The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a movie made during World War II from a short story by James Thurber in which Danny Kaye plays a daydreaming young adult who nonetheless has a girlfriend. The film is enhanced by being in color, which was rare for that era. Walter Mitty imagines all sorts of exciting things he would rather be doing. In one set of scenes, he imagines what it would be like to be an RAF fighter pilot.

However, his patter-song that really goes through the roof is his playing a women's milliner, or professional hat-designer, named "Anatole of Paris." This is based on "Antoine de Paris," a women's hair-salon professional of that era, who became known to the general audience through being seen in The March of Time newsreel with many examples of the preposterous hairstyles he was able to get women to pay him to set up for them. Danny Kaye plays this character as fey and bubbly as he shows off absurd hats on models. The song is an example of the ridicule that gays would have received, though the last words in the song are "I hate women!" So it could have been a vindictive notion that the Walter Mitty character was acting out in his daydream.