Ruth Leon recommends… The Inspector General – Danny Kaye

The Inspector General – Danny Kaye

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​ Even as a small child it was difficult to make me laugh, especially at things that were supposd to be funny. Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy left me cold and I could never understand why my friends laughed at their silly grown-up antics. I was the kid who never wanted a clown at my birthday party.

But then I encountered Danny Kaye. Not in person, obviously, but on film, and he made me fall off my chair every time. Whether he was singing a nonsense song or doing some complicated mime, or pretending to be a duck, I loved him. His Ugly Duckling song made me cry in sympathy, and I knew about inchworms almost before I could talk. I could sing, almost in tune, all his songs, even those which had no comprehensible lyrics.

I was four when he made the movie of The Inspector General and I insisted on seeing it twice around in the local cinema. (Remember when you could see a film twice just by staying in your seat?) How did I know about it at all? No idea, but I was a city kid and somebody must have mentioned it in connection with Danny Kaye.

The Inspector General is a Hollywood movie musical which bears only passing resemblance to the original satirical play on which it is loosely based, The Government Inspector by Russian dramatist and novelist, Nicolai Gogol. The play is a comedy of errors, satirizing greed, stupidity, and the extensive political corruption of Imperial Russia. Kaye’s version sets the story in Napoleon’s empire, instead of Russia, and the main character is Georgi, an illiterate clown fired from a traveling carnival for not being greedy or deceptive enough.  He wanders into a town which is meticulously preparing for a visit by a government inspector general. Mistaken for the official, the town caters to the clueless Georgi’s every whim–until the real inspector arrives.

I think everybody has something or someone that tickles their individual funny bone. Danny Kaye still does it for me, just as he did when I was four, but even if he’s not your bag, you can enjoy the meticulous artistry and thought that has gone into every moment of his performance in this film. I didn’t know about that when I was four. I just knew he made me laugh until I fell off my chair.

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