WONDER MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 351, 15 March 1946, Page 18

WONDER MAN

(Goldwyn-RKO Radio)

T is always rash for a critic to turn prophet, but after Wonder Man I am prepared to suggest that in Danny

Kaye we have a comedian who might become eligible to be mentioned in the same breath with the Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and perhaps even Chaplin, as one of the few truly great and original comic geniuses of the screen. I say "might," because from what we have seen of him in Up in Arms and now Wonder Man, the admission of Danny Kaye into this highly select company cannot yet by any means be taken for granted. Still, the promise is there: a liveliness Of manner, a spontaneity of creative talent suggesting that he is not just a satisfactory vessel for somebody else’s jokes, but that the fun is actually bubbling up inside him and welling over. He is able not merely to sustain a comic situation through a long sequence, but to play it crescendo: an ability seen most notably in his impersonation of a Russian tenor suffering from hay-fever, and in the episode where he masquerades as an operatic star and, with gunmen waiting for him in the wings, contrives to convey a message to the police during a hectic performance of Cavalleria Rusticana. This operatic burlesque business is not new, but Kaye handles it with the comic inventiveness which is the mark of the true virtuoso. While few are likely to find it poisonous, Danny Kaye’s style of comedy may not be everybody’s meat. The frenzied, double-talk routine which he favoured in Up in Arms is less pronounced in this new picture, but his style of humour, though simpler, is still pretty abstract; far closer to the Marx Brothers than, say, to George Formby. With better direction, Wonder Man could have made even more than it does of its comic possibilities. Nevertheless, for a farce the story is well above average and it has the considerable advantage of allowing Kaye to display his versatility as identical twins. As Buzzy Bellew, a_ self-satisfied nightclub entertainer, he gets himself murdered by gangsters for possessing dangerous infor- = As Edwin, Buzzy’s shy bookworm of a brother, he becomes the inpe for avenging his twin’s death when Buzzy’s ghost, encountering him on the scene of the crime, insists that he replace the murdered entertainer at the nightclub. To assist and encourage Edwin in this Hamlet-like duty, the ghost demonstrates that he can possess Edwin’s body at will. In the event, however, the ghost is not always on hand at crucial moments; and further complications arise through Buzzy’s love-life (represented by an agile little actress named Vera-Ellen) becoming entangled with Edwin’s (a pretty librarian, played by Virginia Mayo). If it had had a director as talented as its star, Wonder Man

could, with such a theme, have been a comic masterpiece. But though it is not quite that, it is certainly a first-rate eritertainment.