jerry Zucker’s 1990 film. He appears opposite Patrick Swayze, who plays Sam Wheat.

What does the Subway Ghost teach Sam?

He shows Sam that a ghost can move objects by concentrating strong emotion. Sam uses this lesson later to reach Molly and fight the men who threaten her.

Was Vincent Schiavelli known for anything besides acting?

Yes. He wrote three cookbooks and many food articles for magazines and newspapers. He also directed a stage piece in Sicily in 2001, according to the Associated Press.

Header photo: Alan Light / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0, resized