Transcript:

Patricia Marx Interviews Danny Kaye

October 10, 1968

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Introduction:

Patricia Marx interviews. Each week at this time your city station brings you an interview with a leading figure in the arts, politics or the sciences. And here now, to introduce today’s program, is Patricia Marx.

PM: It’s often been said that Americans today are loosing their sense of humor and have become serious-minded. Ah, we’re talking to a man who should, ah, whether or not this is true. He’s been making people laugh the world over for years. He is actor, singer, dancer, conductor, philantrophist and above all, comedian – Mr. Danny Kaye. (pause) Mr. Kaye, do you feel… that ah…

DK: Would you mind repeating those things you just said?

PM: Actor, singer,...

DK: Wrong, wrong…

PM: Dancer…

DK: Wrong…

PM: Conductor…

DK: Wrong…

PM: Philantrophist…

DK: Oh...ah… right, I am a conductor.

PM: Conductor.

DK: Yeah…

PM: Philantrophist…

DK: Wrong…

PM: Comedian…

DK: Wrong…

PM: How would you, what would you say instead of these words? Just conductor?

DK: That’s the only thing that is right about that whole thing. I conduct Symphony Orchestras. Now I don’t know anything about it – but I conduct them. That’s where it’s right.

PM: Where do you do this?

DK: Whe-e-e-re do I do this? I’ve done it in New York, with the New York Philharmonic. I’ve done it with the Boston Symphony. I’ve done it with the Philadelphia Orchestra. I’ve done it with the Los Angeles Symphony. I’ve done it with the Washington Symphony, with the Detroit Symphony, with the Okla... with the Oklahoma City Symphony and with the Buffalo Symphony aaand a couple of others.

PM: Well, maestro, I shall refer to you  [?...] …

DK: Now, that’s a little bit more respectful, you see…

PM: (laughs)

DK: Sure…

PM: But I want to know, maestro, what you feel about, ah, the statement, which is often said, that young Americans are serious-minded and completely lost their sense of humor and, and are not like the old days. Is this true?

DK: Well, I would heartily disagree with that.

PM: You would disagree?

DK: Oh sure.

PM: Has the humor changed – over the years?

DK: I don’t think the humor has changed so much, Patricia, as – the subject of the humor. I think that has changed considerably. But the same basic things that have been funny for hundreds of years, are still funny today. Ah… all the political, ah, jokes and the political satires that have been going on now for some years and one of the great exponents of that is a fellow, a young fellow called “Mort” Sahl, who’s very, very good at it. But it isn’t anything new. Will Rogers did that some years ago and his subject, for humor, in a great many areas, was the Congress of the United States or the Administration that happened to be in power. And that has happened for years and years not only in this country but in Great Britain, ah, I would think China, before they had their form of government as it exists today– I think in every country in the world – there has to be the kind of elevated platform of people running the government that the ordinary fellow can take a pot shot at.

PM: Mmm…

DK: Because, you know, it releases a great deal of tension, and it’s a wonderful kind of feeling to be able to say, the fellow up in the big important office doesn’t know what he’s doing.

PM: Would ah… Danny, in your, ah, performing, you don’t do this very much, do you?

DK: Umum…

PM: The satire…

DK: No – I…

PM: Why didn’t you do this?

DK: I don’t know, because… I don’t naturally lean toward that. Ah… a lot of people naturally lean toward the spoken word as – the single rapier of, you know, their sense of humor. Other people might take the foibles of people’s characteristics and, ah, exploit them in that way. I think what I do I take… I-I think I take people’s weaknesses, and we all have them, we all recognize them in each other and I just, kind of, ah, maybe draw them a little bit outsize. I-I-I I explode them a little bit more than is normal and I think people recognize those things in themselves, consequently it isn’t really, ah… damaging to anybody. Do you understand what I mean? I’m sure you do.

PM: I do. But I wonder whether you think, ah, that humor should serve some kind of purpose in the sense of—

DK: It always does.

PM: Does it serve different purposes, the satire versus your kind of humor?

DK: Sure. Oh, I do an enormous amount of satire, honey, I sing about ah… I do a song about a fellow who, you know, has all the right clothes on, and, you know, has his hair combed in the right way and he has all the right guestures, and ah, he makes all the right movements, you know, except he sings a little bit off key.

PM: Hmm… yeah…

DK: Now you see hundreds of people like that. They don’t necessarily have to be professionals. I find it in my own family. I have a niece of mine who loves to sing, can’t carry a tune worth a darn.

PM: What purpose does-does it serve – if you said that humor always does serve a purpose?

DK: It serves a purpose in that somebody may recognize that in themselves and cause them, you know, to be amused at themselves. If we take ourselves constantly so seriously that we can’t see anything funny about ourselves, then we’re doomed to a hopelessly inadequate kind of life, aren’t we?

PM: I wonder what you feel about the, ah, the brand of sick, ah, humor, ah, that is grown up ah, in ah, both in the sick jokes and also ah, some of the young comedians ah, the satirists Elaine May, Mike Nichols, Dick Gregory…

DK: Well, they don’t, they don’t use sick humor.

PM: They really don’t, do they?

DK: No, they don’t. They do satire in its purest form. They will take almost any given situation and blow it up – so that, you know, the jagged edges which are very, very tiny, you know, when you look at it realistically, suddenly become the focal point for the, the funny bar.

PM: Yeah.

DK: I don’t think they use sick humor at all. I don’t think Dick Gregory uses sick humor. I think he-his humor is – ahh… It might be slightly chauvinistic, like many of us do, you know, whether we are talking about our country or our race or our religion. Now some people do that quite easily, I find I can’t. I-I work in England or in America or in the different cities in the United States or in any city in the world, if they speak English. I can manage to communicate with each of them, we don’t have any of the highly specialized kind of humor that goes with one particular country.

PM: Does this mean that ah – the sense of humor is not different from country to country?

DK: I don’t think so. I don’t think basically the sense of humor is different.

PM: The-the…

DK: I think the core of humor is exactly the same in almost all the countries. Ah… the best classic example is the fellow slipping on the banana peel, you know. That’s funny in any country in the world.

PM: Yeah…

DK: Or the outrageous situation, that, you know, the fella carefully prepares something or walks through a door and slips on the banana peel or bumps into his boss coming in and spills all the flour on him or something, you know…

PM: You seem to be describing slapstick more than ah, almost any other form there.

DK: That’s visual humor. If you want to call visual humor slapstick, I suppose you can. But the same core of the fellow inadvertantly insulting his boss without knowing it, as he picks up the phone when his boss calls when he least, ah, expects him to and says outrageous things on the phone.

PM: Yeah…

DK: You can translate that into the spoken word, as well as the physical.

PM: Danny, where do you get, ah, your material from? Do you, do you see it in specific peoples, in specific incidents or do you imagine it? How-how do you create it?

DK: I think it’s a combination of both, Patricia. I think if anybody has any core of creativity in him and he sees something and his imagination is allowed full play, he can kind of mold it to his own particular brand of performing. Given the same song, five different people will do it five different ways.

PM: Hmm…

DK: Given the same story, five different people might tell it five different ways. Given the same set of circumstances, five people might do it in five different ways.

PM: Do you change as you perform, do you polish something?

DK: Constantly. Constantly. I haven’t done one show exactly the same since I opened here.

PM: Do you work on a particular skit and change it, I mean in the sense of polishing?

DK: No.

PM: …or do you just, ah…

DK: It depends again on the medium you are working in. If you’re doing a weekly television show you don’t have time to polish very much of anything.

PM: Hmm…

DK: If you do a show which is an accumulation of many, many years of discarding and polishing and rewriting and so forth and so on and performing night after night, you have a great opportunity to polish and shape and form.

PM: Does this change as you…

DK: Oh, sure.

PM: … perform… for the audience?

DK: Sure.

PM: Does your mood influence it a lot?

DK: I would think so. I would think the mood of the audience influences it a great deal, too.

PM: Can you change that, or is it a very…

DK: From time to time I can, yeah, ah… Audiences like a person, you know, if you take them collectively. An audience is a person.

PM: Hmm…

DK: And an audience can be shy and reserved and withdrawn, and only with confidence and only with kind of, ah, familarity, do they emerge from out of themselves. Audiences like a person can be outgoing and warm and immediately responsive.

PM: Hmm…

DK: Consequently there’s a different kind of show. That happens night after night and I never know what there gonna be like until after I step out on the stage.

PM: Are some audiences much harder to gain control of to…

DK: Yes. Yes.

PM: Danny, do you have any, ah, specific approach to an audience?

DK: No.

PM: I noticed when I-I saw you. You just gain their attention and their goodwill almost immediately.

DK: No, sometimes it doesn’t -um- happen immediately. Sometimes it takes longer than others, sometimes it never happens.

PM: Hmm…

DK: Amm…

PM: Are you conscious of trying their goodwill? Or how do you go about it?

DK: No, I don’t actually work at it, you know, ah… I-I sense an audience’s attitude rather than its behaviour. That’s one of the reasons I like to work in the theatre where I cannot see the audience as well as a lot of people like to. Because I don’t like to deal with a group of faces. I like to deal with a feeling of a whole audience rather than specific individuals in it.

PM: Hmm…And you get this feeling from their laughter…

DK: Consequently I like working in the darkness. For me to be looking in the darkness so I can deal with a whole feeling of an audience rather than somebody who is particularly amused or somebody who might no be amused at all. Cause I find there’s a conflict of emotion then – for me.

PM: What is your feeling towards the audience? Is it one of warmth, of repoire?

DK: I don’t know whether my feeling toward the audience is of that much importance or not. My feeling about what I do is important. I like doing what I’m doing. I like it very much. And if I like it and it gives me a sense of well-being and comfort and amusement and entertainment, I think I can communicate with my feeling toward an audience rather than with what I am doing.

PM: In other words, you-you express this or-or create the feeling in them, because you…

DK: No, I – there’s nothing magical about it, Patricia. I don’t go and hypnotize any audience. I don’t go out and say “Abracadabra” and they remain spellbound. I just go out and entertain in the show as well as I know how. Some nights I do it better than others because I feel better. Some nights, ah, I am affected by the proceeding 24 hours. Ah… there is a life to live beside the two hours that I am on the stage. The events of the day have a great deal to do with shaping the way I perform at night.

PM: Danny, what about, ah, the case when there are children and grown-ups in the audience. Ah… and you seem to appeal to both. Is this a difficult thing to do or not?

DK: (pause) Patricia, (pause) I honestly think that all audiences are children. (pause) Now they may be grown-up children or they may be young children. But one of the reasons that people enjoy the theatre as much as they do is that they are not forced to behave the way they have to outside of the theatre. Now let me put it another way. Society demands that you behave like an adult if you’re 21 years or older. Now we have people coming to the theatre who are considerably older than 21 and they make all sorts of strange noises and do all sorts of things that I ask them to do because they are not really spotlighted by what society demands for their behaviour. They can actually behave exactly the way they feel in an audience.

PM: Hmm…

DK: Again the identification with a so-called nut on the stage gives them the freedom to behave the same way.

PM: Hmm…

DK: That’s why I think there is an enormous interplay between an audience and myself.

PM: And so it’s the same with kids…

DK: Now, Saturday afternoon, for instance. There are always a lot of children at the matinee. I don’t change the show. And I find that the adults react in exactly the same way the children do, or, conversly, the children react exactly the same way as the adults do.

PM: But aren’t some audiences much more sophisticated than others?

DK: Yeah. But there’s the child in all of them.

PM: And still you-you can break through that ah…

DK: Sure…

PM: … that ah…

DK: Sure. Some of them may be more guarded about it. (pause) But ah… I don’t think a man ever gets old enough or a woman, for that matter, ever gets old enough to completely destroy the child within them.

PM: Thank Goodness.

DK: I would think so.

PM: I suppose that’s one of the so-called purposes that, ah, humor can serve is to release the child…

DK: Yeah, it kind of is a great leveller.

PM: [?...] sense of, sense of delight again. Do you enjoy, Danny, live-performances better than, than working in movies or television?

DK: Yeah. Yes, I do.

PM: How much of your own material do you write? Or how much do your writers do?

DK: Ah… I would think some 60 or 70 per cent of what you saw on the stage, between the actual numbers, …

PM: Hmm…

DK: … are things that happen quite accidentially on the stage.

PM: Hmm…

DK: Only from relating to an audience. The other afternoon, I don’t know how this started… ah, I think it was a Wednesday afternoon or Saturday afternoon, I happened to mention that I was gonna keep the audience until seven o’clock that evening and one woman, quite involuntarily, said:  “Oohh!“ And I said: “Are you worried about your dinner spoiling?” And she said: “Frankly, yes.” And we started a whole conversation. I don’t know where it came from, we got on the subject of potato pancakes and pot roasts and things… and ah… I find now that I can relate that story to almost any audience, explaining to them that something happened at the matinee that I’d like to tell you about and, you know, they understand it immediately.

PM: You can – use it all the time…

DK: I don’t actually sit down and write with writers. But I will take something that has been written and in the course of performing or in the course of creating it, you know, ah… I think I kind of impose myself onto what has been written so that it, it-it shapes to me.

PM: Hmm. How about with the many movies you’ve made. Did ah – did you work on the scripts at all?

DK: Oh, some of them, yeah. Some. You know, merely in suggesting what might be a … a sequence in a movie or how we could perhaps do the sequence in another way which would either be better for the scene before or afterwards.

PM: Where did you learn these fabulous dialects? Did you—where did you pick them up? From travels around the world?

DK: I don’t think so. I think I did those or had a feeling for those before I travelled anywhere.

PM: Hmm…

DK: You see, I am firmly convinced that a lot of people have ears and really do not hear. And a lot of people have eyes and really do not see. They just see what is necessary to see. In other words, you know, they see if they’re driving toward a cliff, you know, they know enough not to drive over it. A lot of people use those organs for a little bit more than just everyday living. And, ah, I think if one is musically inclined, one has a sense of the cadence of a language which is what causes an accent, you know. Ah… dialects are not, ah, that difficult, they’re not that special to me or a group of people who might do them. Almost anybody can do accents. It isn’t a great talent.

PM: It’s a lot rhythm, isn’t it?

DK: Yeah, it’s cadence.

PM: Yeah, I haven’t thought of that. That’s true, those, the way the put those words together…

DK: Sure…

PM: … there are few sounds, few particular, defining sounds.

DK: Well… Do you speak French?

PM: Umm… I try.

DK: All right.

PM: I’m very good with wine. Once I have a little wine, I’m very good at it… (laughs)

DK: (chuckles) How would you say – ah… “I would like to take a warm bath”, in French?

PM: Aah… J’aimerais prendre une(!) bain chaud.

DK: Amm. Now, in English you say, “I would like to take a warm bath.” In French you’d say, “I would like to take a warm bath.”

PM: Hmm…

DK: So it’s the cadence of the language rather than the accent itself.

PM: Hmm…

DK: Because I will say the same line without any accent at all. I’ll say it, as we speak English now, “I would like to take a warm bath.” Then I will say, “I would like to take a warm bath.”

PM: Hmm…

DK: And it immediately has a foreign flavour, doesn’t it? Now add to that, “I would like to take a warm bath.” And then it immediately becomes an accent.

PM: Do you-do you speak foreign languages?

DK: Eleven.

PM: You do?

DK: Yes.

PM: With an American accent? Or, or… not too much?

DK: No, no, not too much. I speak nine… well,… yeah, eleven. I have a working… Ah, nobody understands them. I speak eleven languages…

PM: (laughs)

DK: … but nobody understands them. (chuckles)

PM: (laughs)

DK: Do you speak Baby?

PM: Umm… umm…

DK: It’s a very important language.

PM: I-I haven’t recently. No.

DK: Yeah. … A lot of people speak French and German and Spanish, ah…ah… Italian. Almost everybody speaks Baby.

PM: Sometimes I do, that’s right… with little animals…

DK: Sure. You get yourself a three or four month old baby. And hear yourself saying: (Baby talk)

PM: (laughs) You’re… (laughs)

DK: (Baby talk) It’s a very important language.

PM: (laughs) You’re [?...]… (laughs)

DK: Basic means for communication.

PM: I didn’t realize now that I speak several languages without even trying.

DK: That’s right.

PM: And I have one dialect for everybody…

DK: Now, now. Now, this is ah - you know I will do this tonight in the theatre? And I’ve never done it in my life. But tonight I will somehow explain…

PM: You’re very good.

DK: Yeah, I will explain about this.

PM: That we do speak several languages.

DK: Yeah. And I’m gonna make the whole audience speak Baby tonight.

PM: (chuckles) This is something that interests me. You have a great deal of audience participation and um… I’ve seen it done other times in this terrific reticence where the audience doesn’t want to. How do you make them do these incredibly odd and goofy sounding sounds?

DK: I haven’t any idea.

PM: Yeah. Do you think they have more fun that way?

DK: Does the audience…?

PM: Yeah.

DK: Oh, I would think so.

PM: Danny, you made a marvelous movie, ah, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I wonder if you have any secret dreams like Walter Mitty?

DK: (pause) We all do. (pause) I’m luckier than most people, I usually can really act them out, you see.

PM: Hmm…

DK: Most people have fantasies like Walter Mitty had. And they have them within the confines of their own mind. A lot of people in my profession literally go about acting them out and sometimes it is more fun and sometimes it gets you all mixed up where you don’t know what you really are.

PM: Hmm…

DK: (chuckles)

PM: Is it being a surgeon?

DK: No, I would have liked to have been a surgeon, I think. When I really come down to the bottom line, I don’t think I would have liked to have been anything but what I am. I would have liked to have been a surgeon. I would have liked to have been a Symphony conductor.

PM: But you were, of course.

DK: Well, again, that’s acting it out, you see. I have, I can’t read music, I have no knowledge of music and yet, I hear well enough that I can conduct an orchestra and make them play the way I want them to. Because everything I conduct I actually know. I can sing all of it.

PM: So you really did do this conducting?

DK: Yeees.

PM: (chuckles) I would have loved to have been there. Would you advise someone now to go into showbuisness if they wanted to?

DK: If they wanted to? I don’t know if I’d advise anybody to go into showbusiness if they wanted to. I would advise them to go into it if they had to.

PM: Hmm… I guess that’s true. (pause) Well, maestro. Doctor…

DK: (chuckles)

PM: (chuckles) … Mr. Danny Kaye, I want to thank you very much.

DK: Not at all. I-I was delighted to talk to you and I-I enjoyed myself enormously. I think we’ve settled some of the world’s problems which will never ever come up.

PM: (chuckles) … again. (laughs) Thank you.

PM: And now I’d like you to hear the maestro sing some songs in several of the eleven languages he speaks.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen – Good Old 149 – Tchaikovsky

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