The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

TCM's "Is it a dream" spotlight this month brings a movie from a star I don't get to mention very often, I think because his movies are generally not from studios part of the old TCM library: Danny Kaye. That movie is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which comes on tonight at 9:00 PM. (Yes, 9:00 PM ET might seem like an odd starting time for a TCM presentation since prime time begins invariably at 8:00 PM, but the first film at 8:00 is the 51-minute silent Sherlock Jr..)

Danny Kaye plays Walter Mitty, and you probably already know a bit about the character because the movie is loosely based on a short story by James Thurber; the Mitty name has entered the lexicon as a byword for a daydreamer; and there was another film version about a decade ago. Walter Mitty here is a daydreamer mostly to escape his crappy personal life. He lives in the New Jersey suburbs with his overbearing mother Eunice (Fay Bainter); commutes to New York to work as a proofreader at a publishing company that puts out pulp fiction, where his boss Mr. Pierce (Thurston Hall) steals his ideas; and has a fiancée Gertrude (Ann Rutherford) who you wonder whether she's part of an arranged marriage just to give Walter someone for a wife. Indeed, she's got another guy pursuing her. Dr. Hollingshead (Boris Karloff) comes along to give Walter a bad, unoriginal idea for another dime novel, and it's all too much.

So when Walter has to deal with the doctor, he finds himself imagining that he's a doctor, specifically a surgeon performing a celebrated new operation. Later, he sees himself as an RAF pilot fighting the Nazis in World War II, which also gives him the opportunity to sing a song when he's celebrating after another great aerial success. In all of these fantasies, there's a woman involved, a very pretty one indeed. It's also well known to everyone around Walter that he has a tendency to fantasize and is terribly absent-minded as a result, which is why nobody is going to believe him for the second half of the movie.

One day on the commuter train to work, whom should Walter see but the woman who's been in all those daydreams he's had! And, she approaches him! This time, it's a story that you'd think is so crazy even Walter can't believe it. The woman says her name is Roasalind van Hoorn (Virginia Mayo), and that she's being followed by another passenger on the train. So would Walter be so kind as to pretend to be Rosalind's boyfriend? Walter, being a fantasist, goes along at least until he gets to his office. But he forgets his briefcase, and his need to go back and get it is going to bring him much further into the intrigue with which Rosalind is involved.

The actual nature of the intrigue, and what everybody is looking for, is of course a macguffin. Suffice it to say, however, that the bad guys know Walter has (or had) what they're looking for, and they're willing to kill him for it. Moreover, because of all of Walter's daydreams, nobody believes him when he says that there are well and truly bad men after him.

James Thurber didn't care for this movie version of his work, and I can understand why. There's not enough in a short story to turn it into a full-length movie, and the Goldwyn studio both had to do a lot of padding and tailor the material to Danny Kaye's talents, which are not going to be to everyone's tastes. I didn't dislike this version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but it's also certainly not a favorite movie of mine.

On the Riviera

A movie that reappeared in the FXM rotation a month or two back is On the Riviera. It's going to be on FXM again tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM, so what better time to blog about it than now?

Danny Kaye plays Jack Martin, a nightclub entertainer doing a show in the south of France, at one of the fashionable seaside resort cities. His biggest draw is doing celebrity impersonations, and his act is aided by his girlfriend Colette (Corinne Calvet). One night, the show is interrupted by everybody running out to see the landing of the first non-stop flight around the world, which is landing in the south of France and piloted by Frenchman Henri Duran.

The landing and a brief press conference are broadcast on TV (I actually checked and apparently France already had TV at the time the movie was released in 1951, although not color TV of course), which is why everybody gets up from their tables. Jack and Colette watch too, and Colette makes the point that Jack looks amazingly like Henri, which is unsurprising since Henri is played by Danny Kaye. Perhaps Jack should do an impression of Henri?

It just so happens that there's going to be a gala for Henri the next night, and Jack is one of the people asked to perform, so he comes up with a routine impersonating Henri, which turns out to be a big success, well-received by both Henri and his wife Lili (Gene Tierney). Lili especially wants to meet Jack. Henri, meanwhile, has some other, more pressing things to do. Apparently he's trying to get the airplane he used for his flight mass-produced, but needs an investor for that. He can't find that man down here, so he's going to go to Paris and London if need be.

But that causes problems of its own. Lili was planning to hold a big soiree at the couple's villa, and the absence of Henri is definitely going to raise eyebrows, with people realizing his business might be doomed. So Henri's two business partners, who saw how successful Jack's impersonation was, offer him a large sum of money to pretend to be Henri for the night. Eventually, he agrees, but on the condition that Lili not be told.

The business partners tell Lili anyway without informing Jack; since Lili knows it's Jack this results in some complications of a sort you can imagine. Further problems come when Periton (Jean Murat) shows up at the soiree looking to negotiate, something Jack definitely can't do because he doesn't know anything about the business deal. Henri, realizing going to London won't work, returns, and now with Henri and a lookalike there it's going to cause more confusion for both Periton and Lili, with consequences for Jack and Henri.

On the Riviera is a pleasant enough movie, although it's one that I think is more obviously not going to be for everybody. The stage show musical numbers definitely slow the movie down, and Danny Kaye can be a bit of an acquired taste (although I find him much more tolerable here than in other movies). The story works reasonably well, even though there is for me the inevitable problem of people having to add lie upon lie to keep the ruse going. Still, it's the sort of pre-Cinemascope fluff that Fox was pretty good at churning out, and you could find worse examples.

On the Riviera is not avaiable at the TCM shop, but does seem to be available at Amazon. (Note that the Blu-ray packaging really doesn't give a good impression of what the movie is about.)