Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; January 18, 1911 – March 3, 1987) was an American actor, dancer, singer and comedian. His performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire novelty songs.
Kaye starred in 23 films, notably Wonder Man (1945), The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), White Christmas (1954), and The Court Jester (1955). His films were popular, especially for his performances of patter songs and favorites such as "Inchworm" and "The Ugly Duckling".
He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honor in 1986 for his years of work with the organization.
Early life and education David Daniel Kaminsky was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 18, 1911 (though he would later say 1913),FBI records and SSDI show 1911. to Russian Jewish immigrants Jacob and Clara () Kaminsky. He was the youngest of three sons. His parents and older brothers Larry and Mac left Yekaterinoslav (present-day Dnipro, Ukraine) two years before Danny's birth; he was their only son born in the United States.
He attended Public School 149 in East New York, Brooklyn (eventually renamed to honor him), where he began entertaining his classmates with songs and jokes. He attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, but he did not graduate.
His mother died when he was in his early teens. Not long after, Kaye and his friend Louis ran away to Florida. Kaye sang while Louis played the guitar, and the pair eked out a living for a while. When Kaye returned to New York, his father did not pressure him to return to school or work, giving his son the chance to mature and discover his abilities. Kaye said that as a young boy, he had wanted to be a surgeon, but the family could not afford medical education.
After leaving school, he held a succession of jobs as a soda jerk, auto insurance investigator, and office clerk. Most ended with his being fired. He lost the insurance job when he made an error that cost the insurance company $40,000 ($600,000 in 2019 adjusted for inflation). A dentist who hired him to look after his office over lunch and run errands fired him when he found Kaye using his dental drill on the office woodwork. In 1939, Kaye met the same dentist's daughter, Sylvia Fine, at an audition, and in 1940, they eloped. He learned his trade in his teenaged years in the Catskills as a tummler (master of ceremonies) in the Borscht Belt.
Kaye's first break came in 1933 when he joined the Three Terpsichoreans, a vaudeville dance act. They opened in Utica, New York, where he used the stage name Danny Kaye for the first time. The act toured the United States and in Asia with the show La Vie Paree. The troupe left for a six-month tour of Asia on February 8, 1934. During its stay in Osaka, Japan, a typhoon hit the city. The troupe's hotel suffered heavy damage. The strong wind hurled a piece of the hotel's cornice into Kaye's room. By evening's performance time, the city was in the grip of the storm. With no power, the audience became restless and nervous. To calm them, Kaye went on stage holding a flashlight to illuminate his face and sang every song he could recall as loudly as he was able.
The experience of trying to entertain audiences who did not speak English inspired him to do the pantomime gestures, songs, and facial expressions that eventually made his reputation. Sometimes, he found them necessary when ordering a meal. Kaye's daughter Dena relates a story her father told about being in a restaurant in China and trying to order chicken. Kaye flapped his arms and clucked, giving the waiter an imitation of a chicken. The waiter nodded in understanding, bringing Kaye two eggs. His interest in cooking began on the tour.
Jobs were in short supply when Kaye returned to the United States, and he struggled for bookings. One job was working in a burlesque revue with fan dancer Sally Rand. After the dancer dropped a fan while trying to chase away a fly, Kaye was hired to watch the fans, so they were always held in front of her. By 1937 he was working in the Catskills under the name Danny Kolbin.
Comedy star
Educational Pictures In 1937 Danny Kaye signed with New York-based Educational Pictures for a series of two-reel comedies. Now billed as "Danny Kaye", he established himself in support of character comic Imogene Coca. He was then elevated to co-starring roles (opposite mild-mannered comic Charles Kemper) and then starring roles, sometimes playing a manic, dark-haired, fast-talking Russian. One of his leading ladies at Educational was the young June Allyson. The Kaye series ended abruptly when the studio shut down production at the end of 1937; Kaye had already left the studio behind when his last two shorts, Cupid Takes a Holiday and Money on Your Life, were released in 1938.Boxoffice, July 23, 1938, p. 126. Years later, after Kaye became a major comedy star, producer Robert M. Savini cashed in by compiling three of Kaye's Educational shorts into a four-reel featurette, The Birth of a Star (1944).The Exhibitor, Nov. 29, 1944, p. 1625.
Return to the stage His next venture was a short-lived Broadway show with Sylvia Fine as the pianist, lyricist, and composer. The Straw Hat Revue opened on September 29, 1939, and closed after 10 weeks, but critics noticed Kaye's work. The reviews brought an offer for both Kaye and his bride Sylvia to work at La Martinique, a New York City nightclub. Kaye performed with Sylvia as his accompanist. At La Martinique, playwright Moss Hart saw Danny perform, and that led to Hart's casting him in his hit Broadway comedy Lady in the Dark.
In 1941, aged 30, Kaye scored a triumph playing Russell Paxton in Lady in the Dark, starring Gertrude Lawrence. His show-stopping number was "Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)" by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin in which he sang the names of a string of Russian composers at breakneck speed, seemingly without taking a breath. In the next Broadway season, he was the star of a show about a young man who is drafted called Let's Face It!.
Hollywood fame His feature-film début was in producer Samuel Goldwyn's Technicolor 1944 comedy Up in Arms, a remake of Goldwyn's Eddie Cantor comedy Whoopee! (1930). Studio mogul Goldwyn wanted Kaye's prominent nose fixed to look less Jewish; Kaye refused, but he did allow his red hair to be bleached blond, apparently because it looked better in Technicolor.
Kaye starred in a radio program, The Danny Kaye Show, on CBS from 1945 to 1946. The program's popularity rose quickly. Within a year, he tied with Jimmy Durante for fifth place in the Radio Daily popularity poll. Kaye was asked to participate in a USO tour following the end of World War II. It meant that he would be absent from his radio show for nearly two months at the beginning of the season. Kaye's friends filled in with a different guest host each week. Kaye was the first American actor to visit postwar Tokyo. He had toured there some ten years before with the vaudeville troupe. When Kaye asked to be released from his radio contract in mid-1946, he agreed not to accept a regular radio show for one year and only limited guest appearances on other radio programs. Many of the show's episodes survive today, notable for Kaye's opening signature patter ("Git gat gittle, giddle-di-ap, giddle-de-tommy, riddle de biddle de roop, da-reep, fa-san, skeedle de woo-da, fiddle de wada, reep!").
Kaye starred in several movies with actress Virginia Mayo in the 1940s, and is known for films such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), On the Riviera (1951) co-starring Gene Tierney, Knock on Wood (1954), White Christmas (1954), The Court Jester (1956), Me and the Colonel (1958), and Merry Andrew (1958). Kaye starred in two pictures based on biographies, Hans Christian Andersen (1952) about the Danish storyteller and The Five Pennies (1959) about jazz pioneer Red Nichols. His wife, writer/lyricist Sylvia Fine, wrote many of the tongue-twisting songs for which Kaye became famous. She was also an associate film producer. Some of Kaye's films included the theme of doubles, two people who look identical (both played by him) being mistaken for each other to comic effect. While his wife wrote most of Kaye's material, he created much of it himself, often while performing. Kaye had one character he never shared with the public; Kaplan, the owner of a rubber company, came to life only for family and friends. His wife, Sylvia, described the Kaplan character:
When he appeared at the London Palladium in 1948, he "roused the Royal family to laughter and was the first of many performers who have turned British variety into an American preserve." Life described his reception as "worshipful hysteria" and noted that the royal family, for the first time, left the royal box to watch from the front row of the orchestra. He related that he had no idea of the familial connections when the Marquess of Milford Haven introduced himself after a show and said he would like his cousins to see Kaye perform. Kaye stated he never returned to the venue because no way existed to recreate the magic of that time. Kaye had an invitation to return to London for a Royal Variety Performance in November of the same year. When the invitation arrived, Kaye was busy with The Inspector General (which had a working title of Happy Times). Warner Bros. stopped the film to allow their star to attend. When his Decca labelmates The Andrews Sisters began their engagement at the London Palladium on the heels of Kaye's successful 1948 appearance there, the trio was well received and David Lewin of the Daily Express declared: "The audience gave the Andrews Sisters the Danny Kaye roar!"
He hosted the 24th Academy Awards in 1952. The program was broadcast on radio; telecasts of the Oscar ceremony started the very following year, in 1953. During the 1950s, Kaye visited Australia, where he played Buttons in a production of Cinderella in Sydney. In 1953, Kaye started a production company, Dena Pictures, named for his daughter. Knock on Wood was the first film produced by his firm. The firm expanded into television in 1960 under the name Belmont Television.
Television Kaye entered television in 1956, on the CBS show See It Now with Edward R. Murrow. The Secret Life of Danny Kaye combined his 50,000-mile, ten-country tour as UNICEF ambassador with music and humor. His first solo effort was in 1960 with a one-hour special produced by Sylvia and sponsored by General Motors, with similar specials in 1961 and 1962.
He hosted The Danny Kaye Show from 1963 to 1967; it won four Emmy awards and a Peabody award. His last cinematic starring role came in 1963's The Man from the Diners' Club.
Beginning in 1964, he acted as television host to the CBS telecasts of MGM's The Wizard of Oz. Kaye did a stint as a What's My Line? mystery guest on the Sunday-night CBS-TV quiz program. Kaye was later a guest panelist on that show. He also appeared on the interview program Here's Hollywood. In the 1970s, Kaye tore a ligament in his leg during the run of the Richard Rodgers musical Two by Two, but went on with the show, appearing with his leg in a cast and cavorting on stage in a wheelchair. He had done much the same on his television show in 1964, when his right leg and foot were burned from a cooking accident. Camera shots were planned so television viewers did not see Kaye in his wheelchair.
In 1976, he played Geppetto in a television musical adaptation of Pinocchio with Sandy Duncan in the title role. Kaye portrayed Captain Hook opposite Mia Farrow in a musical version of Peter Pan featuring songs by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse. He later guest-starred in episodes of The Muppet Show and The Cosby Show, and in the 1980s revival The Twilight Zone.