The Inspector General Reviews

“Kaye Capers Spark McDonald’s Comedy”
Eugene Register-Guard – Jan. 16, 1950

           Danny Kaye’s latest picture, “The Inspector General,” returns the popular comedian to the screen in another of his Technicolor musical comedies. It is the McDonald Theater’s offering this week, Thursday through Saturday.
            Kaye’s new movie follows the highly successful “Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Previews say the film has some Kaye capers that are Danny at his delightful best.
            An odd sequence has four Danny Kayes singing a quartet. Three of the images are ethereal sub-selves of the baffled Kaye telling the original Danny how to conduct himself.
            A mix-up has brought about an assumption that Danny is Napoleon’s Inspector General going about hanging crooked municipal officials.
            Actually he is only the illiterate stooge to a medicine-show humbug, portrayed by Walter Slexak. But, believing him to be the ruthless agent traveling incognito, Mayor Gene Lockhart and other thieving town office-holders can’t do enough to flatter and fete him.
            One passage shows Kaye gorging himself at a loaded banquet table after two days’ starvation. One critic compared the scene to a Chaplin sequence.
            Police Chief Alan Hale lends the bewildered Danny oversized uniforms. Elsa Lanchester, as the mayor’s wife, makes she-wolf passes. Eye-filling Barbara Bates, playing a kitchen maid, catches his eye.
            After a tuneful, colorful time in the city, Danny is suddenly “de-throned” when the near-sighted and genuine Inspector General shows up—in the person of Walter Catlett. [Actually, the near-sighted man was a friend of the real Inspector General. The real Inspector General didn’t show up until the end of the movie. – J.N. webmistress]
            Warner Bros. produced and released the film. It plays with second feature “Red Desert” at the McDonald.

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