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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Danny Kaye Shines as Thurber Gets The Goldwyn Treatment, November 24, 2004
While WONDER MAN and THE COURT JESTER might be more consistently wacky, I thought THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (TSLoWM) brought out the vulnerable side of Danny Kaye, one of my faves since childhood (I never missed any of Kaye's movies on WPIX when I was growing up). It usually gets on my nerves when I see movie characters allowing themselves to be as put-upon and henpecked as Kaye's Walter is here, but there was a sweetness about him that made me root for him instead of merely growling, "Oh, tell 'em all to go to hell already" -- and as a result, it's that much more satisfying when Walter finally does tell off his obnoxious so-called friends and loved ones (unlike such "comedies of cruelty" as MADHOUSE, where the last 10 minutes of Revenge Against The Oppressors are the only entertaining parts of the movie)! Although James Thurber, another of my faves, reportedly tried to buy off producer Samuel Goldwyn to keep the film from being made and hated the finished product, I think perhaps Thurber wasn't being quite fair. First off, books and film have different storytelling requirements, and second, the first 10 minutes are almost straight from Thurber's story (except it's Walter and his nagging mom instead of a nagging wife), and it seemed to me that the characters and performances had very Thurberesque qualities about them. Boris Karloff and Konstantin Shayne are delightfully unctuous villains (Fun Fact: their henchman, Henry Corden, later became the voice of Fred Flintstone!). As Walter's literal and figurative dream girl Rosalind van Hoorn, frequent Kaye co-star Virginia Mayo was thoroughly beguiling and never looked lovelier (and hey, the radiant Mayo was a size 12 and nobody considered *her* a "plus size," thank you very much! :-). TSLoWM also contains two of my favorite Kaye/Sylvia Fine musical numbers: "Symphony for Unstrung Tongue" (am I the only one who finds the line "He gets so excited that he has a solo passage" to be subtly salacious? :-) and "Anatole of Paris." To top it all off, it takes place primarily in my hometown and favorite city, New York City, and is set in one of my favorite milieus, pulp magazine publishing! My hubby and I like to think that Uncle Peter's grand home must be located in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where we used to live, since it looks like the kind of houses we used to see while walking around in the Fieldston area and it didn't seem to take horrifically long for Walter and Rosalind to drive there from the Flatiron district of Manhattan! :-) (Interestingly, the interior of the van Hoorn home looks a lot like the interior of evil Bruno Anthony's home in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN; anybody know if these scenes might have been shot in the same house/set?) I wish the DVD extras had included deleted scenes (there's a bit in the trailer with Karloff and Corden in a pub that I definitely don't recall seeing in the finished film), but it was nice to see Virginia Mayo still alive and well (and bigger than "size 12," but on her it's pleasant plumpness, in my opinion! :-) in the intro and outro, even though she only had time to say one line about most of her co-stars ("Ann Rutherford was delightful...Fay Bainter was a consummate actress...").
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fun movie!, March 10, 2004
Walter Mitty (played by Danny Kaye) is an inveterate daydreamer - henpecked by his mother, unregarded by his fiancé, and abused by his boss. But, when a man is murdered in his presence, Walter soon finds himself protecting a beautiful woman and running from a group of ruthless hoodlums, and nobody believes that this isn't just another daydream. Now, all that Walter has to do is hold onto his sanity and save that girl! [Color, released in 1947, with a running time of 1 hour, 50 minutes.]This is a fun movie! Any Danny Kaye (1913-87) movie is worth seeing, and this one is doubly so. It has Danny's great hijinks and his wonderful off kilter singing. I liked the storyline and all of the antics, and the fact that the whole family could sit down and laugh along to this great comedy. If you like good comedy, and want something family-friendly, then you can't do better than this movie - buy it!
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Predecessor to Whose Line actor Ryan Stiles!, December 18, 2000
When I first read the story of "Walter Mitty" in my Honors English class, I wasn't all that interested in it. However, when my teacher brought in the movie, Danny Kaye quickly became one of my favorite actors of all time! The movie got my cynical, freshman class (that usually doesn't laugh at anything except the local "court jester", if you understand) laughing as well! I absolutely enjoyed the number when Mr. Kaye is recalling his old music teacher. I feel as though he was, no IS, a predecessor to another of my favorite actors, Ryan Stiles. I just turned 15 and I love this very talented actor and this very hillarious movie. I strongly suggest that you get your own children to watch the works of Mr. Kaye ASAP. His acting talent needs to be shared with everyone! (By the way, the Thurber story is very good as well.)
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