Directed by: Henry Koster

Starring: Danny Kaye, Walter Slezak, Barbara Bates, Elsa Lanchester, Gene Lockhart, Alan Hale, Walter Catlett, Rhys Williams

STORY

Poor Georgi just can't seem to get anything right — which is precisely what makes him so much fun to watch.

Georgi, played with boundless energy by Danny Kaye, is an innocent, good-hearted young man working as a stooge for the traveling medicine salesman Yakov. There's just one problem: Georgi has a conscience. When he refuses to help swindle a group of peasants with Yakov's phony miracle elixir, he suddenly finds himself unemployed, hungry and wandering into the small European town of Brodny.

And Brodny has problems of its own.

The town's officials are spectacularly corrupt. The mayor and his cronies have been helping themselves to public money, abusing their positions and generally behaving exactly like the sort of officials who do NOT want an Inspector General arriving from the government to examine their books.

So when Georgi turns up at precisely the wrong moment, the terrified officials reach one magnificent conclusion:

He must be the Inspector General traveling in disguise.

Suddenly the penniless wanderer is treated like royalty. He is fed, flattered, bribed and welcomed into the mayor's home while Georgi tries desperately to understand why everyone has become so incredibly nice to him.

Then Yakov reappears.

Unlike Georgi, Yakov immediately realizes what has happened — and recognizes a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to profit from it. Soon Georgi is caught in an increasingly ridiculous web of mistaken identity, political corruption, romance, attempted murder and outright panic.

And there is one rather significant complication still coming to Brodny.

The real Inspector General is on his way.

Inspired by Nikolai Gogol's celebrated stage comedy, The Inspector General gives Danny Kaye a glorious playground for the combination that made him unique: physical comedy, verbal dexterity, music, innocence and seemingly limitless comic energy. Beneath all the lunacy is a wonderfully simple idea — drop one fundamentally decent man into a town filled with people who have something to hide and watch guilty consciences do the rest.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
FROM GOGOL TO DANNY KAYE

The movie was inspired by Nikolai Gogol's famous 1836 play The Government Inspector, also widely known as The Inspector General. Gogol's satire of bureaucracy, corruption and mistaken identity had already inspired numerous international screen adaptations before Danny Kaye stepped into Georgi's shoes. AFI notes earlier Russian, Czech and Chinese film versions of Gogol's work.

DANNY KAYE COMES TO WARNER BROS.

The Inspector General marked Danny Kaye's first starring performance for Warner Bros. By this point Kaye was already established as one of Hollywood's most distinctive comic performers, but the film gave him an ideal vehicle for his remarkable combination of singing, rapid-fire delivery and physical comedy.

IT ALMOST HAD ANOTHER TITLE

During production, The Inspector General carried the working title Happy Times. That title survived in one of the film's songs, written by Sylvia Fine.

MRS. DANNY KAYE WAS A MAJOR PART OF THE MAGIC

Sylvia Fine wasn't merely Danny Kaye's wife. She was an enormously important creative collaborator in his career. Fine served as associate producer on The Inspector General and wrote original material for the film, including songs performed by Kaye. AFI officially credits Fine as associate producer.

A GOLDEN GLOBE-WINNING SCORE

Johnny Green served as musical director and provided the film's incidental score, and his work earned the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Score.

WHAT A COMIC SUPPORTING CAST

Danny Kaye may be the center of the whirlwind, but look at the people surrounding him: Walter Slezak as Yakov, Elsa Lanchester as Maria, Gene Lockhart as the mayor, Alan Hale as Kovatch and Walter Catlett as Colonel Castine. Rhys Williams eventually arrives as the man everyone in Brodny should have been worrying about in the first place — the actual Inspector General.

AINTOID: THE GREAT ALAN HALE

Classic-film fans will immediately recognize Alan Hale, one of Hollywood's great character actors and a frequent screen companion of Errol Flynn. The Inspector General was among Hale's final films; he died in January 1950, only weeks after the movie's release.

AINTOID: TECHNICOLOR MAKES THE FARCE EVEN BIGGER

Rather than presenting Gogol's world as a dark political satire, Warner Bros. transformed the story into a lavish Technicolor musical comedy. The color, costumes, sets and musical sequences help turn Brodny into a wonderfully heightened storybook world — the perfect setting for Kaye's larger-than-life comic style.

AINTOID: BEN HECHT WAS THERE — MAYBE

AFI records that a 1947 Los Angeles Times item reported that celebrated writers Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer were working on a script for the picture. However, AFI notes that their contribution to the finished film is doubtful. The credited screenwriters are Philip Rapp and Harry Kurnitz.

AINTOID: BEHIND THE CAMERA

The film was produced by Jerry Wald for Warner Bros., photographed by Elwood Bredell and edited by Rudi Fehr. Robert Haas served as art director, while Fred M. MacLean handled set decoration.

AINTOID: WHEN THE REAL INSPECTOR ARRIVES...

The entire joke works because Brodny's corrupt officials essentially convict themselves. Georgi doesn't expose them through brilliant detective work. Their own fear causes them to shower an innocent stranger with attention, favors and bribes because they assume he already knows what they've done.

And then, after all that panic, the real Inspector General arrives.

Sometimes the funniest punishment is simply getting exactly what you were afraid was coming.