DANNY KAYE Vol.2
‘For Kids’ Original 1947-1955 Recordings
I became an entertainer not because I wanted to but because I was meant to. – Danny Kaye
Whether it’s the comical mimicry of his various
Tubby The Tuba guises, or the sham horror of
‘Manic Depressive Presents’ that we remember
best, showman Danny Kaye still looms large on
the mental backburners of the generations for
whom he was once a Family Favourite. There
was in the delivery of this seemingly indefatigable
children’s entertainer supreme something
irrepressibly, uniquely zany which logged easily
into the impressionable minds of the young.
Think of Danny on records and the sad tale of
The Ugly Duckling will come instantly to
mind, but young and old alike were also
captivated by his madcap antics and highly
individual, incisive way with tongue-twisters of
the “Frim Fram Sauce” or “Bloop-Bleep” variety.
Singing-actor, dancer, comedian, writer and
all-round entertainer David Daniel Kaminsky
was born in Brooklyn,NY, on 18 January 1913.
His Ukrainian Jewish immigrant parents had
ambitions for their son to join the medical
profession, but an innate talent for buffoonery
and the quick-fire retort apparent from David’s
earliest years prevailed until, more inclined to
the stage, he dropped out of high school and in
1929 hit the road to Florida with his stage-partner
Louis Eilson. Returning to New York the duo,
now dubbed Red & Blackie, performed at select
evening functions whilst maintaining their ‘dayjobs’:
Danny worked variously as barman,
waiter and inspector for a motor insurance
company. Later, the duo worked summer seasons
at holiday camps on the ‘Borscht Circuit’ in the
Catskill Mountains, until 1933, when Danny
joined vaudeville dancers David Harvey and
Kathleen Young, to form The Three Terpsichoreans.
After a five-month US tour the trio sailed
for the Far East, and there Kaye truly learned his
trade, performing to non-English-speaking
Chinese, Japanese and Malayan audiences.
Returning to the USA in 1936, Danny
teamed with Nick Long Jr and toured with Abe
Lyman and his band and made some ‘unpromising
two-reelers’. His first London appearance, at the
Dorchester Hotel in 1938,was a virtual failure.
How curious that this then unknown,would a
decade later enjoy lasting popularity in Britain.
In 1940 he married a girl from his native
Brooklyn, the pianist-composer Sylvia Fine
(1913-1991), who coached and promoted him
(‘I am a wife-made man’, he would quip in later
years) and furnished him with the first of a long
succession of tailor-made novelty showstoppers,
which he interpolated into Straw Hat Revue.
By the following year an established figure on
Broadway, Danny next appeared to unequivocal
critical acclaim (alongside Victor Mature, Bert
Lytell and Gertrude Lawrence) in the Kurt
Weill–Ira Gershwin musical Lady In The Dark.
During 1941 he also made his first recordings
(for Columbia), in addition to further appearances
on Broadway, in Cole Porter’s Let’s Face It. His
real breakthough, however, came in 1944 via the
silver screen and a five-year contract from Sam
Goldwyn, which incorporated the famous
‘blond-rinse’ clause.
The period of Danny Kaye’s greatest
popularity was bolstered considerably by his
debut in Up In Arms (1944) and, launched upon
a prestigious film career, he went on to make
(also for Goldwyn) Wonder Man (1945), the
quasi-autobiographical Kid From Brooklyn
(1946) and The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty
(scored by David Raksin and including Sylvia
Fine’s “The Little Fiddle” (subtitled ‘Symphony
for unstrung tongue’)). The latter was one of
Danny’s most endearing and enduring
characterisations as the reticent daydreamer, and
proved his first major screen milestone.
Between 1945 and 1946 his own CBS radio
show, featuring Harry James and Danny’s
sometime lover Eve Arden, became an eagerlyawaited
weekly attraction. In 1948 he scored a
hit with a season at the London Palladium and
remained ever after a favourite with British
audiences, returning in 1949 for the first of
many Royal Command Performances and in
1952 for a provincial tour. In Canada, in 1950,
he gave 14 consecutive shows at the 24,000-seat
National Exhibition Stadium which were all sellouts
and in 1951 he made the first of many
appearances as a ‘send-up’ conductor with the
New York Philharmonic. Among his later films
(made freelance for Warners, Paramount and
Columbia) best remembered are On The Riviera
(1951), the ‘controversial’ children’s epic Hans
Christian Andersen (a 1952 money-spinner, this,
with a No.1 bestselling soundtrack album),
Knock On Wood (1953, reputedly Kaye’s own
favourite) and, for TV, Peter Pan (1975) and
Pinocchio (1976), Merry Andrew (1958), The
Five Pennies (1959) and On The Double (1961).
Danny Kaye had his own American TV show
from 1963 to 1967 and his work in that genre
and on screen continued until the late 1970s. In
all he appeared in more than twenty films. In
1970 he returned to Broadway as Noah in the
ill-fated Richard Rodgers–Martin Charnin
musical collaboration Two By Two and during
the next two decades he carved himself a new
niche as a classical orchestral conductor and
presented such TV shows as Peter Pan,
Pinocchio and Danny Kaye’s Look At The
Metropolitan Opera. As a kind of ambassador
for UNICEF from the mid-1950s onwards he
travelled far and wide around the world,
working tirelessly on behalf of children’s
charities, often piloting his own jet for the sake
of convenience. Awarded a Special Academy
Award in 1954 ‘for his unique talents, his service
to the Industry and the American people’ and
various Tonies for his stage work, he was also
decorated with the Croix de la Légion
d’Honneur, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian
Award and the Danish Knight’s Cross of the
Order of Danneborg.
Danny Kaye died in Los Angeles, California,
on 3 March 1987.
Peter Dempsey, 2006