Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; January 18, 1911 –
March 3, 1987) was an American actor, singer, dancer, comedian and musician.
His performances featured
physical comedy, idiosyncratic
pantomimes
and rapid-fire
novelty songs.Queer Places:
P.S. 149 Danny Kaye, 700 Sutter Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11207, Stati Uniti
Thomas Jefferson High School, 400 Pennsylvania Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11207, Stati Uniti
Kensico Cemetery, 273 Lake View Avenue, Valhalla, NY 10595, Stati Uniti
Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; January 18, 1911 –
March 3, 1987) was an American actor, singer, dancer, comedian and musician.
His performances featured
physical comedy, idiosyncratic
pantomimes
and rapid-fire
novelty songs.
Kaye starred in 17 movies, notably Wonder Man (1945), The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), White Christmas (1954) and The Court Jester (1956).
His films were popular, especially his performances of patter songs and favorites such as "Inchworm" and "The Ugly Duckling." He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honour in 1986 for his years of work with the organization.[1]
Kaye and Sylvia Fine grew up in Brooklyn, living a few blocks apart, but they did not meet until they were working on an off-Broadway show in 1939.[85] Sylvia was an audition pianist.[11][30][86]
Sylvia discovered that Danny had worked for her father Samuel Fine, a dentist.[12] Kaye, working in Florida, proposed on the telephone; the couple were married in Fort Lauderdale[87] on January 3, 1940.[80][88] The couple's only child, daughter Dena, was born on December 17, 1946.[16][89] When she was very young, Dena did not like seeing her father perform because she did not understand that people were supposed to laugh at what he did.[90] Kaye said in a 1954 interview, "Whatever she wants to be she will be without interference from her mother nor from me."[10][66] Dena grew up to become a journalist.[91]
There were rumors that Danny Kaye was Laurence Olivier's lover. It is uncertain where and when Kaye met Olivier - Hollywood in 1940 or London in 1947. The two performed together at parties and benefits. Kaye gave Olivier infantile nicknames - "Lally" or "Lala". After he returned to Hollywood in 1949, the Oliviers arrived for their own film projects. Kaye showed up announced at the house they had rented next door to him, got himself invited to any function where the Oliviers were expected, threw them parties of his own, and traveled with Olivier to Noël Coward's Caribbean home. Oliver wrote a letter to former wife Vivian Leigh in 1961, weakly describing as merely transitory and unimportant the sexual intimacy between himself and Kaye.
During the filming of Hans Christian Anderson (1952), Kaye was alternately "solicitous or remote" with Farley Granger and demanded that Granger's one musical number in the score be given to him. Granger later wondered if Kaye's erratic and remote treatment might have had a homosexual element about it; and guilt.
Kaye died of heart failure on March 3, 1987, aged 76, brought on by internal bleeding and complications of hepatitis C.[79] Kaye had quadruple bypass heart surgery in February 1983; he contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion.[17][49]
On 18 January 2013, during a 24-hour salute to Kaye on Turner Classic Movies in celebration of what TCM thought was his 100th birthday, Kaye's daughter Dena revealed to TCM host Ben Mankiewicz that Kaye's stated birth year of 1913 was incorrect, and that he was actually born in 1911.
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