The Inspector General (1949) at Reel Classics: a review

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dir. Henry Koster at Warner Bros.
with Danny Kaye (as Georgi), Walter Slezak (as Yakov), Barbara Bates (as Leza), Elsa Lanchester (as Maria), Gene Lockhart (as the Mayor) and Rhys Williams (as the Inspector General)

If you’re a fan of Danny Kaye then this film is a treasure. Like most of his films, it’s a showcase for his exceptional talents as a comedian, and his talented supporting cast only adds to the hilarity. In it, Kaye plays an illiterate stooge in a traveling medicine show who wanders into a strange town and is mistaken by the town's corrupt officials for the Inspector General. Because the government official has been traveling in disguise to investigate corruption in the kingdom, and the mayor and his council believe they have identified him in Kaye, they make several attempts to assassinate him. The kindly townspeople are on his side however.

Standing out from Kaye’s usual antics in this film are an acrobatic sequence in a military training school in which Kaye wrestles with a dummy, and a few songs written by Sylvia Fine which are nice vehicles for Kaye’s vocal dexterity. Gene Lockhart is his usual bumbling self in this film and Slezak gives a good turn as the villain. Elsa Lanchester is probably the most entertaining of the supporting characters however, in her role as Lockhart’s wife who falls in love with Kaye.

Reviewed: February 27, 2000

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