Danny Kaye's performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire novelty songs.
67 Facts About Danny Kaye
2.
Danny Kaye's films were popular, especially for his performances of patter songs and favorites such as "Inchworm" and "The Ugly Duckling".
3.
Danny Kaye was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honour in 1986 for his years of work with the organization.
4.
Danny Kaye's parents and older brothers Larry and Mac left Yekaterinoslav two years before Danny's birth; he was their only son born in the United States.
5.
Danny Kaye attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, but he did not graduate.
6.
Danny Kaye's mother died when he was in his early teens.
7.
Danny Kaye sang while Louis played the guitar, and the pair eked out a living for a while.
8.
When Danny 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.
9.
Danny Kaye said that as a young boy, he had wanted to be a surgeon, but the family could not afford medical education.
10.
Danny Kaye lost the insurance job when he made an error that cost the insurance company $40,000.
11.
In 1939, Danny Kaye met the same dentist's daughter, Sylvia Fine, at an audition, and in 1940, they eloped.
12.
Danny Kaye learned his trade in his teenaged years in the Catskills as a tummler in the Borscht Belt.
13.
Danny Kaye flapped his arms and clucked, giving the waiter an imitation of a chicken.
14.
Jobs were in short supply when Danny Kaye returned to the United States, and he struggled for bookings.
15.
The Danny Kaye series ended abruptly when the studio shut down in 1938.
16.
Danny Kaye was working in the Catskills in 1937 under the name Danny Kolbin.
17.
Danny Kaye's next venture was a short-lived Broadway show with Sylvia Fine as the pianist, lyricist, and composer.
18.
At La Martinique, playwright Moss Hart saw Danny Kaye perform, and that led to Hart's casting him in his hit Broadway comedy Lady in the Dark.
19.
In 1941, aged 30, Danny Kaye scored a triumph playing Russell Paxton in Lady in the Dark, starring Gertrude Lawrence.
20.
Danny Kaye's show-stopping number was "Tschaikowsky " 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.
21.
Kaye starred in a radio program, The Danny Kaye Show, on CBS from 1945 to 1946.
22.
Danny Kaye was asked to participate in a USO tour following the end of World War II.
23.
Danny Kaye's friends filled in with a different guest host each week.
24.
Danny Kaye was the first American actor to visit postwar Tokyo.
25.
Danny Kaye had toured there some 10 years before with the vaudeville troupe.
26.
When Danny 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.
27.
Danny 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, The Inspector General, On the Riviera co-starring Gene Tierney, Knock on Wood, White Christmas, The Court Jester, and Merry Andrew.
28.
Danny Kaye starred in two pictures based on biographies, Hans Christian Andersen the Danish storyteller and The Five Pennies about jazz pioneer Red Nichols.
29.
Danny 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.
30.
Danny Kaye 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.
31.
Danny Kaye stated he never returned to the venue because no way existed to recreate the magic of that time.
32.
In 1953, Danny Kaye started a production company, Dena Pictures, named for his daughter.
33.
The Secret Life of Danny Kaye combined his 50,000-mile, ten-country tour as UNICEF ambassador with music and humor.
34.
Danny Kaye hosted The Danny Kaye Show from 1963 to 1967; it won four Emmy awards and a Peabody award.
35.
Danny Kaye had done much the same on his television show in 1964, when his right leg and foot were burned from a cooking accident.
36.
Danny Kaye portrayed Captain Hook opposite Mia Farrow in a musical version of Peter Pan featuring songs by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse.
37.
Danny Kaye later guest-starred in episodes of The Muppet Show and The Cosby Show, and in the 1980s revival The Twilight Zone.
38.
In many films, as well as on stage, Danny Kaye proved to be an able actor, singer, dancer, and comedian.
39.
Danny Kaye showed his serious side as ambassador for UNICEF and in his dramatic role in the memorable TV film Skokie, when he played a Holocaust survivor.
40.
Danny Kaye received two Academy Awards - an Academy Honorary Award in 1955 and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1982.
41.
In 1980, Danny Kaye hosted and sang in the 25th anniversary of Disneyland celebration and hosted the opening celebration for Epcot in 1982.
42.
In 1947, Danny Kaye teamed up with The Andrews Sisters on Decca Records, producing the number-three Billboard hit "Civilization ".
43.
Kaye's debut album, Columbia Presents Danny Kaye, had been released in 1942 by Columbia Records with songs performed to the accompaniment of Maurice Abravanel and Johnny Green.
44.
The album was reissued as a Columbia LP in 1949 and is described by the critic Bruce Eder as "a bit tamer than some of the stuff that Danny Kaye hit with later in the '40s and in the '50s, and for reasons best understood by the public, doesn't attract nearly the interest of his kids' records and overt comedy routines".
45.
In 1956, Danny Kaye signed a three-year recording contract with Capitol Records, which released his single "Love Me Do" in December of that year.
46.
Danny Kaye had a custom-made Chinese restaurant installed at the rear of his house by its alley, then had a kitchen and dining area built around it.
47.
The stove that Danny Kaye used for his Chinese dishes was fitted with metal rings for the burners to allow the heat to be highly concentrated, and a trough with circulating ice water cooled the area to keep the intense heat tolerable for those who were cooking.
48.
Danny Kaye learned "at Johnny Kan's restaurant in San Francisco and with Cecilia Chang at her Mandarin restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles".
49.
Danny Kaye taught Chinese cooking classes at a San Francisco Chinese restaurant in the 1970s.
50.
When his daughter asked about the bread, Danny Kaye hit the bread on the kitchen table; his bread was hard enough to chip it.
51.
Danny Kaye approached kitchen work with enthusiasm, making sausages and other foods needed for his cuisine.
52.
Danny Kaye's interest was sparked by his longtime friend, choreographer Michael Kidd, who at the time had recently earned his private pilot's license.
53.
Danny Kaye was an enthusiastic and accomplished golfer, but reduced golf activities in favor of flying and started training for his license in 1959.
54.
Danny Kaye received a type rating in a Learjet, and he was named vice president of the Learjet Company by Bill Lear as an honorary title.
55.
Danny Kaye flew a Learjet to 65 cities in five days on a mission to help UNICEF.
56.
Danny Kaye owned a chain of radio stations, mostly in the Pacific Northwest.
57.
Danny Kaye possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the game and was an accomplished second baseman.
58.
Danny Kaye sold all of his business interests to Smith's family in 1985.
59.
Danny Kaye was an honorary member of the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
60.
Danny Kaye was flying home from London in 1949 when one of the plane's four engines lost its propeller and caught fire.
61.
Sylvia discovered that Danny Kaye had worked for her father Samuel Fine, a dentist.
62.
Danny Kaye, working in Florida, proposed on the telephone; the couple were married in Fort Lauderdale on January 3,1940.
63.
The couple were married for life, except for a separation in 1947 and 1948, when Danny Kaye was involved with Eve Arden.
64.
Donald Spoto, the author of Laurence Olivier, made an unsubstantiated claim that Danny Kaye had a 10-year secret affair with Laurence Olivier.
65.
Kaye died of heart failure on March 3,1987, aged 76, brought on by internal bleeding and complications of hepatitis C Kaye had quadruple bypass heart surgery in February 1983 and he contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion.
66.
Danny Kaye was cremated and his ashes were interred in the foundation of a bench in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.
67.
Danny Kaye's grave is adorned with a bench that contains friezes of a baseball and bat, an aircraft, a piano, a flowerpot, musical notes, and a chef's toque.