On the Double (film)

On the Double

1961 movie poster
Directed by Melville Shavelson
Produced by Jack Rose
Written by Melville Shavelson
Jack Rose
Starring Danny Kaye
Dana Wynter
Wilfrid Hyde-White
Margaret Rutherford
Diana Dors
Music by Leith Stevens
Cinematography Harry Stradling
Geoffrey Unsworth
Edited by Frank Bracht
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release dates
  • May 19, 1961 (1961-05-19)
Running time
92 min
Country United States
Language English

On The Double is a 1961 film, directed by Melville Shavelson, who also wrote the screenplay with Jack Rose. It stars Danny Kaye who plays, as in many of his films, two roles — in this case, an American soldier and a British General.

Plot

The year is 1944. The place is an Allied army camp in southeast England, full of soldiers waiting for the D-day invasion.

Enter Ernie Williams, a most reluctant American soldier. A hypochondriac and a coward, Ernie does have one talent; he is a superb mimic. One night in the mess, he is persuaded to impersonate the commander, General Sir Lawrence MacKenzie Smith. Using this persona, he attempts to go AWOL, but does not get further than the gate.

With a court-martial staring him in the face for impersonating an officer, Ernie is in big trouble. But Colonel Somerset (Wilfrid Hyde-White) of Military Intelligence recruits Ernie for "Operation Dead Pigeon". He is to impersonate the General (to whom he has a striking resemblance) for real, in order to flush out a suspected plot to kill the General, and unmask several officers known to be German agents.

Ernie is unable to fool the General's wife, Lady Margaret (Dana Wynter), but he is able to deceive the officers at a regimental party. On her advice, and to further the deceit, he appears to get drunk and has a fight with his wife. His hard-drinking Scottish aunt, Lady Vivian (Margaret Rutherford) is highly suspicious, but is too drunk to take it further.

The General also has a mistress, Sergeant Stanhope (played by blonde bombshell Diana Dors), but Ernie finds out too late that she is a "plant" - a German agent. With her connivance, he is kidnapped and taken to Berlin. There, he manages to confuse the German interrogators, who want information about the projected Normandy landings, by talking arrant nonsense about non-existent operations and places. In the resultant confusion, he manages to escape and is chased through the streets of Berlin at night.

Ernie takes on several comic disguises to throw off his pursuers. Then he hides in a nightclub, but is forced to perform a cabaret act as Fraulein Lilli (copied from Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel). Finally, disguised as a pilot, he boards a German bomber and manages to parachute out over England. Captured and about to be shot as a spy, he is rescued at the last moment by Somerset.

By the end of the film, Ernie and Margaret are in love (the real General having been shot down in a plane).

Cast

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