Danny Kaye at 100: A Daughter’s Salute

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 04 April 2013 02:12

Written by Laura Blum

In a fidgety, changeable word, it’s comforting to see that entertainment legend Danny Kaye is having a banner year. America’s twinkling star of motion pictures, stage, radio and TV has been dead for more than a quarter century--but not forgotten, if Dena Kaye has her way. Danny Kaye’s only child is fêting his 100th birthday with salutes ranging from a marathon of his films on Turner Classic Movies to The New York Pops’ gala at Carnegie Hall. 

There’s lots to celebrate. Beyond his dazzlements as a performer, Kaye was also an accomplished pilot, orchestra conductor, golfer and chef, not to mention a UNICEF ambassador whose five-day, 65-city campaign in 1975 made the Guinness Book of Records. Surely the comedian also broke records for his trademark rat-a-tat delivered in a UN of faux languages yet true accents. Several bravura examples fetch up in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, in which Kaye stars as a magazine proofreader who dreams of being heroic and finally gets his chance. 

Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York recently showed this 1947 release as part of
the Kaye centennial festivities. After the screening, FilmFestivalTraveler.com tapped Dena for a bead on her father’s life and work.

Q: How did Walter Mitty’s visions of saving the day resonate with your father?

DK: He felt fiercely proud of his work with UNICEF (though his involvement came after this film). He was awarded two Academy Awards for his humanitarian work.

Q: Have any comedians told you they’re influenced by your father’s physical
comedy?

DK: No, but I once met Robin Williams at a comedy-fest and asked if he’d do a remake of [the 1956 musical comedy] The Court Jester. He said, “Are you kidding? I could never be Danny Kaye!”

Q: Did Kaye receive formal training?

DK: No. He couldn’t read music, but conducted the New York Philharmonic. And he never learned dance, but Fred Astaire-ed.

Q: Your mother Sylvia Fine wrote many of Kaye’s tunes. Is this year-long celebration also designed to revive her name?

DK: I'm hoping that when his movies are more available, whether on DVDs or iTunes, her work would be known. She was such a big part of his movies, writing songs in The Court Jester, Five Pennies and so many more.

Q: You can really catch her wit in "Anatole de France," the piece de resistance of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, where she takes aim at hat designers.

DK: A hat that's "a two-story flat" says it all! But didn't only write funny numbers. Irving Berlin called “All About You”--which she wrote for Knock on Wood--a perfect love song. 

Q: Speaking of Berlin, White Christmas is another Kaye classic. Was that a surprise for Brooklyn-born “David Daniel Kaminsky,” who entered show biz as a Borscht Belt tummler?

DK: It was just a movie role, no more or less emblematic than his playing the Jewish refugee in Me and the Colonel or Skokie. His passion moved him from one endeavor to the next, whatever he was doing in the moment.

Q: Was he also passionate about visual arts?

DK: I remember one day my mother bought a very abstract painting. My father looked at it and said, “What the hell is that?” So the painting was forever known in our family as, What the Hell Is That?

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