Danny Kaye

NAME Danny Kaye, born David Daniel Kaminsky. He performed early in his career under the stage names Danny Kolbin and Red (of the duo "Red and Blackie") before settling on "Danny Kaye" in 1933. (1), (2)

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Danny Kaye was an American actor, singer, dancer and comedian best remembered for his manic pantomime, rapid-fire "patter songs" and tongue-twisting routines. He starred in classic films including White Christmas (1954) and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), as well as Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and The Court Jester (1956). Off screen he was UNICEF's first celebrity Goodwill Ambassador, once flying a jet to 65 cities in five days to publicise the charity. (3)

BIRTH He was born David Daniel Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, on January 18, 1911, though for most of his life he and the public believed the year to be 1913 — a discrepancy his daughter Dena only corrected publicly in 2013. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND Kaye was the youngest of three sons born to Jacob and Clara (née Nemerovsky) Kaminsky, Russian Jewish immigrants from Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro, Ukraine). His parents and two older brothers, Larry and Mac, had emigrated two years before his birth, making Danny the only son born on American soil. His father worked as a tailor after arriving in New York. 

CHILDHOOD Kaye grew up in the East New York section of Brooklyn, attending Public School 149, which was later renamed in his honour, where he entertained classmates with songs and jokes. 

His mother died when he was in his early teens, a loss that hit him hard, and not long afterward he and a friend, Louis Eilson, ran away to Florida, singing for money to get by. 

As a boy he dreamed of becoming a surgeon, but his family could not afford to send him to medical school. 

EDUCATION He attended Public School 149 in Brooklyn and later entered Thomas Jefferson High School, though he dropped out before graduating to pursue a career in entertainment and odd jobs. 

He received no formal musical education or dramatic training, learning to perform and sing entirely by ear and practice (4)

 His real education came on the "Borscht Belt" — the Catskill Mountain resorts — where he learned his craft as a tummler, or all-purpose entertainer, from around age 13 or 14. (5),

CAREER RECORD 1933 Kaye adopted the stage name "Danny Kaye" while touring with the vaudeville dance act the Three Terpsichoreans, later joining the revue La Vie Parée on a six-month tour of Asia, where his pantomime style developed out of the language barrier.

1937 He signed with New York's Educational Pictures, appearing in a series of low-budget two-reel comedy shorts as a fast-talking Russian character, ending when the studio folded in 1938.

1939 His Broadway debut came in The Straw Hat Revue, followed in 1941 by his star-making turn in Lady in the Dark, in which his rendition of "Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)" — naming more than 50 Russian composers in under 40 seconds — made him a sensation.

1944 He made his feature film debut in Samuel Goldwyn's Up in Arms, beginning a run of hit Technicolor musical comedies through the 1940s and 1950s, including Wonder Man (1945), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), White Christmas (1954) and The Court Jester (1956).

1954 He became UNICEF's first Goodwill Ambassador, a role he held until his death, combining humanitarian touring with entertainment specials such as The Secret Life of Danny Kaye (1956).

1963-1967 He hosted the top-rated variety series The Danny Kaye Show on CBS, which won four Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award.

1976 He owned a share of the newly formed Seattle Mariners baseball franchise alongside business partner Lester Smith, a stake he held until 1985. 

APPEARANCE Kaye was tall and lean, standing around 5 feet 11 inches, with a rubbery, expressive face that could shift instantly from manic energy to gentle warmth. He had naturally red hair, which Samuel Goldwyn had bleached blond for his early Technicolor films because it photographed better, and a prominent nose that Goldwyn once wanted him to have altered — a request Kaye refused. (5)

Danny Kaye

FASHION On screen Kaye's look varied wildly with his roles, from the medieval motley of The Court Jester to the sharp suits of Phil Davis in White Christmas, but off screen he favoured comfortable, casual clothing suited to his hobbies of flying and cooking rather than Hollywood glamour. Contemporary profiles note he was more at home in an apron in his custom Chinese kitchen than in formal attire. (6)

CHARACTER Those who knew him described Kaye as restlessly energetic and endlessly curious, a man who threw himself completely into whatever interested him, whether cooking, flying or conducting an orchestra. 

He could also be private and complex; his wife and closest collaborator, Sylvia Fine, once described a hidden alter-ego called "Kaplan," a pompous, illiterate character Kaye performed only for family and friends, sometimes staying "on Kaplan for two hours." (1)

SPEAKING VOICE Kaye's speaking and singing voice was famous for its elastic range and speed, capable of rattling off tongue-twisting lyrics at breakneck pace without seemingly pausing for breath, most notably in "Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)." 

Despite claiming he could not read music, he was said to have perfect pitch, and his vocal delivery could pivot in a moment from gibberish scat and mock-foreign dialects to tender, sincere balladry. 

SENSE OF HUMOUR His comedy relied on physical pantomime, absurd facial contortions and verbal dexterity rather than scripted one-liners, a style he first developed while performing for non-English-speaking audiences in Asia in the 1930s. 

He also delighted in private, semi-improvised comic routines, such as the "Kaplan" character, and was known for genuinely improvising much of his stage material even though his wife wrote the bulk of his songs. 

RELATIONSHIPS Kaye married Sylvia Fine, a pianist, composer and lyricist he met at a 1939 audition, on January 3, 1940, in Fort Lauderdale; she went on to write many of his signature songs and manage much of his career. 

The marriage endured until his death, aside from a separation in 1947 and 1948 during which Kaye was involved with actress Eve Arden, and the couple had one daughter, Dena, born in 1946, who became a journalist. 

Sylvia and Kaye, 1945

MONEY AND FAME By the mid-1940s Kaye was one of Hollywood's biggest box-office draws, headlining a run of lucrative Technicolor musical comedies for Samuel Goldwyn and later Paramount, and he expanded his fortune through business ventures including Kaye-Smith Enterprises, a chain of Pacific Northwest radio stations he co-founded with Lester Smith in 1958. 

His fame extended into humanitarian circles through UNICEF, and in 1976 his business group paid $6.2 million for the American League expansion franchise that became the Seattle Mariners. (7)

FOOD AND DRINK Kaye was a celebrated amateur chef with a particular passion for Chinese cuisine, studying for years under San Francisco restaurateurs Johnny Kan and Cecilia Chiang and eventually installing a custom Chinese kitchen — complete with a multi-burner wok stove and circulating ice water cooling system — in the alley behind his Beverly Hills home, which he nicknamed "Ying's Thing." 

He hosted lavish multi-course dinners there for guests including Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and Luciano Pavarotti, and chefs who trained him signed him an honorary "Meilleur Ouvrier de France" diploma, though he was not eligible for the official French professional title. (6), (8)

MOVIE CAREER Danny Kaye made his name in a run of hugely successful Technicolor comedies during the 1940s and 1950s, a period when Hollywood seemed to believe that every mild-mannered fellow with a funny voice and an alarming tendency to get into trouble deserved his own Technicolor epic. Kaye was particularly good at playing ordinary dreamers who found themselves deposited, usually with little warning and considerably less preparation, into extraordinary situations.

His film career took off with Up in Arms (1944), followed by Wonder Man (1945) and The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), which established him as one of Hollywood's most distinctive comic performers. In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), he played the timid Walter Mitty, whose spectacular daydreams are rather more exciting than his actual life. The Inspector General (1949) gave him another chance to turn confusion into an art form, while Hans Christian Andersen (1952) allowed him to combine comedy, music and dance in a much more sentimental setting.

Then came White Christmas (1954), in which Kaye teamed with Bing Crosby in one of the most enduring musical comedies of the era, and The Court Jester (1955), arguably his great comic showcase. As the hapless Hubert Hawkins, Kaye rattled through tongue-twisters, disguises, swordplay and general medieval mayhem with the sort of confidence that suggests he had been born knowing precisely how to make a fool of himself in several languages.

Kaye's appeal went beyond slapstick. He was an accomplished singer, dancer and mimic, and his ability to switch rapidly between characters, accents and absurd verbal routines made him unusually versatile. His films often gave him elaborate comic set pieces, but he could also carry a musical number or a more tender scene without making it feel like a detour from the comedy. By the end of the 1950s, he had become one of America's best-known entertainers, equally at home in movies, on television and on the stage.

MUSIC AND ARTS Beyond acting, Kaye had a substantial recording career, scoring hits with songs including "Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo)" and "The Woody Woodpecker Song" with the Andrews Sisters, and "Wonderful Copenhagen" and "Thumbelina" from Hans Christian Andersen. 

He frequently guest-conducted elite orchestras—including the New York Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, and Philadelphia Orchestra—combining serious musical direction with comedic antics like conducting with flyswatters or flyswatter batons. He did this despite being unable to read music, learning entire scores by ear and raising more than five million dollars for musicians' pension funds through his comic charity concerts. (4)

LITERATURE He loved reading classic literature, children's fables, and biographies, and he authored and narrated several children's storybook records, including collections of Hans Christian Andersen tales.

Kaye brought several literary and folkloric figures to the screen, most notably playing the title role in Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and Walter Mitty, the daydreaming clerk from James Thurber's short story, in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947). He also appeared as Captain Hook in a 1976 television musical version of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan and voiced Geppetto from Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio the same year. (1), (18)

NATURE Danny Kaye’s best-documented connection with the outdoors was aviation. A licensed pilot and Learjet-qualified flyer, he travelled widely on behalf of UNICEF and flew a jet to 65 cities in the United States and Canada in five days to publicise its Halloween fundraising campaign. (4)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Alongside cooking and flying, Kaye was a lifelong, passionate baseball fan devoted to the Brooklyn (later Los Angeles) Dodgers, possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of the game and reputedly excelling as an amateur second baseman. He recorded the novelty hit "D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song (Oh, Really? No, O'Malley!)" during the 1962 pennant race and later became a part-owner of the Seattle Mariners. (7)

He was also an enthusiastic golfer before shifting his energy toward flying in 1959. 

SCIENCE AND MATHS Kaye's boyhood ambition had been to become a surgeon, and in adulthood he was honoured as an honorary member of both the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Pediatrics in recognition of his charitable work and interest in medicine. He maintained a fascination with medicine and surgical procedures, often observing complex surgeries in operating rooms through his friendships with leading surgeons.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Proud of his Jewish heritage, Kaye frequently visited Israel on solidarity missions and visited wounded soldiers in hospitals during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, also conducting the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra several times for charity. Beyond this expression of cultural and religious identity, Kaye practiced a secular humanist worldview centered on global goodwill, tolerance, and direct humanitarian action for those in need. (3)

POLITICS Danny Kaye was a Democrat who supported Adlai Stevenson’s 1952 presidential campaign. He also joined the Committee for the First Amendment, a Hollywood organisation formed to oppose the House Un-American Activities Committee and defend freedom of expression. Most of his public service, however, was non-partisan: from 1954 until his death he served as UNICEF’s first Goodwill Ambassador, advocating for children regardless of race, nationality, colour or faith. (9)

Kaye's humanitarian profile brought him into governmental circles; he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan in June 1987, accepted on his behalf by his daughter Dena. 

SCANDAL He maintained a remarkably clean public record throughout his long career, avoiding major personal scandals or tabloid controversy.

MILITARY RECORD Kaye did not serve in the armed forces during World War II, but he was active in supporting the war effort through entertainment, performing extensively for American servicemen at home and abroad in USO-style tours during the early-to-mid 1940s. He continued touring military bases and hospitals during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. (3)

Danny Kaye on USO tour at Sasebo, Japan, October 25, 1945.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Danny Kaye had a back problem that led to his being classified 4-F and therefore rejected for wartime military service during World War II. 

He continued performing through injuries, including finishing a run of the musical Two by Two on stage in a wheelchair after tearing a leg ligament. 

In 1983, Kaye underwent quadruple bypass heart surgery, during which he received a blood transfusion that left him infected with hepatitis C, a fact not diagnosed until years later. He largely recovered and continued public appearances, but the hepatitis caused intestinal bleeding that led to his final hospitalisation in 1987. (10) (11)

HOMES Kaye lived for many years in Beverly Hills, California, in a home famous for the elaborate Chinese kitchen and eight-seat restaurant he built in the alley behind it, nicknamed "Ying's Thing." He was devoted enough to it that, while filming The Madwoman of Chaillot in France, he once flew home simply to eat dinner there. (6), (8)

TRAVEL Kaye travelled extensively throughout his life, first touring Asia with a vaudeville troupe in 1934 — an experience that shaped his pantomime style — and later logging roughly 50,000 miles across ten countries during a celebrated UNICEF tour documented in The Secret Life of Danny Kaye (1956). 

As an accomplished pilot, he once flew a Learjet to 65 cities in the United States and Canada in five days to promote UNICEF's Halloween "Trick-or-Treat" campaign, a feat that earned him an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. (4)

DEATH Danny Kaye died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in the early hours of March 3, 1987, at the age of 76. The cause was heart failure and internal bleeding brought on by hepatitis C, contracted from the contaminated blood transfusion he received during his 1983 bypass surgery. 

At his request there was no funeral service; his body was cremated and his ashes interred in the foundation of a bench at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, decorated with engravings of a baseball, an aircraft, a piano and a chef's toque. (10), (12)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Beyond his classic motion pictures, he was a regular guest on major television specials, talk shows, and news programs, as well as the subject of numerous documentaries regarding his humanitarian efforts for UNICEF. 

ACHIEVEMENTS Awarded two Academy Awards (an Honorary Oscar in 1955 and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1982). 

Won an Academy Award for Assignment Children (1955), a short documentary highlighting UNICEF's global health initiatives. 

Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. 

Named the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in 1986. 

Honored as UNICEF's first Goodwill Ambassador in 1954, serving faithfully in the post for 33 years until his death. 

Set a Guinness World Record by piloting a private Learjet to 65 cities in the United States and Canada in five days to greet volunteers and promote the Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF campaign.

Sources: (1) Wikipedia (2) Spotify Artist Bio (3) UNICEF USA (4) Jewish Virtual Library (5) IMDb (6) Silver Scenes Blog (7) Baseball-Reference (8) Forever A Pleasure (9) Library of Congress (10) New York Times (11) Los Angeles Times (12) Find a Grave