“Kaye’s Next By Unique Duo That Operates Three Ways”

Toledo Blade – Apr. 5, 1953

By: Ben Cook

HOLLYWOOD, April 4 (UP) – The next Danny Kaye picture will be made by the perennial team of Norman Panama and Melvin Frank.

This producer-director-writer team is unique in Hollywood. Not only because they combine three activities that see a movie through from the written page to the screen, but because they have been together as a writing unit since 1935.

This spring they will trek to Britain, complete with families, and set up operations for “Knock on Wood,” an original film story about a ventriloquist and his dummy who get mixed up in some funny international intrigue.

Kaye will hop over to London to star in it after he completes his record-breaking engagement in New York’s Palace Theater. It will be an independent production.

“We finished up our tour of duty at M-G-M with ‘Above and Beyond,’” Panama said, speaking for the team. “Now we are on our own, as we have wanted to be for some time.

“We hope that this venture with Kaye will be the start of an enterprise that will enable us to work on nothing but our own productions from now on. This is a natural result after many years of working together.”

The collaboration started in 1935 when both left the University of Chicago. Their first work was writing comedy material for Milton Berle’s radio programs. Within nine months they were prominent in the field of radio gagmen and were hired by Bob Hope. They served many another leading radio light before they sold their first original film story, “My Favorite Blonde,” and gave up radio for good.

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