“Danny Kaye Says His Wife Has Never ‘Lied’ to Him”
Kingsport News – June 30, 1943
By: Sheilah Graham
Hollywood—NANA—“My wife has never lied to me,” says Danny Kaye. This remark makes
Mr. Kaye, late of Broadway and now beginning his first Hollywood film for Sam Goldwyn,
the most fortunate actor-
“No one knows me in Hollywood,” states Danny, not with the air of a man with a grievance, but with an inferiority complex allied to realism. “It’s different on Broadway,” says the star who stole a chunk of “Lady in the Dark” from Gertrude Lawrence, and who knocked New York for a loop recently in “Let’s Face It.” This is part of the reason why Danny has not as yet fallen in love with Hollywood.
“When I came out here the weather was bad,” Danny continues. “Everyone said, ‘Ah, but you must wait until April.’ But in New York the weather is also good in April. (Incidentally, the weather in April here was worse than the preceding months, and May was worse than April).
“Hollywood hasn’t the pulse of New York. There’s no pep here. Everyone talks pictures. If I go and buy a suit they’re talking about this or that star. When I go to my dentist he tells me about the grosses on this or that picture. It gets monotonous.”
One of the delights dangled before Danny before he came here was golf. “They tell me in Hollywood I’m only ten minutes from any golf course. So what! In New York I’m only half an hour from a golf course.” Kaye had been playing golf for five months before coming here. Now he’s too busy preparing for his picture, “Up in Arms,” and worrying.
“It’s like beginning all over again,” he tells me. “And I have to make good.” As a prelude to the latter, Mr. Goldwyn has ordered Danny’s hair bleached five shades more blond than his naturally blond hair. [Danny’s hair is not naturally blond. It is naturally red. – J.N. webmistress] It seems the latter photographed mouse color. The lighter hair has improved his looks, and he is not only a fine comedian but handsome to boot.
And now we come to wife Sylvia Fine, who writes a lot of Danny’s dialogue and is his sternest (to put it mildly) critic. [Sylvia wrote a lot of his music and lyrics, not necessarily dialogue.. – J.N. webmistress] On the opening night of “Let’s Face It” in Boston, when the audience thundered its applause for Kaye—really thundered—Danny, a modest soul, went back to his dressing room where Sylvia awaited him, and said deprecatingly, “I was awful.” “Yeah,” echoed Mrs. Kaye, “you sure stank.” “That,” Danny tells me,” is what I love about my wife. She’s so truthful about my work.” Sylvia used the same expressive adjective after viewing Danny’s screen test. No wonder the boy has an inferiority complex. But he says that strong criticism is good for his work.
To give an example, when Danny had his first break at the big time—in New York’s Martinique night club—the manager, after the first show, told him that he would be fired when the evening’s work was done. So he went on for the next show and knocked them cold, and the manager kept him on for eighteen weeks instead of the originally planned three weeks.
Danny comes from Brooklyn. And he bore this fact in mind when, sweating with fear, he made his first appearance at the Hollywood Canteen. “No one knows me here,” he thought and wanted to run. By a happy inspiration his first words to the service men were: “Is there anyone here from Brooklyn?” It seems they all were.
“My wife comes from Brooklyn,” says Danny, “and she lived on the same block as I
did for ten years but I didn’t know this until I met her five years ago.” They have
been married three and one-
Danny says that everyone on his block in Brooklyn grew up to be either a gangster or a doctor. But for the theatre, Danny would be a doctor. Next to his wife, he loves best watching operations. “I’ve seen hundreds of them,” he tells me. “I have many doctor friends (from Brooklyn) and whenever they have a really exciting operation they take me along to watch.” When Danny was in Japan in 1934 he knew a Jap doctor. “And I saw more Jap babies born than any other American.” He wishes now he hadn’t.