Stars of Vaudeville #426: Danny Kaye
Brooklyn kid Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky on this day in 1913) started out in small time vaudeville and Catskills resorts at the tender age of 13. After many summers working as a tumler, he met the woman who was to bcome his manager, primary writer (of both songs and comic material), and wife, Sylvia Fine (they married in 1940). It was she who penned the many tongue-twisting patter songs and foreign dialect routines for which he was most famous. Following smash success in Manhattan cabarets and the Broadway shows Lady in the Dark (1940) and Let’s Face It (1941-43), he began his movie career, largely modeled on those of Harold Lloyd and Eddie Cantor. Notable films included Up in Arms (1944, based on Cantor’s Whoopee!), The Kid from Brooklyn (1946, based on Lloyd’s The Milky Way), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), White Christmas (1954), and The Court Jester (1956, in which he introduced his famous “pellet with the poison” routine — which no one ever seems to mention, is pinched from Cantor’s Roman Scandals). His last starring feature was The Man from the Diner’s Club (1963, written by William Peter Blatty, directed by Frank Tashlin). In 1953, he headlined one of the famous vaudeville revival shows at the Palace to great acclaim.
By the 60s, his box office appeal had wound down, and he became a non-stop presence on television, appearing constantly on variety shows and in guest spots in sit-coms and dramas. He was also a familiar face as the Goodwill Ambasssador for UNICEF, and a familiar voice in the 1971 Rankin-Bass special Here Comes Peter Cottontail. He passed away in 1987.
This clip from Up in Arms is a good example of the kind of thing he did best and was most cherished for. Somehow I think he would approve of the Italian subtitles:
To find out more about the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
