Prismark10 I thought the Walter Mitty remake by Ben Stiller was rather jagged that took some while to get going. I think the Danny Kaye original suffers because Kaye's own shtick gets rather wearing, a film to display his various comedy and musical talent which he does very well including playing a British flying ace. However it felt less like an adaptation of the Walter Mitty short story.Danny Kaye's Walter Mitty is a daydreamer working for a publishing company. He is henpecked by his bossy mother and fiancée Gertrude, he is harassed by his boss at work.Then while sitting next to Rosalind Van Hoorn (Virginia Mayo) on the train he becomes a wanted man by some bad people who want a black book in his possession and an adventure to steal some hidden crown jewels.Boris Karloff plays sinister psychiatrist Dr Hollingshead who tells Walter that this is all a fantasy. This is a zany film with great production values and costumes. Mayo looks simply enchanting.

MartinHafer "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is an enjoyable old film. However, it does have a big strike against it. The studio really made this a Danny Kaye film instead of basing it closely on the James Thurber story. Had it stuck closer and featured less over- acting by Kaye, the film would have greater lasting power today. Instead, it occasionally is cringe-inducing and also has way too much in the way of intrigue.Danny Kaye plays the lead. At times, he's wonderful as well as charming and likable--and at other times he does much more of his Borscht Belt shtick instead of remaining true to the character. So, while I liked Mitty's little regressions into the fantasy world in the story, here they often are just excuses to have Kaye do his act--such as the weird linguistic exercises that folks apparently thought were funny back in the day. I seriously doubt it would go over very well today. If they'd just stuck to him having charming little day dreams like the Thurber ones, it sure would have worked better. Including a plot about Nazis and stolen Dutch art as well as the stand-up routines just tended to derail the otherwise excellent story. Worth seeing but far from Kaye's best work and unfortunately it really did little with the wonderful original source material.

jc-osms A delightful comedy-fantasy showcasing the many talents of Danny Kaye in James Thurber's popular short-story, although it's interesting that the author didn't want it filmed and apparently hated Kaye in the lead.And so what, says I! Yes, helmsman Norman Z MacLeod, perhaps worn down from his days as the director of the Marx Brothers in the 30's, does indulge his star a little too much by unnecessarily giving him two lengthy patter-songs which while highlighting his tongue- twisting and accent-mangling skills, nonetheless don't belong in the film and likewise our hero's pratfall goofiness is overdone too.Nevertheless when, I suspect, Kaye sticks more to the script, there is some genuinely funny humour, often of the grown-up variety, like the scenes where Kaye's Mitty attempts to intercept the delivery of a corset (containing the Maguffin of the mysterious little black book listing Dutch art treasures pursued by a German criminal mastermind) to an unknown female with a suitably large and jealous husband, Virginia Mayo undressing to her slip after being out in the rain and the funny exchange where Mitty is convinced by evil psychologist Boris Karloff that he sees fully-dressed women instead in bathing-suits. Along the way, the movie gently satirises the then fashionably popular pulp-fiction magazine business, international women's fashion and of course various movie genres in Mitty's various day-dreams and it's in the latter that the film is most successful and funny.The pleasing conclusion where Mitty finally comes out of his shell and bites back at everyone that's trodden over him in the past from his mother on down is slightly let down however by a pointless final scene where Mitty at last gets his overdue promotion, but I won't hold that against it. Kaye and Mayo, here teamed for the third of four movies, combine delightfully and are well backed by their supporting cast, especially Karloff spoofing his horror-movie past. Filmed in glowing Technicolour around contemporary post-war New York, (even if some of the location shots are clearly processed), this is a vibrant, funny feature from Hollywood's Golden Age.

Steve Pulaski Walter Mitty (Danny Kaye) is a simple man, working at a publishing company, with the simple goal of making it through the end of the day alive, hoping not to be too harassed by his obnoxious mother (Fay Bainter), his boss who takes him for granted (Thurston Hall), and his childish fiancée (Ann Rutherford). The only place it seems Walter can escape to his own mental fantasy land, made up of whatever he wants them to be. His daydreams feel like the kind of material fit for a pulp magazine or a thriller novel, and become so much a part of his life that when he's interrupted in the middle of one it's difficult to assimilate back to reality. Walter then meets a mysterious woman named Rosalind van Hoorn (Virginia Mayo), who he can't distinguish to be part of his reality or his alternate reality, resulting in nothing but more problems from his overbearing family who just can't let the poor man be.Norman Z. McLeod's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is sharp around the edges because of the fact that it understands life as a simple man, with simple goals, who mentally escapes to a place of greater satisfaction. The trio of writers (Ken Englund, Everett Freeman, and Philip Rapp, respectively) make Mitty so innocent and so humble that his commonality and instantly-likable charm is hard for us to ignore. He clearly is motivated and doesn't want to do wrong, but is constantly treated like an imbecile by his family who seem to not appreciate anything he does.Such a character may have been hard to like if he wasn't played by Danny Kaye, a cinematic master of timing and zealous energy. Kaye is on top of his game here, racing around the sets, owning the screen in nearly every scene he is in, and beautifully utilizing difficult comic skills such as fast-talking, miming, and character dialog in order to create a character we enjoy watching and sympathize, maybe empathize, with. This is my first Danny Kaye film, but could also very well be his tour-de-force performance. The focus is almost always on him and his daydreams.His daydreams, on the other hand, are also noteworthy, because while campy and lighthearted - like the pulp magazines they are trying to emulate - create a certain suspense in their espionage glory, to the point where they're not trivial. They're, in fact, what the film has to thrive on. We, the audience, need to see why Mitty is sucked into this dream world and why it's more interesting and fun to him than his own reality. The trio of writers, combined with director McLeod (known for his work on quite a few Marx Brothers films, as well as other comedies of the thirties and forties), work wonders here when it comes to articulating the excitement and the sensational effect Mitty's dreams have on him and us.The final aspect is the darker element, which comes to light when Mitty, himself, begins to feel as if he does have a mental illness (thanks to being convinced by everyone) and that these consuming daydreams may be harmful to his psych after all. He sees a therapist (Boris Karloff of all people) who begins to see this in him as well, as Mitty states how greatly the daydreams interfere with his life and work. Consider this from Mitty's point; he has a redundant job, where he is grossly undervalued, a manipulative mother, a fiancée who doesn't seem to appreciate him, and a life scarcely providing benefits. His only outlet, his elaborate daydreams, is one that's highly criticized, the subject of him possibly possessing a mental illness, and regarded as a humanistic flaw rather than an ability. Mitty lives a sad life and the filmmakers don't sugarcoat it; it's a tough life as Walter Mitty and we're shown how dreary it can be.I sought this film out, obviously, because of the recent remake, with Ben Stiller serving as the director, producer, and lead actor of the film. I have no idea what to make of the film other than it looks very ambitious and has the grand potential to inspire and captivate. Kaye, however, seems to be having more fun with the idea, while illuminating the film's darker qualities. Stiller's approach seems more driven on ambition and motivation; a go-for-broke kind of attempt that could hit big or miss big, depending on the way of the writing and the emphasis on the themes. However, being released in a very busy time period in cinema, the original Secret Life of Walter Mitty may deserve more than an honorable mention of the forties decade.Starring: Danny Kaye, Fay Bainter, Thurston Hall, Ann Rutherford, and Boris Karloff. Directed by: Norman Z. McLeod.