The potential for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty being remade prompted me to seek out the original. Considering any number of Hollywood types have been attached to the remake without any sort of real forward progress being achieved made watching the original a better move than sitting around and waiting for millionaires to get out of their own way. Who knows if that remake’s actually gonna come around. In the meantime, we have Danny Kaye to entertain us.

Initially released back in 1947 and based on a short story by James Thurber, the title character’s a regular guy, if not a bit sheltered and withdrawn. Walter still lives with his mother, whose taken on the qualities of a work place boss over time, going so far as to ostensibly arrange the remained of her son’s life, including picking out his soon-to-be wife. Life isn’t that much more engaging in the work place as the titular character navigates a corporate publishing firm by allowing his boss to steal ideas and dole out new assignments. Of course, proof reading pulp fiction isn’t the most horrible job in the world and one Walter’s well suited to.

During his daily job, editing and re-writing, the main character frequently detaches from reality and imagines that he’s in whatever fictional prose he’s in the middle of proofing. Each of these day-dreams finds itself related to audiences in weird dream sequences in which the titular character might be anything from a sailor to savior, herding the wrong headed masses to proper realizations. Admittedly, Walter’s day-dreams beat out real life. But that’s what causes concern. An ever increasing variety of spaced-out moments makes Walter’s family reluctant to believe some of what he begins to tell them. Of course, who’d believe it if someone told them a Boris Karloff looking bad guy was stalking them.

Coming so late in the monster-man’s career, it’s a bit sad to watch Karloff play the bad guy again, this time clearly not in supreme health. But with such a familiar and mischevious demeanor, he pulls it off with aplomb. Karloff’s appearance coincides with Watler’s new (and dare I say, better) love interest. Clearly, there’s a change off into the future and it’s marked with this new woman’s arrival. If The Secret Life of Walter Mitty gets a bit tedious with all those dreamy asides, the conclusion’s worth wading through it all. Walter even gets a better job.