“Danny Kaye Likes Video – So Far”

The Victoria Advocate – Sep. 22, 1963

By: Cynthia Lowry

HOLLYWOOD (AP) – Weekly television is a brand new experience to Danny Kaye, the talented comedian who has sampled with tremendous success the joys and disciplines of all other areas of show business—the stage, motion pictures, night clubs.

And with some half dozen shows completed, Kaye finds he likes it—so far.

“I don’t know how it will be later,” said Danny rather soberly, “but at the moment I’m finding it stimulating. I really believe that with a weekly show I’ll have a chance to try out some new things, fool around with some fresh ideas. I’m certain that it is tougher to do one show a year than a show a week. That’s because a performer has limited time to do the best he can with the material at hand. Each week we’ve been making a show on Saturday night. I think—I hope—they have been good, but I’m sure that some of them will only be fair and that some will be bad. But even with a bad show, there’s no time to brood. You pick yourself up and go back to work on Monday—to make a good show.”

Kaye, a tall, skinny fellow who can be more charming than Cinderella's prince when the spirit moves him—and as temperamental and hard to handle as nitroglycerine at other times—currently is enjoying the rugged 6-day-a-week schedule involved in turning out one hour-long variety show a week.

“Now it seems—after almost two months of this—that I had been living in a state of semiretirement,” he commented with obvious contentment. He airily dismissed his frequent long, grueling trips abroad to entertain children, his films, his months of personal appearance tours and his recent limited engagement as a one-man show on Broadway as if they were lazy periods spent in a rocking chair.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he continued with a wave of the hand toward the enormous studio where the rehearsals and final taping of the show take place.

“It’s all incredibly well organized. Everyone seems to like each other.

“But working this hard takes considerably psychological adjustment. Sometimes there’s a question of whether we want something good or whether we want it Thursday, but so far I think we’ve managed somehow to get it both good—or at least pretty good—and Thursday, too.

“The thing that you must adjust to is the lack of time. If you did any of these things on the road, you’d have three or four weeks with the luxury of polishing and honing the thing down fine.”

Kaye sighed and confessed: “Anyway, I think we’ve got an entertaining show, and I can continue to think so at least until the series goes on the air.”

And that decisive moment will be next Wednesday on CBS at 9 p.m.

Back of Kaye’s decision to tackle television is undoubtedly his built-in restlessness and a need for a change. He often quotes Moss Hart to the effect that there occasionally come times in a man’s life when he must pick up his life by the scruff and shake it up.

It isn’t that Kaye, a fellow of many moods and facets, does not have many interests. He’s an airplane enthusiast and flies his own plane around the country. He also—and quite seriously—lists other hobbies as golf, surgery and cooking.

Once a year Danny travels to the Mayo Clinic for his annual physical check-up, an occasion he also uses to indulge his surgery hobby. He watches operations.

About a year ago he landed there unexpectedly with an acute case of appendicitis but, once the troublesome organ was excised, enjoyed his stay immensely.

The following portion was not included in the above article.

Instead, it was found in the Waterloo Daily Chronicle.

"I sat in on some open-heart surgery," he said, with the self-satisfaction of a collector describing his triumph at an auction.

He takes his cooking equally seriously. The other Sunday he jumped in his plane and flew to San Francisco merely to learn how to cook a special shrimp dish and returned with a prize, a Chinese cooking vessel called a "wok."

"Cooking," says Danny Kaye, "is the greatest way in the world to relax. Most Saturday nights when the show is finished, I cook. The other night I made rigatoni (an Italian pasta dish) for 20 people. But somebody else cleans up."

He's also very fond of preparing meat dishes--"It gives me a chance to practice surgery, carving and sewing up stuffings."

Kaye's entire theatrical career has been closely associated with that of his wife, Sylvia Fine, whom he married 23 years ago. Material which she wrote for him has been among his most successful.

But Miss Fine is not connected with his CBS TV show. The credits for the show list a magnificent total of six writers.

Although the Brooklyn-born comedian lives a short distance from CBS's television city, where the show is made, the network is building him a handsome penthouse suite complete with living room, library, sleeping quarters, kitchen (large) and patio, atop his studio.

Kaye is as excited about it as a small boy on Christmas Eve. And the first thing he intends to hang up is his wok.

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