PASSPORT TO DESTINY
Dir. Ray McCarey, 1944.
United States. 65 min.
In English.
16mm.

“If you had a charmed life, what would you do?”
“I’d find my way to Germany, and I’d give that Mr. bloomin’ Hitler what for!”

Elsa Lanchester (the BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN) stars as Ella Muggins, a Cockney cleaning lady who feels proud and empowered in her work attending to the office of the head of the firm. But with the 2nd World War hitting its heights, her working class life in London is soon to be interrupted. After her regimental sergeant major husband perishes (lost not to the war, but underneath a motor truck in Piccadilly Circus) Ella inherits from him a magical amulet. According to her husband who was known for spinning yarns, the amulet—or magic eye—carries with it powers of protection. After a close encounter with a bomb care of the Germans’ air raids, Ella is convinced of her husband’s tall tales, and with a new lease on her ‘charmed’ life, she makes her way to Germany to do what the British military seemingly can’t: kill Hitler.

PASSPORT TO DESTINY is a charmingly hilarious comedic romp, and a lovely piece of anti-Nazi do-it-yourself regime change propaganda care of RKO. With Lanchester turning a brilliant performance as the naively headstrong Muggins, whose fortuitous actions through Germany resemble that of the Mr. Magoo character, who himself would not be created for another 5 years. Released in early 1944 only a handful of months before the Allied forces’ invasion at Normandy, and over a year before Hitler would eventually blow his own brains out.