THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 467, 4 June 1948, Page 24

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY

} (Goldwyn-RKO Radio) zs JV ERE going through!" The Commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold grey eye. "We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,’ said the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-poc-keta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot-window. .. . "Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?" "Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. % bo ae OR those who know (and love) their Thurber, it is perhaps unnecessary to emphasise that any resemblance between the original Secret Life of Walter Mitty and the film story is at best incidental. You can’t blow a miniature up into a mural without the sacrifice of some delicacy of tékture, but on the other hand looking at the film through the wrong end of one’s opera-glasses won’t get the story back to what it came from. Thurber’s celebrated short piece runs to some 2,500 words and -two characters. ~ Samuel Goldwyn’s film version covers about 10,000 feet of technicolour and involves Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, the Goldwyn Girls, Boris Karloff, Thurston Hall, and an assorted cast of minor comedians and sinister characters, Since release it has also involved Mr. Goldwyn in exchanges with the critics -and with Mr. Thurber, whose version. of the screen-script was apparently butchered to make a Hollywood holiday. So far as I am concerned (and though I am a devoted Thurber reader I’m not concerned very’ deeply) I think a good deal of this trouble and strife might have been judiciously circumnavigated by christening the film The Secret Lite of Danny Kaye, or even (and perhaps more accurately) The Secret Life of Samuel Goldwyn. The original Walter was as good as lost when the screen rights were bought, for the beauty of his story lay in its brevity. Maybe Mr. Goldwyn realised this-the children of this world have a disturbing habit of being wiser in their generation than the of light. Maybe he was just anxious to demonstrate the superiority of Hollywood, which has made a commercial success of the subconscious, over Thurber, who merely discovered it. But whatever motives-conscious .or sub-conscious-were operating the result is well-sustained comedy. For that a good deal of the credit must go to Danny Kaye. Like the original Walter Mitty (and for that matter, like 90 per cent. of the people who will go and laugh at him) Danny Kaye is a timid character with a

well-developed _fantasy-fife. Unlike Thurber’s creation, however, whose fantasies were a defence-mechanism evolved to protect him from the terrors of a technological civilisation, Danny | Kaye’s day-dreams are revealed as a sort of occupational affliction-a byproduct of his employment as readeg in a pulp-magazine factory. In addition, he has a doting mother, a petulant fiancee, and a prospective mother-in-law. who looks like the shape of unpleasant things to come-on their own, three excellent reasons for the cultivation of a secret life. Like the original Mitty, of course, Danny Kaye has several secret lives, and the dream-sequences in which he lives them are~ the highlights of the picture. In all of them-Mitty. the bucko clipper-skipper, Group-Captain Mitty, R.A.F., with his wings almost pushed off -his chest by his decorations, Gaylord Mitty the poker-faced Mississippi gambler, Walter Mitty the great surgeon, et al.-he is accompanied by the same gorgeous creature (Virginia Mayo), who represents, I suspect, Mr, Goldwyn’s contribution to the story. When this blonde walks slap-bang into his everyday waking life and gets him involved with a bunch of Nazi agents, poor Mitty hardly knows which life to call his own or what moment is going to be his next. In the end, inevitably, he outwits the villains and wins the girl, but only at the expense of a deal of boisterous farce superimposed rather arbitrarily on an already ade‘quate story. But by that time no one is in much of a mood to be critical. I don’t think’ anyone will be dis-pleased-the Thurberites will occasionally be stirred to pleasant. recollections of the original, those who like Danny Kaye for his own brand of tongue-twist-ing virtuosity will enjoy his two patter numbers, "I’m Anatole of Paris" and "Symphony for an Unstrung Tongue," and for the rest, who go simply to replenish their own secret lives, there is Miss Mayo and the Goldwyn Girls.