THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1947)

Danny Kaye

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1947). Director: Norman Z. McLeod.

Walter Mitty (Danny Kaye) is an editor at a pulp publishing house that puts out magazines of horror and crime. His own life -- living with his unpleasant mother (Fay Bainter) and engaged to an unappreciative fiancee (Ann Rutherford) -- is dull  enough for him to indulge in a variety of fantasies. He imagines himself as a brilliant physician, a famous pilot in the RAF, a riverboat gambler, old west cowboy, and so on. But then he meets a beautiful blond (Virginia Mayo) and his life suddenly gets more exciting -- and dangerous. The blond is named Rosalind, and she gets Mitty involved with deadly spies who are after a book that lists the location of art treasures hidden away from the Nazis. In their attempts to get the book, Mitty almost loses his life on more than one occasion.

Virginia Mayo with Kaye

Walter Mitty holds the attention for the most part, is generally well-acted, and has some clever and amusing moments -- a shot of Whistler's Mother in a bathing suit -- but it just isn't that funny. A routine Kaye does in which he imitates an old music professor goes on forever and hasn't a single laugh. The song numbers by Sylvia Fine, Kaye's wife, are pretty awful. The ever under-rated Virginia Mayo is luminescent, however, and there's some good work from Fritz Feld as a European designer of women's hats. (Kaye later does an imitation of him with some characterizing the caricature as "homosexual," but I doubt if that was the intention.) Thurston Hall is fine as Kaye's boss, who is near-apoplectic at times, and Boris Karloff shows up as a very peculiar psychiatrist.

Boris Karloff with Kaye

Rutherford does a nice job as the fiancee, and Florence Bates is typically on-target and amusing as her somewhat disapproving mother. Bainter [The Children's Hour] makes Mitty's mother a borderline harridan, treating her son like he's a ten-year-old, and she isn't funny enough to make the character palatable; a very good actress but not a skilled comedienne. Gordon Jones of The Green Hornet serial plays a man who has a romantic interest in Rutherford; Konstantin Shayne [The Unknown Man] is a nasty character known as the Boot; and the ever-cadaverous Milton Parsons plays his butler.

Verdict: Kaye running around amiably but not that memorably. **1/2. 

ON THE RIVIERA

Gene Tierney and Danny Kaye 

ON THE RIVIERA (1951). Director: Walter Lang.

Entertainer Jack Martin (Danny Kaye) works on the Riviera with his girlfriend, Colette (Corinne Calvet), but he is told by club manager Gapeaux (Sig Ruman) that he is through unless he comes up with a catchier act. Jack decides to do his impression of married playboy and famous pilot Henri Duran (also Kaye) who looks just like him. To keep a business deal from collapsing along with their careers, associates of Duran importune Jack to pretend to be Duran while he is out of town, causing complications involving Colette and Duran's wife, Lili (Gene Tierney). This is a remake of That Night in Rio (itself a remake of a French film), and it has one insurmountable problem. Why do a remake unless it is an improvement over, or distinctly different from, the original? This version adds Technicolor and a few weak songs by Sylvia Fine (Kaye's wife) that you forget even as you're listening to them. Another problem is that On the Riviera casts competent but essentially unknown French actors in smaller roles instead of the flavorful and more familiar character actors that usually pepper and add enjoyment to these films. Kaye is okay, but has been seen to better advantage in other vehicles. Corinne Calvet [So This is Paris] is gorgeous and capable, as is Gene Tierney [The Pleasure Seekers]. Clinton Sundberg [The Kissing Bandit] plays the taciturn butler, Antoine, in his usual effective style. Jean Murat is Felix Periton, with whom Duran wants desperately to do business. Kaye does so-so impressions of Maurice Chevalier and Carmen Miranda, both of whom starred in previous versions.

Verdict: One dip in the well too many. **.