On the Double (film)
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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.
[edit] Plot
The year is 1944. The place is an allied army camp in South-East England, full of soldiers waiting for the D-day landings.
Enter Ernie Williams, a most reluctant American soldier. A hypochondriac and a coward, Ernie does have one talent; he's a superb mimic. One night in the mess, he's persuaded to impersonate the commander, General Sir Lawrence MacKenzie Smith. Using this personna, he attempts to go AWOL, but doesn't get further than the gate.
With court-martial staring him in the face for impersonating an officer, Ernie's in big trouble. But Colonel Somerset (Wilfred Hyde-White) of Military Intelligence gets to hear about him, and recruits Ernie for "Operation Dead Pigeon". He is to impersonate the General 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 fool the other officers at a regimental party. On her advice, and to further the conceit, he appears to get drunk and has a fight with his wife. His hard-drinking sister, 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 finds out too late that she's a "plant" - a German agent. With her conivance, he's 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's rescued at the last moment by Somerset.
By the end of the movie, Ernie and Margaret are in love (the real General has died in battle).
