secret life of walter mitty by james thurber

Come to think of it, I'm still out of it. Watching her and Kaye talking about corsets reminded me that when I was a teen, all women seemed to be wrapped up in inexplicable buckles, plastic straps, and clips that only a deranged mechanical engineer could design. Something to do with a murder Kaye witnesses (nobody believes him), a black book, Kaye singing silly songs, a chief conspirator nicknamed 'the Boot,' and a dazzling innocent blond - Virginia Mayo - who has a pretty sassy figure. The plot is a mystery about the planned theft of the Dutch Crown Jewels. 'Oh, we've already used that in 'The Revenge of the Gland Specialist',' objects Kaye. He's a copy editor at a pulp magazine in New York and Boris Karloff, he of the ominous lisp, is pitching him a story about a doctor who murders people without leaving a trace by pressing on a nerve at the base of the skull. The 'real' scenes are at least as amusing.

The famous fantasies are pretty much gotten out of the way before the movie is half over. Here Kaye is involved in one richly comic episode after another. It's probably Thurber's most popular story, although 'If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomatox' has more outright laughs. The plot violates James Thurber's short story, the point of which was that Walter Mitty daydreamed so much because his own life was so dull.

That's pretty much what he is here, and if you haven't seen a Danny Kaye movie this is a pretty funny introduction.

Whatever the setting, and there were many, Danny Kaye always played himself - the hypochondriacal, stuttering, cowardly, nervously fiddling neurotic.

Secret life of walter mitty by james thurber