“Kaye Credits Sylvia Fine”
The News and Courier – Nov. 18, 1962
By: Hal Humphrey
HOLLYWOOD – Production credit for Danny Kaye’s NBC latest special hour reads “Produced by Jess Oppenheimer, in association with Sylvia Fine.”
“I never fight over a credit title as long as it doesn’t just say ‘Secretary to somebody or other,” states Sylvia Fine, who held the title of Mrs. Danny Kaye for 22 years.
For most of those years a favorite subject of discussion in show business circles has been the question, “Where would Danny be without Sylvia?”
The dark-
“I do know that I get blamed for a lot of things which I’ve had nothing to do with, or was on the opposite side of,” saps Sylvia.
“When Danny did ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ movie, it was I who fought to keep the late James Thurber’s story intact, but I was overturned and they turned it into a wild spy thing. I was wrong, obviously, but later on Thurber wrote in Life magazine that it was my fault his story was aborted.”
Producers working with Danny and Sylvia have sometimes squawked on the grounds that she will get the last word with Danny after they’ve left the rehearsal hall and gone home.
“This is not true,” says Sylvia. “When we get home, any discussion of Danny’s work is turned off. There wouldn’t be a marriage if we didn’t.”
Where did Sylvia figure in on Danny’s recent decision to do a weekly hour-
“Danny was inactive,” reports Sylvia. “Oh, he was flying his airplane all over and traveling around the world for the United Nations, but good movie parts are hard to find. I suggested he get a job as a TWA pilot or be a spy and forget performing.”
Apparently that sly dig started Danny thinking about steady work and about the only place one can get it is on TV. Sylvia, however, thought once a month on TV would be enough.
“George Burns and Jack Benny told Danny it was easier to do TV every week, because you can have a regular organization then, and it gets into the swing of things.”
Before she met Danny, Sylvia wrote a new show every week at the Tamiment summer camp in Pennsylvania, where Max Liebman was the director. In fact, she later got Liebman to give Danny a job at the same camp.
But Sylvia isn’t likely to be working on Danny’s weekly TV series. She has an option on “Scarlet Pimpernel” to turn it into a Broadway musical. Danny was supposed to play the title role, until he signed up for weekly TV next season.