“Danny Kaye Taking It A Little Easier”
The Sumter Daily Item – Feb. 29, 1980
By: Jerry Buck
AP Television Writer
LOS ANGELES—Danny Kaye, who once had one of the most popular TV comedy shows, is seldom seen on television.
Here’s why: “I’ve been in this profession for 120 years. I did a weekly television show. I’ve done some specials. I’ve done movies, stage, all that.
“I’m at the point in my life here I don’t want to do anything any more just for the sake of doing it,” says Kaye, who turned 67 on Feb. 18 [That should be January 18. – J.N. webmistress] “If something is interesting or exciting or challenging, or I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with it, or is different, fine, then I’ll do it.”
“I’d love to go back and do a weekly television show. If we could find a new way to do that kind of variety show I’d be delighted to go back. I love performing. This is my profession. This is my life. I love doing it. But just doing guest shots on shows, you know, doesn’t appeal to me.”
Danny Kaye – actor, dancer, singer, symphony conductor, jet pilot, Chinese chef and UNICEF ambassador to the world’s children – is hosting a salute to Disneyland’s 25th anniversary on CBS Thursday. He conducts a tour of the popular and pioneering theme park.
But apart from that, “I do very, very few specials,” Kaye says.
He says he can’t remember the last time he did one. One reason is that he has been so busy with other activities. (He did make a special appearance on the Cambodian relief special on CBS.)
“For the last 26 years and the last two years in particular I have been traveling
like crazy for UNICEF,” he says. “Seventy-
Kaye says he was once asked in London why he doesn’t play the Palladium any more or make movies.
“I said for a very simple reason,” he says. “The movies are not like they used to be. The times are not like they used to be. The Palladium is not like it used to be. And, most important of all, I am not like I used to be.”
Kaye says he has no idea why comedy sketch shows faded from television, although he suspects it’s because the medium goes in cycles.
“We had great writers and the sketch is very, very lively and a very, very difficult art form,” he says.
“I tell you, it is easier to do a weekly television show now than it is to do a special.
Because you get into a kind of rhythm. You get a company around you. We had an extraordinary
group of people. We did very good shows, we did good shows, fair shows—but I don’t
think we every did any out-
Kaye came to television after many years on the stage and in movies.
It was on a tour before World War II that Kaye took up his interest in Chinese cooking. Now one of the world’s most renowned amateurs, he once received an award that had never gone to an American from five of France’s most eminent chefs who ate three meals at his house.
“I was in China, oh, 100 years ago,” he recalls. “I was playing in a show called ‘The A.B. Marcus Revue.’ We were in a restaurant and somebody invited me down to the kitchen. I’d never seen anything like that. I was absolutely riveted.
“We think of putting something in a pot and putting it on a stove. They had big things with flames leaping up and guys half naked. It was mind boggling. That’s when I first started to get interested, and I’ve been cooking Chinese food for a very, very long time.”
Kaye says he turns down all requests for him to write a cookbook or to be photographed in his kitchen. He says, “It is something very special and very private to me. This is where my friends come and where I go after I come home from traveling.”