01/20/2025
Celebrating the birth anniversary of Danny Kaye, one of my favorite entertainers, across multiple fields 🌹
REMEMBERING DAVID DANIEL KAMINSKY, “Renaissance Man”
“If Danny Kaye had not been born,” a Hollywood writer once wrote, “no one could possibly have invented him. It would have been stretching credibility far past the breaking point”.
January 18, 1911 was the birthday of this virtuoso entertainer. Kaye was a Renaissance man who was a jet pilot, baseball club owner, master Chinese chef, symphony orchestra conductor, a movie star, actor, singer, dancer and stage performer honored with Oscars, Emmys, Peabodys, Golden Globes, and Kennedy Center Honors. He won a Special Oscar service award in 1955 and the Jean Hersholt Award for humanitarian service in 1982. He won a Tony for his variety show at the Palace Theater in 1953. He received many other honors from organizations as diverse as the Lions Club and the American College of Cardiology. He routinely made the Best Dressed List until he started wearing custom-made "space shoes" with white crew socks for his sore feet. The French bestowed the Legion of Honor on him. The Queen of Denmark knighted him. He was presented with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom. His interests were many and varied, but whatever he did, he did well.
Kaye developed a highly individual performance style that combined mime, song, irony, and brilliance. His specialty was reciting tongue-twisting songs and monologues. Those powers were perhaps seen at their best in the theater, where he could hold an audience with 90 minutes of song, dance and patter.
He had an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball, and was part owner of the Seattle Mariners, though his heart remained with the (once Brooklyn) Dodgers. He read cookbooks like novels, mastered the art of Chinese cooking, and built a kitchen with a multi-wok stove in the alley of his home. On one occasion, Kaye cooked a meal for three of France’s most eminent chefs. A friend asked if he wasn’t terribly nervous about cooking for such a distinguished trio. “Why should I be nervous?” Kaye replied. “What do they know about Chinese cooking?”
This son of Jewish immigrants who grew up poor in Brooklyn and never finished high school, Kaye became an international man who was at home wherever he was and in whatever he did, equally at ease dining with royals or having coffee at his kitchen table with the plumber.
As UNICEF’S first Goodwill Ambassador, a post he cherished from 1954 until the end of his life, Kaye pioneered the role of a celebrity supporting a charity. “He related to children with a child’s lack of inhibition”, said his daughter Dena. He rubbed noses, made funny noises, crawled on the floor and danced with lepers. In 1965, he joined UNICEF’s official delegation in Oslo when the organization received the Nobel Peace Prize, and he accepted the award for them.
Danny Kaye couldn’t read music – he learned symphony scores by ear – but he regularly conducted world-famous orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic. He raised close to $6 million, mostly for musicians’ pension funds, without ever accepting a fee for his services. He got a “sound” that was praised by noted critics, musicians and conductors. But Danny Kaye was also Danny Kaye: He used a fly swatter to conduct “The Flight of the Bumblebee”.
Danny Kaye was one of a kind. There will never be another like him. He combined talent, versatility and skill with passion and joy. The world was a better place when he graced it with his special touch.
