“Danny Kaye Likes Excitement Of ‘First’ Experiences”

Lodi News-Sentinel – May 1, 1959

NEW YORK—“I can’t be a madcap in every picture . . . I’m not one at heart.”

That’s how funny man Danny Kaye explains his decision to “play it straight” in the next film, “The Five Pennies.” In an exclusive, behind-the-scenes interview in Seventeen Magazine’s May issue, the world-famous comedian reveals that he is switching to serious roles because “an actor has to grow up as well as grow old. No one can be happy doing the same thing over and over.”

Commenting on his new role as “Red” Nichols, popular jazz musician of the ‘twenties, Danny points out that it is not the first time he has played a serious role, as Jacobowsky in “Me and the Colonel,” had that special excitement that belongs only to “firsts,” he reports.

A great believer in the importance of “firsts,” in fact, he says that “People think ‘Up in Arms’ was the best picture I ever made . . . It wasn’t the best – it was the first. There’s no getting away from the initial excitement and impact of . . . the honeymoon. The first movie. The first time I played in London. The crowds have been bigger, the money has been greater, but nothing ever can equal that first thrill.”

Danny’s role as “Red” Nichols is a “first,” however – the first time he has portrayed a real person. Pointing out that this part is not as alien to those he usually plays as it may seem, he remarks: “Comedy underlines tragedy, tragedy underlines comedy. Several years ago, I wouldn’t have tampered with my comedy formula. But ambitions and standards change.”

Danny is not completely giving up his career as a comedian for a new one as a serious actor. He reveals that his next film “The Bamboo Kid,” “should make a crazy, lunatic comedy, just like the ones I used to do.”


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