The Kid from Brooklyn

The Kid from Brooklyn casts Danny Kaye as a meek milkman who somehow becomes a boxer. That’s it, that’s the entire premise of this one. Many of the usual parts are here again, Vera-Ellen, Virginia Mayo, the Goldwyn Girls, songs and dances, bits of slapstick comedy. It’s pure Kaye formula by this point, which is maybe not the worst thing.

Plenty of movie stars had formulas built around their image, so why should Kaye be any different. The Marx Brothers always brought a bit of anarchy to various high society and monied arenas, Gene Kelly always put in an extended dream ballet, and Greta Garbo was always emotionally suffering, if not dying. It’s the variations on these images and themes that mark what films are best remembered and which are cast aside.

The Kid from Brooklyn’s lone new wrinkle is Eve Arden’s tart tongue, which adds some much-needed punch to these featherweight exercises. Otherwise, this one stalls a bit too much to add in these cliché bits. For Kaye’s superfans only.