Tinseltown folklore has it that James Thurber hated the Hollywood version of his famous short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Thurber only hated the Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo retelling of his famous tale (1947) since he wasn’t around to comment about the Ben Stiller edition released in 2013.
Thurber could be, by all accounts, prickly. His disdain might seem surprising since he is given a writing credit for the screenplay. He definitely wrote parts of the movie – some would argue the best parts – since these also show up in the short story, which only runs a little more than 5 pages. It appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1939 and was included in Thurber’s anthology of short stories “My World and Welcome To It” in 1942.
Thurber could be, by all accounts, prickly … and very funny. Tinseltown folklore has it that he offered Sam Goldwyn $10,000 to not make the movie. After viewing the completed film, Thurber is supposed to have commented, “Did anyone catch the name of this picture?”
A movie fan might wonder what is missing? The short story ends with Mitty cooly smoking a cigarette as he images himself facing a final test, a firing squad, after he endures a day of shopping with his wife.
Leading up to this final act of bravery – all of it the product of his imagination — he has successfully navigating a Hydroplane through a terrible storm (saving all aboard), performed a delicate brain operation after fixing a malfunctioning medical device with a fountain pen (it goes “pocketa-pocketa-pocketa”), testified as an expert witness at his own murder trial, and agreed to certain death by flying a World War I suicide mission solo despite his comrade’s warning: “It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air.”
All those scenes, written by Thurber, appear in the 1947 movie. There are some variations: In the movie, Captain Mitty is shooting down Nazi aircraft to better fit the new timeline. Also, MGM added more acts of imagined heroism: Mitty as a Mississippi gambler defeating a cheating heel; Mitty as a cowboy looking for a fight in a western town that closely resembles a movie set. What is missing in the mind of James Thurber? It may not have been the missing parts as much as what was added. What was added was Danny Kaye shtick.
Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; January 18, 1913 – March 3, 1987) was a popular American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. His best known performances, his “shtick,” are described as “physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire nonsense songs.” Danny Kaye’s wife, Sylvia Fine, added two such nonsense songs to the picture. She is singled out in the opening movie credits with a “Words and Music … by Sylvia Fine” acknowledgement.
In the first, Kay plays a mid- European professor impersonating most of the instruments of the orchestra. In the second, he is “Anatole of Paris” who makes women’s hats: “The hats I sell make husband’s yell.” Some viewers may have wondered what happened to the bold adventure fantasies.
There is one added scene where Kaye as Mitty flees to a pet store – he is trying to elude a bad guy – and hides among a rack of dog leashes before strapping a leather dog muzzle over his face to avoid recognition. (What?) In the “cowboy” sequence, the outfit he wears might have been borrowed from a toy store window. Fans of Danny Kaye, and there were many, loved it.
The 1947 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty grossed approximately $1 million at the box office, a reasonable showing for the time. Danny Kaye went on to television success with the Danny Kaye Show on CBS which ran from 1963-67, and he is still honored with fan websites today. The film was directed in bright and beautiful MGM Technicolor by Norman Z. McLeod, one of Hollywood’s leading early comedy directors. There are supporting performances from Virginia Mayo as the girl of Mitty’s fantasies, Boris Karloff as a villain in cahoots with spies, Fay Bainter as Mitty’s overprotective mother, Ann Rutherford as his silly girlfriend, and Thurston Hall as his boss.