Column: “New York Day By Day”
Reading Eagle – Apr. 18, 1945
By: Charles Driscoll
Danny Kaye was tired when I caught him, at the close of an air-
He leaned on the piano, his blond hair a terrific mess, as he listened to his wife, Sylvia Fine, tell the pianist some of her ideas about changes that should be made before the show went on the air, next evening.
Sylvia was tired, too, but didn’t look so exhausted as her active husband. We all went to their hotel on Park Avenue, and sat about, with two or three other air showmen, discussing the show.
Danny and two of his male friends wanted to go to a prizefight at Madison Square Garden. Sylvia said she was too tired. She would like to take a long ride in the country, but since that is impossible, with gasoline as scarce as it is, she would just rest.
“I don’t care about fights anyway,” said Sylvia. “So much blood makes me ill.”
“But there won’t be much blood this time,” answered Danny, convincingly, “because neither of these boys can hit very hard.”
The males went to the fight. Sylvia went to rest.
Neither of the Kayes knows for sure why they work so hard on the air. Their Hollywood income puts them in brackets of such proportions that all the radio money goes to the Federal Treasury. More than all of it, in fact. “I spend $750 out of my own pocket for the first night on the air,” says Danny.
The only reason for working themselves to death for nothing, that they could think of, is that one just doesn’t like to be idle. Anyway, they’ve gone back to Hollywood now, to start shooting a Samuel Goldwyn picture, “The Kid From Brooklyn.”