La vie secrète de Walter Mitty

If you like Danny Kaye's style you should see this movie. I like his style of making people laugh, so I'm amused with "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty". The scenes in which "Mitty" imagines himself to be a brave British pilot (and when he pretends to be his old music teacher), a hat designer, and a gambler from the old South are my favorite "dream sequences" of the film. Regarding the scenes that take place in "the real world" I think the takes with Doctor Hollingshead (Boris Karloff) and the one in which Mitty pretends to have a gun in his pocket are very funny. The partnership between Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo is here at its best.

Danny Kaye at his best in a fantasy/comedy about a hen-pecked (by his mom and girlfriend) man who daydreams that he's a hero rescuing a damsel in distress (Virginia Mayo) from all sorts of perils. In real life he stumbles across her path and instantly becomes involved in an espionage plot involving villainous Boris Karloff. It's all played for laughs and Danny even gets to do a couple of his tongue-twisting musical routines.

Especially enjoyable in the supporting cast are Ann Rutherford as his silly girlfriend and Florence Bates as her overbearing mother. Thurston Hall has fun with his role as Kaye's harried, blustery boss who, while browbeating him, is nevertheless prone to borrowing ideas from Kaye for new sales angles in the pulp fiction market.

Kaye has a field day when his dreams take over, impersonating everyone from a sea captain to a riverboat gambler to a fashion designer--all with his own distinct flair for comic routines. A funny, witty, always entertaining little gem that has somehow been overlooked through the years. Virginia Mayo makes a delightful co-star.

This is probably the finest role in Danny Kaye's career. I think its because I can relate to the fact that he is a daydreamer with a vivid imagination and he let's his imagination goes wild. Walter represents every put upon person and his daydreams are his way of escaping. I especially loved the gambler sequence, especially when he wakes up and the cards go flying.

Whatever the setting, and there were many, Danny Kaye always played himself -- the hypochondriacal, stuttering, cowardly, nervously fiddling neurotic. That's pretty much what he is here, and if you haven't seen a Danny Kaye movie this is a pretty funny introduction.

The plot violates James Thurber's short story, the point of which was that Walter Mitty daydreamed so much because his own life was so dull. It's probably Thurber's most popular story, although "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomatox" has more outright laughs. Here Kaye is involved in one richly comic episode after another.

The famous fantasies are pretty much gotten out of the way before the movie is half over. The "real" scenes are at least as amusing. He's a copy editor at a pulp magazine in New York and Boris Karloff, he of the ominous lisp, is pitching him a story about a doctor who murders people without leaving a trace by pressing on a nerve at the base of the skull. "Oh, we've already used that in 'The Revenge of the Gland Specialist'," objects Kaye.

The plot is a mystery about the planned theft of the Dutch Crown Jewels. Something to do with a murder Kaye witnesses (nobody believes him), a black book, Kaye singing silly songs, a chief conspirator nicknamed "the Boot," and a dazzling innocent blond -- Virginia Mayo -- who has a pretty sassy figure.

Watching her and Kaye talking about corsets reminded me that when I was a teen, all women seemed to be wrapped up in inexplicable buckles, plastic straps, and clips that only a deranged mechanical engineer could design. Come to think of it, I'm still out of it. I don't know whether women leave body gel on or wash it off, or what bath beads are. And when did "lipstick" turn into "lip rouge," and "rouge" turn into "blush," and "mascara" into "kohl" -- or DID it? Somebody is pulling the wool over somebody's eyes around here.

You ought to see this if only for the costume design and hair styles. Wow -- what exotica! It's impossible to believe that women ever dressed like this, or hoped to, despite Fritz Feld's glutinous paean to a hat that, although it looks like something Calder might have dreamed up during a horrible hangover, can be disassembled into three -- count 'em -- three separate parts and then be piece together into yet another arrangement. Put a tiny quail under that feathery apparatus and you're talking a two-hundred dollar entree at a four-star Parisian restaurant.

There's a likable element of running gags in here too. On three occasions Kaye's blustery boss is holding important business meetings when Kaye enters unexpectedly -- once simply late, and twice more crawling backward in through the tenth floor window pursued by pigeons.

Kaye's decline was sad. He wound up singing "Thumbelina" to a nearly empty night club in later years. But he's at his peak here, and his peak was pretty good.

Ever since seeing him in Hans Christian Andersen when I was 8 or so(a film I still love) I've liked Danny Kaye a lot, and feel that like many commentators here that he is deserving of more attention. He is wonderful in The Secret of Walter Mitty, one of his best performances and quite possibly his most endearing. His antics are genuinely funny and he is charming in a way that comes naturally to him and is conveyed just as much to the audience. He has a fine supporting cast too, Virginia Mayo is astonishingly beautiful and as likable as Kaye, Ann Rutherford is charming and naïve, Boris Karloff plays cool and subtly sinister to perfection, Florence Bates is wholly convincing in overbearing mode and Thurston Hall is appropriately blustery without overdoing it. The Secret of Walter Mitty looks beautiful, the scenery is bursting with colour and vibrancy and the photography is expertly. The music fits with the action and comedy very well indeed, and the songs are catchy and a lot of fun. The best being Anatole of Paris though Symphony for Unstrung Tongues has some great lyrics/lines and is interesting for future director Robert Altman as an extra. The writing is witty and infectious, it never feels forced or mushy and it holds up well today too. The story is sweet and instantly lovable, children will be spellbound and amused by the dream sequences especially. Overall, a wonderful film with Kaye on top form. If you want to get acquainted with him or see what the fuss is about, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a great place to start. 10/10 Bethany Cox