Walter Mitty a daydreaming pulp-fiction proofreader with an overprotective mother likes to imagine that he is a hero who experiences fantastic adventures. His dream becomes true when he accidentally meets a mysterious woman who hands him a little black book. According to her it contains the locations of the Dutch crown jewels hidden since World War II. Soon Mitty finds himself in the middle of a confusing conspiracy and has to admit that being a hero in real life isnt that easy.
Review
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 Kayes movies on WPIX when I was growing up). It usually gets on my nerves when I see movie characters allowing themselves to be as putupon and henpecked as Kayes 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 its that much more satisfying when Walter finally does tell off his obnoxious socalled 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 wasnt being quite fair. First off books and film have different storytelling requirements and second the first 10 minutes are almost straight from Thurbers story (except its 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 Walters literal and figurative dream girl Rosalind van Hoorn frequent Kaye costar 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 KayeSylvia 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 Peters grand home must be located in the Riverdale section of the Bronx where we used to live since it looks like the kind of homes we used to see while walking around in the Fieldston area and it didnt 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 Anthonys home in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN anybody know if these scenes might have been shot in the same houseset) I wish the DVD extras had included deleted scenes (theres a bit in the trailer with Karloff and Corden in a pub that I definitely dont 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 its pleasant plumpness in my opinion! ) in the intro and outro even though she only had time to say one line about most of her costars ("Ann Rutherford was delightful...Fay Bainter was a consummate actress...").