“Danny Kaye Tries to Turn the Tables”

Oakland Tribune – Feb. 8, 1959

By: Theresa Loeb Cone (Tribune Drama Editor)

Interviewing Danny Kaye is not at all like talking with other stars. He is apt, we discovered, to turn the tables on a reporter and start firing personal questions of his own. For the first several minutes of our conversation a few days ago he enthusiastically proceeded to elicit all sorts of data from me in that wryly humorous manner he occasionally evidences in his many roles.

But after having had the initial satisfaction of beating his interviewer to the punch, as it were, the unpredictable but always enjoyable Mr. Kaye settled down quite docilely to answering our request for information about him.

When the tall, reddish-blond comedian returns to the Curran for a personal appearance on February 17, his first here since 1952, he will be setting a record—San Francisco is the first U.S. city in which he has appeared twice during a stage career that theater historians tend to date from 1941, the date of his huge success in “Lady in the Dark.”

Neophyte

Actually, Kaye appeared in this area before when he was a neophyte entertainer, just another performer—for all the audiences then realized—among a group engaged in one night stands all over the country. Part of that tour, incidentally, took him to the Orient and during an interview in 1942, when public opinion supposedly made it unpopular to voice such sentiments, Kaye said he found the best audiences in the Far East were Tokyo’s.

Now the star says he will be going back to Japan shortly after his Curran “International Show of Stars” comes to an end. But this time it won’t be for stage appearances. Instead, he intends to make another movie comedy. “It’s called ‘The Bamboo Kid’ and it’s about bamboo and kids,” he joked. “Actually, it’s going to be a comedy in the freewheeling style of ‘Knock on Wood.’ Remember that one?” he asked modestly.

He recently completed a serious role in the biographical film “The Five Pennies,” based on the real-life story of musician Red Nichols. Although Kaye has a dramatic part, he also manages to sing a few songs, some of which were written by his talented wife Sylvia Fine.

Slightly overwhelmed that his name was even considered as a potential Oscar candidate for his deeply-stirring, serious performance as the refugee Polish Jew in “Me and the Colonel,” the actor doesn’t want anyone to get the impression that he is giving up comedy. “Far from it,” as his proposed return to our stage and the forthcoming trip to Japan indicate.

“The theater was my first love and every year I make a point of appearing in at least one live show somewhere. The troupe coming to the Curran, which includes Senor Wences who has played many times before on stage with me, has been especially assembled for this engagement. We aren’t going to play anywhere else.”

New York

Skipping from topic to topic with ease and humor, New York-born Kaye said to this New York-born scribe he loves New York girls—“they are so chic, intelligent and alive,” thereby happily discounting the fact that any may exist of lesser quality. He loves New York, too. And he wants to do a show there someday again.

When he was told in answer to one of his sudden questions that this reporter feels capable of coping with her problems, he had a few words to say about his. “I won’t say they are all ironed out, by a long shot, but they have been flattened quite a bit.” The ambiguous subject apparently was closed.

For someone who has been in the public eye as much as Kaye, a rare American who was once able to make an audience at a British theater stand up 5,000 strong to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” it is to his credit that seldom, if ever, has he had unfavorable publicity either about his public or personal life. Perhaps the single achievement, however, of which he is most proud and which certainly won him an international friendship that few men enjoy, is the work he has done for the United Nations in the past few years.

International Language

If you saw the short film of his trip for UNICEF, “Assignment Children,” which showed him cajoling first smiles, then shrieking laughter from children in impoverished areas who had never had medical care for frightful illnesses, who had never had an adequate diet, and who had never before heard of Danny Kaye, the clown, you will remember what a warm feeling his sojourn generated. He couldn’t speak the de facto language of any land he visited, perhaps, but Kaye spoke a language children understood everywhere.

That experience changed him considerably and certainly broadened his outlook with regard to human relationships which do not recognize arbitrary national boundaries and varying cultures as a deterrent to understanding. So UNICEF became a cause “close to my heart,” as he puts it, and soon he plans to embark on another roving ambassador trip to further that cause.

During the 90-minute television broadcast which Edward R. Murrow called “The Secret Life of Danny Kaye” two years ago, the CBS narrator-reporter described Kaye as a combination Pied Piper, Sir Lancelot and entertainer-ambassador.

The tall fellow with the rubbery, dancing legs, the impish face, the talent for un-self-conscious imitations, for singing comic songs all the way from “Deena” to “The Square Root of the Hypotenuse” and for clowning his way through hours of ad-libs demonstrated when he played the aforementioned Jacobowsky in “Me and the Colonel,” that his charm has developed with his years.

It would be nothing short of myopic not to notice that the 6-foot gentleman seems to be getting taller all the time.

In reference to the movie The Bamboo Kid, Danny apparently never filmed it. I did find this information, however --
“The planned Hope-Crosby picture, ‘Road to Hong Kong” is a revamp of the picture Danny Kaye once planned to make, ‘The Bamboo Kid.’” [TV Bit Parts, The Press Courier, Dec. 3, 1959.]

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