“Danny Kaye harmonizes 2 talents”
The Milwaukee Journal – Sep. 21, 1981
By: Peter Goodman
Newsday Special
Danny Kaye thinks his mother suspected he was born to be an entertainer. She and little David Daniel Kaminski were in the theater once in Brooklyn when someone yelled, “Fire!”
“There was a small panic,” Kaye recalled from his home in California. “But instead of rushing to the exit doors with everyone else, she took me by the hand and marched me backstage, because nobody was going in that direction. It was the first time I saw it, all those ropes and wires and all hanging around.
“I keep thinking about kids in small towns and cities, where the family thinks it
is a great outing to go to the airport and watch planes take off and land. A lot
of them later became pilots.” In the same way, Kaye guessed, that long-
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that Kaye has been performing ever since, from his days doing pratfalls as a waiter in Catskill Mountain hotels to Broadway, Hollywood and Lincoln Center.
So when he takes up the baton Wednesday night to lead the New York Philharmonic for the season’s first broadcast of “Live From Lincoln Center” on public TV, he certainly won’t be a newcomer to television – or the orchestra.
Kaye has been leading orchestras for more than 25 years – his first appearance with the Philharmonic was in 1958 – and has raised more than $5 million for the musicians’ pension funds in the process.
“If he would start increasing his repertoire, I would worry,” said Philharmonic music director Zubin Mehta, one of the many musicians Kaye counts as friends. “He is an extremely talented person. He has instant recall.”
Mehta, speaking from Chicago during a recent Philharmonic tour, recalled an instance when he was visiting Kaye with composer Michel Legrand (“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”). “Legrand fiddled around with the piano. Danny was not prepared for it, but instantly recalled what Legrand had played. If he had learned to read music in his youth, he would really have become a musical talent. Like if Jack Benny had continued practicing, he would have been a good violinist.”
The Philharmonic performance probably will go just the way all Kaye’s other conducting stints have gone – crazy.
“I probably rehearse with them more than Zubin does. It isn’t a straightforward concert like they are doing Mahler or Beethoven,” Kaye said. “I do a lot of different things, a lot of crazy things. When we rehearse, we rehearse very seriously. They have no idea what will happen between the pieces – and neither do I.
“That’s why it’s so entertaining for the audience, because the orchestra is acting like an audience.”
Kaye, sounding very relaxed and not at all like the high-
“I think people are innately musical or they’re not,” Kaye said. “I think some people who play instruments are not as musical as some who listen. It takes as much chutzpah to stand before 110 people and lead them, to have the confidence to do it yourself, to face an audience.”
Which reminded Kaye that he had not always been quite so bold.
“Once I went to audition for a choir in Newark somewhere. I was so embarrassed, I would have the choirmaster sit in the other room while I auditioned. Can you imagine if I asked the audience to wait outside?”
Besides music, which is the topic of the moment, and theater, which is his life, one subject that seems to pop up constantly is cooking. Kaye’s great hobby. It’s almost more than a hobby; he is a cooking evangelist.
His culinary skills don’t prevent him from realizing that what for him is a hobby is literally a matter of life and death for millions around the world. The conversation turns momentarily downcast as Kaye considers the future.
“We keep hearing about the shortage of oil, and what we haven’t paid attention to is there is going to be a food shortage, which is far more dangerous, far more stultifying than the lack of oil.
“There won’t be enough food in the world to feed the people of the world. We in the United States will probably feel it last, but eventually there will be a shortage of food that is going to be very critical.”
Meanwhile, however, there is an orchestra to conduct and a television program to watch.
“Go to a store, buy some Chinese cabbage, buy a shrimp, a piece of fish, get a book, chop it the way it says, put it in oil and garlic, just potchky around, and look at the show.”
That’s Danny Kaye’s recipe.