“Danny Kaye Says His Ambition To Be Doctor Basis Of Success”

Lakeland Ledger – Apr. 11, 1958

HOLLYWOOD—As Ambassador-at-Large for the United Nation’s International Children’s Fund, and honor never before accorded to a show business personality, Danny Kaye spends as much time possible traveling around the world with diplomatic portfolio, inspecting UNICEF medical and nutritional stations.

(Danny Kaye is starred in “Merry Andrew” which is scheduled to open soon at the Polk Theater.)

He has won not only world-wide recognition for UNICEF but extraordinary honors for himself from the UN as well as a special Academy Award.

Kaye’s success in both his roles—on and offstage—might be explained by his one-time urge to be a doctor.

Wanted To Be Doctor

“I had a burning interest in medicine,” he says, “because the idea of making people happy appealed to me. I never became a doctor, but I like to think I’ve made people happy by making them laugh.

“In a way I’ve realized my ambition. For I feel when you make someone laugh, you’re giving him a kind of medication.”

Kaye returns to the screen for the first time in more than two years in Sol C. Siegel’s M-G-M production of “Merry Andrew.” It’s only his 12th picture after 14 years as one of Hollywood’s brightest stars. He has made fewer pictures over a similar period of time than any other star of his stature.

Made Promise

“When I first came to Hollywood, I made myself a promise never to make more than one film a year,” he says, “for three reasons. Primarily, I believe that an entertainer can use up his welcome with the public with too frequent appearances. That’s why I’ve never appeared on television as an entertainer.

“Second, I’ll only accept a motion picture role if I feel the story is right. And third, I refuse to give up my stage appearances. I feel that steady contact with audiences not only keeps my material fresh but my comedy sense alive and up-to-date.”

It was said a direct contact that started Kaye on the road to fame. And the method by which he convulsed audiences is still one he uses today.

“I toomle,” he says.

Toomling, in Kaye’s vocabulary, is the art of creating tumult.

Kaye’s Antics

As a novice on the Borscht Circuit, he toomled by falling into swimming pools, wild dancing, tongue twisting and singing. Such antics brought him to Broadway and subsequently to motion pictures.

In “Merry Andrew,” he “toomles” as a shy, sensitive schoolmaster who inadvertently becomes involved with a circus troupe. He gets trapped in a cage of wild lions, becomes a clown and gets tossed through the air by a quintette of vengeant acrobats bent on seeing that his romance with Pier Angeli ends properly.

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