“Danny Kaye Ends TV Holdout; Wife to Write Script”
The Milwaukee Sentinel – Jul. 4, 1959
By: Earl Wilson
Also found in the Sarasota Herald-
The portion from the Sarasota Herald-
NEW YORK – Danny Kaye’s going to do television.
‘Twas Mrs. Danny Kaye who told me the last great holdout is buckling. Not that I caught Sylvia Fine in a weak moment—she doesn’t have any. But she was feeling warm toward the world. The reviews of Danny’s Red Nichols picture, “The Five Pennies,” had been raves. She wrote and scored it—and also snatched it from limbo, that being a Latin word meaning a musty old desk drawer at Paramount Pictures.
“How come Danny keeps refusing TV—is he waiting for NBC or CBS to offer him the whole network?” I asked delicately.
Sylvia Fine replied with the knowledge that comes from having been Mrs. Danny Kaye since January 3, 1940.
“I don’t think Danny’s eyes or ears are closed to television—I’d say he has infinite possibilities in that medium,” she said.
“He was dead against doing TV until two years ago…the recent offers have come at the wrong time… Then there’s the question of which sponsors, Danny being identified so much with children.
“He’d never do a weekly show…it sometimes takes me a week or even six weeks to write one big number…”
Naturally, she’s going to have a finger in the Nesselrode when he does TV, and the vegetable bills at the Kaye ménage will soar because the only wife in show business who writes her husband’s material requires two strange kinds of writing materials.
“I eat carrots and raw celery when I write,” she confessed.
“They make noise and they fight back,” she explained.
“My cook gets mad at me. She’s just about to make a salad and she’s out of celery.”
Sylvia laid in half a ton of celery and carrots and went to work on “The Five Pennies” after four other writers hadn’t quite done it. Sadly, she tossed out “Ida,” the first Dixieland record to sell a million, because the whole world associated it with Eddie Cantor rather than Red Nichols who made it first famous.
Danny manipulates the cornet so convincingly that I asked her, “How many instruments does he play?”
“None,” she said. (It was all right—Danny is over in Australia doing personal appearances.)
“Oh, come on. He must play the piano—he conducts symphonies,” I said.
“Not at all. Danny, as you know, is a genius. He was born with a middle ear, or whatever you call it. He also has a natural beat. I’ve offered to teach him to read music for 20 years. Danny has never had a lesson.”
[The following portion included in the Sarasota Herald-
"In what?"
"Anything. He's, as I say, a genius. When he conducts, he conducts with his ears, his elbows, his feet. He tells the orchestra, 'Watch carefully because I don't know which part of me I'm going to conduct with tonight.'"
I mentioned that his "Begin the Beguine" off-
Sylvia smiled and thought back 20 years. Danny was working in the Catskills then.
"The first time I heard him sing 'Rock-
She made clear that while she writes everything that's written for Danny's act, he makes up much on stage as he goes along, which he carries around in his head. Danny probably will never get around to doing publicly one of his favorite characters which he reserves for his home or the homes of his friends.
"It's a man named Kaplan who has a rubber company in Akron," Mrs. Kaye said. "He doesn't have any first name. Even his wife calls him Kaplan.
"He's an illiterate pompous character who advertises his philanthropies. Jack Benny or Dore Schary may say, 'Kaplan, why do you hate unions so?' If Danny feels like doing Kaplan that night, he may be off on Kaplan for two hours."